Good morning and welcome to Friday. Exactly how many years on this planet do you think humans will need before we can successfully chew food without ever biting our tongues?

The 10,000 hour rule definitely isn’t adding up…🤔

Some things you’ll know after reading this email:

• 💍📱 The amount of US marriages that start on an app
• 👩‍💻 How many product searches begin on Amazon
• 👨‍🎨 What a Van Gogh self-portrait looks like

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.70 minutes to read.

P.S. Today marks the end of our big week of announcements. Read on to see what’s changing!

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

–Seneca (4 B.C. – 65 A.D.)

In the aftermath of last month’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Meta reportedly told its workers not to openly discuss topics related to abortion on internal company channels.

🚗 Driving the move… The social media giant cited a company policy, initially established in 2020 following George Floyd’s murder, that puts “strong guardrails around social, political and sensitive conversations” in the workplace due to “a heightened risk of creating a hostile work environment.”

• Meta employees were instead encouraged to discuss abortion-related issues in one-to-one conversations, or in small groups of “like-minded colleagues.”

💬 On one side: Other Big Tech companies like Amazon and Apple saw highly-charged discussions on internal Slack channels, with some celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion and others bemoaning it, per Bloomberg.

🚫 On the other side: In recent years, startups Basecamp and Coinbase both announced bans on political discussion in their respective workplaces, while simultaneously offering a buyout to all employees. About 5% of Coinbase’s 1,200 workers accepted and left the company; more than ⅓ of Basecamp’s 57 employees did the same.

+Flash poll: Do you think employees should be allowed to talk about contentious societal and political topics in the workplace?

Yes

No

Unsure/other

President Biden arrived in Tel Aviv on Wednesday to kick off a four-day trip to the Middle East, which includes visits with the leaders of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern nations.

📝 A deeper dive… The overall trip is focused mainly on furthering Israel’s integration into the rest of the Arab world, a process that made great strides with the signing of the Abraham Accords under former President Trump, and rallying countries against their common enemy: Iran.

• Biden’s first major announcement came yesterday, when the US and Israel signed a joint agreement pledging to be "prepared to use all elements of national power" to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
• Separately, Israel’s government also approved the parameters of a deal that would see the transfer of two strategic Red Sea islands from Egypt to Saudi Arabia. Analysts say the move increases the likelihood of a historic normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

👀 Looking ahead… Over the next two days, Biden will meet with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, hold bilateral meetings with other Middle Eastern leaders, and deliver a speech at a summit of Arab nations.

🔋 Zoom out: Earlier this week, Iran announced that it’s begun enriching uranium at levels up to 20%. Weapons-grade material requires 90% enrichment, but experts say the move from low- to high-grade uranium can be made in just a few weeks.

A growing number of Gen Z users prefer social media sites like TikTok and Insta over Google when searching about certain topics online, like places to eat, per internal Google data first reported by TechCrunch.

📱🔍 A deeper dive… “In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search, they go to TikTok or Instagram,” Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan said. For context, Google owns ~90% of the global search engine market.

• The company later confirmed the accuracy of his comment, saying the stat could soon be added to its competition site alongside other industry trends – like how 55% of product searches now begin on Amazon, for example.

🤔 So, what’s next?... Raghavan told TechCrunch that Google plans to improve its search product with new features in order to win back young eyeballs. TikTok also surpassed YouTube in terms of average global watch time last summer.

📸 The big picture: Search and other semi-related tools (Maps, Play, and GMail) brought in $149 billion in revenue for Google last year, accounting for 58% of parent company Alphabet’s total revenue.

📉😓 It’s one thing to be fashionably late – but not when it comes to investing.

Were you late on Bitcoin? Tesla? The GameStop surge a couple of years back???

Here’s your chance to get in early for once: A startup using robotics to disrupt the $155B pizza industry.

Piestro creates pizza kiosks that fit in high-traffic areas, run 24/7, require minimal operation costs, and they already have $580M in preorders… including 3,600 units for pizza franchise 800 Degrees!🔥

Piestro plans to take a mouth-watering bite out of the $155B pizza industry with a 2-headed approach:

• Step 1: Sell kiosks to restaurants
• Step 2: Sell pizza with units of their own

🧐 Interested?... You can invest, but there are only 14 days left!⌛

Get your piece of the Piestro pie.

Lesley Stevenson, a conservator at the National Galleries of Scotland, recently discovered a secret self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh on the back of one of his paintings ​​during a routine X-ray ahead of an exhibition.

👨‍🎨 More deets: The Dutch artist – whose work didn’t become famous until after his death – often reused canvases to save money, turning them over and then working on the other side.

• His self-portraits have been discovered on the backs of other paintings, especially those from between 1883 and 1885. 
• The one in this story, “Head of a Peasant Woman,” depicts a local woman from a small Dutch town where Van Gogh lived during that period.

🤔🖼 Not so fast… Though the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam said the hidden painting was “almost certainly” drawn by the famed artist based on the X-ray, it hasn’t officially been confirmed yet. But that’ll be tricky, since it needs to be done in a way that doesn’t damage the painting underneath.

• Dozens of Van Gogh paintings have been bought and sold for tens of millions of dollars over the past few decades, led by “Portrait of Dr Paul Gachet” which sold for $83 million in 1990 (~$186 million adjusted for inflation).

• ☝️ You’re looking at one of the finalists of a design contest for the “I Voted” sticker in Ulster County, NY; the design was created by 14-year-old Hudson Rowan, who said it took him “like, 10 minutes to draw”; as of Wednesday, it had received more than 170,000 of the 190,000 votes cast in the county.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🔋🏭 Panasonic announced plans to build the world's largest EV battery manufacturing plant in Kansas; it'll invest $4 billion in the new facility and hire up to 4,000 local employees.
• 🐦 Twitter went offline for about 40 minutes yesterday morning, its longest outage since 2016.
• 🛒 See the early results from Amazon’s Prime Day 2022; the company raked in an estimated $12 billion in sales, per Adobe Analytics data, a 8.5% year-over-year increase.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🔠🎲 The New York Times is launching a Wordle-based board game in partnership with Hasbro.
• ⚖️ Amber Heard’s bid for a mistrial in her case against Johnny Depp was denied after a judge found “no evidence of fraud or wrongdoing.”
• 🎤 Disney Plus announced a collaboration with Hybe – the label behind K-pop sensation BTS – to bring “five major content titles” to the platform; at least three are confirmed to feature BTS in some form.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🐦 A new peer-reviewed study upends previous scientific belief about how woodpeckers protect their brains from a seemingly catastrophic impact every time their beak hits wood.
• 🚀 The European Space Agency successfully debuted its new Vega-C rocket this week, using it to launch seven satellites into orbit – the largest of which will test Einstein's general theory of relativity.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• ⚖️ South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdagh was charged with murder yesterday in the deaths of his wife and 22-year-old son; he faces a total of 81 felony charges primarily related to alleged financial crimes.
• 🏛️ Ivana Trump, the ex-wife of former President Trump, died at the age of 73.
• 🌾 Delegates from the UN, Russia, and Ukraine met in Istanbul to negotiate the release of Ukrainian grain supplies stuck behind a Russian blockade in the Black Sea.
• 💌🎉 You're invited… to TheFutureParty! It's a free daily newsletter that breaks down the business of entertainment & culture – and what it all means for the future. Want in on trends that influence the decisions of tomorrow? Subscribe for free.*

*Sponsored post

💬 Quoted… ​​"Unreasonable and unacceptable."

Emirates Airline rejected demands by London’s Heathrow Airport to stop selling new summer tickets, following the airport's recent cap of 100k passengers/day amid struggles with staff shortages and surging demand.

• For context: An average of 110,000-125,000 people departed from Heathrow each day prior to the pandemic.

💍📱 Stat of the Day: About ⅓ of all new marriages in the US start on an app, per online dating giant Match Group.

🌎 Around the World: Italy’s president rejected Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s offer to resign yesterday, asking Draghi to instead reassess whether he can form a government and hold a parliamentary majority together.

🤯 Did You Know?... In extreme situations, alligators can survive up to three years without eating.

📖 Worth a Read: 10 Year Thinking: The Next Decade Will Change Your Life — Learn to Play The Long Game → (Mind Café)

🖱 Clickbait: ​​Beyoncé has officially joined TikTok.

We bring you the most unusual, off-the-wall and occasionally laugh-out-loud headlines from this week…

• Teacher plays trombone to fend off black bear at Shawnigan Lake school → (Victoria Times Colonist)
• Iguana found in Florida man's toilet for a third time → (UPI)
• US tourist falls into Mount Vesuvius after taking selfie → (ABC News)
• 49% Of Japanese Companies Have An "Old Man Who Does Nothing" → (Japan Inside)

One thing to keep in mind when you’re submitting odd or off-the-wall experiences: The tone of this section is meant to be uplifting, cute, and funny – so if you think we aim to poke fun, you can erase that from your mind. It’s all love and acceptance, people.

On that note: Share your most unusual, off-the-wall, or laugh-out-loud story with us here. We’ll publish our favorite ones next Thursday.

Stay weird out there.✌️

104-year-old Bertha Komor has an unusual item on her bucket list: she's always wanted to pet a penguin. And thanks to the team at Twilight Wish Connecticut, Bertha's dream finally came true. 

🐧 Pretty flippin' cute... Mr. Red Green the penguin made the trek from Mystic Aquarium to meet Bertha, who was surprised with the bird on her birthday. 

• “Never thought it would happen,” said Bertha of the adorable meet-and-greet. 
• “I am just so excited for her,” shared her granddaughter Karen Rivkin. “Just so happy that she was able to have this wish come true!" 

Below are three lists of ingredients. All you have to do is give us the completed dish they make. Easy peasy! (The rules, at least.)

☝️ Recipe #1:

• Chickpeas
• Tahini
• Lemon juice
• Garlic
• Cumin
• Salt
• Olive oil

✌️ Recipe #2:

• Flour
• Sugar
• Cocoa powder
• Baking powder & soda
• Salt
• Mlik
• Oil
• Eggs
• Vanilla extract

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Olive oil
• Soy sauce
• Red wine vinegar
• Honey
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Black pepper
• Sirloin steak
• Bell pepper
• Red onions
• Button mushrooms

(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.

☝️ Recipe #1: Hummus

✌️ Recipe #2: Chocolate cake

3️⃣ Recipe #3: Beef kebab