Good morning and welcome to Thursday. May we all be granted the serenity to eat the food we have at home, the courage to not buy food when we’re out, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Ready, break.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today's news takes 4.74 minutes to read.

"Formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you a fortune."

–Jim Rohn (1930-2009)

It’s not often that stats make us do a double-take. But when Kyle, our lead editor, learned that women signed up for betting apps last year at double the pace of men, he spit out his coffee (and then called his girlfriend).

All this to say: More than 4.6 million women joined sports betting apps in the US last year, a 115% increase compared with 2020, per a recent report by Global Wireless Solutions. The rate of men using sportsbook betting apps grew 63% over the same time period.

💁‍♀️💁‍♀️ Girls rule…

• In fact, some of the biggest sportsbook apps in the US reportedly now have more female users than male, including BetRivers and its associated New Jersey outlet SugarHouse (54% to 46%). Fewer than 380,000 men signed up with the company last year, compared to around 600,000 women.
• FanDuel brought in more new US female users in 2021 than any other sportsbook gambling company, with an estimated 1.7 million. DraftKings was second with an estimated 900,000.

✋ Yes, but: Despite the higher growth rate, women use the apps less frequently than men. 70% of women engage with the apps for a mere one-to-five weeks per year compared to 61% of men, according to the study.

📸 Big picture: The sports betting industry more than doubled last year to $4.3 billion, with Goldman Sachs predicting it’ll reach $39 billion by 2033. A large portion of that future growth is expected to come from women.

• “It’s all about market-share grab at this point… [betting apps] know women watch football, basketball and everything in between,” Brendan Bussmann, managing partner at a gaming and hospitality-focused consulting firm, told Forbes.

🎰 The bottom line: If you’re a woman in a legal betting state, get ready to see some targeted ads.

IMPORTANT: If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, help is available. The National Council on Problem Gambling Helpline offers a confidential, 24-hour helpline for problem gamblers or their family members at 1-800-522-4700.

Russia is no longer allowed to pay its debt holders through US banks starting yesterday, the Treasury Department announced, revoking a special license it had previously granted Moscow when sanctions were first implemented.

• The move means Russia is all-but-guaranteed to default on its international debt for the first time since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

🏦 More deets... Russia has a series of debt service deadlines coming up, including a $107 million interest payment due Friday, and another $400 million due late next month.

• If Russia misses a payment, it’ll face a 30-day grace period before likely being declared in default, though Moscow is expected to challenge that declaration in court.
• The implications of a Russian default are currently unclear, but experts say it should limit the country’s access to global markets and drive up asset seizures both domestically and overseas.

🇺🇦 Zoom out: A quick rundown of recent Russia/Ukraine war happenings: Moscow approved a law removing the upper age limit of 40 for military service, Russia's military continued its all-out assault to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a sanctions law enabling officials to seize and sell Russian assets related to its military invasion.

🏛️ The SEC announced two new proposals yesterday aimed at ensuring that funds investing based on environmental, social, and corporate-governance (ESG) factors accurately describe their activities.

• The first proposal would overhaul the SEC’s requirements around fund names. Under a previous rule, if a fund’s name suggests it will focus on certain investment types, it must invest 80+% of its holdings in such assets; the new measure would expand that rule’s scope to also include ESG factors.
• The second proposal would require ESG funds to disclose more information to the public. For example, those seeking to achieve a specific climate-related objective would have to reveal how they measure progress toward that goal.
• The lone Republican on the SEC’s four-person commission voted against both measures, saying they would impose undue burdens on asset managers and reinforce decisions that only some investors favor.

📸 Big picture: Assets in funds claiming to focus on ESG factors reached $2.78 trillion last quarter, up from less than $1 trillion two years earlier, according to Morningstar. 

• The fees charged by such funds are typically much higher than index funds, but the WSJ reports that there are few consistent standards for what constitutes an ESG investment.

+Dig deeper: From the Left | From the Right

🤯 Did you know?… If you were to return a piece of furniture after purchasing it, 8 times out of 10 it ends up in a landfill?

🌎🛋️ It’s a huge issue, contributing to over 12.2 million tons of furniture waste being generated by Americans per year. Many of the materials are toxic to the environment, too.

♻️ Enter: FloorFound, a recommerce company.

Instead of the furniture manufacturer picking up a returned couch and taking it to a warehouse until it's thrown out, they enlist the good people at FloorFound instead.

FloorFound handles everything from pickup of the old couch to delivery to the new customer, incentivizing furniture companies to recoup losses instead of damaging the environment.

Now anything that helps the environment deserves praise, but FloorFound is a great thing for you, too. When they resell the furniture, they do it at STEEP discounts. And they have a huge selection of brands like:

• Burrow
• Feather
• Castlery and more!

If there’s a dream couch or chair you’ve had your eye on but is a bit out of reach, check out FloorFound and see if you can make that dream a reality.😁🪑

Check FloorFound’s amazing deals on furniture today!

New York state officials announced a new program to distribute hundreds of robots to act as companions for elderly residents, in an attempt to combat America’s ongoing ‘loneliness epidemic.’

🤖 A deeper dive... NY’s State Office for the Aging plans to hand out more than 800 “ElliQ” personal robots (☝️), which are manufactured by Israel-based Intuition Robotics and described as a “more proactive version of Siri or Alexa.”

• ElliQ is designed to converse with users, read poetry, play games, give reminders to take medication, and more. Its ‘face’ lights up and swivels to ‘look’ at the people it’s talking to, while the touchscreen tablet can display pictures and other info, or conduct video calls.
• The robot is also designed to remember key user details and shape its personality in reponse – for example, cracking more jokes if the user tends to laugh a lot.

📊 The potential impact: A 2018 study from the Kaiser Foundation found more than one in five US adults said they often or always felt lonely or socially isolated; recent research suggests that long-term loneliness is as damaging to an individual’s health as smoking or obesity.

🤖 Zoom out: The use of robots to keep elderly people company isn’t a novel idea. Countries with aging populations, like Japan, Denmark and Italy, were experimenting with similar gov’t-run programs before the pandemic, while a handful of states launched pilot programs after Covid became rampant.

• ☝️ Nathan Paulin set a new world record on Tuesday after completing a 1.4-mile-long walk along a tightrope set across France’s iconic Mont Saint-Michel.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 👕 Amazon Style, the e-commerce giant's first brick-and-mortar clothing store, opened yesterday in the LA area.
• 🐦 Twitter shares rose more than 5% in overnight trading after a new SEC filing revealed Elon Musk upped his personal financial commitment in the pending $44 billion acquisition (from $27.25 billion to $33.5 billion).
• 🚫💊 CVS will stop filling controlled-substance prescriptions for telehealth startups Cerebral and Done Health, per the WSJ. (Background from the DONUT)

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎶 Harry Styles’ third solo album, Harry’s House, set a record for the largest sales week for a vinyl album in the US, selling 146,000 copies within three days of its release last Friday.
• 🥩 Beyond Meat signed Kim Kardashian as the company’s “Chief Taste Consultant”; the company’s stock rose 7% following the news.
• ⚽ The UK government approved the ~$5.3 billion sale of Chelsea FC to a group led by LA Dodgers part-owner Todd Boehly; a majority of the English Premier League’s 20 teams now have US owners.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🔌🚘📽 Tesla has filed plans for a 29-stall supercharger and diner/drive-in theater in Hollywood, CA.
• 🚀 SpaceX raised at least $1.5 billion in new funding at a valuation of ~$125 billion.
• 🪙 Backers of Terra voted to revive the failed crypto venture’s Luna token – but not the UST stablecoin, which plunged below its intended value of $1 earlier this month. (Background from the DONUT)

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🔎🌐 DuckDuckGo, which sources its search results primarily from Bing, reportedly has an agreement with Microsoft to not block some of their browser trackers.
• 🥜🍪 Introducing “Oreo x Ritz”: A new limited-time snack that’s one part cracker with peanut butter, and another part cookie with creme filling.
• 🌿 Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee (D) signed legislation yesterday legalizing recreational marijuana for adults 21 and older, becoming the 20th state (plus D.C.) to do so; RI’s new law comes one day after Delaware Gov. John Carney (D) vetoed legislation that would have done the same. (From the Left | From the Right)

💬 Quoted… “Trying to protect her students.”

More details emerged yesterday regarding the victims of the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, TX, that resulted in the deaths of 19 children and two teachers on Tuesday; more than a dozen other people, including children and law enforcement officers, were also injured.

• Dose of Action: A fundraiser from VictimsFirst, a network of survivors and family members of those lost in past mass shootings, is collecting donations for those affected by the Texas shooting. You can donate here.

🛒 Stats of the Day: Three grocery brands – Trader Joes, HEB, and Wegmans – landed in the top 5 of the annual Axios-Harris Poll 100, a ranking of the world’s top 100 brands by reputation.

🌎 Around the World: India, the world's largest producer of sugar and second-largest exporter behind Brazil, is restricting exports amidst rising domestic prices.

🤯 Did You Know?... Frank Dixon, author of the Hardy Boys books, and Carolyn Keene, author of the Nancy Drew Series, don't exist; they’re actually pseudonyms for a variety of writers who wrote those stories.

📖 Worth a Read: Why Do People, Like, Say, 'Like' So Much? → (The Guardian)

👍 Yes (22%): “Life on this planet is so fascinating; I would relish the opportunity to witness all of the change (and similarity) over the years, and would also look forward to being able to progress, change, and grow forever!”

👎 No (56%): “While I do think the average lifespan is a bit short to enjoy everything that life has to offer, I wouldn't want to live forever. Everything loses its luster over time, and even in the best of circumstances, life would likely become an exhausting nuisance.”

🤷‍♀️ Unsure/Other (22%): “It would depend on my mental/physical state. I love the idea of it, but if I’m unable to do most things independently or have to be taken care of by others forever, I wouldn’t want to live forever.”

+Note on sample size: We received 9,294 responses. 👏🥳 Some may have been lightly edited for grammar or clarity.

Sicily native Peppe Corsaro moved across Europe to London at only sixteen years old. 

• After creating a career for himself in the restaurant industry, it wasn't long until Peppe longed for genuine Italian cuisine, just like his Mamma used to make. 

💡🍝👩‍🍳 Lightbulb moment... That's when he got an idea. Peppe founded Mia Mamma, an restaurant featuring home cooked meals from his native country, with none other than a group of Italian mothers in the kitchen.

• Peppe's own mom was the first official Mia Mamma, flying out from Italy to cook for her son's new business.
• The restaurant now offers a three-month residency program for the mothers, providing them with an opportunity to travel abroad and introduce the flavors of Italy to London.  

And answer these questions, three.

1. ❓ Trivia: Who was Cleopatra's husband?
2. ⚖️ True or false… Alexander the Great was a pupil of Socrates.
3. 🤔 Riddle me this… What falls but never breaks? What breaks but never falls?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

👆 Check out the referral prizes you can get just for introducing people you know to little old us. 

What to do: Copy your unique link below, then send it to anyone you think would like the DONUT.

❓ Trivia: Trick question! She actually had two official husbands, Mark Antony and Ptolemy XIV. She was also thought to have married Ptolemy XIII, but there's no surviving official record.

🏛️ T/F: False, Alexander the Great was mentored by Aristotle.

🤔 Riddle: Night and day.