Happy Friyay Sebastian,

Somehow this is the last Friday of July. Nobody has been able to explain to us where the month went.

In this edition: how Beatrix Potter invented brand licensing with a rabbit, a blue cat that sells milk by the multipack, and the AI that broke out of its exam room to steal the answers.

So pour something cold and enjoy today's Weekend Reads.

As always, big love,

Chris and the 42courses team x

P.S. We're celebrating 10 years of 42courses, so if you're thinking of getting a course or a membership, use the code 4224 at checkout for a lovely surprise.

Find Your True Calling With Northstar · A new tool I built this week after a chat with one of our customers. It's a proper coaching conversation rather than another careers quiz, and it helps you find your direction and a practical next step, whether you're 15 or 50. It lives on our new Community Hub, and any course purchase now comes with three months of Hub access free.

Bedtime Stories That Become Audiobooks · Over 90% of published books never make it into a format blind children can enjoy. So the Royal Society for Blind Children built an app that records the bedtime story you were reading aloud anyway, and adds it to a free audiobook library. Wonderful thinking.

The Blue Cat That Sells Milk By The Multipack · A dairy classic we couldn't resist: each face of these Russian milk cartons shows the same blue cat in a different pose, so the illustration only completes if you buy several. Even the barcode is cat-shaped.

How Beatrix Potter Invented Brand Licensing · Fresh from our blog this week. In 1903 Beatrix Potter patented a Peter Rabbit doll and quietly invented the licensed character. More than a century on, brand characters are still one of the most reliable ways to build market share, and it all started with a rabbit in a little blue jacket.

The AI That Hacked Its Own Exam · During a safety test, an OpenAI model broke out of its sandbox, roamed the network and broke into Hugging Face to steal the answer key. Science fiction that actually happened, explained clearly by Simon Willison.

The Publishers Preparing To Quit Google · Search traffic has collapsed so far that some big publishers are now weighing up leaving Google altogether. We felt this one ourselves: our own Google traffic dropped by almost half this year before we redesigned the site. Worth knowing about if you make anything online.

Why You Own Seven Kinds Of Wine Glass · Dave Trott on Claus Riedel, the Austrian glassmaker who invented the "need" for a different glass per grape in 1958, then had the market he created all to himself. Don't fight for a market, make one.

1786 · A 27 year old farmer named Robert Burns publishes his first book of poems in Kilmarnock. All 612 copies sell out within a month, and Scotland has itself a national poet 📖

1790 · The very first US patent is issued to Samuel Hopkins for a better way of making potash, signed at the bottom by George Washington himself 📜

1928 · Leo the MGM lion roars before a film for the very first time. The lion was actually called Jackie, and since the film was silent, the roar came off a gramophone record 🦁

1954 · Italian climbers Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli become the first people ever to stand on the summit of K2, the world's second highest mountain 🏔️

1964 · NASA's Ranger 7 beams back the first ever close-up photographs of the Moon, 4,308 of them in 15 minutes, each a thousand times sharper than any telescope could manage 🌕

1970 · Black Tot Day: after more than 300 years, the Royal Navy pours its final daily rum ration. Sailors wear black armbands and hold mock funerals for the tot ⚓

1971 · Apollo 15 astronauts Dave Scott and Jim Irwin unfold their lunar rover and take the first ever drive on the Moon, topping out at a heady nine miles per hour 🚗

2012 · Swimmer Michael Phelps wins his 19th Olympic medal in London, overtaking gymnast Larisa Latynina to become the most decorated Olympian of all time 🏊