A list of intriguing things
One: Airbnb is getting Disney to get folks to book overpriced stays at their themed properties. The latest to make waves: Shrek’s Swamp located in the Scottish Highlands. Feel free to book a weekend but fair warning: there is no Wi-Fi, TV, kitchen, washing machine, or air conditioning. Umm, hard pass. Though it does look adorable (see: lead image). (CNBC)
Two: This is more damning than intriguing. Below is the first ever discovered slave brand that bears a royal insignia:
A crown resembling the iconic St. Edward’s headpiece from British coronations sat atop the letters S and C, apparently a stylized reference to the slave-trading South Sea Company. The accompanying text, written in 1715, declared that this was “the Mark henceforward, to be put upon the Bodys of the Negros to be sold & Dipos’d of in the Spanish West Indies,” under a contract between Britain’s late Queen Anne and Spain’s King Philip V.
The contract was to transport 4,800 enslaved Africans per year to the Spanish colonies. You can see the regal looking brand seared into their skins below. Washington Post has lots more on new research that shows the British royal family was actively involved in slave trade—and some of it is funded by King Charles.
Three: Coca Cola has a new flavour called Y3000—the beginning of the next millenia like Y2K. Whipped up by AI (yeah, right!), it’s described as: “Created to show us an optimistic vision of what’s to come, where humanity and technology are more connected than ever.” According to The Atlantic, “it smells like circus-peanut candies and tastes mostly like Coke.” Sad.
As the magazine points out, Coke is increasingly in the business of releasing hokey ‘Limited Edition’ versions. For example: “Soul Blast” tastes like a Japanese anime; “Starlight” is “space flavoured”; ” “Byte” is reminiscent of the delicious flavour of “pixels” (Yum!). But no one can compete with ‘Dreamworld’—which “taps into Gen Z’s passion for the infinite potential of the mind by exploring what a dream tastes like.” Apparently, dreams taste like “Yellow Tic Tacs.” As part compensation, we offer a far better PR stunt—a fab collab with Rosalia to promote its ‘Transformation’ flavour:
