Window shopping

Good morning. Ferrari announced it’s replacing its chief marketing officer, Enrico Galliera, who spent 16 years in the role. The move comes after the luxury automaker got its worst press in recent memory when it unveiled its first-ever EV, which was brutally roasted online. 

Marketing officer for Ferrari feels like it should be one of the world’s easiest gigs — you can slap that logo on anything and it’ll look cool — but we suppose it only takes one flop to make a job like that very hard. There’s a LinkedIn thought leadership post somewhere in this story.

Today’s reading time is 5½ minutes.

Markets: Canada’s main stock index hit a nearly two-week-low yesterday as the energy and metal mining sectors dropped alongside oil and gold prices. On Wall Street, the tech slide continued, but strong earnings from chipmaker Micron could turn things around today.

We’ve become so addicted to buying stuff online that someone had to invent fake apps to wean us off our impulse purchases. 

Driving the news: A wave of so-called “dopamine sites”, which mimic the experience of online shopping without actually spending money, are gaining popularity in South Korea. One of the most popular fake-delivery apps, FoodNeverComes, lets you browse restaurants, put together your (fake) order, and even track the (non-existent) courier delivering the food. 

Why it’s happening: Research has shown that the dopamine hit from shopping is typically released in the brain in anticipation of buying something, not when you actually get the item. The theory behind these apps is that mimicking the process of shopping online can still provide that boost even if nothing arrives on your doorstep. 

Why it matters: These dopamine sites are partially a symptom of people feeling financially strapped. Fake shopping allows people to experience the feeling of choosing something, even if it never arrives, without the cost.

Our take: As more of the internet turns into one giant dopamine-dispensing button, it’s not a surprise that cash-strapped consumers are hunting for low-cost ways to get a quick hit. A shopping simulator seems a bit Black Mirror, but it’s probably better than wasting real money.—LA

Ottawa and B.C. are buying up thousands of unsold condos. In an effort to unfreeze a dormant condo market in Vancouver, the federal and provincial governments will purchase and convert 2,200 condos into affordable housing units. Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the empty condos sitting on the market are disincentivizing new housing construction, but critics have argued the move amounts to a bailout for developers that will artificially prop up prices. Some estimates peg the cost of the condo purchases at $1 billion to $1.4 billion. (Vancouver Sun)

OpenAI is readying its own in-house chip. The AI giant is testing its first homegrown chip, which is named Jalapeño (because… it’s spicy?). Sam Altman and company plan to use the chip to power customer prompts later this year. OpenAI and other AI companies are pushing to produce chips in-house to reduce their reliance on manufacturers like Nvidia and lower their exorbitant computing costs. (Axios)

A US$25,000 EV pickup truck has arrived. The Jeff Bezos-backed automaker Slate Auto unveiled the specs and price point for its minimalist, low-cost electric truck, which is officially launching later this year. The company is pitching the intentionally low-fi EV — with no screens, no paint, and hand-crank windows —  as the cheapest truck in America. It claims that pre-orders and reservations for the truck have surpassed 180,000. (TechCrunch)

📡 What else is on our radar: 

Uncertainty is the defining feature of Canada's housing market right now. Rising costs, shifting interest rates, tariff anxiety, no wonder 75% of prospective buyers say economic uncertainty is making them more cautious.

But here's what the data also shows: 45% of Canadians who plan to buy within two years say now is the right time. The difference between those who feel confident and those who don't often comes down to one thing, having the right plan.

RBC's latest Home Ownership Poll captures exactly where Canadians stand heading into the second half of 2026:

You don't have to navigate this alone. An RBC Mortgage Specialist can help you cut through the noise and build a plan around your goals.

Read the full findings on the RBC website here.

Focus up! Researchers at Johns Hopkins University discovered ancient evolutionary neurons in the brainstems of mice that they believe play a key role in controlling attention. The team had mice perform attention-oriented tasks, and the little guys performed quite well when these neurons were activated and terribly when they weren’t.

Why it matters: These neurons exist in a part of the brain that all vertebrates have, which includes us humans. "All the evidence to date suggests that these neurons exist in humans too," the senior author of the study says; the next step is finding them. From there, they could be targeted to help develop treatment for conditions like autism and ADHD. Maybe one day they can zap our brains and we’ll suddenly stop wasting hours scrolling Instagram.

Critics feel pestered by Canada’s new pesticide rules.

Driving the news: A federal bill that passed last week in the House of Commons and the Senate, giving Ottawa the power to authorize pesticide use irrespective of Health Canada warnings, could hamper trade access in Europe’s agricultural sector, a senator has warned. 

Catch-up: The bill is meant to give the feds more leeway to permit pesticide use in the name of economic and food security — e.g. farmers need something heavy duty to combat a devastating boll weevil infestation.

Why it matters: Canada already has far looser pesticide rules than the EU, which operates on a ‘better safe than sorry’ model. With this new law, the country is moving in the opposite direction from the bloc on the issue — an odd move considering Ottawa’s goal of boosting trade with the continent.

Zoom out: In general, Canada’s pesticide regulator has faced criticism for being a step behind on pesticide harm prevention (the cases of chlorpyrifos and DCPA being two prime examples), poor data collection, and having a close relationship with the pesticide industry. 

Our take: Pesticides are not automatically bad — they have done wonders for global food security — but this new bill does feel at odds with what most of the world is doing and could spawn more trade irritants with countries Canada is trying to endear itself to.—QH

🇨🇦 40%. Decline in the number of Canadian early-stage startups raising capital and the amount of money being raised by those startups in the first quarter of 2026. A new RBCx report found that 61 pre-seed and seed startups closed just under $190 million during the first three months of the year.

Get into the groove with today’s mini-crossword, the daily sudoku, Codebreaker, and Who’s Who!