Hi and good morning to any bleary-eyed Swifties who may have been up since midnight listening to Taylor’s new album “The Life of a Showgirl.” Remember — your unwavering, at times unnerving, support helps make her the world’s biggest popstar. Today we’re exploring: |
- Happy meal: Chick-fil-A is the slowest, but friendliest, fast-food drive-thru this year.
- Watch out: Strava is suing Garmin over alleged patent infringements.
- Expense and the city: Solo living is pricier now, per The Economist’s “Carrie Bradshaw index.”
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Taco Bell is the fastest drive-thru for a fifth year, but it may have lost a human touch with AI |
At first glance, it seems as though Yum! Brands’ AI drive-thrus are paying off... bar the odd 18,000 water cups incident. According to the QSR Drive-Thru Report for 2025, released Wednesday, the quickest drive-thrus of all the chains surveyed were Yum!-owned Taco Bell (4 minutes 16 seconds) and KFC (4 minutes 21 seconds), both of which launched AI-powered ordering systems this year. But these outlets were already pretty quick: 2025 marks the fifth consecutive year that Taco Bell has taken the top spot in the rankings. On closer inspection, the total wait time and order accuracy at Taco Bell were the same as in 2024, and KFC actually took 2 seconds longer than last year’s average — and got 10% more orders wrong. |
While the rollout of AI drive-thrus hasn’t yet had a tangible effect on wait times and accuracy, one thing that the tech can’t replicate is real-life connection. The report detailed another factor at the drive-thru: friendliness, measured as the percentage of shoppers who said that the service was “friendly.” |
Chick-fil-A, renowned for its customer service, was considered friendly by 93% of customers — and, even though its food took the longest (7 minutes 6 seconds), it was also joint first-place for overall satisfaction with Dutch Bros. As well as being the second-most amiable in the study, the “broista”-branded beverage company delivered its protein coffees in 6 minutes 22 seconds on average. However, customers weren’t lovin’ it over at McDonald’s: America’s biggest fast-food chain was found to be the least welcoming, scoring a paltry 65% for “friendliness.” Still, even as consumers look for more supersized pleasantries with their service, Taco Bell’s iconic offerings aren’t going anywhere — especially as they start to look more like fan favorite Chick-fil-A’s. |
Strava is suing Garmin over alleged patent infringements |
In a federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday, exercise- and activity-tracking platform Strava accused Garmin, famed for its exercise- and activity-tracking hardware, of infringing three separate patents covering its popular map segments and user heat map technology. | Strava, a private company that has more than 170 million users worldwide, per the suit, also alleged that Garmin breached the contract of an agreement they formed 10 years ago that allowed the watchmaker to implement Strava’s segment technology on its devices, but only in limited instances. Strava is seeking damages and declaratory and injunctive relief — or, as popular fitness tech YouTuber DC Rainmaker put it: “They are demanding that Garmin cease selling effectively all of their fitness/outdoor watches, as well as cycling computers.” Unbeknownst to many who see Garmin only as the brand of the running watch worn by the friend who never stops talking about PBs and “negative splits,” the company actually makes a lot of other stuff, too. |
OK, sure, the outdoor and fitness segments — home to its GPS-enabled smart watches, handheld trackers, smart scales, dog training and tracking tech, plus much else besides — are the biggest parts of the business, pulling in $1.96 billion and $1.77 billion, respectively, in the latest fiscal year. Garmin also, however, kits out planes with navigation and communication tools, integrated flight decks, engine indication systems, and other tech in its aviation segment; it’s a leading manufacturer of recreational marine electronics like fish-finders and sonar and radar tech in its marine division; and it even supplies in-car infotainment systems and other offerings for major automakers in the automotive, or “Auto OEM,” part of its business. |
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The top-5 crypto asset most Americans can’t buy in a brokerage account |
BNB is one of the top five largest cryptocurrencies in the world by market cap1 — even bigger than Solana. It runs its own smart contract ecosystem, it’s a deflationary asset,2 and, unlike Bitcoin, BNB lets you farm yields.3 Yet almost no American brokerage account allows you to own it directly. Fortunately, CEA Industries (NASDAQ: BNC) is basing its treasury strategy on BNB.4 As a public company with leadership that combines deep crypto expertise and traditional finance experience, an investment in CEA Industries provides indirect exposure to one of the world’s largest and most widely used cryptocurrencies. Learn more about how CEA Industries is giving everyday investors a backdoor into BNB, a multibillion-dollar asset Wall Street still ignores. |
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Solo living is getting pricier, per The Economist’s “Carrie Bradshaw Index” |
The Economist just dropped its 2025 “Carrie Bradshaw Index,” named after the Sex and the City protagonist who lived (and splurged) solo in New York. The index compares gross median wages with the income you need to actually afford a median-priced studio in 100 US cities, using the 30% rent-to-income rule. A score above 1 means the average worker can afford to live alone; below 1 means rent is out of reach. |
This year, 41 cities landed in the “unaffordable” club, up from 38 last year, with even previously-cheaper Southern hubs like Houston, Dallas, and Memphis slipping below the threshold. In Texas, rents are climbing faster than wages as the influx of tech firms — and the new residents they attract — fuels demand, while in Memphis, that surge is paired with limited housing supply from soaring construction costs. On the brighter side, Phoenix, Aurora, and Knoxville became more affordable, thanks to falling rents or rising wages — while Wichita once again topped the list for affordability. Median wages there are as much as 77% higher than what's needed to cover an average studio, making it a safer, if a little less interesting, bet for the Carrie Bradshaws of today than Manhattan. The lifestyles and spending habits in “Sex and the City” were never exactly rooted in reality most of the time. But just how close can a median-wage worker really get to Carrie’s lifestyle of Jimmy Choos, cab rides, and dinners out in 2025? We found out and charted the results in the online version of the story. |
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- Elon Musk briefly became the first person to be worth $500 billion on Wednesday, after his companies’ stock price and valuations soared recently.
- Your delivery, outside the window… Amazon is restarting its drone delivery service in Arizona today, which was temporarily suspended after a crash on Wednesday.
- 15,000 churches might shut down by the end of this year — an unprecedented contraction as a record number of Americans (29%) now identify as religiously unaffiliated.
- OpenAI’s AI-only social media app, Sora, has bumped its own ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini from the top of the US free App Store rankings, just three days after its launch.
- The Life of a Bride-to-be: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s upcoming wedding is expected to add a $1.8 billion bump to US wedding spending over the next two years.
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It’s a top-5 crypto asset by market cap1… but almost no US brokerage account allows you to own BNB directly. Fortunately, public company CEA Industries (NASDAQ: BNC) is basing its treasury strategy on it.4 Discover the BNC investment opportunity.5 |
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- Charting the relatively low share of Americans who get news from AI chatbots.
- Explore this extensive annual migration map of more than 450 bird species.
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Off the charts: Which Swedish company this week became the latest high-profile member of the dual-CEO club — a corporate structure Wall Street isn’t always immediately convinced by? [Answer below]. |
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Advertiser’s disclosures: 1 Please see website for further market cap information. 2 Please see article for further details. 3 The process of earning cryptocurrency profits/rewards by either staking, lending or pooling digital assets in a virtual ecosystem is known as yield farming. See article for further details. 4 Please see article for further details. 5 Stock markets are volatile and can fluctuate significantly in response to company, industry, political, regulatory, market, or economic developments. Investing in stock involves risks, including the loss of principal. This company is operating in a highly speculative industry where the underlying value/exchanges they process can be quite volatile (value-wise). Before investing, carefully assess whether a particular stock aligns with your investment objectives, risk tolerance, and financial situation. |
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