🍟 I’m Lovin’ It: BTS Edition

A number of McDonald’s branches across Indonesia were forced to shut down this week after being swamped with demand for the newly launched meal inspired by Korean boy band BTS.

• From the BBC: “To the uninitiated, this may all seem a bit of an overreaction to a meal consisting of 10 chicken nuggets, [fries], a coke and two sauces (sweet chilli and Cajun, for those who are interested). But that is underestimating the enormous pull of the seven-member K-Pop phenomenon that is BTS. Their last single Butter broke global records [and a YouTube record] when it premiered last month, while they beat superstars like Taylor Swift to be named best-selling album of 2020.”

In the first seven days after McDonald’s BTS meal was first introduced on May 26, restaurant visits in the U.S. were up 12% compared to the previous week, according to Business Insider ($).

More: McDonald’s BTS promotion is the company’s third celebrity meal partnership in recent months, joining Colombian reggaeton artist J Balvin and American rapper Travis Scott (who made ~$20M from the deal, per Forbes).

A "ring of fire" solar eclipse occurred across the globe Thursday morning. It was fully visible in parts of Canada, Greenland, the Arctic Ocean and Siberia, and partially visible for much of the Northern Hemisphere.

• A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes directly between the Earth and the sun, completely blocking the sun's light. During an annular (aka ring of fire) solar eclipse, the moon does not completely cover the sun as it passes, leaving some sunlight visible.
• Yesterday’s event was just one of two solar eclipses this year. A total solar eclipse will be visible on December 4.

Consumer prices for May rose at its fastest annual pace in nearly 13 years, according to consumer price index data published yesterday by the Labor Department.

Background: The consumer price index (CPI) is the most widely used measure of inflation.   It measures the weighted average of prices of a basket of consumer goods and services. In other words, it tracks the price of the same group of goods throughout time.

🤿 A deeper dive…

Image: WSJ

The Labor Department said the CPI increased 0.6% month-to-month in May after rising 0.8% in April.

• From the WSJ: “The core-price index, which excludes the often-volatile categories of food and energy, jumped 3.8% in May from the year before — the largest increase for that reading since June 1992.”

⏭️ What’s Next?
The Fed’s Open Market Committee is scheduled to have the fourth of eight annual meetings on Monday and Tuesday, though “market participants generally do not expect to see the Fed react to the latest numbers,” per CNBC.

• All three major U.S. stock indexes rose sharply at the open after the CPI data was released, with the S&P 500 closing the day at a record high.

Image: Apopo

🤔 Imagine This:

• You’ve saved thousands of lives before your 7th birthday.
• You’ve been awarded a gold medal for your immense bravery.
• You only weigh 2.7 pounds…

Meet Magawa, a brave little rat who specializes in sniffing out landmines in Cambodia.

Able to sniff out a 200 square meter minefield in only 20 minutes, Magawa has successfully detected 71 land mines and 38 explosive remnants over his 5-year career.

Image via Twitter

After five years of hard work, Magawa is officially settling into a well-deserved retirement.

• The remarkable rodent has helped clear over 225,000 square meters of land, allowing local communities to regain their land previously occupied by the mines.

Keep reading.

🎮 Ready Player None…

Image: VentureBeat

On Wednesday, Facebook proposed that a classic video game called NetHack serve as the digital arena for an AI research competition in Sydney, Australia.

• Despite its rudimentary visuals, the 80s-era game is considered to be among the hardest in the world.
• It challenges players to complete more than 50 levels that are generated randomly. Once their character dies, the game starts from scratch on an entirely new level.

Facebook researchers claim the continuously changing nature of the game will push the limits of reinforcement learning, a method of teaching AI to understand and interact with a given environment.

Keep reading.

The very first ticker-tape parade was thrown in celebration of which event?

A) The dedication of the Statue of Liberty
B) Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight
C) Teddy Roosevelt returning home from an African safari
D) Soldiers returning home from World War II

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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A) The dedication of the Statue of Liberty

Ticker-tape parades are a phenomenon unique to NYC. They were inspired by the stock ticker – a machine of the late 19th-early 20th centuries that tracked financial data over telegraph lines and stamped it on strips called ticker tape.

• The first parade to involve throwing ticker tapes out of the windows of buildings took place on October 29, 1886, marking the dedication of the Statue of Liberty.