Good morning and welcome to Thursday. Today is the 9th day of the 6th month. Nice.

Some other things you’ll know after reading this email:

• 📺💰 Why Netflix may want to buy Roku
•  🏙 The most forgetful city in America
• 🐦 How a firehose is related to Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.20 minutes to read.

"The more you extend kindness to yourself, the more it will become your automatic response to others."

–Wayne Dyer (1940-2015)

Employees at Roku have been discussing a potential acquisition by Netflix, Business Insider reported yesterday, citing multiple sources within the company.

📺 A deeper dive... The internal chatter at Roku reportedly began a few weeks ago, when the company abruptly closed its stock trading window for all employees at a time when it's normally open.

• Before yesterday, the TV hardware giant’s shares had fallen ~80% since late July amidst weaker demand for video streaming compared to the early days of the pandemic.
• Since tech companies typically pay employees with a combination of salary and stock, the price collapse has made it nigh impossible for Roku to compete with rivals Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung for talent in a tight labor market.
• Insider reports that Netflix is especially interested in Roku’s video-advertising platform, which generated $647 million in revenue last quarter. Netflix previously announced plans to introduce its first ad-supported pricing tier by the end of this year.

✋ Yes, but… There could be other reasons for Roku to halt employee trading besides a pending acquisition. 

• Companies typically close trading windows before releasing any information they think would affect their share price to avoid potential insider trading.

🧠 In the know: 38% of US smart TVs sold in 2020 were Roku models, tops among all manufacturers.

⚖️ A group of more than 90 women, including former Olympic gymnasts Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, Maggie Nichols, and Aly Raisman, are suing the FBI, seeking a collective $1+ billion over the mishandling of its investigation into convicted sex abuser Larry Nassar.

• The group is made up of women who were sexually assaulted by Nassar, the former doctor for Team USA, under the guise of medical treatment; it also includes dozens of women who were abused for over a year after the FBI was alerted to Nassar’s behavior.
• They join 13 other women who sued the FBI in April seeking a payout of $130 million under the Federal Tort Claims Act, a 1946 law that makes the US liable for injuries caused by “the negligent or wrongful act or omission” of any federal employee acting within the scope of their job.

📸 The big picture: Both lawsuits draw from a DOJ inspector general report published last year that found FBI agents who received the initial allegations in July 2015 failed to take the claims seriously, document the evidence they received, or transfer the case to their superiors – and then later lied to cover their mistakes.

• In late May, the DOJ said it was standing by an earlier decision not to charge the FBI agents named in the report.

Housing affordability in the US fell 29% over the last year, the sharpest decline in recorded history, per the National Association of Realtors Home Affordability Index.

📈 Driving unaffordability… Two main things: surging housing prices and rising mortgage rates.

• Home prices posted their biggest ever year-over-year gain in March (+20.6%), while the rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has risen from under 3% to more than 5% over the past year.
• 95% of the 100 largest US housing markets were less affordable last month than their long-term levels, up from just 6% at the start of the pandemic, according to data from analytics firm Black Knight.
• The total volume of mortgage applications fell 6.5% last week compared with the previous week, reaching its lowest level in 22 years.

🏘️ Zoom out: Sales of new single-family homes fell for the fourth straight month in April, reaching its lowest level since the first full month of the pandemic.

And who can blame them? Computer labs at schools tend to be boring and lifeless, it’s no wonder many students have a tough time staying engaged.🥱

☝️ The thing is... bored students aren’t learning to the best of their ability. And many kids today struggle with attention span, plus 30-40% of the population could be diagnosed as atypical (ADHD, ASD), which makes staying focused even more difficult.

Fortunately there are people working to help the issue, like Hedgehog Health... they invented the Hoglet, which is what would happen if you combined a hedgehog with a computer mouse.🦔🐭

Its nubbed, squishy textures and bright hues provide the sensory feedback many kids and unique learners need to stay engaged. The Hoglet serves as a functional fidget and has a calming effect on users.👌

• Fidgets are proven to help people with ADHD concentrate, however, they aren’t allowed in many school computer labs. But the Hoglet is!🦔👍

LIMITED TIME: Get an additional $15 off the already reduced price of the Hoglet.

Uber recently released its sixth annual Lost & Found Index, which chronicles the most surprising and popular items left behind by riders over the past year.… and as an Austin-based company, we feel quite seen.

📝 Some takeaways...

• Austin, Texas topped the list as the most forgetful city for the second year in a row (#represent), followed by Charlotte and Houston.
• Phones, wallets, and keys topped the list of the most commonly forgotten items. But there were also some more… unique items that riders reported lost. Our three favorites: 40 chicken nuggets, part of a soft serve ice cream machine (no wonder they’re always broken), and a sh*tty painting of a moose (their words, not ours).
• The most forgetful days of the week were Saturdays and Sundays, and the most forgetful times were between 4-6pm. As for individual days, July 4 and March 20 (on St. Paddy’s Day weekend) took the top-two slots.

☝️ One interesting thing: Nike stuff seems to be forgotten the most, followed by Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Samsung, and Apple products.

+Soooo… what does all this say about your favorite Austin-based news company?🤔

Actually wait, don’t tell us. We’ll just forget.

• ☝️ Taco Bell was (barely) the speediest drive-thru last year, according to a recent QSR study visualized by Chartr; Chick-fil-A was roughly half as fast as T-Bell, but sported an impressive 100% accuracy rate.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📉 The S&P 500’s information-technology sector has dropped 20% in 2022 through Wednesday, its worst start to a year since 2002.
• 🐦 Twitter plans to give Elon Musk access to its “firehose” of data – aka all 500+ million daily tweets and basic info about the accounts and devices they tweet from – to comply with his demands for transparency regarding spam and bot accounts.
• ✈️ Spirit Airlines is postponing its shareholder meeting, previously scheduled for Friday, until June 30 to consider competing acquisition offers from Frontier and JetBlue. (Background from the DONUT)

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎮 Epic Games announced its PC store will begin selling the company’s first blockchain game later this year, a battle royale called Grit.
• 🏈💰 A group led by Walmart heir Rob Walton acquired the Denver Broncos for a reported $4.65 billion, the most expensive purchase of a sports franchise ever.
• 🏌️ Top-40 golfers Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed are planning to join the new Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit, according to multiple reports, with DeChambeau reportedly receiving a $100+ million payout. (Background from the DONUT)

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🤖🪞 H&M is testing smart mirrors at select COS stores that can identify products, make recommendations, and offer virtual try-ons and styling.
• 🌌 Astronomers have detected a mysterious, repeating fast radio burst coming from a dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years away.
• 🪨 One fun thing: NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover has accidentally adopted a pet rock.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🇸🇾 A Kansas woman pleaded guilty to leading an all-female ISIS military battalion of more than 100 girls and women based in Syria.
• 🎖️ The Brookings Institution placed its president, retired four-star general John R. Allen, on administrative leave after a new FBI affidavit revealed he’s under investigation for alleged illegal lobbying on behalf of Qatar. (From the Left | From the Right)
• 🏛️ An armed man was arrested outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh early yesterday morning and charged with attempted murder; the man told authorities he was upset over last month’s leaked abortion opinion and the recent Uvalde shooting, and had traveled from California to kill Kavanaugh. (From the Left | From the Right)

💬 Quoted… “[The Church] is perceived as hierarchical, authoritarian, sexist and anti-democratic.”

• Members of the Catholic Church leadership in Barcelona reportedly plan on asking Pope Francis to allow women to become priests, and to let priests get married.

📊 Stat of the Day: Roughly 20% of Americans believe the federal government does the right thing just about always or most of the time, according to a Pew Research poll published this week.

🌎 Around the World: President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine is launching a "Book of Executioners" to collect evidence of war crimes during Russia's occupation.

🤯 Did You Know?... In France, it’s illegal to disinherit one’s children, meaning a portion of every estate is legally required to be kept for the deceased’s children.

📖 Worth a Read: The Search for Carbon-Neutral Protein → (BBC)

👍 More important than (14%): “If we make guns more difficult to access, they'll increasingly be concentrated amongst criminals (who ignore laws) and the military/police. I think this potential harm ultimately outweighs the thousands of gun deaths every year.”

👎 Less important than (46%): “The world has changed since the framers wrote the Constitution. Guns have changed, and their ability to destroy human life has amplified. A simple solution is banning firearms that do the most damage and enacting stricter laws for other guns (like waiting periods and background checks).”

🟰 Equally as important as (28%): “Americans have an intrinsic right to protect and defend their property. We don’t need to punish law-abiding citizens who could actually protect someone because of criminals who don’t obey laws.

😬 Unsure/Other (12%): “I struggle with this phrasing. I hesitate to say the right to own is LESS important, because to me this implies support of a blanket gun ban, but the right to own guns is certainly not MORE important than safety.”

Breakdown by party:

🔴 Conservative/lean conservative:

• 5% “More important”
• 23% “Less important”
• 67% “Equally important”
• 5% “Unsure/Other”

🔵 Liberal/lean liberal:

• 2% “More important”
• 87% “Less important”
• 9% “Equally important”
• 2% “Unsure/Other”

🤷‍♀️ Independent:

• 10% “More important”
• 56% “Less important”
• 31% “Equally important”
• 3% “Unsure/Other”

+Note on sample size: We received 9,851 responses. 👏🥳 Some may have been lightly edited for grammar or clarity.

Everyone has that one special teacher from childhood who made a special impact on them. 

• For musical theater actress Talia Suskauer, that teacher was Craig Wich, her vocal coach and mentor with whom she's worked since she was only 12 years old. 
• Craig “basically taught [me] how to sing," shared Talia, who has stared as the leading role of Elphaba in the national tour of Wicked since 2019. 

🧙‍♀️🎶 There's no business like show business... When Talia received the news that she'd be taking over the title role in Wicked on Broadway, Craig was one of the first to know... and his reaction was absolutely priceless.

• Thanks to some generous folks online, Craig was able to travel to the Big Apple and catch Talia's opening night on Broadway. 

Can you name the capital cities of the numbered states shown above?

(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.

1. Harrisburg
2. Albany
3. Montpelier
4. Concord
5. Augusta