The Wiggles Movie, Death of Self-Checkout and Pathetic Branding of the World's Hottest Pepper

New Wiggles Documentary Offers Up Exactly the Radical Optimism the World Needs Right Now

They say meeting your heroes never ends well. But they have never met the Wiggles. This week at SXSW Sydney I was able to attend the world premiere of a new documentary called "Hot Potato" that tells the story of the unlikely rise of the renowned children's entertainment group and rock band, The Wiggles. During the pre-show conversation, the film's director suggested that the movie itself might be a celebration of radical optimism in exactly the way the world needs. It really is.

Aside from telling the story of the group, the film delves into unexpected topics like mental illness and lack of diversity while showcasing the humanity and musicality that made the group so popular among toddlers and adults alike for more than three decades. The film is nostalgic, truthful and joyous without devolving into meaningless fandom. And the original Wiggles from the group are just the nicest most genuine people you could ever imagine. The film will be streaming on Amazon Prime starting October 24th.

The World's Hottest Pepper Will Never Succeed For This Reason

A list of the world's hottest peppers before 2023 includes some scary names. The Carolina Reaper. The Ghost Pepper. The Trinidad Scorpion. The Inifinity Chili. Those are respectable, intimidating names for peppers that can melt your face starting with your taste buds. Apparently this year for the first time since 2017, there is a new pepper that must be declared the world's hottest at more than 2.69 million SHU.

So what has the pepper world decided to call this dangerous new winner? Pepper X. I can't even find words for how much this bothers me. Or why I even care. But wasting a branding opportunity this badly is a tragedy. The hottest pepper in the world is now called pepper x? Nope. I say all self-respecting pepper fans should reject this simply on principle. This doesn't belong in the same league as the Carolina Reaper. Now that's a name that deserves to be number one.

The Future of Tattooing Might Be Robots Partnering with Artists

A new tattoo shop in Austin is trialing a robotic interface that can apply a tattoo faster and with less pain than the usual process. Apparently the machine can also adjust it's approach based on an individual's skin type. In Sydney this week, I went old-school and visited an Aboriginal artist to get a custom design done for a tattoo.

In the future, I might instead be able to seek out an artist anywhere in the world and then have them upload their designs for a robot in my hometown to complete. The question is, will people forego the experience of working with a person and instead willingly trust a robot to do something so permanent and personal? If you have a tattoo, or aspire to get one, what do you think?

Self-Checkout Is A Failed Experiment

Self-checkout is not a delightful experience. Goods don't always scan properly. The system stalls if you don't put a scanned item in the right place. Double scanning an item, or buying something that requires validation, or getting an error requires waiting for a human employee to help you anyway. Self-checkout, in other words, usually sucks.

A growing number of retailers have begun to realize this and made moves to compensate for it. "Walmart has removed the kiosks entirely from a handful of stores, and is redesigning others to involve more employee help. Costco is stationing more staffers in its self-checkout areas. ShopRite is adding cashiers back into stores where it had trialed a self-checkout-only model, citing customer backlash." The truth is, installing self-checkout kiosks is expensive and so far that expense isn't really paying off for retailers. All of which means self-checkout may be a dying experiment.

Introducing the Inc Magazine Non-Obvious Book Awards

Over the next week, I will be announcing more details about an exciting new partnership we have finalized to have Inc Magazine co-sponsor our annual Non-Obvious Book Awards program. Since you're part of my newsletter, I wanted you to be the first to know about this upcoming collaboration as we roll out more details.

In addition to working together on the book awards and the Longlist which will be announced at the Inc 5000 event in early November, I will also be joining the magazine's editorial team as a contributor to the print edition with a monthly column titled the "Non-Obvious Book Review" where I interview authors and feature new books.

We are very excited about this new program and I can't wait to share more details with all of you. For now, we're just 10 days away from closing our entry window for 2023 book submissions, so if you have any amazing non-fiction books you read this year that you think we should consider, let me know!