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Welcome to the new issue of Readiance...

Today’s topics

• Italian Pasta Faces a U.S. Tariff Wall
• SoftBank Dumps Nvidia to Chase OpenAI
• Apple’s $230 Phone Sock Lands with a Thud
• AI Batbots Take Search-and-Rescue to the Skies
• The Flatiron Becomes Luxury Geometry

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BUSINESS

Italian Pasta Faces a U.S. Tariff Wall

Italian pasta could get wiped from U.S. grocery shelves — the actual imports, not the “Italian-style” stuff churned out domestically. La Molisana and other major producers are ready to pull out after tariffs and antidumping penalties shove their U.S. costs up by roughly 107%. With a 92% antidumping duty stacked on top of an existing 15% EU tariff, shipping fusilli or rigatoni from Italy stops making financial sense. Even Giuseppe Ferro, one of Italy’s biggest pasta executives, isn’t pretending this is workable. The result: a low-stakes but very real trade fight between the U.S. and Italy over pasta. If nothing shifts, “authentic Italian” on the box will soon just mean “not from Italy.”

SoftBank Dumps Nvidia to Chase OpenAI

SoftBank unloaded its entire $5.8B Nvidia position — again — to funnel cash into a $30B bet on OpenAI. Masayoshi Son is basically trading the proven winner for what he thinks will be the next one. Nvidia slipped a couple of points after the news, but the real story is SoftBank’s massive quarterly profit: $16.6B, driven mostly by OpenAI’s rising valuation. Son frames this as a strategic reallocation. Strip away the euphemisms and it’s simple: he’s doubling down on the narrative he thinks will dominate the next decade.

Toyota Doubles Down on U.S. Hybrids

Toyota just activated a $13.9B battery plant in North Carolina — its first outside Japan — and decided that wasn’t enough, so it’s adding another $10B in U.S. investments. CEO Tetsuo Ogawa pitched it as a milestone, which is corporate shorthand for “pay attention.” While other carmakers are still trying to salvage their EV ambitions, Toyota is coasting on a hybrid market it already controls. EV enthusiasm is cooling; hybrids are selling; Toyota is acting like this was obvious all along. The company’s message is clear: new factory, more money, and a not-so-subtle victory lap.

TECH & SCIENCE

Apple’s $230 Phone Sock Lands with a Thud

Apple decided the world needed a $230 “iPhone Pocket” — basically a designer sock for your phone — and the internet immediately called nonsense. The company claims it was inspired by a piece of cloth and co-created with Issey Miyake, the brand behind Steve Jobs’ turtlenecks. Minimalist, sure. Practical? Not remotely. Marques Brownlee summed it up as a loyalty test: if you’re willing to buy this, Apple knows you’ve lost the plot.

AI Batbots Take Search-and-Rescue to the Skies

Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute have built palm-sized drones modeled after bats, using AI-driven ultrasound to navigate in places too risky for human rescuers. These “batbots” fly in the dark, stay stable in rough conditions, and don’t rely on cameras. Professor Nitin Sanket’s team ditched their earlier insect- and bird-inspired designs after noise problems, instead mimicking how bats shape sound with specialized tissues. The result is a quieter, sharper, and more useful rescue drone.

Australia Unveils a New Bee Straight from Hell

Australia just added another unsettling creature to its roster: a newly discovered bee with horn-like features, officially named Megachile (Hackeriapis) lucifer. Researcher Kit Prendergast identified it while studying a critically endangered wildflower in Western Australia. DNA checks confirmed it doesn’t match any known species. Between its devilish look and its bad-luck origin story, the name “Lucifer” wasn’t exactly a stretch.

OTHER

The Flatiron Becomes Luxury Geometry

Manhattan’s Flatiron Building is ditching its office past and turning into high-end condos. Developers are carving 38 luxury units into the 22-story landmark, which means buyers get to live inside a triangle with no right angles and pretend that’s convenient. The sample unit on the 12th floor shows off a 60-foot great room, Vermont marble baths, and enough windows to make curtains feel mandatory. Architect William Sofield reworked the building’s notoriously awkward interior to make furniture placement possible, though barely. Even the preservation work is on-brand: staircase parts turned into sink legs and old boiler scraps turned into art for the gym. It’s a blend of history, design, and geometric chaos — all priced for people who think “quirky floor plan” is a lifestyle.

Pixar Pits Toys Against Screens

Pixar’s Toy Story 5 is leaning straight into a tech-vs-childhood plot, with the first teaser introducing a new villain: “Lilypad,” a frog-shaped tablet voiced by Greta Lee that declares, “The age of toys is over.” Woody and the gang are basically fighting your kid’s screen addiction. The film drops June 19, 2026, marking 30 years since the original. Conan O’Brien shows up as a toilet-training gadget named “Smarty Pants,” which tells you exactly where the humor is aiming. Beneath the nostalgia, Pixar is clearly trying to recover from a brutal box office run — Elio opened at a weak $21 million. If there’s a real antagonist here, it’s not the tablet; it’s the studio’s struggle to win people back to theaters.

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