💬 Quoted… “As much as we want to fight for what we believe is a fantastic product that really should exist, the truth is that we can’t win a cat-and-mouse game with the largest company on earth.”

• Beeper, the startup that developed an iMessage workaround for Android users, is done playing Whac-A-Mole with Apple and is shifting its focus to “building the best chat app on earth,” the company announced yesterday. When Beeper launched, users just had to download an app to bring iMessage to Android. But Apple has blocked the service multiple times since then, and Beeper’s workarounds have needed to get more complicated – for example: the latest one requires users to own or rent a jailbroken iPhone to access the service – so the company gave up. This whole saga could end up spurring some change, however – a coalition of more than a dozen tech advocacy groups wrote a letter to the DOJ yesterday calling for an investigation into allegedly anticompetitive behavior by Apple.

🏡🍿 Stat of the Day: If you’ve ever spent two hours watching a child lead robbers on a merry chase around a super nice house and wondered: “Just how much do I need to make to afford a place like that?” – the NY Times has your answer. Its reporters spoke with economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, who estimated the McCallisters in Home Alone (1990) were in the top 1% tax bracket, pulling in ~$305,000/year (~$665,000 in 2022).

🤔 Did You Know?... It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the wordiest show on TV with 176.2 words per minute, per a new study by WordFinderX, making the FX sitcom the hardest series to follow if you’re watching with subtitles.

📰 Worth a Read: Her Brand Had $100 Million Ambitions. Now It’s Being Sold in a Fire Sale → (WSJ)