Opioids & Ferraris 💊
This Week in Review☕️: A Hot Sauce Shortage | This Big Pharma company prepares for Bankruptcy | Jalapeños are losing their taste | Ferrari buyers are under 40 | India enters the Space Race | G20 Summi
This Week’s Partner💡: Instacart
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Quick Bites:
Food 🌶: If you're a fan of Sriracha (and who isn't ?) you’ve probably noticed there aren't many top brands available on the market right now.
Extremely dry weather in Mexico has caused red jalapeños, the main ingredient in sriracha, to fail.
Large areas of farming in Mexico rely on water from the Colorado river, which has itself been depleted in recent times.
Mexico is by far the largest producer, but you can also find red jalapeños in New Mexico, Texas and California- regions that have all been suffering a mega-drought over the past few years, Forbes reports.
Even peppers- a heat-loving veggie, are starting to suffer the consequences of climate change 🌡
To put it simply: Climate Change > Drought > Bad Peppers > NO MORE HOT SAUCE FOR OUR MORNING EGG AND CHEESE SAMMIE 😩😩
Things we've survived in 2023 so far:
💡Turkey earthquake
💡Titanic submarine implosion
💡Cyclone Freddy
💡Chile Forest Fires
💡Texas Ice Storms
💡Biden re-launching 2024 POTUS campaign
💡Donald Trump indictment
💡Hurricane Hilary
💡In-N-Out Banana Peppers
💡A Hot sauce shortage
And it's not even September yet... Buckle up folks
The online market for sriracha is so hot (pun intended) that bottles of top brands are going for over $100. Amazon and eBay resellers are jacking up prices as as high as $120.
Our Thoughts💡: We've attained a bottle of liquid gold during the Great Sriracha Shortage of 2023. We will be starting bidding from $5k next month.
Email us to get this bidding WAR started 🌶🌶
Healthcare💊: Drugstore giant- Rite Aid is preparing to file for bankruptcy in the coming weeks.
Rite Aid, which is the 7th biggest pharmacy in the US by total prescription revenue, has $3.3 billion in debt and potentially billions more in damages from opioid-related lawsuits, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Popular opinion💡: Pharmacies are killing thousands of people by pumping dangerously addictive painkillers to make a buck
Unpopular opinion💡: Blaming a pharmacy for selling prescribed medication is like blaming a gas station for a drunk driving accident
Which one are you? 💭
Purdue Pharma, Mallinckrodt and Endo International have already declared bankruptcy due to opioid lawsuits, WSJ reports.
These large corporations have always depended on refinancing their debt to survive, but that became hard to do with higher interest rates.
So.. Big pharma- the most heavily regulated industry has caused the opioid endemic..🙄
Maybe we should deregulate it and get the government out of it? Ya know, for our safety.
The US has now seen 402 bankruptcies in 2023. That's more than all of 2020.
Analysts are further predicting 300 more bankruptcies this year, the most since 2010.
Meanwhile, Jerome Powell is screeching from the White House that the economy is stronger than ever. Go figure 🤷🏻♀️
Luxury🏎: Ferrari CEO says nearly 30% of its buyers are under 40, even as waitlist grows, CNBC reports.
A 3-year waiting list to spend $300k? Hmm.. Seems a bit excessive, sticking with our Subaru 🙏🏻
Despite the excessive demand, Ferrari said it has no plans to amp up production.
“We are a brand that is not looking for volume"
“The client is giving a value to our cars because they are unique, because they are limited, because they are exclusive.
We could make more, but that doesn’t make sense. We will offend our clients.”
-Ferrari CEO Beneditto Vigna
Touché.. Scarcity breeds desire after all 💯
Our Thoughts💡: Ok, so we did the math:
If we have 109 kids, then we can receive enough stimulus money to buy the new Ferrari, no questions asked.
*Currently Manifesting a red Daytona to go with our strawberry glazed Donuts* 🍓🍓
Culture 🧸: "Kidults" and "Eldertainment".. a new trend to watch out for.
Toymakers target adults because "kids these days" only want their iPads and iPhones, Axios reports.
"Eldertainment"- which refers to toys and games for senior citizens, has become an important new category for toy makers.
Key Highlights, according to Axios:
💡Movies like 'Barbie' and 'Transformers' have been key in reviving interest in retro dolls like Allan
💡The pandemic lockdown had already started this trend by pushing many adults to pick up childhood pastimes
💡Now, "kidults"- adults who enjoy cartoons, action figures and pop culture are driving toy sales
💡A recent survey by The Toy Association found that 41% of parents have bought toys for themselves in the last year.
Lego has come up with an "icons" series of products aimed at adults, featuring major sets like a $680 Titanic ship.
"Retro nostalgia sets are super, super popular,"
-a Lego spokeswoman told Axios at a recent toy expo in New York City.
Our Thoughts💡: Nothing to see here folks.. 👇🏻Just a grown-ass woman walking in to the movie theater in a Barbie truck, a Barbie sundae with butter cake chunks and hot pink whipped cream and a special Barbie cocktail made up of strawberry ice-cream, rum, pineapple juice and GLITTER.
Oh, and a life-sized Ken to go with our doll in the passenger seat ofcourse
Space 🚀: India celebrated a historic moment by becoming the 1st nation to successfully send a spacecraft to the moon.
Every Indian last week👇🏻
The landing of 'Chandraayan 3' rover made India the 1st country to probe the moon's south pole and the 4th nation to have successfully completed a lunar mission.
💡NASA annual budget: $25 billion
💡Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) annual budget: $1.6bn
💡Chandraayan 3 cost: $75 million
INDIA 🔥🔥🔥
🚀Space Race: Chandraayan 3 is on the moon
♟Chess World Cup 2023: Praggnanandhaa reached the finals
🥇World Athletics Championship: Neeraj Chopra wins gold
🏏Women's blind cricket team: India beat Australia to win gold
🏃♂️Men's 4x400m Relay: shattered the Asian record
What a week for Desi’s WORLDWIDE 🙌🏻
Sports 🎾: Djokovic makes winning return to the US Open as he beat his french opponent to reclaim the World No.1 ranking.
Djokovic, who was banned from the US for being unvaccinated against Covid-19 last year, was seen in New York after 2021.
The three-time champion was greeted by a record crowd of over 30,000 which included Barack Obama and his wife-Michelle, Reuters reports.
Our Thoughts💡: 36-year old Djokovic providing us all the mid-week motivation to get us out of bed and get crackin’
Guys, LET'S GOOO🚀
Quicker Bites:
Florida braces for Category 3 hurricane.
Trump and co-defendants in Georgia election case will be arraigned on September 6.
NASA releases 1st US pollution map images from new space instrument.
Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov to represent Russia at G20 summit.
Goldman Sachs offloads $29bn advisory unit.