E-scooters

Scattered along the streets of Washington DC are electric scooters. Most have four-letter names: Bird, Lime, Skip, Jump, Bolt. Using one for the first time, you may prefer to employ another four-letter word. I know I did. My first taste of the e-scooter phenomenon was on a visit to Los Angeles in February last year. The Santa Monica company Bird had been up and running for only five months, yet already its scooters were all over the city, like avian excrement. Students at UCLA embraced the Birds. Nobody seemed fazed by the undeniable fact that you cannot look cool on a battery-powered two-wheeler. The epidemic then spread to other American metropolises: Atlanta, Minneapolis, Miami. New York has so far held out, but will likely soon fall.

Google co-founder Larry Page popularized the term ‘moonshots.’ But venture capitalists, apparently, are looking to the stars. An app called Co-Star, which provides slick digital versions of horoscopes and astrological birth charts, has raised $5 million in funding. An investor who put money into an ‘Uber for astrological readings’ company expresses excitement about the $2.1 billion market for ‘mystical services.’ Erin Griffith, the author of a recent New York Times feature on the subject, took a lighthearted angle toward the subject while nevertheless acknowledging that there really is business potential. Millennial women, she writes, have ‘traded [astrology’s] psychedelic new-wave stigma for modern Instagrammy witch vibes.