Take off

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today: Interest rate hike is increasingly likely amid weakening economy; alternative travel destinations are having a moment; and the weird and curious case for the bathroom fridge…🤣

Let’s get into it!

When travellers think of canal cities, they think of Amsterdam and Venice. In reality, there are plenty of beautiful destinations lined with waterway canals instead of asphalt roads, including Hamburg.

As you can see in the photo above, the city features the classic dichotomy of centuries-old, low-rise buildings clashing with the narrow canals that creep through the town like roots on a tree or veins on an arm.

Despite being less top-of-mind when travellers are looking for a canal-packed city, Hamburg is actually Europe’s third-largest port after Antwerp and Rotterdam. Its warehouse district (known as Speicherstadt) is a UNESCO heritage site, and it’s fairly distant from the next-closest major tourist hotspots, insulating it from the overcrowding typical of European travel today.

Just an hour and a half north via airplane lies the Town Between the Bridges—the original name for Stockholm, Sweden. As you may have gathered, there are quite a few bridges in Stockholm, most of which hang over the canals and rivers that line and intersect the Swedish capital.

Birmingham, Copenhagen, and several other beautiful canal towns have been patiently waiting for someone to explain to them why they aren’t as popular as Venice and Amsterdam. Until someone does, they’re a bunch of gems hiding in plain sight for a lot less money.

The urge to immortalize our strongest talents is possibly a primal instinct, but it’s become insidious in an era when greatness can be—and is—manufactured through infinite takes on a phone camera before the best version is posted online for the world to marvel at.

It breeds competition, particularly in already-competitive disciplines like music and sports, but in reality, everyone knows intuitively that whatever they’re seeing online is only a sliver of the whole picture—the preferred sliver of the person not just in front of the camera, but also behind it.

The superficiality of modern media is stealing joy from the “hobby,” creating a cultural obsession with “likes” and “monetization” that leaves no room for enjoyability—the thing that supposedly motivates one to take up a hobby in the first place.

Some psychologists think legacy hunting is a form of Terror Management Theory (TMT), which refers to how human beings navigate their subconscious fear of mortality. We must leave something that outlasts us, and in the case of those who coined the term (none of whom were likely parents), TMT finds its release in the perfecting of and capitalization on a skill.

Care to guess how to break the cycle of cynical surrender? You can read on here.

Two recreational divers were swimming a few miles off the coast of Sicily at a depth of about 70 feet when they encountered what appeared to be a pink rock with strange patterns on it.

After taking a harder look, they realized it was no rock, but some sort of cargo that sank on a ship many years ago. After reporting it to Italian culture ministry authorities, it was determined the cargo was likely wine being transported in two-handled pots called amphorae, and the ship sank sometime between 200 and 100 BCE.

“This is one of the most important underwater archaeological discoveries of recent years,” Alessandro Giuli, Italy’s minister of culture, said in the statement.

It’s unclear where the ship was going or why it sank, but preliminary analyses of the vessel’s remaining pieces and the amphorae mound confirmed they were from the Late Roman Period a couple hundred years prior to the Common Era.

“It is hard to describe the feeling of being among the first humans in nearly twenty centuries to see that place again,” said one of the divers, Giacomo De Mola, in a social media post. “The sea never ceases to surprise us. This time, we found more than just a shipwreck. We found a piece of our history.”

Outside college dorm rooms where kids are trying to be clever with hiding places, you’ve probably never heard of the idea of placing a mini fridge in the bathroom.

However, the concept has been quietly exploding in popularity in 2026. According to The Guardian, the popular secondhand U.K. retail site Gumtree has seen searches for the most popular brand soar 85% this year.

The explosion of secondhand searches isn’t particularly surprising if the product itself is growing in popularity. They start at an astounding £5,000 at Sub-Zero & Wolf, where the marquee, best-of-the-best versions of these cute little contraptions are made.

“It is more convenient to have products to hand in say a bathroom rather than having to walk to a kitchen fridge,” said Emma Lewis, the marketing manager for Sub-Zero & Wolf, which is located in Essex. “That sense of ease is really what people want.”

The growth in popularity can likely be attributed to the uptake in GLP-1 drug usage, since these products often need to be refrigerated. Since they’re medications, people are naturally inclined to keep them in the bathroom.

On top of that, injectable gut health shots, lotions, creams, and other bathroom products fit nicely in a mini fridge, so why not go for it?

Laugh-in for days

Back in the day, laughs didn’t just come from sitcoms. You also had variety and sketch comedy shows, and we’ll be quizzin’ you on the classic, with today’s trivia 🤣