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Good morning. We've got a doozy for y'all today – let’s get right to it.
⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s newsletter takes 4.81 minutes to read. (With the 360 view: 7.95 minutes.)
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🍩 Daily Sprinkle
“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.”
–Beverly Sills (1929-2007), American operatic soprano*
*Moving forward, we’ll be including a little tidbit about the individual to whom the Daily Sprinkle is attributed. Shoutout to Matthew for the suggestion! For any other ideas or suggestions on how we can improve the newsletter, just hit ‘reply’ and drop us a note. ⬇️📧
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🗣👂 Dose of Discussion
🇺🇸 Natural Gas Bans Across America
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A growing number of U.S. cities - including San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, & New York - are considering or have enacted measures to ban or discourage the use of natural gas in new homes and buildings, citing concerns about climate change.
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Meanwhile, five states - AZ, KS, LA, OK, & TX - have enacted laws preemptively outlawing such municipal bans, with Ohio also currently considering similar legislation.
🤿 A deeper dive…
From the WSJ: “The outcome of the battle, largely among Democratic-led cities and Republican-run states, has the potential to reshape the future of the utility industry, and demand for natural gas, which the U.S. produces more of than any other country…
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Homes and businesses account for about 13% of the nation’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, mostly because natural gas is used in cooking, heating, and washers and dryers.” (EPA source)
However… Natural gas is America’s biggest source of generated electricity, at over 40%, meaning even if cities are swapping out gas directly from homes and buildings, it’s often still powering them.
🏛️ On a federal level…
President Biden’s proposed $1.7T infrastructure plan calls for greater adoption of all-electric heat pumps and induction stoves, though details of the potential federal incentives to do so are unknown.
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👇📰 Quick Bits
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🦠 New Variant Names, Says WHO
Image: WHO
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced a new naming system for notable COVID variants based on letters of the Greek alphabet.
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Per the WHO: "While they have their advantages, these scientific names can be difficult to say and recall, and are prone to misreporting. As a result, people often resort to calling variants by the places where they are detected, which is stigmatizing and discriminatory."
More: The new system will not replace existing scientific names involving numbers, Roman letters, and full stops, which “convey important scientific information and will continue to be used in research.”
From the Left: NPR
From the Right: Deseret News
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🇪🇺💉 The EU’s Digital Vaccine Certificate
A digital Covid certificate system intended to ease travel within the European Union became operational in seven countries on Tuesday. (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Croatia, & Poland.)
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The rest of the bloc’s 27 member-countries must adopt the system by a July 1 deadline.
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📝 Background: The document, known as a digital green certificate, records whether people have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, recovered from the virus, or tested negative within 72 hours (48 hours for rapid antigen tests). Travelers can move freely if at least one of those three criteria is met, though individual EU countries can set additional restrictions.
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More: The European Commission is still in talks with the U.S. about how to verify the vaccination status of American visitors.
From the Left: The Guardian
From the Right: Fox News
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🚁📝 Autonomous Drone Report
Image: STM
A military drone may have autonomously attacked humans for the first time without being instructed to do so, according to a recently published 548 page report by the UN Security Council.
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The incident occurred in March 2020 in Libya, a country that was in the midst of a civil war.
What Happened… Libya's Government of National Accord (GNA) reportedly deployed the Turkish-supplied STM Kargu-2 drone to find and attack logistics convoys and retreating troops belonging to rival Haftar Armed Forces. The drone then found and attacked Haftar troops.
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From the report: "The lethal autonomous weapons systems were programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true 'fire, forget and find' capability."
More: The UN attempted to begin working on a treaty that would ban autonomous weapons in 2018, but the move was blocked by both the U.S. and Russia, Politico reported at the time.
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DONUT Holes...
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🇵🇪 Peru nearly tripled its official COVID-19 death toll - from 69,342 to 180,764 - following a government review of the figures, leaving the country with the world’s worst death rate.
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🇬🇧 The UK reported no new COVID-19 deaths for the first time since March 2020.
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🎥 Warner Bros. Discovery will be the name of the new media company resulting from a $43B merger between Discovery and WarnerBros. (which is being spun-off from AT&T).
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💰 Circle raised $440M in the largest-ever VC round for a crypto business.
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⚖️ The Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Johnson & Johnson seeking to undo a $2.1B judgment against the company over allegations that asbestos in its talc powder products, including baby powder, caused women to develop ovarian cancer.
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⚾ Major League Baseball signed a multi-year licensing agreement with Fanatics to produce NFTs.
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🥩 JBS, the world's largest meat processor, is experiencing an ongoing cyberattack that began affecting operations in the U.S. and Australia over the weekend; the White House said JBS described the attack as coming “from a criminal organization likely based in Russia”; JBS released a statement last night indicating most of its food plants will be open today.
+Bonus: AMC stock had an interesting day.
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📸 Pic of the Day…
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Image: Screenshot, CBS LA broadcast |
“Look! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superma – no wait, it really is a plane.” - Overheard from a bystander as a plane landed on the 101 Freeway northwest of LA (probably).
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The single-engine Cessna managed to land safely in the natural flow of traffic – the instructor and student pilot aboard the craft are safe, and no injuries were reported.
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There’s no word yet on what caused the pilot to radio air traffic control for help prior to the landing. The FAA and NTSB are currently investigating the incident.
Watch it here.
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🔢 By the Numbers
$6.9B – Amazon’s ad revenue in the first quarter of this year; 2.4x the ad revenues of Snap, Twitter, Pinterest, and Roku combined, per Loop Capital.
51% – The percentage of Europeans who would be in favor of replacing lawmakers in their country with AI, according to a recent survey (40% in America; 75% in China).
$13.4M – The median pay for a CEO at an S&P 500 company in 2020, according to a WSJ analysis.
268 – The number of books selling more than 100,000 copies last year, according to The Novelleist (just 0.01% of books). For comparison, 2.6 million books sold less than 1,000 copies last year (96%).
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🤗 Daily Dose of Positive
📝🧠 The Math Wiz
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Image: Guinness World Record
The average person likely needs a calculator to multiply numbers above two or three digits – but not 11-year-old Sanaa “Higher Math” Hiremath.
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The Florida youngster, who was diagnosed with autism at two years old, recently set the Guinness World Record for the largest mental arithmetic multiplication, solving a 12-digit problem in ten minutes without a pen, paper, or calculator.
After failing second-grade math due to her inability to hold a pencil correctly, Sanaa is now homeschooled and working daily to overcome the obstacles presented by her autism.
Keep reading.
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🛸🌄📲 Calling from the Future…
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🤖 Face The Facts…
Image: Columbia Engineering
Facial expressions are integral to establishing trust among humans – so as robots become increasingly integrated into our everyday lives, the need for trust between humans and automated assistance is becoming increasingly important.
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Robotic body parts have historically been made of metal or hard plastic - materials too stiff and heavy to mimic the movement of human facial tissue.
Enter Creative Machines Lab: Over the past five years, researchers at Columbia University have worked to develop EVA, a new autonomous robot with a soft, expressive face that relies on artificial “muscles” (cables and motors) and an AI algorithm to read and mirror human facial expressions.
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“I was minding my own business one day when EVA suddenly gave me a big, friendly smile,” said one of the researchers. “I knew it was purely mechanical, but I found myself reflexively smiling back.”
Keep reading.
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💡 Dose of Knowledge
🍪 The Way the Cookie Crumbles
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What are the best-selling Girl Scout cookies?
A) Caramel deLites/Samoas
B) Thin Mints
C) Peanut Butter Patties/Tagalongs
D) Trefoils/Shortbread
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(keep scrolling for the answer) |
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🍩 Share the DONUT
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Help them find this endearing, impartial, fun, and positive newsletter and forever win our gratitude. 🥰😉
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Ambassador Rewards and Progress → |
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💡 Dose of Knowledge Answer
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B) Thin Mints
According to the Girl Scouts website, the best-selling cookies are Thin Mints, followed by Caramel deLites/Samoas, Peanut Butter Patties/Tagalongs, and Do-si-dos/Peanut Butter Sandwich.
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