This Week: A $75 million gaming tournament just left Saudi Arabia for Paris | the French Riviera now has a private island hotel and we have questions about the rates | Joan Collins wears gloves
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The world is a lot right now. Paris is hosting a gaming tournament the size of a small country. Big companies are firing tens of thousands of people in one go. Cannes is doing Cannes. A Korean scientist found something in Kimchi that helps you get skinny. And somewhere off the French Riviera, a private island just became a hotel.
This is your weekly briefing on the things worth knowing.
Quick Bites:
Wellness: Move over, Protein. It’s all about Fiber in 2026.
According to new data shared by CNBC, people are suddenly obsessed with fiber– pushing protein off center stage.
The trend exploding online is called“Fibermaxxing,”– which sounds like a gym workout but is really just people eating oats and chia seeds like their lives depend on it.
About 22% of shoppers now say they’re deliberately choosing high-fiber foods.
Despite all this enthusiasm, fiber isn’t exactly new. Nutritionists have been begging us to eat vegetables for decades..
BUT now that TikTok has decided gut health is aesthetic, suddenly psyllium husk is the new Stanley cup right??
Food giants are racing to catch the wave; PepsiCo, Nestlé, and other major brands are expanding their portfolios with fiber-fortified snacks, cereals, drinks – basically, if they can sprinkle fiber on it, they will.
Corporate marketing teams right now: “Can we put fiber in cookies? In chips? In air?”
Even traditionally indulgent categories are getting a “health” makeover. Expect to see more products screaming “Gut Health!!!” in fonts large enough to be seen from space.
While it’s unclear whether fibermaxxing will be the next kale or just a temporary social media fling, one thing is certain:
The gut is trending and the microbiome is booked and busy this upcoming summer.
Business x Culture:
Paris just got one of the biggest entertainment events of the summer.
The Esports World Cup is coming to Paris this summer. 750 million viewers, $75 million prize pool. 2,000 gamers who haven’t seen sunlight since 2019- all descending on the city of light..
Which means their wives and girlfriends get two weeks in Paris with a black card and absolutely nothing to do. Croissants for breakfast. Saint laurent for lunch. A Guerlain spa in the 8th for dinner.
The boys are busy. The girls are eating.
This is the first time it has ever been held outside Saudi Arabia.
The reason is geopolitical: ongoing regional instability made travel unbearable for the +2,000 players, coaches, and support staff attending from over 100 countries.
The move to Paris is practical, but it is also significant. Esports is now large enough that when it moves, it moves like a major sporting event- with sponsorship agreements, broadcast partners across 35 languages.
The business angle worth watching: the Esports Foundation has flagged country hosting fees as one of its most promising future revenue streams.
Whoever pays to host EWC is effectively buying soft power over a global audience that is young, male, and extremely online. That is a valuable audience.
AI
GM, Ford, and Stellantis- the world-famous “Detroit Three”- have together cut more than 20,000 white-collar jobs in the US.
That is 19% of their combined salaried workforce, gone.
The cuts started before AI became a mainstream conversation, but AI is now accelerating them. GM just laid off 500 to 600 IT workers this week alone- and simultaneously posted 250 AI-related job openings.
Ford’s CEO Jim Farley put it plainly last year:
“Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the US.”
He said this as the CEO of a company actively cutting white-collar workers. The jobs being eliminated are the ones that involved repeatable work- coding, data analysis, IT management, admin.
The jobs being created are for people who can build and run the AI systems that replaced those roles.
FYI- The gap between those two populations is HUGE and the timeline for bridging it is not years. It is months.
Food
Scientists in South Korea found that a probiotic in Kimchi may help flush microplastics from the body before they build up in your body.
We have spent years putting microplastics into our bodies through water bottles, takeaway containers, and the general misery of modern packaging.
The idea that fermented cabbage might be part of the solution is either deeply sad or deeply Korean.
Probably both.
Also this week:
Eating grapes daily for two weeks showed signs of improved skin protection and reduced UV-related stress at the genetic level.
Two weeks. Grapes. Genetic-level changes to how your skin behaves.
Science is having a very productive month for people who enjoy eating things and would like them to do more work.
Health:
PCOS- polycystic ovary syndrome- has just been officially renamed PMOS: polycystic morphology ovary syndrome.
Global doctors announced the change, saying the new name better reflects what the condition actually is. This sounds like an administrative update. It is not.
The old name implied cysts on the ovaries, which is not what the condition causes- the “cysts” are immature follicles, and many women with the diagnosis don’t have the polycystic morphology at all.
Millions of people were diagnosed with a name that described the wrong thing, which contributed to years of misdiagnosis, dismissal, and confusion. The name change is the medical community finally being right- for once.
Travel:
Zannier Île de Bendor opens this month– 17 acres, just off the French Riviera, previously a private retreat owned by Paul Ricard, the man who built the modern French aperitif industry.
Zannier is opening 93 keys across three house styles, each designed to reflect a different aspect of Provençal character. No cars on the island. You arrive by boat and then you are simply somewhere in the Mediterranean with nowhere particular to be.
The restaurant runs multiple bars, which, given the Ricard family history, feels less like a hotel amenity and more like a founding principle.
Team Touristy will be watching the rates closely!!
Quicker Bites:
- Nvidia reported earnings yesterday and Jensen Huang confirmed it is the only platform running every major frontier AI model.
- Meta is laying off 8,000 people globally today, with engineering and product teams hit hardest, while simultaneously spending $115–135 billion on AI infrastructure this year
- Beavers- extinct in west London for 400 years- were reintroduced to a nature reserve in Ealing this week.
- Nearly 3,000 people have been killed and 1 million displaced in southern Lebanon since the war began in March.
- The Atlantic hurricane season forecast is 8 to 14 storms this year.
- You can now legally request revenge porn and deepfake intimate images to be taken down in the US, following new legislation signed this week.
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