🚫👀 No Spectators at Tokyo Olympics

Image: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP

All fans - foreign and local - will be banned from attending this year's Tokyo Olympic games, the city's governor announced Thursday. Officials had previously planned to allow 50% capacity at each Olympic venue.

• The move came hours after Japan's prime minister placed the city of Tokyo under a state of emergency from next Monday through August 22, ordering bars, restaurants, and karaoke parlors that serve alcohol to close for the duration of the Games.

📸 The Big Picture: Tokyo reported 920 new cases on Wednesday, up from 714 a week earlier. It was the 18th straight day of week-on-week increases, and the highest total since May 13.

• Japanese health officials attribute the recent surge to the delta variant, which last week made up nearly one-third of all cases in the eastern part of the country and is expected to grow to 50% by mid-July.

👀 On the Horizon: The Games kick off July 23. 

🎁 DONUT Headline: The timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan was moved from September 11 to August 31.

Snacks, Smiles, and Trees… yes, please!

Not only can you munch on some delicious plant based cookies and crackers with Back to Nature, but you can help the environment while doing it (#multitasking). Back to Nature is partnered with The Nature Conservancy in their quest to plant a BILLION trees. 🤯

One Billion 🌳🌳🌳
The Nature Conservancy has a global mission to restore our world’s forests. Their goal is a billion trees and they are already well underway. These new trees can help curb the effects of climate change, provide clean air and fresh drinking water, and secure homes for thousands of species of plants and animals

• So get snacking!

Image: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

The AP declared Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams the winner of this year's Democratic primary for mayor of NYC, though the state Board of Elections won't officially determine a winner until next week.

• The primary election was especially notable since it was the first time NYC voters participated in a new way of casting ballots: ranked-choice voting (RCV).

A Quick Recap: On the surface, the premise is simple – in an election with multiple candidates, voters rank their preferred choices from most favorite to least favorite.

• If a candidate wins a majority of first-place votes, they are declared the winner.
• If no candidate wins a majority, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated and voters who ranked that candidate first have their votes reallocated to their second choice.

Proponents of RCV say it will help alleviate many of the problems with the current system – negative campaigning, pandering to a small voter base, the feeling of needing to “pick between two evils.”

Opponents argue RCV actually has a less representative outcome, citing the practice of 'ballot exhaustion' that happens when voters rank too few candidates to stay meaningful until the final runoff.

• From the DONUT: A 360º Look at Ranked-Choice Voting 

📸 The Big Picture: Voting in the NYC primaries ended June 22, after which the city's Board of Elections began the process of ballot tabulation, releasing the results in waves in an effort to be transparent (though it received some flak for the delay in results).

• From the AP: "The city’s first experience with the system in a major election was bumpy. As votes were being tallied on June 29, elections officials bungled the count by inadvertently including 135,000 old test ballots. Erroneous vote tallies were posted for several hours before officials acknowledged the error and took them down."

The tallying mistake was eventually corrected and did not have an impact on the final outcome of the race.

📅 Looking Ahead: In November, Eric Adams will face off against Curtis Silwa, the winner of the Republican mayoral primary (in which RCV was not a factor since there were only two candidates).

+Note: Adams is expected to assume the mayor's office in the heavily Democratic city.

🤝 A Touching Development…

Image: Ales Utovko

• Known as "Aifoam," the e-skin is made of a highly elastic, spongy polymer embedded with microscopic metal particles and tiny electrodes which act like human nerves.

Aifoam is even able to mimic the ability of human skin to self-heal from small cuts, fusing easily back into one piece.

• Inspired by Luke Skywalker’s robotic hand in Star Wars, the developers aim to integrate the e-skin with prosthetic devices to give users better control of their artificial limbs.

Keep reading.

Image: Yahoo News

☝️ Monk Zhi Xiang gives one of his adorable diaper-wearing puppies a hug.

• With over 8,000 rescued dogs and counting, Zhi has made it his mission as a Buddhist monk to save the lives of as many stray animals as possible.

Though his temple in Shanghai, China, is still a place of worship, the monks share the sacred building with more than 200 animals in addition to a separate shelter owned and run by Zhi.

Keep reading.

What's the word for when you can't remember a word?

A) Obliviaria
B) Lethologica
C) Hypomnesia
D) Paramnesia

(keep scrolling for the answer)

Access exclusive rewards and even an all-expenses-paid round trip to Austin, TX, just for sharing this newsletter.

Simply: 

1. Copy your unique referral link.👇
2. Post said link on social media, drop it in your group chat, put it on a billboard in Times Square, etc.
3. Watch the rewards roll in.

[Ambassador] No link found!

B) Lethologica

'Lethologica' describes that annoying feeling when a word is on the tip of your tongue, but you can't quite remember what it was – despite it being there just moments ago.

• The term for this short-term phenomenon literally means "the inability to remember the right word.”
• Similarly, 'lethonomia' is when you can't recall someone's name. The root of both words comes from Greek mythology — the river Lethe in Hades was said to cause forgetfulness.