Spineless

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Today’s reading time is 6 minutes.

Markets: Canada’s main stock market and top Wall Street indexes hit rough sledding yesterday as a worsening bond market sell-off rattled investors and lower gold prices hit mining shares.

The real tragedy of the burning of the Library of Alexandria? That all those books couldn’t be used to train LLMs before they went up in flames.

Driving the news: A number of Canadian used booksellers have seen an increased number of mysterious bulk order requests, per a new CBC News report, which they suspect are coming from companies looking to train AI models with the materials before destroying them.

Catch-up: Concerns about AI companies buying, scanning, and then shredding old books first came to the fore in January, when a tranche of documents unsealed as part of a US$1.5 billion copyright lawsuit against Anthropic revealed the company’s secret book-nabbing plot. 

Why it matters: Experts believe that the literary capabilities of large language models degrade when they’re trained on AI-generated texts, which now make up a large percentage of written content on the web. This has created an insatiable appetite from AI companies for older texts — guaranteed to be devoid of AI influence — so they can keep improving models.   

Our take: It’s not the destruction of these specific physical books we find alarming — one bookseller told CBC News the books they sold were unwanted and losing them was “not a great loss to civilization” — it’s the growing disregard for human creation as fodder for automation.—QH

Carney tells Washington to get serious. The prime minister said that he’s prepared to restart trade talks with the U.S. if the Trump administration can “start to be serious.” Carney addressed an insulting tweet posted by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth yesterday — aimed at a Canadian cadet — telling Washington to “Stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough,” adding that the post was “beneath their office.” (CTV News)

BYD has its eye on idle Stellantis plant. The Chinese EV maker has reportedly held talks with city officials in Brampton, Ontario, to potentially build buses at the plant, which has been out of operation since 2023. Meanwhile, Unifor — which is currently in contract talks with Stellantis — said it will push the automaker to keep the plant open as part of a new deal. (Bloomberg News)

The Liberals sweep all three federal by-elections. The party came out on top in by-elections in Toronto, North Vancouver, and a tight race in Quebec, tacking on seats to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s slim majority. It marks the Liberals’ second by-election victory this year in a Quebec riding, after winning the Bloc Québécois stronghold of Terrebonne in April. Six more federal by-elections are slated for this year. (CBC News)

📡 What else is on our radar:

🤝 Meet Lauren Sudeyko. She’s the founder of Sleep or Die, a buzzy Canadian sleep-tech company that specializes in supplement mouth strips. We sat down with Lauren to talk about building a self-proclaimed “sexy” sleep business and how a cycling accident set Sleep or Die in motion. 

How did Sleep or Die’s tongue-in-cheek marketing come to be? 

It just spoke back to that same insight that sleep is frustrating and dark, and what if we made it fun? I think in creative I want to look at opposing feelings — sleep is frustrating and tiresome and lonely, but you could never feel sexy when you're feeling tired, you could never feel rebellious or confident when you're feeling lonely. So if we could win on those feelings, we would essentially obliterate the other feelings. That's how we framed it.

You’ve said you started having sleep troubles after a bad cycling accident. How did that personal need translate to launching a business?

For me, I was just struggling with sleep after the accident, and when you have a concussion, you get prescribed something right away. It wasn't working. I couldn't wake up in the morning. I really wanted to find a solution. When I started talking to girlfriends around me, we realized that when it comes to your sleep, everyone was taking something. Some of them were taking Advil PM every night, melatonin, everything you can imagine. So it just turned into: we're all taking something, but we all hate what we're taking. That created a lot of white space for me to create something that women would look forward to.

You’ve said that smoking is back in a big way — which partly inspired your cigarette box packaging — but that it’s more of a rebellion against a certain type of wellness culture. How do sleep tape and strips fit into that equation? 

I think it alludes back to that same theme: the sleep category is exhausted. It's the same lavender-whispering flavour that's been used for the last 20-30 years. For us, it was really about how we can stand up differently and have a rebellious approach, while also being very truthful in our copy as a brand. If you don't sleep enough, you're just going to die younger — that's the truth. On the flip side, it was: where would you never find a sleep product? In a cigarette box. 

When we launched in January, the box was a lot of the reason why we went viral initially. I posted the box on LinkedIn, and it went to 200,000 people in a week. That's also where our venture capital investor sent us a DM — they had been seeing that post. And then we raised $1 million. 

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Read the full Q&A here. If you want to give it a shot for yourself, The Peak readers get $10 off right now with code thepeak.

Apple believes its ex-employees are taking some very valuable souvenirs with them on their way out the door. 

Driving the news: Apple levied new accusations against OpenAI alleging the AI startup was well aware that former employees — including its chief hardware officer Tang Tan — had stolen trade secrets, data, and even hardware when they left. Over 400 ex-Apple employees now work at OpenAI. 

Why it matters: The legal challenge could delay or even stop OpenAI from dropping its first devices, one of which is expected to be a direct challenger to the iPhone. For Apple — which makes about half of its revenue from iPhones — the spying allegations will at least buy it some time to play catch-up with its AI features before OpenAI’s products hit the market.

Our take: In the cutthroat AI talent race, where engineers are paid nine-figure salaries, it’s certainly not out of the question that poached employees are being asked to bring more than their big brains.—LA

Women are managing more than their health. They are often managing the healthcare system itself. New research from Blue Cross reveals many women are coordinating care and advocating to be heard across healthcare interactions. Among women with chronic conditions, 71% repeatedly retell their full health history. The research sheds light on the hidden burden of navigating care. 

Discover what this hidden burden means for women’s healthcare. 

🔥 US$450 billion. Expected costs of natural disasters in a typical year, according to risk modeling firm Verisk, 62% of which are not covered by insurance. As climate catastrophes become more common, insurance companies have begun carving protections from them out of their policies.

Wouldn’t you know it? It’s time for today’s mini-crossword, the daily sudoku, Codebreaker, and Who’s Who!