📅 Tomorrow is Juneteenth

Tomorrow marks the 156th anniversary of Juneteenth – a day commemorating the end of slavery in the Confederate states.

• The story behind Juneteenth.

President Biden on Thursday signed into law a bipartisan bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday.

• It’s the first new federal holiday since 1983, when Congress approved Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.

More: Whether it’s in-person or at-home – here’s what America is up to this Juneteenth:

• Juneteenth celebrations around the USA.
• Juneteenth Programming Schedules from TV networks, streaming services, film festivals, Broadway, and more.
• Commemorate Juneteenth with free virtual programs from the Smithsonian.

💬 Quote of the Day:

"We are committed to helping El Salvador in numerous ways including for currency transparency and regulatory processes. While the government did approach us for assistance on bitcoin, this is not something the World Bank can support given the environmental and transparency shortcomings."

–A World Bank spokesperson via email to Reuters ($).

AT&T Experts, a subsidiary of the internet and phone service giant, analyzed Google Trends data from March 2020 to March 2021 to identify the most common searches beginning with “how to spell.”

• “Quarantine” topped the list in 12 different states - the most of any word - with its most common misspelling being “corn teen.” (Though in autocorrect's defense, that is what children of the corn grow up to become...)

Read the full report.

The final debate in the Democratic primary for NYC mayor took place yesterday. As New Yorkers head to the polls this month, they’ll be faced with a new way of casting ballots: ranked-choice voting (RCV).

• Although RCV is not new - it’s established in cities like Oakland, CA, and St. Paul, MN, and used for federal elections in Maine - it involves a different process than what most of us are accustomed to doing.

🤿 A deeper dive…
On the surface, the premise is simple – in an election with multiple candidates, voters rank their preferred choices from most favorite to least favorite (capped at five candidates in NYC, though other places allow expanded/unlimited rankings). This is also referred to as ‘instant-runoff voting.’

Here’s where it gets a little tricky:

• If no candidate receives over 50% of the first-place votes, the last-place candidate is dropped from the ballot, and voters who ranked the dropped candidate first then have their votes reallocated to their second choice.
• This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of the remaining votes in the narrowed field.

⏭️ What’s Next?
Early voting in the race has already begun. The Democratic and Republican NYC mayoral primaries will officially occur on June 22.

• The general election, which will not be conducted using ranked choice voting, takes place on November 2.

Image: CNN

An elephant herd wandered into the small Indian village of Nimatand last month, startling the townsfolk as they quickly chased the herd back into the lush Indian forest.

• For one baby elephant, a slight misstep caused him to tumble 30 feet down into a village well. The youngster was stuck in the shallow water without his herd – and wasn’t discovered until the following morning.

With the help of the local forest department, an entire side of the well was demolished with three backhoes, allowing the injury-free youngster to walk out on its own.

Dig deeper.

🔬 Searching The Web…

Image: University of Cambridge

Despite its weak molecular bonds, spider silk is incredibly durable - it clocks in at 5X stronger than steel, and if a spiderweb were scaled to human size, it would be capable of stopping an airplane in full flight (In other words, it can bring planes to a full stop. ‘full stop’).

• Intrigued by the surprising strength of spider silk, researchers at the University of Cambridge replicated the naturally occurring material using plant proteins, dubbing their creation “vegan spider silk.”

After discovering their arachnid-inspired innovation is compostable, the researchers started promoting their plant-based material as an eco-friendly alternative to single-use plastic.

• The tech will be commercialized by a University of Cambridge spinoff called Xampla, which will begin selling sachets and capsules made of the plant-based plastic replacement later this year.

Dig deeper.

What is the term for a group of people all misremembering the same fact?

A) Mandela effect
B) Gell-Mann amnesia effect
C) Dunning–Kruger effect
D) Streisand effect

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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A) Mandela effect

False memories can sometimes be shared by multiple people, with prominent examples including:

• Memories of The Berenstain Bears being spelled “Berenstein.”
• The logo of clothing brand Fruit of the Loom featuring a cornucopia.
• The past existence of certain emojis such as a robber or hiker.

From Wikipedia: “In 2010, this shared false memory phenomenon was dubbed "the Mandela effect" by self-described "paranormal consultant" Fiona Broome, in reference to her false memory of the death of South African anti-Apartheid leader Nelson Mandela in prison in the 1980s (he actually died in 2013, after having served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999), which she claimed was shared by "perhaps thousands" of other people.”