🤔 Bed Bath Beyond & Baffled

How neuroaesthetics and design affect our health

What do you like about your favorite cafe? Plants, natural light, comfortable seats, a welcoming vibe?

Neuroaesthetics studies the way our brains respond to things like art, music, and other stimuli, which can be particularly useful in architecture and design.

“Buildings make us feel things all the time, both good and bad, that we don’t recognize,” Eric Corey Freed, director of sustainability at CannonDesign, told The Hustle.

So how do you make them feel good?

CannonDesign often works in health care settings, where people are frequently scared, stressed, or sick.

Studies have found that nature can reduce stress and improve immune system function and mood, among other benefits, while natural light affects serotonin.

That’s driving increased interest in biophilic design, which connects us to nature, even when we’re indoors.

• Examples include natural light, fountains, rooftop gardens, natural materials like wood or stone, patterns like fractals or curves, and nature-themed art.
• For rooms without sunlight, a rooftop fiber-optic system can “harvest” daylight and drop full-spectrum sunlight inside.
• Certain tones of light can help regulate circadian rhythms in night-shift workers.
• Aroma and color can enhance mood and appetite.

That’s not to say that a well-designed building itself will treat patients, but rather that it may boost positive outcomes — a concept known as evidence-based design.

Besides nature…

… there are other ways to enhance good vibes. Color, curves, and “compression” — a narrow entrance leading to an open space — can make people feel welcome in a way that boxy, cold, white lobbies don’t.

Alison Leonard, a senior health care programmer at Blue Cottage of CannonDesign, notes that choice — even as simple as seating in waiting rooms or at bus stops — can give people “a sense of control over their environment, and [put] them at ease.”

More broadly…

… these elements also apply to schools, offices, and how buildings fit into their cities and communities through street-facing art, landscaping, and public events — e.g., farmers markets, health screenings, etc.

So, if you’re feeling stressed at home, maybe get a plant?

Fun fact: Google once partnered with Johns Hopkins University on a neuroaesthetic design exhibit in Milan.

Oops: An MSN travel article suggested tourists in Ottawa, Canada, visit the local food bank “on an empty stomach.” Microsoft has removed and is investigating the likely AI-generated content.

X games: The platform formerly known as Twitter had another wild weekend, with Elon Musk saying he’d phase out its blocking feature, a glitch wiping out most pre-December 2014 photos and links, and Musk admitting his takeover “may fail.”

Lyft and Uber threatened to stop or limit service in Minneapolis over a proposal that would make drivers’ minimum wage at least $1.40 per mile and 51 cents per minute.

A new lawsuit alleges Roblox facilitates child gambling via third-party sites where players can gamble in-game currency, which costs real money (~$10 for 800 Robux). Roblox said it’s not affiliated with such sites and called them “bad actors.”

Cruise control: A week after letting Waymo and Cruise expand their autonomous taxi fleets in San Francisco, California regulators ordered Cruise’s fleet halved. One crashed into a fire truck; another got stuck in fresh concrete.

No kidding: Average US day care and preschool prices increased 6% last month, nearly 2x the overall inflation rate (3.2%). Sorry, parents — you didn’t need another reason to lose sleep, but here we are.

Spain won its first Women’s World Cup yesterday, earning the team $10.5m in prize money — up from $4m in 2019, but far short of Argentina’s $42m haul after winning last year’s men’s tournament.

Pink slip? After a month atop US box office charts, Barbie narrowly lost its No. 1 status to Blue Beetle. But the doll will survive — the Mattel powerhouse is this year’s second highest-earning domestic film.

Pitch perfect: We got the truth out of top venture capitalists about what they actually look for in a startup pitch, and how you can wow them.

Excited about Bed Bath & Beyond’s return? You may feel pretty lonely

Playing into people’s sense of nostalgia for something is usually a winning strategy. But it sure helps when people are, y’know, actually nostalgic for that thing.

The retailer formerly known as Overstock is staking its future on the idea that people are clamoring for the once-dead Bed Bath & Beyond. To recap, per Bloomberg:

• In April, Bed Bath & Beyond went bankrupt, shuttering all stores.
• In June, Overstock dropped $21.5m for the decrepit husk of the Bed Bath & Beyond brand.
• This month, Overstock rebranded to Bed Bath & Beyond.

Is this gonna work?

We’ll see, but Overstock — with its business down 20% YoY in Q2 — can’t be blamed for trying.

Overstock CEO Jonathan Johnson said he thought his company “had a good operating model but a bad name” while “Bed Bath & Beyond had a great name but a bad operating model,” per The Washington Post.

• It’ll be, Johnson told Bloomberg, a “match made in retail heaven.”

But this ignores the fact that Bed Bath & Beyond spent years in decline.

In 2021, the brand scored its lone bright spot of the last decade when the home goods chain became a memestock.

That didn’t translate to a sustainable business either — that same year, Bed Bath & Beyond lost ~5m customers from its once-loyal fan base.

What happens next?

It’s early, so the jury remains out. Maybe we’ll be eating crow — served on some 20%-off dinnerware — and the rebranded retailer will bounce back.

But for now, we can assign one loser in all of this: original Bed Bath & Beyond stockholders.

• Last month, it was confirmed they’ll be “left empty-handed,” per The Street.

Some solace: Being empty-handed is bad, but nothing could feel worse than spending ~$29 to cover your hand in a “Life is better with cats” oven mitt.

The content creator’s guide to AI

We don’t care how stubborn you are on process — it’s time to switch things up. Creators and marketers are already using the latest AI tools to wrangle analytics, brainstorm better stories, and quickly chop up content.

Read the AI for creators ebook we wrote with the smarties at Jasper to learn how content experts are amping up operations.

Save time with AI:

• What we know about generative AI
• Current use cases and limitations
• Example prompts and responses
• How to generate ideas and content
• How to apply AI across your team

A deep introduction to speaking the language.

A great kebab costume, POTUS is a dreadful job, and more newsy numbers

~30m: cups of “spaghettieis” sold in Germany each year. Invented by Dario Fontanella, the dessert uses a spaetzle maker to turn ice cream into pasta-like strands; it’s then topped with a fruit sauce and white chocolate to resemble marinara and parmesan.

10: extra DVDs Netflix will send to its DVD-by-mail subscribers before it shutters the service after 25 years. Subscribers must opt in by Aug. 29 to receive 10 movies selected from their queue a month later. All discs must be returned by Oct. 27, though.

$11.9k: what Adil Asim, owner of a Canadian restaurant chain, paid for an incredible costume auctioned off by the Alberta government. It looks like a giant donair— a Canadian street food mashup of a Greek gyro and a Turkish doner kebab — and was originally bought for a never-aired anti-drug PSA in 2015.

36%: the share of Americans who approve of President Biden’s handling of the economy, according to the latest AP-NORC poll. The Biden team is winning on many key economic numbers — inflation down to 3.2%, unemployment at 3.5%, and per Axios, ~80% of S&P 500 companies beat forecasted earnings last quarter — yet they’re continually losing on vibes. And you think your job is annoying?

🖼️ On this day: In 1911, ex-Louvre employee Vincenzo Perugia stole the “Mona Lisa” to return it to Italy, where it was found in 1913 upon his arrest. Perugia was sentenced to one year and 15 days.

🪧 That’s cool: This map from Cornell University tracks labor strikes across the US.

👀 Video: We explore considerations for pushing your business in a new direction — e.g., the difference between product line and brand extensions, benefits and risks, and more.

😴 How to: Fall back asleep when you wake up in the middle of the night.  

🐇 Aww: And now, a bunny massage.

Living stress-free right now: the person who sells CliffsNotes.com subscriptions. (Link)