Gm. LeBron, Brady, Joey Chestnut. The living legend did what he does every 4th of July and choked down 62 hot dogs to win his 16th Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. On this beautiful day, pay homage to the GOAT and gobble a glizzy.

— Stephen Flanders

🏠 SOCIAL MEDIA

Say Hello To Threads

Back in May we covered Meta’s rumored Twitter competitor, P92. At the time it was believed P92 would:

• Be built on top of Instagram, with your login working on both and your Instagram followers ported over.

• Have a centralized feed showcasing your followers and recommended content where you can post text updates up to 500 characters.

• Have creator controls and account safety features. Block to your heart’s desire.

• Have a decentralized component, as users will be able to interact with other apps such as Mastodon.

Now, it is finally time for P92 to be unveiled.

P92 Threads

Except the app is actually called Threads, not P92.

Judging from a quick peek at the website, it seems like a safe bet that release day is tomorrow. And, thanks to the good folks at 9To5Google, we have an idea of how the app will work:

• You don’t necessarily have to follow all of your Instagram peers on Threads, but you’ll have that option.

• Similarly, you can choose whether you’ll allow your Instagram followers to follow you on Threads.

• Your name, username, and profile picture are all synced from Instagram. Sorry anons.

• The Mastodon integration is in development and won’t be available right away.

Pretty exciting stuff, and very conveniently timed.

One Man’s Troubles Is Another Man’s Gains

It’s no secret that user frustration with Twitter is at an all-time high due to the “rate limit exceeded” debacle. People are so frustrated that BlueSky literally can’t handle all of its sign-ups.

Does anyone really believe Threads getting released now is a coincidence?

Because if you do, I have some beach-front property in Idaho to sell you.

The Bottom Line: The headwinds for Twitter keep adding up.

🏠 TECH

It’s BookTok Now

TikTok’s influence on culture is undeniable. It has turned countless people into celebrities. It influences what restaurants put on their menus. And it’s become a major player in the publishing world.

So major that ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) is launching their own publishing company: 8th Note Press.

More specifically, they are launching “an ecosystem where people could find, buy, read, review, and discuss books”, whatever that means. Because it’s ByteDance, information is hard to come by.

But, what we do know is:

• They are already reaching out to authors for book deals, although these deals are lighter on money compared to their competitors.

• They are focused on books in the fantasy, romance, and mystery genres.

• They have the power to really disrupt the industry because of the power of #BookTok, a hashtag that has been viewed 91 billion times in the past year.

• They plan to focus on digital books until TikTok launches an online retail store.

Naturally, having the company behind BookTok’s 91 billion views is an attractive possibility for authors.

Now we’ll just have to see if they can convince authors that these views are worth less money up-front.

The Big Picture: TikTok may or may not be toast in the US, but ByteDance doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

What else is going on?

• Apple is planning to launch a Mac monitor that is always on.

• Google is scraping everything you do as part of their AI training efforts.

• ChatGPT’s browse with Bing has been turned off due to persistent rule-breaking.

• TweetDeck-ers, welcome to the dark side.

Stat: $140B: The amount that SoftBank has already invested into AI, and they aren’t planning to stop anytime soon. What a time to be alive.

Rabbit hole: AI, Ozymandias (Freddie deBoer)

😂 WACKY AI WEDNESDAY

May I present the future of funerals:

🤥 3 LIES & A HEADLINE

News is so weird these days. Three of these headlines are fake stories from The Onion while one is actually true. Can you spot the truth amongst the fakes?

A. Nation Demands World’s Tallest Man Give World’s Shortest Man A Piggyback Ride

B. Microscopic Louis Vuitton Bag Sells For More Than $60,000

C. NFL Players Suspended For Violating DraftKings Terms Of Use

D. Georgia Cuts Welfare Benefits For Recipients Caught Experiencing Happiness

🛠️ FOUNDERS CORNER

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💉 DOPAMINE HIT

This guy’s doing the Lord’s work with these science experiments.

@evan.eac

how many twizzlers can hold me? #fyp #funny

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3 LIES ANSWER

B. Some people are actually sick.