Tokenmaxxing at Amazon, a Swatch riot, and wedding countdown panic

Amazon employees are literally running fake AI tasks to climb an internal leaderboard (corporate America, you ok??), people camped outside Swatch stores for days over a pocket watch collab, and commencement speakers are getting booed for being too enthusiastic about AI.

Let's get into it.

The Swatch x Audemars Piguet collab caused actual chaos at malls around the world

Swatch teamed up with Audemars Piguet, one of the most prestigious luxury watchmakers on the planet, for a collection of pop-art pocket watches called the Royal Pop. People were camping outside stores for DAYS before the Saturday launch, and when the doors finally opened, crowds were so intense that stores had to close completely over safety concerns. These are POCKET WATCHES, by the way. That can be worn as a pendant or a bag charm. And people are getting into actual altercations.

Amazon employees are faking their AI usage and it's called "tokenmaxxing”

Amazon has been tracking how much employees use its internal AI tools on leaderboards, because we've gamified literally everything now. The company set targets for over 80% of developers to use AI each week, and employees responded by... running the tools on useless, made-up tasks just to pump up their numbers. They're calling it "tokenmaxxing," which is extremely internet and also wildly corporate dystopia. Meta has the same problem: someone built an internal leaderboard called "Claudeonomics" that ranked all 85,000 employees by AI consumption (Mark Zuckerberg didn't crack the top 250, which is funny). This is the workplace equivalent of walking around the office with a coffee cup so you look busy. Except it costs billions of $$.

Commencement speakers cannot stop talking about AI

It's graduation season, which means CEOs and celebrities are lined up at podiums across the country trying to deliver the next iconic commencement speech. This year's theme? AI, obviously. Nvidia's Jensen Huang told Carnegie Mellon grads this is basically the best time ever to start a career (convenient stance from the guy selling all the AI chips), and Magic Johnson told graduates at Stillman College and Tuskegee University to master it or get left behind. But here's where it gets good: real estate exec Gloria Caulfield got straight-up BOOED at the University of Central Florida's College of Arts and Humanities after calling AI "the next industrial revolution." Turns out telling a room full of young creatives that the thing they're worried is replacing them is actually great was not a great call! Meanwhile, Delta CEO Ed Bastian won Emory over by admitting he tried to write his speech with AI and it came out soulless, so he wrote it with his actual brain instead.

Wedding countdown is officially in the alarming phase, which means weekends are no longer out of office so much as deep in playlist negotiations with my fiancé (we do not agree on what constitutes a crowd-pleaser and may never), writing personal notes to loved ones (cried multiple times), and finalizing "day-of paper goods," which is an actual term for things people will glance at and leave on their chairs. Snuck out for a friend's birthday dinner Saturday night, which was a nice reminder that I still have a personality outside of seating charts.

Attempting the slick back bun. Again. Every few months, I get inspired and tell myself THIS is THE look, and then I spend the rest of the day wondering if I look sleek and professional or kind of like a bald middle-aged man? Not sure! Shirt is new and has my initials embroidered above the pocket which I am obsessed with. Has unlocked an unhinged desire to monogram everything I own. Towels. Sweatshirts. Pajamas. My fiancé's things. The dog, probably. Nobody is safe.

Highly recommend doing an early summer travel wardrobe audit before you're panic-buying a cover-up at the airport.

Summer weekends fill up fast and if you have a beach trip, a wedding (or 10), a bachelorette, or multiple long weekends in warm places, now is the time to figure out what you actually have and what you need before it's an emergency and you end up overnighting something you don’t even really like.

Pull out your go-to summer pieces and try them on. That swimsuit from last year might not fit the same or those white linen pants might have a mystery stain you forgot about.

Make a short list of the gaps and give yourself a few weeks to shop smart. Now you have time to find pieces you really like, or even try sourcing secondhand if you’re into that. A couple of weeks of lead time means you're not paying for overnight shipping on a beach bag you could've found for $12 on Poshmark.

While you're at it, check your suitcase situation. Make sure the wheels still roll, make sure the zipper isn't about to betray you mid-terminal, etc. And if you don't have a beach bag that can double as a carry-on personal item, this is your sign to get one. It will be the hardest-working bag in your rotation from now until September.

Thanks for reading!