Good morning and welcome to Thursday. They say it’s important to be kind to yourself... but can you just imagine all the trash future-you is talking about you at this very second?🤔

Some things you’ll know after reading this email:

• 💼🏠 How many Americans can work from home full-time
• 🚫💃📱 Why there probably won’t be a TikTok ban (for now, at least)
• 🦈 A whale shark’s throat is how narrow?!🤯 

… and more.

P.S. We’ll be off tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday for Independence Day. Have an awesome 4th of July, and a happy Canada Day tomorrow to our friendly neighbors up north!🇺🇸😎🎉🍁

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.66 minutes to read.

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. ”

–Oprah Winfrey (b. 1954)

The op-eds we had curated for yesterday's Dose of Discussion on the January 6 hearings didn't get published due to a technical glitch. They're live now; you can read them here. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Later today, Spirit Airlines shareholders will be forced to make a decision: move ahead with its planned merger with Frontier or pursue a deal with JetBlue, which has been circling like a jaded ex at wedding festivities, tossing out not one, not two, not three, not four, but five increasingly sweeter takeover offers.

🤝🗳 More deets… Either deal would create the fifth-largest US airline. But in simplest terms, the choice for Spirit boils down to this: create a discount juggernaut by merging with Frontier, or attempt to directly challenge carriers dominating the industry and merge with JetBlue.

• Spirit’s board has been very clear about its choice, reiterating as recently as Tuesday that it’s all-in on new frontiers with Frontier – and that shareholders should be, too – even though JetBlue made a higher offer.

🤔 Wait, why?... Because Spirit believes regulators would block a deal between it and JetBlue.

• The DOJ has already challenged JetBlue’s alliance with American Airlines in New York and Boston, and is currently suing to block it.
• Spirit points to this👆 as an area of concern, as well as the potential for regulators to look unfavorably upon “remov[ing] about half of the ULCC (ultra low cost carrier) capacity in the United States.”

✋ Yes, but: JetBlue has accused Spirit’s board of having conflicts of interest, noting that multiple directors have ties to Frontier’s board chair Bill Franke, who previously was the chairman of Spirit’s board.

✈️ Zoom out: All this drama comes as airlines are gearing up for one of the busiest travel weekends of the summer. AAA predicts 3.55 million people will travel by air over the Independence Day holiday, up from 3.5 million people in 2021.

Brendan Carr, one of the FCC’s five commissioners, shared a letter on Tuesday that he wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai requesting TikTok be removed from their app stores. The short-form video app has an estimated 80 million US users, 60% of which are between the ages of 16–24.

🚫💃📱 Driving the move… National security concerns. In the letter, the Trump-appointed Carr described TikTok’s funny videos as “sheep’s clothing” for a “sophisticated surveillance tool that harvests extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data” that can be accessed by the Chinese government (the app is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese tech company).

• He referenced a Buzzfeed report from earlier this month, which provided evidence of TikTok engineers in China having access to US data between September 2021 and January 2022. Per leaked audio from a TikTok official: “Everything is seen in China.”

🤔 So, what’s next?... If they refuse to comply with the request, Apple and Alphabet have to report back to Carr by July 8 (next Friday) with an explanation as to why.

✋ Yes, but: As just a single member of the FCC, Carr has no power to compel action by either company. And as both the WSJ and Bloomberg ($) note, the FCC has generally steered clear of regulating apps, though it does have broad jurisdiction over communications.

🇮🇳 Zoom out: TikTok has been banned in India over similar concerns since 2020.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will officially retire at noon today, according to a letter he sent to the White House yesterday, ending a nearly three-decade tenure on America’s highest court.

⚖️ A deeper dive... Breyer was nominated by President Clinton in 1994 and approved by a wide margin; his ​​87-9 Senate confirmation was the last one with fewer than ten dissenting votes.

• A moderate liberal, he was a pragmatic force on a Court that grew increasingly conservative during his term, often forging majorities with more moderate justices to the right and left of center, per the AP.
• Over the years, Breyer authored majority opinions upholding the Affordable Care Act, resolving a multi-billion dollar copyright dispute between Google and Oracle, and affirming free speech rights of students off-campus, among others.
• He also joined several notable dissents, including an objection to the use of the death penalty and a recent dissent against the Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

👀 Looking ahead… Breyer is being replaced by his former clerk, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who’ll become the first Black female Justice in Supreme Court history. She’ll also be the third Black justice and sixth woman overall, bringing the current Court to a record four women.

🚸 Jimmy 1 and Jimmy 2… were born on the same day, lived on the same street, had identical upbringings, and were now both young adults.

🥇 Jimmy 1… loved reading clickbait articles and didn’t enjoy spending mental energy to read anything thoughtful.

🥈 Jimmy 2… couldn’t stop reading in-depth articles on sophisticated topics. He CRAVED knowledge.

But Jimmy 2 grew frustrated with the poor quality of articles everywhere. He would find himself endlessly searching for something, anything of substance.😞

Until one fateful day, he remembered a recommendation from his favorite newsletter, the DONUT.🍩🔥

On a whim, Jimmy went to Refind.com, picked 5 topics of interest, and rated the sample articles.

Then every morning, along with 50,000 other subscribers, he got what he'd so long been craving right in his inbox. Links to intelligently written articles on topics he actually cared about, aka endless knowledge!

⏩ Fast forward to 2050… Jimmy 1 still lives in his mother's basement, but he swears his podcast is finally about to pop off.🎙️🤦‍♂️

Jimmy 2? He went down a rabbit hole of brand new topics, found new passions and interests, colonized Mars, and saved the human race.🙌👽

Be Like Jimmy 2. Subscribe to Refind.

Roughly 92 million Americans – or 58% of all employees – are currently able to work from home at least one day per week, while some 56 million have the ability to work remotely full-time, according to a new McKinsey survey.

💼 Based on a sample size of 25,000 US adults...

• When given the choice, 87% of Americans embrace the opportunity to work remotely, spending an average of three days per week at home.
• Roughly half of people earning between $25,000 and $49,000 have remote work opportunities, compared to three-quarters of people making over $150,000.
• 89% of people employed in computer and mathematical occupations have remote work options; on the flip side, that number drops to 29% for food preparation and production work.

✋ Yes, but: The report wasn’t entirely positive about the growing trend of remote work. McKinsey’s research found Americans working under a hybrid remote model were most likely to report multiple obstacles to getting things done, followed by those working entirely from home. 

• People working entirely in the office were the least likely to report these problems.

+Dig deeper: What does the future of work look like?

• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners from Picfair’s inaugural Urban Wildlife Photography Awards; all proceeds on print sales go to conservation non-profit Re:Wild.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• ⚖️ Crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital was ordered to liquidate its assets by a court on Wednesday, two days after the fund defaulted on a ~$655 million outstanding loan.
• 🍨 Unilever sold its Ben & Jerry’s business interests in Israel to a local licensee, allowing sales of its ice cream in the occupied West Bank to resume.
• 🚘🤖 Tesla laid off nearly 200 workers yesterday, most of whom were tasked with training the company’s Autopilot AI system.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📱 Snap announced a new Snapchat Plus subscription service for $3.99/month that unlocks exclusive and early access features (but doesn’t let you turn off ads).
• ⚖️ R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison yesterday for sexually abusing women, girls, and boys as part of a sex trafficking ring.
• 🏥 Travis Barker was hospitalized with pancreatitis that doctors believe was triggered by a colonoscopy.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🧠🦾 Researchers from Johns Hopkins University developed a new technique that allowed a partially paralyzed man to feed himself, using robotic arms connected to a brain-machine interface.
• 🌎♨️ Quaise Energy is an MIT spinout that wants to use X-rays to melt rock and create the world's deepest holes in a quest to harness geothermal energy.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🌮🧀 Taco Bell is launching two new menu items featuring a giant Cheez-It 16x the standard size.
• 🎖️ The last WWII Medal of Honor recipient, Hershel W. “Woody” Williams, passed away yesterday at 98.
• ⚖️ Former President Trump is no longer in contempt of court for failing to comply with a subpoena from NY AG Letitia James, a state judge ruled yesterday. (From the Left | From the Right)
• 📖 Discover your next favorite book. A podcast to binge on. Longreads that offer new perspectives on the world. Every Friday, the Weekly Filet provides you with a careful selection of great things to read, watch, and listen to. Sign up here for free.*

*Sponsored post

💬 Quoted… ​​ “I’m relatively successful at un-retiring.”

Cameron Diaz is coming out of retirement to star in a new Netflix action-comedy thanks to… Tom Brady?

• The news was confirmed on Twitter, where Diaz’s new co-star Jamie Foxx shared audio from a phone call in which he connected her with someone who knows a thing or two about not being able to retire.

📉 Stat of the Day: New vehicle quality has declined 11% year over year, according to JD Power’s new Quality Study for 2022-model cars, the steepest annual drop recorded by the group over the past 36 years.

• In this year’s survey, JD Power recorded 226 problems per 100 Tesla vehicles and 240 problems per 100 non-Tesla EVs, compared to 175 problems per 100 cars with internal combustion engines.
• Translation: EVs had ~40% more problems per 100 vehicles than their gas-powered counterparts.

🌎 Around the World: Scotland’s leader announced plans for a second independence referendum to be held in October 2023; the country’s voters previously chose to remain in the UK by a 55-45 margin in 2014.

🤯 Did You Know?... A whale shark, the world’s largest fish, has to eat a diet only consisting of very small prey, since its throat is so narrow. How narrow, you ask?? Well, it’s often compared with the size of a quarter.

📖 Worth a Read: Biotech Wizard Left a Trail of Fraud — Prosecutors Allege It Ended in Murder → (WSJ)

👍 Yes (30%): “Aside from my firmly held belief that killing babies in the womb is wrong, there was no constitutional basis or legal precedent for the Supreme Court to rule the way it did. The authority for such decisions lies with each of our 50 states. The Dobbs decision puts the power back with the states, where it belongs.”

👎 No (63%): “Carrying a child to term is using your organs for a fetus. No one can use your organs after you die without you choosing to be an organ donor beforehand – so how is it legal to require a woman to keep a pregnancy? Denying women their right to bodily autonomy removes their status as equally protected people, and denies them full citizenship as free Americans.”

🤷‍♀️ Unsure/Other (7%): “I am pro-choice, but I don’t really think abortion is a Constitutional right. I’d be fine with it being codified into federal law.”

+Note on sample size: We received 10,771 responses. 👏🥳 Some may have been lightly edited for grammar or clarity.

NY state is kickstarting a new program of supplying free robot companions to the elderly. 

🤖 The future is here... The robot in question, named ElliQ, has been called a "more proactive version of Siri or Alexa." 

• ElliQ is able to create small talk with its owner, remind them to exercise and hydrate, help assist with daily reminders, make video calls with friends and loved ones, and more. 

The project is part of a greater effort to reduce elderly loneliness, which impacts millions of Americans, and can be as deadly as smoking about a pack of cigarettes each day.

Dive deeper.

❓ Trivia: What nationality was Marco Polo?

👃 True or False?... It’s impossible to hum while you hold your nose. (No cheating!!!)

🤔 Riddle me this: How can someone go twenty-five nights without sleeping?

(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: Italian.

👃 T/F: True!🤯

🤔 Riddle: They sleep during the day.