Good morning and welcome back. We came across this quote over the weekend, and wanted to share it with you.

From Laquan Austion, founder of the Juneteenth Foundation, to Axios: “Think about July 4th, we celebrate that day for independence. Juneteenth represents our independence from ourselves. Now we all have the ability to pursue the Founding Fathers’ vision.”

Makes ya think, doesn’t it?

Some things you’ll know after reading this email:

•  💰💼 The three largest employers in America (and why one of them could be in trouble)
•  ⛽️ What a temporary gas tax holiday would mean for you
• 🦠 Whether omicron or delta is more likely to cause long Covid

... and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today's news takes 4.54 minutes to read.

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”

–Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Friday was a day of technical difficulties for us.🤦‍♀️

1. First, the op-eds we had curated for the Dose of Discussion about the recent primary elections and upcoming midterms didn't get published. They're live now; you can read them here. Sorry for the inconvenience.
2. And on Thursday, we wrote a correction for Friday's newsletter about how we inaccurately said the Black Death is harmless in today’s day and age. (While rare and mostly treatable, the bubonic plague still infects hundreds of people each year with a ~10% mortality rate.) That section also didn't get published.

Anyways... here's to the future.

The e-commerce giant could run out of workers to hire in US warehouses by 2024, according to leaked internal research from mid-2021 recently obtained by Recode.

😳 Whoa… Yeah. The report calculated Amazon’s available pool of workers based on stats like income levels and household proximity to existing or planned facilities.

• Amazon currently employs ~700,000 workers in warehouses and Whole Foods stores across America, making it the third largest US employer behind Walmart and McDonald’s.
• It churned through the equivalent of 123% of its entire workforce in 2019… and 159% in 2020, a rate about three times industry average. In other words: Amazon is more than rehiring its entire workforce each year.

📦 Cause for concern: Execs say the method used to create the report was 94% accurate at predicting understaffed locations ahead of Prime Day 2021.

🤔 So, what’s next?… Per the report, Amazon had six levers it could use to delay the labor crisis by a few years, including raising wages and increasing automation, but “only a series of sweeping changes to how the company does business and manages its employees will significantly alter the timeline,” per Recode.

📸 The big picture: Following an early pandemic growth spurt, CEO Andy Jassy has spent much of his first year reversing e-commerce growth initiatives started under Jeff Bezos. Amazon’s stock has dipped by more than ⅓ since early April, wiping out $600+ billion in market cap.

⛰️ Nepal is moving base camp for Mt. Everest. The site, located ~3.5 miles above sea level, is at risk of being wiped away as a nearby glacier continues to melt, dumping 12.5 million cubic yards of water per year into a rapidly-expanding stream that runs through the camp. Officials say the new site will be at a lower altitude, where there’s no year-round ice.

🗳️🌍 Elections are happening aound the globe. 🇫🇷 French President Emmanuel Macron’s party lost control of parliament after failing to win a majority in nationwide elections held Sunday; 🇨🇴 Colombian senator Gustavo Petro was declared the winner of Sunday’s presidential election, becoming the first leftist president in the country’s history (per multiple sources); 🇮🇱 Israel’s government agreed to dissolve yesterday, triggering the country’s fifth parliamentary election in the past three years.

🏭 Germany’s got gas. The European nation is firing up its coal plants in a bid to end its reliance on Russian gas. Per the country’s economic minister, Germany will limit the use of natural gas for electricity production amid concerns over possible shortages stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

• Quick note: Since the invasion, Germany has managed to bring Moscow’s share of overall gas imports down from 55% to 35%.

President Biden told reporters yesterday that he’s considering formal support for a federal gas tax holiday, with a decision expected by the end of the week. His comments came a day after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said such a measure is “certainly worth considering.”

🤔🏛️ What exactly is a gas tax holiday?... A federal gas tax holiday is when the US government temporarily pauses its nationwide tax on fuel, which has been set at 18.3 cents per gallon since 1993. This has never happened before, though it was a 2008 election proposal endorsed by Hilary and McCain (but not Obama).

• Any such suspension would require approval from Congress. So far, Democrat-led efforts to halt the tax have been met with firm GOP opposition.
• On the state level, recent gas tax holidays in Connecticut, Georgia, and Maryland have resulted in a majority of the savings going to consumers, rather than service stations or others, according to new estimates from the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

⛽ Big picture: The average price for a gallon of gas in the US topped $5 for the first time in history earlier this month, per AAA. It currently sits at $4.98, up from $3.07 this time last year.

+Dig deeper: From the Left | From the Right

📉😓 Ok, so we’re down bad, and the end might not be in sight either.

Luckily, if you look hard enough, there’s always a silver lining…

🌧️ Whoop, there it is… In this case, for the first time in a while, GPUs are starting to come down in price!🎉🥳

So if you’re looking to take advantage of this opportunity and finally get some equipment, Luxor's ASIC broker has facilitated over 20,000 ASIC purchases since launching three years ago.

Luxor and its best-in-class mining pool infrastructure are trusted by the biggest names in mining, like Argo and NYDIG.

⛏️ And miners go to them because they’re reliable, they offer competitive pricing, and they provide software/services for every step of the way.

After identifying why so many users were unsatisfied with their mining platforms, Luxor delivers the best possible experience by:

• Operating with complete transparency
• Having a physical presence in North America
• Providing excellent customer service

Plus, they let users stay up to date on the mining market with their Hashrate Index data platform... all while having the best UI in the game.🏆

Do mining the right way with Luxor.

On Friday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new online store where users can purchase clothing for their 3D avatar on Facebook, Instagram, or FB Messenger.

👗👔 More deets… Earlier this year, the company brought its 3D avatars to Instagram and rolled out updated avatars for FB and Messenger, allowing users to sync their character and its belongings across all Meta platforms (including the VR app Horizon Worlds).

• The Meta Avatars Store will officially open for business later this week, with digital outfits from Balenciaga, Prada, and Thom Browne priced between $2.99 and $8.99; existing free clothing options will still be available.
• Zuckerberg said the company ultimately plans to make it an open marketplace where users can create and sell clothing, and that new brands are coming “soon.”

🌐👠👕 Zoom out: It's not just Meta, luxury fashion and tech company collabs are so hot rn. Fortnite recently introduced Balenciaga-branded skins and purchasable garments like hoodies, Roblox gamers can visit ‘Gucci Town’ and buy digital outfits from its virtual store, and League of Legends players can purchase custom Louis Vuitton skins.

+Excited? I know VR (scene): At a virtual roundtable last week, Zuckerberg revealed more than a dozen next-gen VR headset designs with improvements like resolution approaching 20/20 vision and reduced distortion so it’s easier to wear longer.

• ☝️ A 661-lb stingray caught in the Mekong river may be the largest freshwater fish ever discovered, according to Cambodian and American scientists.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🍎 A group of Apple employees in Towson, Maryland, have voted to unionize, marking the first time in company history that any of its US retail employees have done so.
• 🪙 Solend, a crypto lending platform built on the Solana blockchain, tried to gain control of a “whale” account worth $100+ million over fears it was putting the protocol at risk; the move was later voted down by Solend’s users.
• ✈️💰 JetBlue really really wants Spirit: The seventh-largest North American airline boosted its offer to acquire Spirit by $2 per share; JetBlue said its offer now represents a 68% premium on the deal offered by rival Frontier. (Background from the DONUT)

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏌️ English golfer Matt Fitzpatrick won the US Open by a single stroke over Will Zalatoris and Masters champion Scottie Scheffler, earning his first-ever major victory.
• 🤼 Vince McMahon is stepping down as CEO of WWE during an internal investigation into a $3 million secret payment to a former employee with whom he allegedly had an affair.
• 🏊 FINA, the governing body for international swimming competitions, voted on Sunday to restrict transgender athletes who had undergone male puberty from women's races; it also established a working group to establish an "open" category in some events. (Background from the DONUT)

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🦠 Omicron is less likely to cause long Covid than delta, according to new peer-reviewed UK research; 4.5% of the 56,000 omicron patients analyzed had long Covid, compared to 10.8% of the 41,000 delta patients.
• 🪐 Astrophysicists have discovered the remains of cannibalized baby planets eaten up by the gas giant Jupiter.
• 👅👂 Humans can learn to echolocate by clicking their tongue in as few as 10 weeks, according to a new peer-reviewed study involving 26 participants.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🛬 Nearly 20,000 flights were canceled or delayed over the holiday weekend, including more than 5,100 on Sunday alone; airlines blamed a combination of issues, including bad weather and staffing shortages. (Background from the DONUT)
• 🏞️ Yellowstone officials said the park will partially reopen this week, days after a series of historic floods damaged roads and buildings and forced all visitors to evacuate.
• ☀️ Today is the summer solstice, aka the longest day and shortest night of the year.
• 💉 The FDA and CDC officially authorized Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna’s Covid vaccines for use in children older than six months. (From the Left | From the Right)

💬 Quoted… “We are an entertainment platform... The difference is significant. It’s a massive difference.”

• Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s president of global business solutions (who previously spent 12 years at Facebook), told CNBC that his current company is, at its core, an entertainment app – not a social app like FB or Insta.

📊 Stat of the Day: LGBT identification in the US rose to 7.1% of the population last year, up from 5.6% the year before.

🤯 Did You Know?... Pythagoras, the Greek mathematician most known for his theorem on triangles, was also a cult leader who believed he could time travel and speak with animals; he also forbade his followers from eating fava beans.

📖 Worth a Read: The Six Forces That Fuel Friendship → (The Atlantic)

Six months ago, Steven Gallagher couldn't get dressed on his own or hold his sweet dog.

The UK man lives with an autoimmune condition called scleroderma, which caused his hands to curl in on themselves and become incredibly painful. By the age of 47, he had no use of either hand.

✋✋ "Space-age stuff..." Last December, Steven became one of the only people in the world to receive a double hand transplant, the first of its kind for a patient suffering from scleroderma.

• Steven is now enjoying the simple things with his new hands. "It has given me a new lease of life," he told BBC News.

Are you not just crazy about the game, but want to understand what makes the entire college sports industry tick?🤔

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🏈 Behind the scenes… Subscribing to Extra Points gives readers access to original reporting and unique analysis about how the college sports industry works that they won't find anywhere else on the internet. Subscribe today to get every dispatch, published each weekday.

🏫 From major FBS schools to the smallest NAIA programs, Extra Points covers it all!👌

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Guess the definitions of the following Latin and Greek root words.

1. Hydr
2. Dyna
3. Brev
4. Lev
5. Omni

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