🍪 Elon's the main character

Happy Thursday, friends. This is Bite Sized Beta. We’re like the advent calendar of tech news and life hacks - serving up new surprises every week.

It really is the most wonderful time of the year.

We're taking next week off to go caroling and watch Avatar, but don’t you worry - we'll be back at it in the new year.

We got a fun one for ya today, so let's dive in.

In the oven this week:

•  ⭐️ Our most popular stories, tools, and life hacks from 2022

• 🎭 Elon's dramatic week

•  🗳 Poll of the week: guess the top Google searches of 2022

• 🍪 Cookie crumbs: what happened in tech this week

• 🍫 Chocolate chips: our 3 favorite finds

• 😂 Snickerdoodles: memes for the holidays

THE BIG PIZOOKIE

BITE SIZED BETA'S 2022 WRAPPED

It’s the end of the year, so you know we gotta throw it back.

This newsletter has grown like crazy in 2022, and since most of y’all are still pretty new, we’ve rounded up the most popular stories and personal growth links from all our emails this year.

Here’s our top 10 to help you start the new year off strong:

• Apparently, you’re not supposed to rinse the toothpaste from your mouth after you brush your teeth.

• Ever wonder what the point of getting married is? Well, here’s your chance to find out – for all the couples out there (or forward-thinking single people), there’s a great tax calculator that lets you see whether you’d pay more taxes when you file jointly vs separately.

• A harvard nutritionist on 5 foods that weaken memory and focus

• The top YC companies of all time by valuation. Lots of cool startups in there for all the homies out there lookin’ for a new gig.

• A tool to see which VCs are actually a-holes, because founders are now reviewing them, Yelp style. Look up anyone you know, from the bottom of the totem pole to the top.

• What the receipt checkers at Costco are actually checking for.

• For those of us that can’t shell out half a month’s rent for a Michelin star meal but still wanna be bougie, here are the 10 most affordable Michelin-starred restaurants in the U.S.

• Wanna know what kinda books guys like Bill Gates, Zuck, and Elon have recommended? This site collects their recs from across the web. You can even see the most popular books between their lists.

• A handy tool to get behind most news paywalls. A good one to bookmark in your browser since it works pretty well for mainstream news sources like WSJ, NYT, etc.

• Life questions to ask yourself from a billionaire, a PhD math professor, and a 99 year old man.

FRESHLY BAKED

ELON'S THE MAIN CHARACTER

You know when you’re 51, but you still do that thing from elementary school where you think of yourself as the main character in a soap opera? No? Just Elon? Ok.

Somehow he can’t seem to keep himself out of the headlines.

Here’s the circus that went down this week:

He decides to ban Twitter accounts that were posting real time info on the location of his private jet because he says it doxxing and jeopardizing his family’s safety. Sure, but the problem is, flight information is already publicly available from the FAA.

He then tries to make doxxing a policy violation on Twitter, leading to lots of mockery:

Mid-week, he gets booed at Dave Chappelle’s show. It's awkward. Chappelle: “sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience.” LOL

Meanwhile, @TwitterSupport announces that all accounts posting links to other social media (e.g. IG, FB, etc.) on Twitter will be suspended. 

Twitter erupts.

Y Combinator founder Paul Graham says enough is enough and tweets his Mastodon link. He gets temporarily suspended.

Elon eventually apologizes and says there will be no more major decisions without a vote.

In the spirit of votes, Elon starts a Twitter poll asking if he should step down. He loses.

He says he’s gonna step down as soon as he’s able to find a successor. Now all he has to do is find a successor…

In all the kerfuffle, Tesla stock is down ~15% this week, after Elon sold another $3.58B worth of stock, and Forbes calculates that Musk is no longer the richest man in the world.

When’s the docuseries dropping, Netflix??? We want the biopic!

FROM THE COOKIE JAR

POLL OF THE WEEK: 2022'S MOST SEARCHED

Everyone's favorite search giant just released their search trends report for 2022. Take your guess at the most popular Google queries for the year 👇🏽. No peeking!

Answers at the bottom of this email.

COOKIE CRUMBS

BITE SIZED TREATS

CHOCOLATE CHIPS

3 FINDS OF THE WEEK

• Since it’s almost time to write those new year's resolutions: 7 rules for saving money.

• 10 Psychology tricks that feel like cheat codes to life. My favorites: remember names & sit next to aggressive people in meetings.

• Trying to join an early stage startup next year and have no idea how to value your equity? YC just released a great talk on startup equity earlier this week.

SNICKERDOODLES

THURSDAY MEMES

😂

POLL ANSWERS

1. Most searched person: Johnny Depp

2. Most searched TV show: Euphoria

3. Most sought after tickets: Disneyland (I know, I thought it'd be Taylor too.)

4. The top song people hummed to find: Everybody (Backstreets Back) - Backstreet Boys. Backstreet's back, alright.

What'd you think about this email?

• 🍪🍪🍪 Top notch!

• 🍪🍪 Meh... could use more milk

• 🍪 Undercooked, do better