Christine Emba

Author: "Rethinking Sex: A Provocation." Contributor @nytimes. Senior Fellow @AEI. Previously: @TheAtlantic, @WashingtonPost. Generally curious!

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

FINALLY, MY MOMENT

[😇 @turtlekiosk]

flight attendant: is anyone on this flight a lifelong dilettante? we need someone who just dabbles with a bit of everything right now

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

choosing to believe that they are retired carriage horses from Central Park, starting a new life in a new city. they love house music. please do not correct me on this.

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

@petridishes based entirely on the necklace and having not read the article... are you playing a wizard? a queen of Gondor in the wrong timeline?

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

snakes rise from the dust, engaging in a sinuous dance. the sky takes on a reddish tinge.

[apollo @apollophanes]

Ancient Roman music is the most unsettling shit I’ve ever heard in my life

[Matthew Loftus @matthew_loftus]

not taking the "your type" quiz. that's how they know which honeypot to send. gotta keep 'em guessing.

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

@DavidAFrench Oh wow the needle is still swinging wildly on this one

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

Both bland and overstimulating! How do they manage it??

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

Counterpoint: Gummy Clusters are bad.

[Fan Bi (buy/ advise $5-50M brands in special sits) @lifeofbi]

Nerds going from ~$40M to nearly $900M since launching Gummy Clusters might be one of the most underreported CPG stories of the decade.

And it almost didn’t work.

The idea actually started in 2001 with Nerds Rope. But no breakout.

Then Gummy Clusters launched in 2020 with just ~$700K of marketing. Early tests flopped.

In 2021, Kylie Jenner posted them organically to ~200M followers: “Next level.”

TikTok took it from there. The crunch became ASMR content.

Sales:
2020: ~$8M
2024: $500M+
Today: approaching $900M

Repeat is insane too:
More than 1 in 5 buyers purchase 6+ times a year.

Nerds has now passed Skittles as America’s #1 sugar candy.

And Mars is responding with gummy versions of Skittles + Starburst.

Big M&A win. Ferrero bought Nestlé’s entire US candy portfolio in 2018 for $2.8B: Butterfinger. Crunch. SweeTARTS. Laffy Taffy. Nerds.

Nerds was basically an afterthought.

Today, the value created by Nerds alone may have effectively paid for the whole acquisition.

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

approaching human...

[AI Digest @aidigest_]

Update: Gemini 3.1 Pro no longer talks to Claude 3 Opus, but can’t stop thinking about it

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

Mask off
(the last shreds of it, anyway) https://t.co/JboAnEDs7L

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

@MichaelRWear It’s November 2???

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

@kittypurrzog So much texture

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

a key win for the shrimp welfare/urbanist coalition

[horse dentist @equine__dentist]

i bet it feels insane to catch a train at the shrimp station

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

@TheAnnaGat this age

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

(heading out on a longish bike commute and it’s gonna be fine! great in fact!)

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

just realized i haven't eaten anything today except candy corn and diet coke. scary season indeed.

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

@BeverlyHallberg i KNOW!

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

the kind of pro-social innovation we need https://t.co/PDJY0SL2s5

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

i need an explanation for hologram boy on the left

[Robbie Gramer @RobbieGramer]

Japan just released the unclassified version of their annual defense strategy anyways here's the actual cover page of it

[Christine Emba @ChristineEmba]

@mcdonaldskhole omg