Last week, Linda Yaccarino announced X is entering yet another front of the content war with a smart TV app. The new product promises to leverage X’s trending algorithms and AI to personalize a feed of videos for customers. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to watch your favorite viral video brothers on television. It’s great to see this company innovating on product — something only a few mature companies are able to manage, all of which are run by powerful, sort of crazy founder-CEOs (compliment). But with a “for you” feed increasingly amplifying viral cotton candy, a longform writing product built to bury longform pieces, and a link embargo suffocating every writer on the platform, I do hope the team spends some of its remarkable energy on the basics. Innovation and growth are essential, but without a core product people are in love with, there’s a danger you’ll be innovating in an empty room.

A report from Microsoft exposing a Chinese social media disinfo operation generated concerned headlines last month, but a new investigation from Wired shows the CCP’s “Spamouflage Dragon” campaign has actually been impotent at best. Investigators say the network is “everywhere, and nobody looks at them except for researchers.” One reason? The Chinese citizens employed to run these accounts grew up behind the Great Firewall, so they lack the background context needed for fluency on Twitter. It turns out America's best defense against foreign influence is that our culture and politics are so incestuously intertwined the narrative is almost unintelligible. Try explaining to a keyboard agitator in Shanghai that while republicans won’t vote for AOC, they still think she’s somewhat (very) hot. Or just because Senator Menendez should be in prison, it doesn't mean taking bribes in literal gold bars isn't somewhat badass (it’s insanely badass). You kinda need to be here.

As the festival-like “protests” at America’s wealthiest private universities grow more unhinged, a would-be white girl jihadi with giant “I’m here to yell at you” glasses has naturally taken center stage at a Columbia University press conference. There, beside a tall, “yay Hamas” gay in a midriff, she demanded food be brought to the country’s richest 1%, who purposely locked themselves inside a campus building. But just a little further south, a very different youth archetype was resurrected. At UNC, when radical leftists attempted to destroy the university’s most prominent American flag, a crowd of frat brothers in pastel polos, zoomer broccoli perms, and at least one Hooters shirt protected the Stars and Stripes with their bodies. Photos have gone viral, and commentary is universally pro-chad. Online, the difference from 2020 could not be more stark. Turns out, when sanity is legal, sanity prevails.

Recent global aviation data shows that over a six-month period the U.S. had the highest number of flight cancellations worldwide, at 124,883. Responding to this pain point, travel management platform TravelPerk developed proactive travel disruption alerts and a suite of tools such as 24/7 support and FlexiPerk (at least 80% refunds on all canceled trips). This is on top of their core offering to help companies book flights, track spend and maintain policy compliance. Used by leading fintech, e-commerce and manufacturing brands, they have the largest travel inventory (read: available hotels, flights, etc.) in the industry, and they integrate with tools such as Ramp and Airbase to remove the pain that comes with managing travel expenses. Just because airlines let you down doesn’t mean your travel platform has to.

Check out more from TravelPerk here.

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