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Good morning and welcome to Thursday.
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⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s newsletter takes 4.99 minutes to read. (With the 360° view: +3.30 minutes.)
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🍩 Daily Sprinkle
"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured."
–Mark Twain (1835-1910)
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👇📰 Quick Bits
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📅 Fed Lays Out Tapering Timeline
 Image: Reuters
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🎁 Yesterday, the Federal Reserve laid out a timeline that would end its emergency bond purchases by next summer.
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🤔 Why it’s important: The central bank has been buying $120 billion a month in Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, a pandemic-era measure designed to keep borrowing costs low for households and businesses.
- What critics are saying: Inflation is outpacing the rate paid by treasury bonds, effectively meaning any purchase of bonds is an immediate financial loss for investors and not a hedge against inflation. So investors chasing returns are feeding financial bubbles in the housing, stock, and crypto markets, and stoking higher consumer prices.
💬 What else the Fed is saying about…
- Inflation: It’s higher than expected. "Bottlenecks have been more persistent and more prevalent. We see that just like everybody else does, and we see that they're now on track to persist well into next year," Fed chair Jerome Powell said at a press conference.
- Interest rates: They’re staying near zero for now. "We didn't have that discussion at today's meeting," Powell said. "We did talk about the economy, and the development of the economy, but we didn't ask ourselves whether the liftoff test is met, because it’s clearly not met on the maximum employment side.”
👁 Looking ahead… Before making a move on rates, the Fed is keeping an eye on the labor market. October’s employment report is set to be published Friday morning.
- The S&P 500, Dow, Nasdaq, and the Russell 2000 closed at all-time highs yesterday for a second straight session – something not seen since January 2018.
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⚖️⚽ Soccer Execs Indicted for Fraud
 Sepp Blatter (left) shakes hands with Michel Platini (right) in May 2015; Image: Philip Schmidli/Getty
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🎁 Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini, the former presidents of FIFA and UEFA, respectively, were indicted for fraud in Switzerland yesterday following a six-year investigation into a secret $2.2 million payment from FIFA to Platini in 2011.
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If found guilty, they could be jailed for several years, though Swiss cases often take years to reach a conclusion. Both men are claiming the sum was paid out as part of an oral contract that was "approved by all responsible FIFA bodies."
📜 Blast from the past… Blatter and Platini were two central figures in widespread accusations of corruption against FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, in 2015 – and this goes deeper than when your friend unpaused the game so they could score uncontested.
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The two men and others were accused of fraud, money laundering, and bribery in an attempt to influence the selection process for the 2010 FIFA World Cup host and the 2011 FIFA presidential election.
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Both were eventually banned from the game for eight years and forced to leave their positions following an investigation by FIFA’s ethics committee.
🎮 Zoom out: EA Sports is reportedly exploring changing the name of its iconic soccer video game franchise – which has been known as FIFA for nearly three decades – after the organization doubled its licensing fees this year.
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According to gaming site Polygon, the company has filed new trademark applications in the EU and Britain for the name “EA Sports FC,” though any formal change has yet to be confirmed.
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🔥🧔 Sponsored by Get MR. 🧴🔥
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Quick, What Month Is It? (Hint 👇 )
If you answered, “No-Shave November,” you’d be spot-on. If you answered “Movember,” you, sir, are a bold one indeed.
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All jokes aside, No-Shave November/Movember is a pretty awesome month. It’s a 30-day sprint (how many days hath November?) where participants forgo shaving and grooming in order to evoke conversation and raise cancer awareness.
🤔 Why are we telling you this ?... Because this is one-third an ad, one-third raising awareness for Movember, and one-third a PSA for the male portion of our species: Unless something changes, melanoma will be the #1 cancer among men by 2040.
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Apply the non-greasy 3-in-1 moisturizer, sunscreen, and age-defense aftershave (maybe not needed this month) each morning...
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Take control of your (or your man’s) skincare today.
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🔥 The Hot Corner
💬 Heard Through the Grapevine… “[We have] reasonable cause to believe, based on specific and articulated facts, that the entity has been involved, or is involved, or poses a significant risk of being or becoming involved in activities that are contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.” – The U.S. Commerce Department, in a statement yesterday.
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The story: Israeli spyware company NSO Group and three other companies were placed on a national blacklist.
🔢 Stat of the Day: More than 140,000 Amazon drivers are getting back close to $60 million in illegally withheld tips after the FTC reached a settlement with Amazon. By the numbers:
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The average payout is $422.
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One driver will see a check for more than $28,000 in lost tips.
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Nearly 20,000 drivers will receive checks for more than $600.
📖 Worth a Read… Crypto Investors Spend $250K to Touch 2,000-lb. Tungsten Cube Once a Year
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🗣👂 Dose of Discussion
🗳️ The GOP’s New MVP
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 Virginia Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin; Image: Al Drago/Bloomberg
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🎁 Election Day 2021 was a good day for the Republican party. It won a major victory in Virginia's gubernatorial race, while New Jersey’s governor race came down to the wire despite pre-election polls favoring the Democratic incumbent.
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👑 Virginia: Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor of Virginia over Democrat Terry McAuliffe by a margin of 50.9% to 48.4% (with over 99% of precincts reporting as of late Wednesday).
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A 54-year-old former private-equity executive and political newcomer, Youngkin becomes the first Republican to win statewide office in Virginia since 2009. Last year, President Biden carried the state by a 10-point margin.
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In Virginia’s lieutenant governor race (aka the vice governor), Republican Winsome Sears defeated Democrat Hala Ayala to become the first woman – and first woman of color – ever elected to the position.
👥 New Jersey: The AP declared victory for incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy (D) over GOP challenger Jack Ciattarelli late last night after the Democrat pulled ahead by ~19,000 votes out of more than 2.4 million ballots cast.
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The result is especially notable since pre-election polls gave Murphy a nearly double-digit lead in a state that Biden carried by 15 points in the 2020 presidential election.
🇺🇸 Across the country: Eric Adams was elected mayor of NYC by a 38-point margin, with 78% of precincts reporting as of late Wednesday. Boston elected city councilor Michelle Wu as mayor, making her the first woman and first person of color to lead Massachusetts' capital city.
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Voters also rejected police reform ballot measures in Austin and Minneapolis while approving such measures in Albany, Cleveland, and Denver – though of those, Minneapolis was the only one considering a total overhaul of its police department.
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👟 Is Nike Going Virtual ?
 Image: Kicks Guru
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🎁 The sneaker giant filed seven trademark applications to make and sell virtual goods, aka NFTs and digital gear, with the USPTO in late October.
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It’s also hiring for its Digital Product Creation group, “a team focusing on igniting the digital and virtual revolution at Nike” according to job postings.
📎 Covered under the filing: Headwear, eyewear, bags, backpacks, and sports equipment using either the Nike or Jordan brands (the Swoosh, Jumpman, and “Just Do It” tagline), as well as related services for retail stores and entertainment.
✋ Yes, but... The trademark filings only indicate an intent to sell, meaning Nike doesn’t have to follow through.
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It could also be solely for the purpose of protecting their brand against knockoffs in the metaverse, but it “will probably become a revenue stream for Nike,” trademark attorney Josh Gerben told the WSJ.
📈 Zoom out: Digital avatars need clothes, too. Consumers already spend tens of billions per year on virtual goods (think Fortnite skins), and with recent announcements about the metaverse from Facebook, Microsoft, and the Match Group (yep, there’s a dating metaverse coming), it’s probably safe to assume that trend will only increase.
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Elsewhere in digital land, analytics platform DappRadar reports the NFT market hit $10.67 billion this past quarter. That’s a 704% increase from Q2.
+What we’re watching: NFTs as exclusive entertainment, arguably the truest form of “digital art” – earlier this week, Quentin Tarantino announced he’ll auction off seven never-before-seen “Pulp Fiction” clips as NFTs.
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🍩 DONUT Holes…
 Image: Reuters
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☝️ In celebration of No-Shave November: Check out the best pics from Germany's beard Olympics.
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🏈 Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers tested positive for COVID-19 and will miss Sunday’s game against the Chiefs; despite previously telling reporters he'd "been immunized," news outlets confirmed Wednesday that Rodgers had remained unvaccinated.
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🏀 NBA player Kevin Durant is launching a $200M SPAC called Infinite Acquisition Corp.
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👟 Allbirds jumped 90% on its first day of trading Wednesday; the eco-friendly shoemaker backed by Leo DeCaprio is now valued at $4.1 billion.
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🌍 The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, an alliance of financial firms with ~$130 trillion in assets, committed yesterday to hitting net-zero emissions across its members’ portfolios by 2050.
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⚖️ The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday concerning a law in New York that imposes restrictions on the ability of residents to carry firearms in public. (From the Left | From the Right)
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📣🗣💬 This Week's Poll Responses
The pandemic is already “over” – “I think we have reached endemic stage, even though some leaders are too cautious to say it. Now that the schools are open, all bets are off. Yet numbers have remained low. Covid isn't going anywhere, we just need to have good treatments and learn to live with it.”
Sometime next year – “With large scale debates on masks, vaccine mandates, and allowable events, I find it difficult to say the pandemic is already over. But as we constantly become more knowledgeable about transmission, treatment, and vaccines I think we are approaching what could be considered an end state where it becomes treated more like the flu.”
Sometime in 2023 – “Until all humans have been exposed, the pandemic will continue to spread. The number of cases in non-first world countries will continue to rise, providing a reservoir of virus that’ll continue to mutate and infect the rest of the world."
In 2024 or later – “I think it’s going to take some time for everyone to find a new way of life, since COVID-19 is here to stay. We still have more questions than answers at this point. Only time will reveal the fallout on our physical, social, emotional, and mental health.”
+Note on Sample Size: We received 2,458 responses. 👏🥳 Some may have been lightly edited for grammar or clarity.
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🛸🌄📲 Calling from the Future…
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🔋 Old School Cool
 Images: Ford
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🎁 Ford unveiled a 1970s-era electric pickup truck called the F-100 Eluminator on Tuesday.
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It’s modeled after the 1978 F-100 pickup and features electric motors and batteries from the 2021 Mustang Mach-E GT Performance Edition that can produce up to 480 horsepower.
💰 Where can I buy one ?... Unfortunately, it’s just a concept vehicle for now. Ford built the car to showcase its new “e-crate motor” the company assembles and sells directly to consumers.
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If you’ve got a knack for mechanics and $3,900 to spare, you can buy the Eluminator’s motor to electrify your own vintage vehicle.
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🤗 Daily Dose of Positive
👵🏻🎓 Graduating Grandma
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 Images: Maricruz Rodríguez Silva
María Josefina Cruz Blancas y García is a passionate learner who graduated last month with a degree in business education.
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But she's not your typical graduate – she has absolutely no plans to use the degree, and is already looking for the next school to start another two year program.
Oh yeah… did we mention she’s 93 years old ? 🤯
📚 Live and learn… The great-great-grandmother has always considered herself a lifelong learner, and began taking classes at a local high school after she turned 88. It was there that a teacher convinced her to apply to a university.
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In addition to working toward her business education degree, the nonagenarian also studied theology, earning a diploma in August. Her dream, she said, is to continue studying religion.
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💡 Dose of Knowledge
🗺️ On a Grand Scale
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What is the only mammal completely covered in scales ?
A) Armadillo
B) Snake
C) Pangolin
D) Iguana
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(keep scrolling for the answer) |
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Ambassador Rewards and Progress → |
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💡 Dose of Knowledge Answer
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C) Pangolin
Pangolins are the only mammals wholly-covered in scales, which they use to protect themselves from predators.
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Their scales are made from keratin – the same material as human fingernails and toenails.
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