Good morning and welcome to Friday. Today’s newsletter is jam-packed, so let’s just rock ‘n roll.

Some things you’ll know after reading it:

• 🚫⛽ How Europe plans to phase out Russian energy
• 💪🖥️ Which movie studio has one of the 25 most powerful supercomputers in the world
• 📱 What’s changing after Facebook’s big announcement

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.99 minutes to read.

“A person is great not because they haven't failed; a person is great because failure hasn't stopped them.”

–Confucius (551 B.C. – 479 B.C.)

A bipartisan group of 16 senators – including nine Republicans – unveiled a new agreement on Wednesday to reform the “archaic and ambiguous” Electoral Count Act of 1887.

📝 A deeper dive… Led by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Susan Collins (R-ME), the bill would:

• Define the role of the vice president in the election certification process as merely symbolic.
• Eliminate a provision that theoretically allows state legislatures to override the popular vote by declaring a “failed election.”
• Provide clear guidelines for the transfer of power between Election Day and inauguration.
• Set the threshold for the House and Senate to object to a state’s electors at ⅕ of both chambers, up from a single member in each.

💬 What they’re saying: “In four of the past six presidential elections, this process has been abused, with members of both parties raising frivolous objections to electoral votes. But it took the violent breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6 of 2021 to really shine a spotlight on the urgent need for reform,” Sen. Collins said in an address to Congress this week.

👀 Looking ahead… The measure now heads to the Senate Rules Committee, which will hold a hearing on it "in the coming weeks," per Chair Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). With nine Republican backers, it's on the cusp of getting enough GOP support to pass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold if all Dems end up voting in favor.

+Flash poll: Do you think Congress should pass the proposed reforms to the Electoral Count Act?

Yes

No

Unsure/other

Meta announced major changes to the Facebook app on Thursday, altering the platform to deliver a more TikTok-like experience.

📱 What’s changing… The News Feed will be renamed “Home,” part of the company’s larger transition away from news. It'll now show a never-ending stream of mostly video public posts from creators, suggested algorithmically based on what the platform thinks a user is most likely to enjoy and engage with.

• The app is also introducing a new tab called “Feeds,” which serves up ​​chronologically ordered posts from friends, groups, and Pages that users follow (aka the OG Instagram). Posts from these users will also appear in the Home screen.

📸 The big picture: Facebook actually lost daily users for the first time ever in the last quarter of 2021. And while it returned to the black in the first quarter of this year, it’s now growing slower than ever.

With this move, FB is shifting towards algorithm-based content in an attempt to become less of a social networking site, and more of a content and product recommendation engine relying on algorithms and machine learning to serve a user content they may be interested in – a popular industry trend called “discovery.”

• Snap and Twitter have also invested heavily in the area, according to The New York Times.

+Original, schmidginal: Meta isn’t the only big tech firm to recently… adapt a competitor’s style. Amazon’s Prime Video is rolling out a Netflix-esque update over the next couple of weeks, while Microsoft on Tuesday debuted a new Teams social media platform that looks nearly identical to the classic FB.

Following a 10-day pause due to planned maintenance, natural gas resumed flowing from Russia to Europe at normal levels via Germany’s Nord Stream pipeline yesterday. *Cue the EU’s collective sigh of relief.*

✋ Yes, but… Uncertainty about supply still remains. Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this week that the volume of gas sent via Nord Stream will be cut in half soon, due to maintenance requiring a pipeline part currently delayed by Ukraine-related sanctions.

• German authorities responded by saying their energy dependence on Moscow “is being used as a weapon,” accusing Putin of keeping Europe in a constant state of uncertainty as leverage in its conflict against Ukraine.
• On Wednesday, the EU proposed a 15% cut in natural gas use by each of its member states from August until March in case Russia halts its exports.

⚡️📸 The big picture: Germany – and the EU, more broadly – have been dependent on Russian fossil fuels for years. Both sourced ~40% of their energy from Moscow in 2021. But shortly after Ukraine was invaded, the 27-member bloc implemented a plan to phase out most Russian imports by the end of this year and began ongoing efforts to source energy from elsewhere.

• Since March, the EU has negotiated new gas deals with the US and Azerbaijan, and held additional talks with Israel and Qatar.

+Elsewhere: Japan recently announced plans to restart nine of the country’s nuclear reactors this winter, enough to cover 10% of its energy needs (roughly the same share that was supplied by Russia in 2021).

Storytime. Parents love it, kids love it, and reading especially helps young minds. But you probably didn’t realize how much.

🤯 Did you know?… Reading to an infant promotes the growth of thousands of brain cells, and is one of the absolute best things you can do for their cognitive development?

• It helps with creativity, concentration, and language skills while preparing them for academic success. Not to mention strengthening the bond between parent and child.

Keepsake Tales gets kids excited about reading by letting you create a custom book with your child as the main character. Just upload a photo, make adjustments, and select your story!

The books feature beautiful illustrations, awesome adventures, and the coolest main character imaginable.

Pick from classic stories like “Winnie the Pooh”, “Adventures in Wonderland”, and more.

➡️ Use code DONUT25 and save 25% off Keepsake Tales.

Good news, ladies: a hot girl walk and a Wordle per day keeps the dementia away. At least according to a new peer-reviewed study published in the medical journal Neurology, which found physical and mental activity may help preserve cognitive ability and delay dementia.

🧠 More deets… The study’s aim was to look at the effects of physical and mental activities, such as reading, going to classes, or playing cards or games, on cognitive ability in the areas of thinking speed and memory.

• Mental activities: Led to improved thinking speed for both women and men – but a little more for the latter. In total, mental activity was associated with 13 fewer years of aging in participants’ thinking speed (17 years for men vs. 10 years for women).
• Physical activities: Were a little less straightforward. Women who performed more physical activity had a greater thinking speed reserve… but this connection wasn't seen in men.🤔 Greater physical activity also wasn't linked to improved memory reserve in either of the sexes.

📚🧪 Zoom out: It’s been a big week for gender-based longevity studies. New peer-reviewed research published in Science suggests the reason men typically die several years younger than women is linked to the loss of the male sex chromosome, which causes the heart muscle to scar and can lead to heart failure.

• ☝️ A dead great white shark washed up on a Long Island beach this week, but waves later washed it back out to sea; police issued a warning for swimmers to be cautious as they attempt to locate the shark.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🏥🚚 Amazon is purchasing healthcare provider One Medical for $3.9 billion, its third-largest acquisition ever. | It also began wide-scale deliveries yesterday with the Rivian-designed electric cargo van.
• 👻📉 Shares of Snap fell more than 25% in after-hours trading yesterday following an earnings report that revealed its weakest-ever quarterly sales growth as a public company; the company also suspended revenue and earnings guidance for next quarter.
• 🏛️ Weekly jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, rose to a new high for this year, per new government data. | Federal authorities brought the first-ever crypto insider-trading case yesterday, accusing a former Coinbase employee of tipping off his brother and a friend with confidential information and netting $1.5 million in profits.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📱 TikTok introduced a new feature that lets viewers turn on closed captions even if a creator doesn’t have them enabled. Also coming soon: auto-translation for select languages.
• ♟️ Five-time world chess champion Magnus Carlson announced that he won’t defend his title, but said he isn’t retiring from competition.
• 🏈 Georgia head coach Kirby Smart, fresh off the Bulldogs’ first national title in 41 years, reportedly signed a new 10-year, $112.5 million contract; it would make him the highest-paid coach in all of college football.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🩸🧬 Scientists have pinpointed the exact moment in evolutionary time that our earliest mammalian ancestors became warm-blooded.
• 🦋 The monarch butterfly is now considered an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature; its native population in North America has shrunk 22-72% over the past decade.
• 🦠 The first confirmed US polio case since 2013 was discovered in Rockland County, NY.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 💎🥚 US authorities found a possible Fabergé egg on a private yacht recently confiscated from Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov.
• 🤒 President Biden tested positive for Covid yesterday and was exhibiting “very mild” symptoms; he’s expected to keep performing his duties while quarantined at the White House. (From the Left | From the Right)
• 🏛️ The House Jan. 6 committee held its eighth public hearing in primetime last night; no more hearings are scheduled for now, but at least one more is expected around the release of the committee’s final report this fall. (Background | From the Left | From the Right)
• 🍕🏆 The global pizza market is worth $155B and Piestro’s about to take its slice with robotic kiosks that 3X pizzeria profit margins.. they’ve already secured $580m in preorders. Learn more about investing in Piestro (hurry: the campaign closes on July 28th)!*

*Sponsored post

💬 Quoted… ​​“The largest amount of money lost by a single firm over a six-month period.”

Blackrock has reportedly lost a record $1.7 trillion worth of clients’ money in the first half of this year, former hedge fund manager Marc Rubenstein wrote in a Bloomberg op-ed this week.

• The global investing giant previously held a record $10 trillion in assets under management as of January.

🤑 Stat of the Day: Arizona Cardinals QB Kyler Murray will make an average of $46.1 million per year over the course of his new five-year contract extension, which was agreed to yesterday.

• The Oakland Athletics, who selected Murray 9th overall in the 2018 MLB draft, have an entire payroll of $48.5 million this season.

🌎 Around the World: Hundreds of Puerto Ricans marched in the capital of San Juan on Wednesday, demanding the government cancel its contract with grid operator LUMA Energy over chronic power outages and frequent rate hikes.

🤯 Did You Know?... Animated Pixar films are rendered – aka turned from 2D or 3D models into realistic images – using one of the 25 largest supercomputers in the world. And even with all that computing power, it still took two years to render Monsters University (2013).

📖 Worth a Read: The Great Fiction of AI → (The Verge)

🌎Startup investing… is nature’s recourse to over-enabling the ultra-rich. You see – before, everyday people didn’t have access to investing in early-stage speculative ventures because you had to be an accredited investor and required large investment amounts.

But now, startup investing lets anyone invest – and for much smaller amounts of money!🥳

⚙️ How it works… Companies are able to raise money through the public to finance a new business venture. This is usually done through online channels like social media or websites.

• Startup investing takes this even further by giving investors a proportionate slice of equity in exchange for relatively small amounts of cash.
• The lowered barriers have proven largely successful – the capital-raising market was valued at $12.27B in 2019 and is expected to double by 2026!📈

🍕 Get your piece of the pie... and learn more about how you can invest in Piestro, the robotics company taking the $155 billion pizza industry by storm.

⬆️ This ray of sunshine is Doug the Pug, a pup with a life-mission to bring smiles to people's faces. 

• Not only does he have an impressive online fan base, but he and his humans are the creators of the Doug The Pug Foundation, which has a mission to support kids fighting cancer and life-threatening illness.

🐶 Giving back... Doug frequently makes trips to hospitals to spread some puppy love to sick kids. And with the creation of his official foundation, Doug (and his humans) are able to make an even bigger impact.

• They've been able to give thousands of dollars to families in need, even making some kids' wishes come true.

💬 What they're saying: “From the very first time we were there, it was like, ‘oh, this is why we’re doing what we’re doing,’” Doug's owner said. “It’s so much more than social media. Doug has this very beautiful quality of knowing who needs the most love.”

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:

• Chicken breast
• Salt & pepper
• Broccoli
• Mushrooms
• Oil
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Sesame oil
• Soy sauce
• Brown sugar
• Chicken Broth

 ✌️ Recipe #2:

• Peanut butter
• Butter
• Powdered sugar
• Crushed graham crackers
• Chocolate

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Dark & light soy sauce
• Sesame oil
• Sugar
• Ramen noodles
• Onions
• Chopped veggies
• Mirin

(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: Chicken veggie stir-fry

✌️ Recipe #2: Peanut butter balls

3️⃣ Recipe #3: Lo mein