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Good morning. It's about that time again... 🌅☕️🍩🗞
⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s newsletter takes 4.32 minutes to read. (With the 360° view: 8.43 minutes.)
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🍩 Daily Sprinkle
“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people”
–Leo Burnett (1891-1971), American advertising executive.
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👇📰 Quick Bits
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🪙 El Salvador Officially Adopts Bitcoin
El Salvador officially became the first country to accept bitcoin as legal tender yesterday. The country’s Congress approved a proposal from President Nayib Bukele, under which the U.S. dollar and El Salvador colon will also remain legal tender.
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The new law takes effect in 90 days, and stipulates bitcoin must be accepted by firms when offered as payment for goods and services. Tax contributions can also be paid in the cryptocurrency.
From Reuters: “The use of bitcoin will be optional for individuals and would not bring risks to users, Bukele said, with the government guaranteeing convertibility to dollars at the time of transaction through a trust created at the country's development bank BANDESAL.”
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✍️ May I Take Your (Executive) Order?
President Biden revoked three executive orders by former President Trump on Wednesday that sought to ban transactions with TikTok and WeChat by American businesses.
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Biden replaced the Trump orders with an executive order of his own directing the Commerce Department to conduct regular security reviews of any software “subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign adversary, including the People’s Republic of China.”
More: TikTok updated its U.S. privacy policy last Thursday to enable the company to collect “biometric identifiers and biometric information” from its users’ content.
Even More: The White House last week issued an executive order expanding a Trump-era list of Chinese companies that Americans can’t invest in because of purported links to the Chinese military and surveillance.
Even Even More: The Senate passed a $250 billion bill Tuesday that invests in American science and technology to challenge China’s growing economic ambitions.
From the Right: WSJ
From the Left: CNBC
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🏥💉 Health Care Workers Suspended
Almost 200 health care workers have been suspended from Houston Methodist Hospital for failing to meet a mandate to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Monday, June 7. The employees were given a two-week period to become fully vaccinated or face being fired.
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In an internal message Tuesday evening (later shared with the press), Houston Methodist said the 178 suspended workers represent less than 1% of its workforce; 24,947 employees have already been fully vaccinated.
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The hospital said a further 285 employees "received a medical or religious exemption, and 332 were granted deferrals for pregnancy and other reasons."
Last month, a group of 117 Houston Methodist employees filed a lawsuit in a state court challenging the hospital over its vaccine requirement policy
More: The federal government in May updated its guidelines to say it is legal for companies to require workers to get vaccines so long as they make accommodations for medical reasons or religious beliefs.
+Bonus: Why Americans are - or aren't - being vaccinated.
From the Left: USA Today
From the Right: NY Post
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DONUT Holes…
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🌊 National Geographic will recognize a fifth ocean on its maps and globes: "The Southern Ocean."
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🥩 JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, reportedly paid $11M to cybercriminals who temporarily knocked out the company’s plants last week.
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❌📶 Fastly blamed Tuesday’s widespread internet outage on a software bug triggered by a single customer.
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🌯 Chipotle is raising its prices by roughly 4% to pay for increased wages for employees.
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🛢️ Canada’s TC Energy Corp., the company behind the Keystone Pipeline XL, confirmed the project has officially been canceled. (From the Left | From the
Right)
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☀️🇺🇸 First Solar, the largest U.S.-owned solar panel maker, announced plans to invest $680M in a new Ohio factory it says will be “the largest fully vertically integrated solar manufacturing complex outside of China.”
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🏛️📝 Last June, protestors clashed with police in a park near the White House just before then-President Donald Trump walked to a church for a photo-op; a government watchdog report released yesterday found the protesters were cleared to install fencing, not for Trump. (From the Left | From the Right)
+From the Rumor Mill: Richard Branson may try to beat Jeff Bezos to space.
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📸 Pic of the Day
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Image: CMA CGM Group |
France is sending the U.S. a replica of the Statue of Liberty to celebrate this year’s Fourth of July.
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Nicknamed the "little sister," the bronze statue is one-sixteenth the size of the world-famous one that stands on Liberty Island. It will be erected on Ellis Island, just across the water from the original, from July 1 to July 5.
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🗣👂 Dose of Discussion
🏛️📝 U.S. Infrastructure Legislation: What’s Happening?
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President Biden on Tuesday turned down Republicans’ latest offer on an infrastructure deal and officially ended talks with a group of GOP senators led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV).
🤿 A deeper dive…
From the WSJ: “Weeks of discussions between Mr. Biden and a group of six Republicans had left the two sides still deeply divided on the size of an infrastructure package and how to pay for it.
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An exchange of offers last week did little to resolve the major disputes, with Republicans continuing to reject Mr. Biden’s ideas for raising revenue and the White House arguing that the Republicans’ counteroffers were too small.”
⏭️ What’s Next?
The White House is now expected to turn its focus to a small bipartisan group of lawmakers that includes Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), and Krysten Sinema (D-AZ) – all three of whom President Biden spoke with on Tuesday after ending the other negotiations.
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📣🗣💬 This Week’s Poll Responses
Background: On Monday, we covered Facebook’s decision to extend President Trump’s suspension from its platforms until at least January 2023.
Yes – "I don't believe anyone should be allowed to go against platform guidelines without consequences. As a private platform they established their rules, he broke them, and these are the results. It would be more concerning if they did nothing, therefore opening the door to exceptions being made for politicians which feels like a very slippery slope."
No – "I believe this decision violates Section 230 ('No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.') Many politicians have used social media to tell lies and half truths. I do believe Facebook has the right to due this IF they relinquish current Section 230 protections."
Unsure – "I think if the decision was based on his political profile, then it isn’t fair to Trump. To add on, he should have been treated as anyone else who would be faced with the same circumstances. Companies like Facebook and others shouldn’t have the ability to silence someone if they don’t like what they have to say. On the other hand, I’m not sure this is the case; they could have acted upon the terms of service in perfect accord. It is a really polarizing situation and I don’t think I’m ready to take a side."
+Note on Sample Size: We received 637 responses. 👏🥳 Some may have been lightly edited for grammar or clarity.
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🤗 Daily Dose of Positive
🌈🍪 Over the Rainbow
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 Image: Facebook
To kick off Pride month, Confections Bake Shop in Texas baked some adorable rainbow heart cookies to share and sell to their customers.
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The colorful cookies were enough for some to cancel their orders with the small business.
The bakeshop team, run by a pair of sisters and their baker-friend Felicia, asked for support the next day to help recover the funds lost by the large canceled order.
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What happened over the course of the next few days absolutely blew them away…
Keep reading.
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🛸🌄📲 Calling from the Future…
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🐘 The Elephant In The Room…
Young elephant exhibits protective behavior toward his younger sibling. Image: Alamy
Elephant communication is quite complex - the animals are capable of conveying hundreds of calls and gestures that each have a specific meaning. In fact, different elephant groups even display culturally learned behaviors distinct from other herds (think elephant accents and slang).
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To keep track of all the different communication styles employed by the largest existing land animals, a renowned biologist - who studied elephants for over 50 years - created the world’s first digital elephant ethogram.
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In essence, the Elephant Ethogram is a Google Translate for elephants. It contains every bit of known information about the animals’ behavior and communication, consisting of ~3,000 annotated videos depicting more than 500 distinct behaviors.
The new ethogram will help wildlife managers and conservationists across the globe differentiate between healthy or distressed elephant mannerisms.
Keep reading.
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💡 Dose of Knowledge
🍊 Orange Is The New…?
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Modern-day oranges are a hybrid of what two fruits?
A) Clementines and mandarins
B) Mandarins and pomelos
C) Pomelos and grapefruits
D) Grapefruits and clementines
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(keep scrolling for the answer) |
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💡 Dose of Knowledge Answer
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B) Mandarins and pomelos
The conventional orange fruit, known as sweet orange, is not a wild fruit – rather, it arose in domestication from a cross between a mandarin, which is flat, small, sweet, and orange in color, and a pomelo, which is like a slightly less bitter grapefruit.
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