π Good morning. Phone battery running low? You might need a hamster. No, we didn’t spell charger wrong. A YouTuber rigged his pet hamster’s exercise wheel with a 5-volt motor, an energy harvester, and lithium-ion cells salvaged from an e-scooter to generate power overnight. While the setup technically works, the hamster would need to hit ~10k RPM to charge at normal speeds, so you might want to keep that cable at your desk, after all.
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π Your new roommate is a data center: California-based startup Span is partnering with Nvidia to turn your house into a mini data center. The startup’s goal is to use spare household electricity — the average home uses just ~42% of its allotted power — to run "nodes" packed with 16 Nvidia GPUs and ~$500k worth of hardware. In exchange, homeowners would get their energy and internet bills subsidized. So far, the startup has outfitted only one home with a node, but says it has ~100 rolling out in a pilot program later this year.
πͺ What about my gains? Companies started putting protein in literally everything, and now intense demand has led to a shortage of whey protein concentrate, increasing the price of standard whey powder by 50%+ since January. Companies may respond by hiking prices or exploring alternative sources, including soy and pea proteins, per FoodDive.
π Hacky Sack is back: Standing in a circle and kicking a small bag around is apparently the hot new trend among youth, perBusiness Insider. The low-stakes sport as we know it was invented by John Stalberger and Mike Marshall in 1972 as the former was recovering from a knee injury, and acquired by Frisbee maker Wham-O in 1983. It took off across schoolyards and college campuses in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and is now so popular among high schoolers that some stores have sold out of footbags. At least one parent was thrilled to see her kids doing something that did not involve their phones.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Going primetime: NBC’s producing a gameshow based on Wordle, the puzzle game acquired by The New York Times, hosted by Savannah Guthrie. Players will face off in a “Wordle arena.”
Money, please: Venmo will see its first redesign since it launched in 2009, reflecting how it’s evolved from the app you use to pay your friend back for lunch to a more robust payments platform.
Tired of ads for billionaire werewolf CEO vertical dramas? UK TikTok users will get an ad-free option if they’re willing to pay $5.40 per month.
My sugarboo, I’m litigating: Dua Lipa is suing Samsung for $15m+ for allegedly featuring a photo of her on its TV packaging without permission. Her lawyers also claim she’s asked the company to stop using the pic for nearly a year.
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The act of turning water into wine may be divine. But at Credem Bank’s warehouse in northern Italy, which is said to resemble a “cathedral of cheese,” turning cheese into cash is just business.
Since 1953, the regional bank has been wheeling and dealing in Parmesan Reggiano — one of the most strictly regulated foods in the world, produced by just ~300 dairies — accepting the cheese from producers as collateral for loans.
According to CNN, it hasn’t lost a euro on it yet.
Why bank on cheese
The $4.7B industry relies on a delicate supply chain, tight regulations, and age-old methods.
It can only be produced within a small geographic location using three ingredients — cow’s milk, salt, and rennet.
After 12 months of aging, the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium performs a tapping test to certify a wheel’s quality with its (literal) stamp of approval.
Each wheel weighs 80+ pounds and can cost anywhere between $900 and $2.5k, depending on its age, with some maturing for up to 40 months.
For producers, that means revenue doesn’t arrive for at least a year. But farmers must be paid monthly, while other costs add up. Credem fills this gap.
While parm represents just 1% of the bank’s business, it’s a vital part of the overall industry.
“Without this system of leverage, the world of Parmigiano Reggiano cannot exist,” Italian dairy industry leader Paolo Ganzerli told CNN.
How it works
Certified wheels are scanned and saved in a digital log detailing their production date, dairy or origin, and status.
Then they’re stored on long wooden shelves in a climate-controlled vault, where they’re monitored daily for irregularities (swelling, cracks, etc.).
Producers receive 60%-80% of the wheel’s value upfront while saving on operational costs of aging the cheese, and the bank holds onto an appreciating asset that it can sell if a producer defaults on a loan.
Blockchain technology has also recently doubled the bank’s lending capacity by allowing pledged wheels to be stored in producers’ own facilities.
BTW: Wine and whiskey are also commonly exchanged for financing, but food isn’t the strangest form of collateral out there. In 2011, a Spanish bank tried to offer soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo as collateral for a loan from the European Central Bank.
If a 14-year-old can make $14k a month… maybe you can, too? Here’s the one strategy he used when building his mobile app.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Price of three cans of “human meat hash,” according to an ad spotted on Temu by New York Magazine’s John Herrman. Since launching in 2022, Temu has become one of the most popular e-commerce sites in the world, offering something for just about everyone — apparently, even cannibals.
While a company rep explained that the ad “shouldn’t have run,” it, in fact, did. Let’s just hope that, like much of the site’s inventory, the canned human was also a knockoff.
AROUND THE WEB
π On this day: In 1963, a then-unknown Bob Dylan walked off “The Ed Sullivan Show” because the network rejected his song “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” a satire of the conservative John Birch Society.
π That’s interesting: The Guardian attempts to rank all 35 of Shakespeare’s plays.
π️ Newsletter: The Assist is packed with actionable tips, resources, and insights to help women professionals move forward at work.
