| THIS IS HIDDEN PRE-HEADER TEXT
|
|
|
Good morning. The nation’s largest fuel pipeline restarted operations, days after it was Forced to shut down by the DarkSide. 😉
-
Supplies will resume flowing from Texas to the East Coast in the coming days.
⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s newsletter takes 3.97 minutes to read.
|
|
🍩 Daily Sprinkle
“No schooling was allowed to interfere with my education.”
–Grant Allen (often misattributed to Mark Twain)
|
|
🗣👂 Dose of Discussion
🏛️ Cheney Removed from GOP Leadership
|
GOP lawmakers voted to remove Rep. Liz Cheney (WY) from her position as Republican House Conference chair - the party’s third highest-ranking House member - in a closed-door meeting yesterday morning.
🤿 A deeper dive…
Cheney, the daughter of former VP Dick Cheney, was one of ten House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump earlier this year.
-
Unlike the others, Cheney continued to criticize Trump and publicly reject 2020 election fraud claims.
In February, Cheney survived a secret-ballot GOP vote to remove her from leadership, 145-61.
-
By Wednesday’s vote, however, what had formerly been support from GOP leadership turned into opposition, and Cheney was ousted from her position.
Leaders opted against recorded individual votes, but one GOP lawmaker described a “deafening” voice vote in favor of removal.
⏭️ What’s Next?
Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who entered Congress in 2015 as the youngest woman ever elected (30), is expected to replace Cheney as the third-ranking House GOP member.
-
The official replacement vote will take place Friday.
|
|
|
👇🗞 Quick Bits
|
|
🇺🇸📈 Inflation in the U.S.
Image: WSJ
The Consumer Price Index (CPI), a metric used to measure inflation, rose 4.2% year-over-year in April according to Labor Department data published yesterday – the highest such increase since September 2008 (4.9%).
-
The CPI for all items rose 0.8% compared to March, matching its biggest monthly increase since 2009.
More: The monthly number was buoyed by a 10% rise in the index of used cars and trucks - the largest single-month increase in recorded history - which the government said accounted for over one-third of the monthly increase of all items.
|
|
|
📺 The Ellen Show is Ending
Ellen DeGeneres revealed she is ending her talk show in 2022 in a Hollywood Reporter story published Wednesday.
-
The standup comedian began her talk show in 2003, six years after she officially came out in a Time magazine cover titled “Yep, I’m Gay.”
-
The Ellen DeGeneres Show has won more than 60 Emmy awards over the past 18 years. DeGeneres herself received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
However… last year, former and current staffers - who remain anonymous - told BuzzFeed News they experienced racist comments, fear, and intimidation on set, and some alleged they were sexually harassed by the show’s producers.
More: The tea on her potential replacement.
Even More: DeGeneres will sit down today with former daytime host Oprah Winfrey to discuss the news (4 pm ET; NBC).
|
|
|
🌌 NASA Craft Detects “Hum” in Interstellar Space
NASA’s Voyager 1, the farthest human-made object from Earth and the first to enter interstellar space, has been detecting a “faint, persistent hum” according to research published Monday in Nature Astronomy.
-
The team of researchers who analyzed the data - sent from 14 billion miles away - attribute the hum to emissions from interstellar gas, a term describing the collection of gas, radiation, and particles that makes up the space between stars.
-
They likened it to a “quiet or gentle rain” of plasma pattering against the craft’s detector.
More: Voyager 1 first escaped the heliosphere and crossed into interstellar space in 2012, but the plasma “hum” was first detected in 2017. Researchers still don’t know what’s causing it, nor do they understand why it took so long to appear.
|
|
|
DONUT Holes...
💬 Quote of the Day:
“Do not fill plastic bags with gasoline. Use only containers approved for fuel.”
–The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on Twitter, as gas stations in the Southeast and Atlantic regions are facing shortages.
|
📉 Gas isn’t the only thing in short supply. Chick-fil-A is rationing sauce because of “industry-wide supply chain issues.”
🏦 SoftBank reported the biggest annual profit in Japan’s history (~$46B in the year ending March).
🤘 The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced its 2021 inductees – Jay-Z, Foo Fighters, The Go-Go’s, Carole King, Todd Rundgren, and Tina Turner were among the 13 chosen.
💉 A CDC advisory panel voted to recommend Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for use in kids ages 12-15; shots in arms are expected to begin as early as today.
🚘 Tesla will stop accepting bitcoin as payment for car purchases due to environmental concerns.
|
|
|
🧐 The Perspective Game...
Rules: We choose a hot-button news topic and curate headlines to show you how everyone’s spinning it. The twist? It’s up to you to guess which perspective is being pushed (e.g., left or right).*
Today’s topic: The ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Background: Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rocket fire continued yesterday. The death toll over the past few days climbed to at least 83 Palestinians – including 17 children – and seven Israelis, including a child. Seven of the Palestinian deaths on Monday (including three children) were attributed to an explosion with unclear origins.
#1: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Jerusalem Evictions about Enforcing Rule of Law
#2: Joe Biden Can’t Duck the Jerusalem Crisis
#3: The Palestinian Authority is trying to set Jerusalem ablaze
#4: On Israel-Palestine, Biden Must Stop the Harm
#5: Hamas Tests Israel—and Biden
#6: It's Obvious — Israel Is an Apartheid State
Scroll for the answers 👇
*We use MediaBias/FactCheck.com for all our ratings.
|
|
|
📸 Pic of the Day
👥 Guess Who?
|
Image: Instagram |
If you said Seth Rogen, you’d be correct.
-
The actor shaved his beard for a role in the upcoming Hulu miniseries Pam & Tommy, which centers on Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee (played by Sebastian Stan) and actress Pamela Anderson (Lily James).
|
|
|
🧐📝 Answers
#1: Right → National Review; Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Jerusalem Evictions about Enforcing Rule of Law
#2: Left → The New Republic; Joe Biden Can’t Duck the Jerusalem Crisis
#3: Right → Washington Examiner; The Palestinian Authority is trying to set Jerusalem ablaze
#4: Left → The American Prospect; On Israel-Palestine, Biden Must Stop the Harm
#5: Right → WSJ; Hamas Tests Israel—and Biden
#6: Left → Jacobin; It's Obvious — Israel Is an Apartheid State
|
|
|
🤗 Daily Dose of Positive
🦍🍼 Monkey-ing Around
|
Total strangers Kiki and Emmily shared a sweet moment of motherly bonding at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston last week. The sight of the two holding their babies together and smiling caused people to stop dead in their tracks to take photos and videos.
What made it such a special moment? Kiki and her son Pablo are actually residents of the zoo – Western Lowland Gorillas, to be exact.
Image: YouTube
Before bringing their 5-month-old son named Canyon to the zoo for a fun family day out, Emmily Austin and her husband Michael had no idea the hubbub their sleeping baby would cause.
-
When they reached the gorilla enclosure, 39-year-old Kiki appeared to take an interest in Emmily’s baby boy, walking straight up to the glass to get a closer look.
"I was just in awe," Emmily said. "Trying to pet his face through the glass, and trying to hold his hand ... just the most beautiful thing. You could see the emotion in [Kiki’s] eyes."
Eventually, Kiki brought her own baby - a son named Pablo - up to the glass to show him off to the humans on the other side.
Watch the heartwarming video.
|
|
|
🛸🌄📲 Calling from the Future…
|
🏀 Gotta Catch ‘Em All…
Image: Flex NBA
As elusive and complex as they may seem, NFTs are, in essence, collectibles.
The blockchain-based digital artifacts currently selling for millions of dollars are really no different than the baseball cards, Hot Wheels, or Star Wars action figures collectors have been trading for years.
-
Meet Flex NBA, an AR tabletop game that runs on NFTs.
Users register physical hexagonal discs containing profiles of NBA athletes, which function as typical sports trading cards and can be tracked via mobile app.
-
When a user points their device’s camera at the tiles, 3D animations of the players spring to life on the screen, ready for in-person or online gameplay.
Read more.
|
|
|
💡 Dose of Knowledge
🍪 C is for Cookie
|
Cookie Monster made his debut in a training video for which company?
A) IBM
B) Pan Am
C) Nestle
D) General Motors
|
(keep scrolling for the answer) |
|
|
🍩 Share the DONUT
|
Spread fun, objective news and earn exclusive rewards – a win-win. Simply:
1. Copy your unique referral link below.
2. Post said link in the networking Slack channel, add it to your Linktree, send it to your penpal, etc.
3. Watch the rewards roll in.
|
|
|
|
Ambassador Rewards and Progress → |
|
💡 Dose of Knowledge Answer
|
|
A) IBM
Prior to landing a TV deal, puppeteer Jim Henson used to create furry creatures to star in commercials. He'd originally conceived of a fuzzy blue monster for a General Foods commercial, but it was never picked up – so Henson repurposed the monster into a wildly popular training video he produced for IBM in 1967.
|
|
|
|
