Good morning, and a warm welcome to all our new subscribers. In today’s edition:

• 🤖 Music publishers sue Anthropic
• ⚽ Messi retirement
• 🎰 George Santos’ lifetime Kalshi ban

…and much more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~3.79-minute read (1,009 words).

Note: Due to a malfunction, yesterday’s content wasn’t immediately published to our website upon sending; the issue was fixed after a few hours. Apologies for the inconvenience.

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“Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.”

–J.M. Barrie (1860-1937)

Some of the world’s largest music publishers are taking AI giant Anthropic to court over an alleged piracy operation that would make LimeWire blush.

Units of Sony Music and Warner Music filed a federal lawsuit late Friday accusing Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann of illegally downloading massive amounts of copyrighted works to train the company’s Claude AI models.

The scale is notable: The publishers allege Anthropic unlawfully trained its models using “tens of thousands” of copyrighted musical compositions via a “brazen campaign” of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading songs.

The plaintiffs are seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for each composition that was allegedly infringed (totaling billions of dollars).

It likely isn’t the last AI music copyright suit

Music copyright is more complicated than hitting “Accept all” on Spotify’s terms and conditions. A single song can contain several separately owned copyrights—composition, lyrics, sound recording, etc.—which can belong to different artists, publishers, and labels.

• Under this structure, AI companies could be facing multiple copyright claims for the same song.
• Commercially released songs can also qualify for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work without copyright holders having to prove any specific financial losses.

Zoom out: Sony and Warner’s case against Anthropic is significantly broader than previous AI lawsuits within the music industry, and could rival Anthropic’s $1.5 billion deal with authors and publishers last September that marked the largest copyright settlement in US history.

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Your fountain drink order could soon be getting a glow-up.

Coca-Cola is experimenting with new ways to capitalize on Americans’ growing appetite for customizable beverages, from dirty sodas and colorful refreshers to energy drinks.

What’s bubbling

Coke has developed a prototype Freestyle drink dispenser—the touch-screen soda fountain with 100+ drink options—that’s capable of making dirty sodas, which combine soda with flavored syrups and cream.

• It’s also testing equipment with AMC Theatres that dispenses brightly colored refreshers and other customizable beverages.
• Restaurant beverages are becoming an increasingly important draw for customers, as beverage servings outpaced both food-only and food-and-beverage orders in Q2, according to Circana.

Coke has a pretty big testing ground. Since Freestyle machines launched 17 years ago, they’ve dispensed more than 67 billion 8-ounce servings. The machines give Coca-Cola real-time insight into what customers are pouring, where they’re pouring it, and when.

Zoom out: Coke is also helping restaurants create drinks that don’t necessarily carry its name. The company spent roughly 18 months working with Whataburger on its “Whatafreshers," and is currently developing an unbranded, customizable energy drink for restaurants to name themselves that’s expected to debut within a year.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🌐⚖️ FTC and 20+ state AGs sue Amazon alleging the company manipulated prices that businesses paid for ads on its platforms; complaint says advertisers allegedly suffered $20+ billion in harm over seven years by paying higher ad prices to Amazon.
• 🏘️ Average 30-year mortgage rate hits 6.87%, the highest level since June 2025 and up 12 basis points since Thursday amid rising oil prices.
• 💰 Kalshi issues first-ever lifetime ban to former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) and fines him $71,356 after a federal regulator alleged he made $17,000+ betting on whether he would attend President Trump's State of the Union address.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚽ Argentina superstar Lionel Messi announces retirement from international soccer after 21 years and six World Cups, including the 2022 title; Messi will continue to play at the club level with Inter Miami.
• 🎾 #4-seed Novak Djokovic upset in US Open Round 1 by Mariano Navone in marathon five-set match; it’s the earliest exit in a Grand Slam since 2006 for the record 24-time major champion.
• 🎙️ Howard Stern to bring filmed episodes of his SiriusXM show The Howard Stern Show to HBO Max beginning in September; Stern will also scale back to one new episode/week.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🧠 Hormone replacement therapy used for at least one year by post-menopausal women was associated with a 10% lower risk of dementia and 16% lower risk of Alzheimer’s, study finds.
• 🫀 High blood levels of xylitol, a common sweetener used in chewing gum, toothpaste, and jam, was linked to a 57% greater risk of heart attack, stroke, and death in newly presented research.
• 🩸 FDA approves first freeze-dried plasma product in the US; it can be stored at room temperature for up to 12 months and prepared in ~2.5 minutes for use in emergency blood transfusions.

US, WORLD, & POLITICS

• 🪖 President Trump vows to hit Iran hard after the Islamic Republic retaliated to US strikes by unsuccessfully targeting American forces in Jordan and the UAE. | Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigns following months of tension with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
• 🏛️ SCOTUS allows President Trump to continue building the White House Ballroom, finding that the preservation group challenging it likely lacks the legal standing; Justices didn’t rule on whether the construction itself is legal.
• 💥 Russia launched 1,500 long-range drones at Ukraine over four-day period ending Sunday, including ~800 next-gen jet-powered models that are harder to intercept, Ukrainian President Zelensky said; one jet-powered missile struck an ammunitions depot in a Kyiv suburb on Friday, killing 38 people.

☝️ You’re looking at some of the participants and winners of the annual World’s Ugliest Dog Contest, held last month at the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, CA.

🤔 Did you know? NASA once lost contact with a spacecraft—the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE)—for over 12 years, before it was rediscovered in 2018 by amateur astronomer Scott Tilley.

📰 Worth a read: Why Syracuse can’t attract the students it needs to pay the bills

🖱️ What we’re clicking:

• The hottest US zip codes of 2026
• When someone talks down to you, use Dolly Parton’s simple trick
• Can’t whistle? It’s not you, it’s mouth geometry

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Yesterday we covered President Trump’s announcement of a new oil deal with Venezuela on Friday that would give the US a stake in a private company with rights to a major portion of Venezuela’s oil fields, which contain world’s largest proven crude reserves.

❓ Our question to you: On the whole, do you support or oppose the Trump admin’s new oil deal with Venezuela’s government?

• Support: 22%
• Oppose: 64%
• Unsure/other: 14%

Read some of the most thoughtful longform responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 505 votes and 54 longform responses.

🎧 Listen: The most iconic hip-hop samples of every year from 1973-2023 (30 mins).

📊 Poll position: How Americans view capitalism, socialism and free enterprise, according to Gallup.

🐅 Mike Tyson’s got nothing on this: From a beer-drinking elk to the Pope’s elephant—seven peculiar pets in history.

💼🚀 A 3-minute shortcut to leveling up your career…Join 310,000+ professional women reading The Assist — a 4x-weekly newsletter packed with actionable tips, resources, and insights to help you move forward at work. Subscribe free to The Assist.*

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❓ Trivia: What unit is the speed of a computer mouse measured in?

🎓 True or false?... Spaghetto is the singular word for a piece of spaghetti.

🤔 Riddle me this: What runs, but never walks. Murmurs, but never talks. Has a bed, but never sleeps. And has a mouth, but never eats?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

🐱 A North Carolina Lego store built custom wheelchairs for two rescue kittens with cerebellar hypoplasia, a condition that makes walking difficult.

The Lego rides give the growing kittens some much-needed mobility without their caretakers shelling out thousands of dollars for wheelchairs they’d quickly outgrow.

❓ Trivia: Mickeys

🎓 T/F: True

🤔 Riddle: A river

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