Selena Gomez's startup drama, Anthropic's trillion-dollar valuation, and the $60 butter economy

Selena Gomez's mental health startup is in hot water with its investors, Claude’s parent company might go public at a $2 trillion valuation (cool, cool, a very normal amount of money), and apparently we've all agreed that butter counts as a little treat now.

Let's get into it.

Selena Gomez and her mom co-founded a startup, got sued by investors, and I'm remembering why I've never gone into business with my mother (love you, but no).

We all know Selena Gomez as the successful founder of Rare Beauty, but did you know about its neglected startup stepsister Wondermind? Well now you do because investors are suing Gomez and her co-founders, including her mother Mandy Teefey, alleging the mental health startup never delivered on the app, rapid growth, and access to Gomez's 500 million followers, and that they hid the company's problems from investors the whole time. This isn't coming out of nowhere either: Forbes flagged the overpromising last August, and The Cut reported the company was falling apart internally, with unpaid staff and a barely-involved Gomez. Wondermind launched in 2021 and by the following year it had a $95 million valuation and pulled in millions from investors, including Serena Williams's firm. The lawsuit claims Selena signed a contract to actually work on the thing and then just… didn't. Celebrity co-founder title as a personality trait strikes again.

Anthropic might go public at a $2 trillion valuation, which would make it the biggest IPO ever, and I have never felt so broke by proxy.

Claude is valuation maxxxing according to Anthropic investors who reportedly expect the company behind everyone’s current favorite AI chatbot to hit $2 trillion or more when it debuts this fall. This would edge out SpaceX's $1.77 trillion IPO for the title of biggest ever. Backers are betting on revenue that's projected to 10x this year, up to $120 billion annually, though skeptics point out the company's models cost more than competitors' and it's currently fighting the federal government over a Pentagon supply-chain risk designation. It's also reportedly eyeing a $6 billion acquisition of AI startup Decart before any of this even happens. Going to go ahead and file this under “way above my pay grade.”

We've collectively decided $60-a-pound butter is a normal little treat now, even though we're apparently too broke for everything else.

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s our love of butter. Even tough economic times can’t change that. Americans ate a record amount of dairy in 2024 and analysts expect that number to keep climbing, with $15 pints of ice cream and $30 cups of froyo having a moment too. Despite our well-documented love of dairy, the timing still feels funny as US retail sales just posted their biggest drop in over a year and consumer sentiment continues to slide. So overall spending is down, but somehow the butter aisle is thriving. This is peak lipstick-index behavior, but with butter. Cost of living is up, so the "affordable luxury" of the moment isn't a candle or skincare, it's a stick of Kerrygold.

My wedding brain fog is finally starting to clear, but I'm still replaying the whole thing frame by frame, sue me. The best cure for post-nuptial summertime sadness? A mother-daughter day, of course. Time with mom is always the best medicine and my favorite kind of day. We did the full circuit: shopping that turned into a lunch that turned into a full-blown yap session about anything and everything. And somewhere in between it all she talked me into buying a dress I will wear exactly once in my life. "Honey. You NEED that." She was right. I did need that. I need to stop letting her be right about things.

This is technically a "tie-neck blouse," but let's not pretend it's anything other than a full Canadian tuxedo. My double denim theory: nobody actually thinks they look good in it while they're wearing it, we just remember it looking good on someone else once and gamble that lightning strikes twice. I felt like Britney and Justin at the 2001 AMAs all day at my desk (iykyk) and would do it again in a heartbeat.

It’s almost back-to-school season, which has me reminiscing about how I dragged myself out of bed at dawn every morning growing up and somehow had the energy to get through classes, sports, extracurriculars, and still have enough energy to stay up late. How did we do it?

Nowadays, everyone on the internet wants to sell you a 5am routine with cold plunges and gratitude journaling before the sun's even up. Let’s be so for real: I am not doing all that and neither are you. But there are a few ways to set your day up for success that don't require becoming a different person overnight.

Believe it or not, a good day starts with how you ended yesterday. So at the end of each work day, make a priority to-do list so future you can pick up where you left off. I like to write a to-do list of all the things I couldn’t get to that day along with any additional tasks I know I need to add to the top of the list. Pick your top three before you open your laptop, not after. Write them on a sticky note if you have to. That way, you're out of bed and strategically positioned in front of the sink.

This prep-work strategy extends to your bedtime routine. The night before, pick your outfit and pack your bag. If you’re a true zombie in the morning, take it a step further and lay everything you use in your morning routine out where you can see it so you can get ready on autopilot. You at 7am with zero decisions to make is a completely different, much calmer person.

If you’re a phone-first-thing offender like me, get yourself an actual alarm clock and charge your phone in the bathroom. That way, you’re out of bed, and strategically positioned in front of the sink to start getting ready for your day. If you can muster enough self-control, don't check Slack or email until you've done one non-screen thing: shower, make the bed, coffee, whatever feels like a win. You're allowed to see the 40 unread messages, just after you’ve actually done something productive with your morning.

Finally, if you don’t have the time or energy to do all of this the night before, prioritize at least filling up your water bottle the night before and leaving it right next to your bed or your bag because let’s be honest, you will not remember to hydrate unless it’s right in front of you. And even if you start the day in disarray, at least you won’t be dehydrated.

Thanks for reading!