Weekend Edition: Keep It Moving

How Phones and Schedules Killed Street Culture?

Author

Fatih Taskiran
January 25, 2025 • Reading Time: 7 minutes

In partnership with

Good morning, fellow wanderers and sidewalk sprinters!

Today, we look closer at the surprisingly barren egg shelves (thanks, bird flu) and wonder why we've stopped lingering on city streets. Now it's time to explore the news you never knew you needed.

Today’s world, simplified for you:

We've decided sidewalks are just highways for walking. A new study comparing 1980 to 2010 found city dwellers walked faster, stopped less, and had fewer casual encounters. Screens, overscheduled lives, fewer inviting public spaces—whatever the cause, we're swapping spontaneous hangouts for solitary phone time.

The downside? It's time to say goodbye to the messy magic of random sidewalk chats that spark connection and creativity. So next time you're rushing, consider slowing down—maybe even saying "hi" to a stranger.

Bonus: Read—or watch—Whyte's classic study of New York's plazas, which started a mini-revolution.

Sea of Lies

The catch of the day might be a big fat lie. The Indonesian aquatech darling, once valued at $1.4 billion, is under fire for allegedly fabricating over 75% of its revenue. A whistleblower said a fish-feeding startup served up massive "sales" that never existed. SoftBank, Temasek, and even G42's Sheikh Tahnoun are plagued with financial problems, while EFishery's now-expelled CEO is accused of misleading investors.

Yeah, so much for that "modernizing the fishing industry" thing. It's time to ask: Where did the money go, and were enough fish in the sea to justify EFishery's lofty claims?

Egged On

It's back and wreaking havoc on America's egg supply. Over 30 million hens were culled to stop the bird flu, cutting the egg-laying population by about 10%. Many grocery stores set "one carton per customer" limits, while others have empty shelves.

Prices soared to over $4 a dozen (and even higher in some cities) as farms scrambled to restock and hatcheries couldn't keep up. It will be at least six months before the flocks recover, which means sticker shock—and a lot fewer omelets.

🎪 Weekend Leisure Core

Fuel Your Screen: I'm here to tell you that Sean Baker's Anora is a star-maker, earning the old cliché of a "star-making turn." It's about wealth, power, and what love can and can't do. But it's also about something far more heartbreaking: being used to being looked at one way and then seen.

Fuel Your Ears: Best Classical Music Albums of 2024, including John Adams opera recordings, Chopin studies by Yunchan Lim, Brahms works by Igor Levit, and more.

Fuel Your Mind: Nnedi Okorafor's new book, Death of the Author, shows how a once-struggling writer deals with power, privilege, agency, and art. It's a great work from its time that reflects the past, present, and future.

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💡 Core Wisdom

❝

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

📸 Lens to Life

Pictures of mirrors in art.

🧮 Core Count: 7,325

The number of stores closed last year by major US retailers. (It's the highest level since 2020.)

🗓️ Flashback:

1554 - The city of So Paulo was founded in Brazil.

1840 - Antarctica was identified as a new continent by an American naval expedition under Charles Wilkes.

1924 - First Winter Olympics open in Chamonix, France.

1949 - David Ben-Gurion's Mapai party won the first Israeli election.

1961 - First live, nationally televised presidential news conference, held by JFK.

1971 - Major General Idi Amin led a military coup in Uganda.

2011 - The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 starts with street demonstrations, rallies, acts of civil disobedience, strikes, and violent clashes.

I'm glad we could get together here. Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow!

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