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California will teach teens about workers’ rights because employers keep violating them

Remember that job that said you were an independent contractor and didn’t get benefits even though it kept you on a 40 hour/week schedule? Or, wait, was that just me?

Anyhow, California has a new law that requires public high schools, including charter schools, to teach students about their rights as employees.

“Workplace Readiness Week” will take place every April, educating students in grades 11 and 12 on labor law topics like:

• The difference between employees and independent contractors
• Wage and hour protections
• Worker safety
• How workers’ comp, unemployment insurance, sick leave, disability insurance, and other programs work
• Unionization

Why it matters

Fifty-five percent of young people (ages 16 to 24) are employed, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They’re more likely to take lower-wage jobs, where wage theft is more prevalent, or to suffer on-the-job injuries.

And while California is expanding protections, some state lawmakers are proposing looser laws — allowing students to work on school nights or for 14-year-olds to serve alcohol — amid the labor shortage.

The number of children involved in labor violations…

… jumped 283% from 1k+ in 2015 to 3.8k+ in 2022, per USAFacts, including ~700 children who worked illegally in hazardous environments.

And several US companies have recently been fined:

• A Minnesota food manufacturer paid a $30.2k+ fine for having two teens, ages 16 and 17, operate meat-processing equipment.
• Packers Sanitation Services was fined $1.5m for employing 102+ children on overnight shifts at meatpacking plants, where children as young as 13 were using hazardous chemicals to clean dangerous equipment.
• Last month, two Utah Chick-fil-As were fined $187.4k+ for unpaid overtime and allowing 14- and 15-year-old employees to work too many hours and past permitted times.

California’s new law may empower a new generation of workers, but there is a caveat.

Over 300k children have come to the US alone since 2021, some undocumented. The New York Times examined the difficulties they’ve faced working long hours in sometimes perilous conditions. Some tried to attend school, but others couldn’t — meaning such lessons won’t reach them.

Speak to ChatGPT — or send it a picture

Just when you thought OpenAI might be losing steam, it comes rumblin’ back with thumpin’ updates.

OpenAI recently announced a partnership with Spotify to clone podcasters’ voices and translate them to other languages. It’s also upgraded its tech to allow for both speech and image-based inputs.

GPT-4 “with vision” can even interpret videos. It features increased input capacity and less hallucinations than its predecessors, and also outscored itself on most standardized tests, according to OpenAI’s website.

Learn how the latest GPT updates are like magic for marketers on this episode of Marketing Against The Grain.

This year’s Nobel Prizes have all been awarded. The economics prize went to Harvard professor Claudia Goldin, for advancing global understanding of women’s progress in the workforce.

Google Cloud revealed new AI search tools to help health care providers quickly locate patients’ medical info across data sources.

Taking off? The founder of Joby Aviation Inc. says commercial electric air taxis will be hitting our skies in 2025. The company, whose largest shareholder is Toyota, lost $400m+ between 2021 and 2022.

Mack Trucks union workers went on strike after voting down a five-year contract agreement. The UAW said 4k workers walked out, joining 30k+ auto workers across 22 states on the picket lines.

That’s long: Ridley Scott says his 4-hour, 10-minute cut of Napoleon — a biopic of the French leader starring Joaquin Phoenix — will drop on Apple TV+ after a shorter theatrical release.

Atari’s “Save Mary,” in which players build platforms to rescue a woman trapped in a canyon, will finally debut after being scrapped in the ‘80s. It’s only playable on the Atari 2600, which was discontinued in ‘92, or the delightfully retro Atari 2600+.

Why? Mars Inc. is rolling out Skittles Littles, a smaller version of its popular candy that was already a perfectly fine size. It’ll come in poppable tubes just like M&M’s Minis, the 1997 miniaturizing of Mars’ other already-perfect-sized legendary candy.

If marketing campaigns are your thing: Use this free marketing brief to plan out your promotions and set the stage for clean communications.

Move over, stocks — alternative investing apps are here

Have you ever woken up to see the whole stock market in the red only to think it would be nice to have your money where you could see it… or wear it… or drink it?

Well, alternative investing platforms want to help you do just that.

Niche investing apps are democratizing a practice once reserved for elite investors:

• Vinovest lets users invest in bottles of wine and whiskey, offering four investment tiers, starting at $1k.
• At Masterworks, investors have access to multimillion-dollar artworks by famous contemporary artists.
• With Fundrise, users can invest in assets like real estate, venture capital, and private credit.
• AcreTrader offers ownership shares in US farmland with a minimum investment of $10k.

Last week, investing platform Public started letting users invest in Shrek music rights, taking a cut of royalties every time the movie is streamed or aired on TV, or when the music plays at a theme park.

Other investment options on Public’s platform include an Hermes Birkin bag, original art by Banksy, Air Jordan sneakers, and a first-edition Harry Potter book.

As far as returns…

… alternative investments can have a leg up.

Vinovest co-founder Anthony Zhang told The Hustle that wine has seen an average of 11% returns in the last 20 years, while whiskey has been closer to 15%. (Traditional stocks saw ~9.75%.)

Plus, since things like fine art and wine bottles don’t usually correlate with the stock market, they can help diversify a portfolio and mitigate volatility.

Best of all? An app like Vinovest lets you cash out and drink your assets whenever you want. Cheers to that.

Need help brushing up on the new dictionary?

Merriam-Webster recently made 690 additions to its dictionary, and honestly, we’re still processing them.

Some newly legitimized words are long overdue:

• Common abbreviations like NGL (“not gonna lie”) and TTYL (“talk to you later”) made the list.
• Also paying their dues in the cultural zeitgeist and meriting inclusion: jorts (denim shorts), tiny house (a home smaller than 500 square feet), and chef’s kiss (a gesture of approval).

Some words, though, just feel like Merriam-Webster is now a living Steve Buscemi meme:

• Lookin’ at you, modern slang like rizz (romantic appeal) and simp (to show excessive devotion).

But hey, that’s the dictionary nerds’ lane…

… whereas ours is business and tech, so we’ll stick there and run down the reference tome’s newest entries within our nerdom:

Generative AI (noun): artificial intelligence capable of generating new content (such as images or text) in response to a prompt.

• Used in a sentence: “No way, that wasn’t a picture of me wearing jorts… That was, uh, totally some generative AI program.”

Smishing (noun): the practice of texting someone in order to trick them into revealing confidential information which can then be used for criminal purposes.

• Used in a sentence: “Detective, I’m worried the person behind this smishing scheme will release all those photos of me wearing jorts.”

’Grammable (adjective): suitable to be posted on Instagram.

• Used in a sentence: “I hate how khaki shorts make me look, so that picture’s absolutely not ‘grammable.”

Edgelord (noun): someone who makes exaggerated statements online with the intent of shocking others.

• Used in a sentence: “Elon Musk is an edgelord.”

Finsta (noun): a secret or incognito Instagram account.

• Used in a sentence: “I was forced to use my finsta after I called Elon an edgelord and his fanboys came after me.”

Meme stock (noun): a stock that experiences a temporary surge in popularity and price due to a coordinated effort by small investors.

• Used in a sentence: “People on Reddit disagree, but I think Levi’s should become a meme stock on the strength of their denim shorts catalog alone.”

P.S. There were plenty more business and tech-related inclusions — e.g., “large language model,” “passkey,” “quiet quit,” “girlboss,” and “microtransaction” — but they were just too hard to work into sentences featuring jorts.

🎭 On this day: In 1935, George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway. An adaptation of author DuBose Heyward’s Porgy, it received mixed reviews at the time, but is now considered one of the greats.

🦴 That’s interesting: In Taiwan, feng shui consultant Jiang Bole digs up, cleans, and cares for the bones of his clients’ ancestors to ensure they are not cursed.

😕 Haha: Weird Shit You Can Buy is a website for… exactly that.

🧘 Chill out: With this peaceful walking simulator.

🐶 Aww: Very, very sneaky.

Who needs money to live? Definitely not me! (Link)