INBOXIFY ORIGINAL's [25/August/2023]

Hello, Friday! Welcome to our weekly newsletter filled with captivating stories, exciting updates, and valuable insights. Get ready to embark on a journey of discovery and inspiration as we dive into the highlights of the week. Sit back, relax, and enjoy your Friday read!

SPACE

India got to the moon on the cheap

India spent less money to land a spacecraft on the moon than Warner Bros. spent to make Gravity.

With a reported budget of just $75 million, India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft successfully landed on the moon’s south pole yesterday, making India the first country to reach the unexplored terrain after a Russian spacecraft crashed in the same pursuit earlier this week. Its rover will rove in hopes of locating a water supply that is easily accessible—a necessity for more advanced and long-term missions to space.

The landing instantly became an immense source of national pride and signifies India’s prowess in launching high-quality moon missions with a Kirkland-level price tag.

• The Indian Space Research Organization, which launched Chandrayaan-3, had a budget of less than $1.5 billion last fiscal year. By comparison, NASA currently has over $34 billion in budgetary resources.

• India’s $6 billion private space industry, filled with space tech startups inspired by companies like SpaceX, is expected to triple over the next two years.

One for the books: Prayers were held across India ahead of the momentous landing, which 7.5 million people tuned in to watch on a YouTube livestream as the country joined the exclusive club of just three other nations that have successfully landed on the moon.

FOOD & BEV

‘Fall is here’—Starbucks

People in the Midwest are welcoming the pumpkin spice latte back by slurping it in 100+ degree weather because fall starts when Starbucks decides. The PSL—now in its 20th year of being as synonymous with autumn as billowy scarves and going brunette—and the rest of the Starbucks seasonal fall menu went live today.

The iconic PSL will be joined by new menu items, including the Iced Pumpkin Cream Chai Tea Latte and the Iced Apple Crisp Oatmilk Shaken Espresso. The fall newbies highlight two industry trends:

1. Everyone wants an iced coffee. Both new drinks are, by default, served over ice, meaning three out of five of the Starbucks fall drinks are intended to be cold instead of hot. Five years ago, cold drinks accounted for about 50% of all the company’s beverage sales—now they’ve jumped to 75%.

2. R&D is watching TikTok. The Iced Pumpkin Cream Chai Tea Latte took inspiration from a popular customization by TikTokers, who ordered from the coffee chain’s secret menu. And Starbucks isn’t the only chain getting its best ideas from 90-second videos: Chipotle added a new menu item to accommodate two quesadilla “hacks” that went viral on TikTok.

No need to spike your drink…the coffee giant is offering Pumpkin Spice Espresso Martinis at its posh Reserve locations in major global cities.

ENVIRONMENT

Japan to send treated radioactive water into the ocean

Tomorrow, Japan will begin a decadeslong process of releasing treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean.

Japanese officials say it’s a necessary step to decommission the plant, which was wrecked in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami there and suffered a nuclear disaster. For the past 12 years, hundreds of underground tanks have stored roughly 1.34 million metric tons of contaminated water from the nuclear plant and releasing the water into the ocean is considered the most feasible option.

It’s become a major controversy in the region. In July, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), cleared the Japanese government’s plan to dump the water in the ocean. But neighboring countries, environmental activists, and the seafood industry are urging Japan to find an alternative.

• In Japan, which exported $2 billion worth of fish in 2022, seafood workers are worried that this move will cause reputational harm and cost them their livelihoods.

• South Korea and China, the biggest importers of Japanese seafood, have already banned fish imports from Fukushima.

Baby, there’s tritium in the water

Japan says it’s filtered out all the radioactive elements in the water…except one: tritium. This element that can’t be filtered (only diluted) has become the main point of tension around the plan.

Opponents warn of the potential harm of releasing tritium, which emits radiation, but supporters say that disposing of nuclear wastewater with minimal amounts of tritium has been done before in Japan and other countries.

• The released water will contain 190 becquerels of tritium per liter, far below the World Health Organization’s safety limit of 10,000 becquerels per liter for drinking water, according to the Tokyo Electric Power Company.

• Two plants in the UK release between 400 and 2,000 terabecquerels of tritium into the ocean every year. Plants in Japan also discharged terabecquerels of tritium before the Fukushima accident.

But critics, including the US National Association of Marine Laboratories, argue that there are still unanswered questions and a lack of evidence about the safety of the water.

Looking ahead…after the discharge begins, Japan plans to test seawater and fish near the plant starting as early as next month. But disposing of all the water is expected to take between 30 and 40 years.

CLEANTECH

A wind-powered cargo ship has set sail

Sailing the high seas may give off Master and Commander vibes, but it’s coming back in 2023 as an innovative way to lower commercial shipping’s carbon footprint.

A cargo ship retrofitted with solid wing sails embarked on a trial voyage earlier this week, chartered by food giant Cargill for a fuel-efficient journey from China to Brazil. A UK company started by yacht racing pros, BAR Technologies, designed the so-called WindWings tech.

How it works:

• Two foldable sails made from wind-turbinelike material were installed atop the bulk cargo vessel Pyxis Ocean and stand 123 feet above deck when raised.

• Those sails enable a ship to harness sea wind for propulsion, reducing fossil fuel use by up to 20%.

The concept could be a game changer for the shipping industry, which relies primarily on oil-powered vessels and spits out around 3% of global carbon emissions. That existing ships can be modified to breeze along with the winds is particularly promising for making old gas guzzlers cleaner.

But this tech faces some headwinds. It’s unclear whether WindWings will be commercially viable before we all hit the age when a cruise becomes the go-to vacation: Cargill expects it’ll take at least seven to 10 years for fuel savings to surpass the cost of installing the sails on the Pyxis Ocean.

REAL ESTATE

Reports of the mall’s death have been greatly exaggerated

If you thought the days of going to the mall to nibble on an Auntie Anne’s pretzel and leave smelling of Bath and Body Works were over, think again.

According to a recent report from analytics firm Coresight Research, malls are back:

• From 2021 to 2022, retail sales at malls increased 11% to over $800 billion.

• Foot traffic at top-tier malls, where the average shopper makes $200,000+ per year, increased 12% in 2022 compared to 2019.

What’s fueling the malls’ post-pandemic resurgence? While it once looked like the rise of e-commerce would kill the mall, brands have figured out that customers want both. They have invested in “omnichannel” marketing, which promotes both online shopping and physical stores, to drive growth, per Coresight. Plus, Gen Zers might have missed the halcyon mall days of Aéropostale and Hollister, but they are mall-loyal—a survey conducted by the International Council of Shopping Centers found that roughly the same share of Gen Z respondents shopped at brick-and-mortar stores (97%) as online (95%).

Big picture: Retail is a bright spot in the otherwise dim outlook for commercial real estate. In Q2, office vacancy rates soared to a 30-year high of 18.2%, while the vacancy rate for retail space fell to 4.8%—the lowest level since real estate firm CBRE started tracking it 18 years ago. And 1,000 more stores are expected to open than to close this year.

E-COMMERCE

The TikTok Shop is open for business

Illustration: Francis Scialabba, Photo: Ridofranz/Getty Images

A $44 pickle sweatshirt making the rounds on TikTok is the new “I mustache you a question” merch for the terminally online generation.

If that sentence gave you a headache, take some ibuprofen before scrolling through the dizzying cornucopia of products available on TikTok’s official catapult into e-commerce: TikTok Shop. The new feature, which fully rolled out in the US this month, lets TikTok users purchase anything under the fashion or life-hack sun with just a few clicks, right from the comfort of their For You Pages.

The social media app is looking to sell more than $20 billion in products through TikTok Shop by the end of the year, taking on e-commerce giants like Shein, Temu, and even Amazon.

To get there, TikTok has been accused of boosting videos that sell products through the new feature, which are marked with an orange shopping cart icon. The pickle sweatshirt, for example, is suddenly all over people’s screens despite having been around since January.

And whether the app is actually putting its thumb on the algorithm scale or not, users are expressing frustration that their feeds are overwhelmed with glorified advertisements—and that it’s now easier than ever to fall into the #tiktokmademebuyit trap.

Watch: The iPhone alarm as a piano ballad. Would love to wake up to this instead of the original.

Explore: Very expensive maps.

Learn: A cursed fact about the Indain housing market.

Share: Share INBOXIFY NEWSLETTER with your friends and family