Good morning and welcome to Wednesday. These past five days were the longest we’ve gone without sending a daily newsletter in… idk how long. Tbh, it felt really weird not writing one. It’s great to be back.

Some things you’ll know after reading this email:

• 📈📉 Why some economists think inflation has peaked
• 🎓 The admissions rates of America’s top colleges (hint: they’re historically low)
• 🤔 What the world’s largest particle accelerator is up to

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.68 minutes to read.

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done. Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal.”

–Bruce Lee (1940-1973)

The Spirit shareholder vote on a potential merger with rival discount carrier Frontier Airlines was postponed just a few hours before our story on the vote was sent out in Thursday's email. It'll now take place this upcoming Friday.

The prices of many common goods have begun to fall from recent highs, according to new data from the WSJ, leading some experts to believe that US inflation could finally be on the decline.

📈📉 What’s going on?... Commodity prices – aka the cost of basic goods like oil, natural gas, corn, wheat, soybeans, lumber, and more – have skyrocketed over the past several months, contributing to historically high levels of inflation.

But many of those goods saw steep price declines in June, and are actually cheaper now than they were at the beginning of Q2.

• Natural gas prices rose 60+% from the beginning of April to early June before declining to finish the quarter 4% lower, and crude oil dropped from highs above $120/barrel to end the quarter around $106.
• Cotton has lost more than a third of its price since early May.
• Prices for copper and lumber have fallen 22% and 31%, respectively, over the past three months. (Fun fact: Copper is on the brink of a bear market, and every recession of the last 30 years has followed a bear market in copper, per Insider.)

✋ Wait, there’s more: One of the most closely watched measures of inflation – the core Personal Consumption Expenditures price index – has now fallen for three straight months, according to new Bureau of Economic Analysis data published Thursday. 

• Though it should be noted this index excludes often-volatile energy and food prices, which have mostly been responsible for the recent spike in inflation.

Following three years of maintenance, upgrades, and pandemic delays, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), aka the world’s largest particle accelerator, was switched back on yesterday. It’ll stay running for the next four years.

🤔 Why that’s a big deal: This new experimental stretch could finally reveal the long-sought "right-handed" versions of ghostly particles called neutrinos, find the elusive particles that make up dark matter, and even help to explain why the universe exists at all, LiveScience reports. So…. yeah. Kind of a big deal.

• Case in point: Yesterday, hours after the machine was turned on, the physics lab housing the LHC announced the observation of three new “exotic particles” that could provide clues about the force that binds subatomic particles together.

⚙️⚛️ How it works… The Large Hadron Collider does just what it says on the box: smashes hadrons (subatomic particles) together at 99.99% the speed of light. Scientists then get to observe what happens; these observations have generated 3,000 scientific papers on many areas of fundamental particle physics, including the discovery of the Higgs boson.

• The atom smasher is also the most powerful supercomputer in the world, set to generate 40,000GB of data each day – or in other words, enough to download the James Cameron classic Titanic 20,000x times over (not that anyone would want to).

+Fun fact: All that computing power means it gets hot. Like, real hot. To talk specifics, the LHC reaches temps of more than 100,000x hotter than the Sun… but it also gets cold, too, reaching temps as low as -456°F.🥵 ➡️🥶

About 1.7 million students in the high school class of 2022 took the SAT at least once, a 13+% increase from the previous year, despite the fact that nearly ~80% of colleges aren't requiring entrance exams for admission.

• The overall number of students taking the ACT is up, too, from 2.69 million → 2.71 million year-over-year.

⏩ Driving the trend… Competition. Many high schoolers said they took one or both of the exams to gain an advantage over their peers in an uber-competitive admissions environment, according to the WSJ.

• While overall college attendance has fallen in recent years, applications to America’s most selective schools have skyrocketed, causing acceptance rates at places like Harvard (3.19%), Stanford (3.95%), and MIT (3.96%) to hit all-time lows in the face of unprecedented competition.

☝️ One more thing: ACT CEO Janet Godwin also attributed a small part of the increase in test-takers to more school districts requiring standardized tests to graduate or receive state-sponsored scholarships.

👀 Looking ahead… The SAT is moving to an all-digital format in the US by March 2024, with the new test taking two hours instead of three.

🤖 NEW TARGET ACQUIRED… Robots and AI have turned many industries on their heads, and now they’ve locked their sights on pizza!🍕

• What we mean: Piestro, today's sponsor, has developed a robotic kiosk that produces gourmet-quality pizza in minutes! 😋

🤔 Ok cool, but why?... Thin profit margins (usually 5-10%) and labor costs make opening a restaurant extremely difficult.

Add in labor shortage concerns, rising wages/real estate, and yeah… it’s not easy to crack into the pizza game.

🤖🍕 How Piestro changes things…

• It eliminates labor costs.
• Fits in high-traffic areas like malls and airports (it’s the size of a van).
• Can stay open 24/7.
• Maintains high-quality ingredients, and produces artisanal pizzas within 3 minutes.

The result?... TRIPLED profit margins for restaurants!!!

🤑 The proof is in the pizza: Piestro has already secured $580M in preorders, including well-known pizza chains like 800 Degrees Pizza. They are planning to seize a serious market share of the $155B pizza industry by selling to both pizza chains and consumers.

🧐 📈 How you can get involved: Piestro is fundraising until July 28th... meaning you have an opportunity to invest (and get a piece of the pie).

Learn more about investing in Piestro before time runs out.

Rihanna, 34, is now the youngest self-made female billionaire in the US, and the first woman to make the list before turning 40, according to Forbes’ annual self-made women list.

🤔 Where have we heard this before?... That title previously belonged to reality star Kylie Jenner, but Forbes stripped it from her in 2020 after claiming the then-22-year-old forged tax documents to reach her billionaire status. Jenner’s net worth sits at $600 million in the most recent list.

💄 Anyways… The majority of Rihanna’s $1.4 billion net worth comes from her stake in cosmetics line Fenty Beauty, which she co-owns with LVMH. Another sizable chunk comes from the Savage x Fenty lingerie line, which successfully fundraised at a $1 billion valuation in February 2021.

• But not all of Riri’s recent business moves have been hits; her high-fashion clothing line with LVMH – also called Fenty – halted operations last year due to poor performance.

💁‍♀️💰 Zoom out: America’s richest self-made woman overall is Diane Hendricks, co-founder and Chairman of roofing giant ABC Supply, with a net worth of $12.2 billion.

• ☝️ Explore images from Independence Day celebrations across America, from sea to shining sea.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🛢️ The price of crude oil fell below $100 per barrel yesterday for the first time since early May.
• 💶💴📉 Both the euro and yen are approaching 20-year lows against the dollar.
• 🚘 Tesla plans to pause production at its plants in Shanghai and Berlin for several weeks in July and August for factory upgrades to improve production.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🍿 Minions: The Rise of Gru earned $125.1 million at the domestic box office, setting a July 4 weekend record.
• 🏀 WNBA star Brittney Griner's trial in a Russian court began on Friday, with the next hearing scheduled for tomorrow; Griner could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted on cannabis possession charges.
• ✈️ USC and UCLA are leaving the Pac 12 athletic conference for the Big Ten starting in 2024. (At sixteen teams, is it finally time to consider a name change?)

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🦠 UC Berkeley researchers successfully produced alternative jet fuel made from common bacteria found in soil.
• 🧠 Two-year-old Isla McNabb of Crestwood, KY, just became Mensa’s youngest member.
• 🏅The Fields Medal, a prestigious math prize handed out once every four years, was awarded to four mathematicians, including Ukrainian professor Maryna Viazovska, the second woman to win the prestigious math prize.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🇷🇺 Russian President Vladimir Putin declared full victory in Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region on Monday.
• 🇬🇧 Two senior UK cabinet ministers resigned yesterday, saying they no longer have confidence in PM Boris Johnson to lead the country.
• 🚨 At least seven people were killed and 31 others hospitalized in a mass shooting at a July 4 parade in Highland Park, IL, a northern suburb of Chicago; police later arrested the 21-year-old male suspect and charged him with seven counts of first-degree murder.

💬 Quoted… ​​ “Our first step into Web3 has been educational.”

Chevy’s initial foray into NFTs can be explained in no other way than as a complete dud.

• The automaker received a grand total of zero bids at auction for its opening project last month... despite the fact that ownership also came with a free 2023 Corvette Z06. Like, a real one.🤯

🌭 Stat of the Day: Joey Chestnut won his 15th Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on Monday, gulping down 63 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes. The eating champ has only lost one July 4 contest dating back to 2007.

🌎 Around the World: Twitter has sued the Indian government over its orders to block some users’ accounts and individual tweets, alleging abuse of power by officials. India has also threatened criminal action against Twitter execs who defy the law.

🤯 Did You Know?... The original version of the Game of Life – created by Milton Bradley in 1860 – was a lot more depressing than later installments, with players able to end up in ruin, poverty, or suicide.

📖 Worth a Read: Crypto Crash Threatens North Korea's Stolen Funds as it Ramps Up Weapons Tests → (Reuters)

Over the weekend, USC and UCLA announced they’ll be joining the Big Ten, creating a new 16-team ‘superconference’ on par with the SEC.

🤔 This week’s question: Does increasing conference consolidation and the advent of the NIL era, where some athletes are being paid like pros while still in college, make you more or less likely to watch college sports in the upcoming years?

More likely

Less likely

It probably won’t have an affect

Unsure/Other

+Note: All you need to do is click one of the links above and your vote is recorded. Poll results and the best comments for each response will be featured in tomorrow's newsletter.

Bette Nash is a cheery and well-loved flight attendant for American Airlines.

For her entire career, the Massachusetts-based woman has stuck to her familiar route, nicknamed "The Shuttle," which flies between Boston, Washington D.C., and New York every day. The dedicated stewardess has been on this same route for sixty-five years.🤯

Oh yeah, did we mention Bette is 86? 

✈️ Up in the air, breaking records... Bette was recently named the longest serving and oldest flight attendant in the world by Guinness World Records. 

• “As long as I have my health and I'm able, why not work. It's still fun," said Bette of her long career. "Plus, I've at least made my Diamond Jubilee, just like Queen Elizabeth!" 

Name the capitals of the numbered states.

(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. Olympia
2. Helena
3. Cheyenne
4. Boise
5. Salem