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Good morning and welcome to Tuesday.
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⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s newsletter takes 4.58 minutes to read. (With the 360° view: +3.19 minutes.)
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👇📰 Quick Bits
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🚘🇺🇸 Autopilot in America
Image: Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg
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🎁 DONUT Headline: The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened a probe into Tesla’s Autopilot software, citing 11 crashes with parked emergency vehicles since 2018. Seventeen people were injured in these crashes, and one died.
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“Most incidents took place after dark and the crash scenes encountered included scene control measures such as first responder vehicle lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board, and road cones,” per the agency’s statement.
🚫 For those without Teslas… Autopilot is the company’s limited self-driving feature – and while pretty cool, it’s not fully hands-off.
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When engaged, Autopilot maintains speed and lane centering, but drivers are still responsible for identifying roadway obstacles and maneuvers from nearby vehicles.
Experts say the likely cause of the crashes is driver error, since autopilot systems (from Tesla and other automakers) are programmed to mostly ignore stationary objects – otherwise they might react to all sorts of items on the side of roads, from signs to buildings.
🔭 Zoom out: While there are no commercially available fully autonomous vehicles, you can still ride them in certain areas – and will most likely be able to buy one in the coming decades.
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Phoenix: Waymo One, a driverless taxi service run by Waymo, has been open to the public since October 2020.
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Miami & Austin (soon): Lyft riders in Miami will be able to hail self-driving Fords powered by Argo AI before the year ends. The partnership plans to expand to Austin next year.
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Everywhere (TBD): Major hurdles still remain before fully driverless cars can be deployed to the public. For those interested, the WSJ and Recode sum ‘em up quite nicely.
📝 The bottom line… Regulatory agencies have been fairly hands-off in regards to autonomous vehicle development – but with self-driving tech approaching commercial viability and deployment, that’s bound to change.
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🛒 Oh, SNAP!
Image: Patrick T. Fallon/Reuters
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🎁 DONUT Headline: The Biden administration announced a permanent increase in the levels of food stamp assistance.
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The increase will take effect in October, coinciding with the end of a 15% boost in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits ordered as a pandemic protection measure.
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An average of nearly 42 million people are on the program thus far in FY2021 (which started in October), up from 39.9 million in FY2020 and 35.7 million in FY2019.
🤿 A deeper dive… Average monthly SNAP benefits are set to rise by around $36 per person (from $121 to $157), the largest single jump in the program’s history.
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The changes reflect the "shifts in the food marketplace and consumers’ circumstances" since the program was created in 1975, per the Department of Agriculture.
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It comes amidst a major revision to the USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan, which estimates the cost to purchase groceries for a family of four and guides the way the government calculates benefits.
The increase is projected to cost an additional $20 billion per year, per Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, but it won’t have to be approved by Congress. A bipartisan 2018 farm bill signed by former President Donald Trump already directed the department to reassess the Thrifty Food Plan.
📰 In related hunger news… New data from the Census Bureau found the percentage of American families with kids who report not having enough to eat fell by nearly three percentage points after the first child tax credit payments were distributed last month (from 11% to 8.4%; families without kids stayed constant around 6%).
From the Right: Washington Times
From the Left: ABC News
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🍩 DONUT Holes…
Projected rain totals through Wednesday; Image: Fox News
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🌀 Tropical Storm Fred made landfall along the western Florida Panhandle on Monday.
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🚰 The federal government formally declared a water shortage at Lake Mead for the first time since it was built in the 1930s, triggering supply cuts to individual states beginning in January. Lake Mead is the country’s largest reservoir by volume.
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🏛️ The New York State Assembly reversed its previous decision and promised to continue its investigation of Gov. Andrew Cuomo after he steps down. It will issue a report with the findings. (From the Left | From the Right)
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🚀🌕 Blue Origin is suing NASA over its decision to award SpaceX an exclusive $2.9 billion contract to carry astronauts to the Moon's surface, arguing the process was flawed.
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⚖️ A new lawsuit alleges singer-songwriter Bob Dylan groomed and sexually abused a 12-year-old girl in 1965; a spokesperson for Dylan said, "The 56-year-old claim is untrue and will be vigorously defended."
+🇭🇹Haiti Follow Up: The country’s Civil Protection Agency raised the death toll from the recent earthquake to 1,419, and the number of injured increased to 6,000. Tropical Depression Grace made landfall in Haiti yesterday; it could drop 10-15 inches of rain on some areas.
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🔥 The Hot Corner
💬 Heard Through the Grapevine… “I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.” –President Biden referring to U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in a national address yesterday afternoon. Lawmakers from both parties have criticized the Biden administration's handling of the situation.
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The U.S. is deploying another 1,000 troops to help secure Kabul’s international airport, where evacuations were halted Monday after thousands of Afghan civilians stormed the runway in attempts to flee the country. Some Afghan civilians clung to the sides of a U.S. military aircraft as it was taking off. At least seven people were killed in the chaos.
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Senior Taliban officials reportedly agreed to a deal with the U.S. to ensure that evacuations from Kabul’s airport take place without interference.
From the Left: NBC News
From the Right: WSJ
🔢 Stat(s) of the Day... The S&P 500 closed at a record 4,475.24 on Monday, doubling its pandemic bottom of 2,237 from March 2020.
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It occurred over just 354 trading days, marking the fastest-ever bull market doubling off a bottom (historically, it’s taken more than 1,000 trading days).
📖 Worth Your Time… Excerpt: How Google bought Android—according to folks in the room
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🗣👂 Dose of Discussion
🌎 The Final Frontier
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Image: Mining.com
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🎁 DONUT Headline: A new space race is upon us as the U.S., Russia, and China battle to become the world’s dominant space power.
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A few weeks ago, there was a Code Red at the International Space Station. About three hours after docking with the orbiting base, a Russian module began to "inadvertently" fire its thrusters, twisting the station’s orientation and throwing it briefly out of control.
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While the seven crew members aboard were never in any immediate danger, according to NASA and Russian state-owned news agency RIA, the incident highlighted differences between the two space programs – and raised questions about the future of space cooperation.
🔭 Zoom out… The ISS became operational in 1998 and was supposed to have a lifespan of 30 years — which, if you’ve got your calculator out, means its time will be up in seven years. But no one really knows how legit the deadline is...
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In 2019, a NASA safety panel approved a plan to have at least two Russian-made rockets drag the 450-ton structure into the Earth’s atmosphere as early as 2028, where it will turn into a giant flaming ball of space destruction like in Avengers: Endgame.
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But international partnerships and funding are slated to end in 2024, and Russian state media reported in April that the nation's deputy prime minister, Yuri Borisov, said it might abandon it by 2025. Earlier this year, Russia announced a partnership with China to build a joint moon base ready for crewed visits by 2036.
🇨🇳 Separately, in Beijing… China, which is banned from the ISS, successfully launched the first module of its own long-term space station earlier this year – and peep its progress over the past two decades.👇
💪💰 What’s at stake: The one who controls space controls Earth – weapons in orbit would provide leverage to sway the balance of power on the entire planet. Bases on the moon or other planets also provide strategic points from which to launch future missions.
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And did we mention space mining and its potential resources? To give you an idea, NASA is launching a mission next year to scope out 16 Psyche, an asteroid thought to contain quintillions of dollars worth of metals (here’s what one quintillion looks like: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000).
📝 The bottom line: A new era of colonialism is upon us. How it plays out is anyone’s guess. 👇
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🛸🌄📲 Calling from the Future…
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🦠 Got Fungi?
Image: Perfect Day
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🎁 DONUT Headline: A California-based company called Perfect Day uses fungi to recreate the whey protein found in cow’s milk. (Moo-ve over oats, there’s a new milk alternative in town.)
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According to Perfect Day co-founder Ryan Pandya, the company makes dairy protein “molecularly identical” to the protein in cow’s milk.
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By introducing the gene that codes for whey protein into a fungus, the company is able to create a powder that can be used to produce dairy products such as cheese and ice cream - without the base flavors of oat, coconut, or banana associated with some plant-based dairy alternatives.
Although Perfect Day’s products aren’t suitable for people with dairy allergies, they are vegan-friendly.
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Plus, the fungi-based products have an additional, environmental advantage - Perfect Day’s production process creates 97% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional, cow-based methods.
The company’s newest creation – fungi-based cream cheese – is set to hit stores later this year.
Keep reading.
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🤗 Daily Dose of Positive
🎨 One Artist’s Journey
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Images: Aiden White/Timothy Bishop
Richard Hutchins recently celebrated his first successful art show in Los Angeles, making more than $250,000 in sales.
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Richard’s life has been far from easy – the artist rose to prominence while he was in jail, painting envelopes by mixing Skittles sugar dye, toothpaste, and coffee with a paintbrush made of his own beard hairs.
How did he get here? 👇
Keep reading.
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💡 Dose of Knowledge
🏀 Ballin' On A (Big) Budget
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Who is the second-richest retired NBA player, behind Michael Jordan?
A) Charles Barkley
B) Shaquille O'Neal
C) Larry Bird
D) Junior Bridgeman
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(keep scrolling for the answer) |
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💡 Dose of Knowledge Answer
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D) Junior Bridgeman
Ulysses “Junior” Bridgeman enjoyed a 12 year career in the NBA after being taken with the eighth overall pick in the 1976 draft, earning a grand total of $4.2 million.
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After his NBA days were over, Bridgeman began working inside a Wendy’s as he studied the franchise's business before building and opening up his own Wendy’s.
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Now, he is Wendy’s largest franchise owner, holding the ownership of over 160 restaurants (in addition to 120 Chili's). His net worth is estimated at $600 million.
(Note: Magic Johnson's net worth is also estimated around $600 million.)
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🍩 Daily Sprinkle
"No matter who you are, we’re creatures of habit. The better your habits are, the better they will be in pressure situations."
–Wayne Gretzky (b. 1961)
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