Good morning and welcome to Tuesday. Since January 2020, the use of “buy now, pay later” services by Gen Z-ers has increased 925%, per data from AfterPay. 43% have missed at least one payment.

In today’s edition:

• 📈 Why Gen Z's wage growth is outpacing all other age groups
• 💰🏈 The top candidates to win the NFL’s Sunday Ticket bidding war
• 🤔 Does TV affect how we dream?

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.79 minutes to read.

“Common sense is not so common.”

–Voltaire (1694-1778)

Wages for American workers aged 16 to 24 increased 12.5% over the year-long period ending in June, more than twice the rate of workers between the ages of 24 and 54, according to new data from the Atlanta Fed.

“Big deal,” you may say, “it’s normal for workers who are just starting out and earning less to see faster wage growth than their older peers”... and you’d be right. But last month marks the largest gap between ages in recorded history, dating back to 1998.

🤔 What’s going on?... In today’s job market, the biggest wage gains are happening at the bottom, with hourly, low-wage, and less-educated workers (who are more likely to be younger) seeing increases that have mostly kept up with inflation.

Young Americans are even outperforming all other age categories in absolute dollar terms:

• A 12.5% annual raise for 16-to-24-year-olds (median weekly wage: $685) amounts to an extra ~$85/week
• A 5.6% annual raise on the 24-to-54 median weekly wage ($1,103) is ~$62/week
• A 3.7% annual raise on the 55+ median weekly wage ($1,115) is ~$41/week

🇨🇳 Meanwhile… in China, things are the exact opposite. New data from the country’s National Bureau of Statistics shows unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds hit a record 19.3% last month, more than twice the comparable rate in the US. And it probably won’t get better anytime soon: a record 12 million college grads are set to enter the job market this summer, a number that’s grown ~10x over the past two decades.

Dozens of papers involving Alzheimer's research – including one of the field’s most-cited studies from 2006 – may have been fraudulent, per a new Science article published following an investigation by neuroscientist and physician Dr. Matthew Schrag of Vanderbilt University.

His probe examined research into Simufilam, the leading Alzheimer’s drug produced by pharma company Cassava Sciences. It’s projected to reach $550+ million in sales by the end of the decade.

📚 Here’s how it went down… Last August, Schrag said he was contacted by a lawyer representing "two prominent neuroscientists'' who believed some research related to Simufilam may have been fraudulent. (Full disclosure: the two are also short sellers who stand to profit if Cassava Sciences’ stock falls.)

• After looking at images published in articles related to Simufilam, Schrag identified "apparently altered or duplicated images in dozens of journal articles," per Science.
• The scientific journal then asked two independent image analysts to review the findings. Both concurred with Schrag, or found his conclusions “compelling and sound.”

✋ Yes, but: Schrag doesn't use the word "fraud" or claim to have proven misconduct, as such an assessment would "require access to original, complete and unpublished images and in some cases raw numerical data," Science reports.

📝 Bottom line: If true, Schrag’s research would imply that potentially billions of dollars in federal grants – and countless lab hours – may have been misspent on Alzheimer's research and other efforts based around the fabricated findings over the past 16 years. Gulp.

Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate proposed new legislation yesterday that would raise the mandatory commercial pilot retirement age from 65 to 67, with pilots above 65 subject to medical recertification every six months.

If enacted, it would be the second change to the pilot age law since it was first established in 1960. Congress previously raised the mandatory retirement age from 60 to 65 in 2007.

✈️ Driving Flying the move… An ongoing pilot shortage, which forced many US airlines to cut back on summer flight schedules despite strong consumer demand for air travel. And it doesn’t appear to be getting better anytime soon.

• Over the next four years, roughly 14,000 US pilots will turn 65 and be forced to retire under current laws, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the bill’s sponsor.
• An additional 14,500 pilot job openings are projected each year for the next decade, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but the FAA only issues an average of 6,500 new pilot certificates annually… and its training programs have actually seen a decrease in applicants since the pandemic began.

🚫 Zoom out: Similar staffing shortages in Europe have also led to flight cancellations and capacity limits, most notably at London’s Heathrow Airport, the busiest place for international air travel in the world.

+In the know: Since May 27, roughly ¼ of all flights by US-based carriers have been canceled or delayed, per flight-tracker FlightAware, up from ⅕ of flights over a similar period in 2019.

Most of us have a... let’s say... reckless spending phase at some point in our lives. And hey, there’s nothing wrong with a good time!😎👍

Eventually, though, most of us have to get serious about our spending habits.🙍‍♀️

☝️ But if you’re going to become more financially responsible anyway, why not get rewarded for doing it???

Introducing Jupiter Card: the first-ever credit card that rewards you for sticking to budgets and limits!

⚙️ How it works… When you sign up, you'll receive Jupiter Goals (like spending less than you make or adding to your savings). And when you hit them, you earn better cash back!

• Every time you complete a goal it adds to your lifetime point balance 
• As this point balance grows, you “level up” and get better interest rates and credit limits

You can also track your progress and compare your spending to others with Leaderboards! (Nothing like shame and envy to drive results! 😉)

Join the free waitlist for Jupiter Card.

If all of your friends jumped off a cliff entered the streaming wars, would you do it, too? If you’re the NFL, the answer is yes: the league's first standalone streaming service, NFL+, officially launched yesterday for $4.99 per month (or $39.99/year).

🏈📺 More deets… With its launch, the NFL joins the MLB and NBA as the only pro sports leagues with a streaming service. Subscriptions will include live out-of-market preseason games across all devices, live local and primetime regular-season and postseason games on mobile devices, live local and national audio for every game, NFL Network shows on-demand, and more. 

• The service won’t initially feature exclusive regular-season games, but could eventually in the next decade or so, per NFL Media executive vice president and chief operating officer Hans Schroeder. The league has already locked up its local broadcast rights for the next 7 to 11 years.

💰 Zoom out: The NFL is currently in the process of renewing the rights for its Sunday Ticket package, which DirecTV has held since 1994 (their deal expires after this season). The league is reportedly asking for $2.5 billion per year, with the top candidates being Apple, Amazon, Disney, and Google.

• ☝️ What appears to be a humpback whale breached and landed on the bow of a boat in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on Sunday. Local officials said no one was injured and the boat wasn’t seriously damaged.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🐔 Meat companies collectively employing ~90% of America’s chicken processing jobs agreed to pay $85 million to settle DOJ claims that they illegally exchanged info about worker wages and benefits to drive down employee competition.
• 🚘 Tesla incurred a $170 million loss after selling more than 75% of its bitcoin holdings last quarter, new filings revealed; the automaker also disclosed another SEC subpoena over CEO Elon Musk’s 2018 “Funding secured” tweet.
• 🏦 A former Goldman Sachs banker was charged in an insider-trading scheme where he allegedly shared confidential information with a close friend over games of squash.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📱 Since Instagram launched Reels, its TikTok clone, engagement on regular, non-Reels content has dropped 44%, according to a new analysis of 81 million posts.
• 🎭 Actor Paul Sorvino, best known for his roles in Goodfellas and Law & Order, died on Monday at the age of 83.
• ❓ Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik both signed long-term deals with Sony to split hosting duties on Jeopardy!

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🌎👶 Humans around the world tend to speak and sing to babies with similar high-pitched, exaggerated sounds, which may advance infants’ cognitive and social development, per a new peer-reviewed study.
• 🐜🤖 Colonies of ants act a lot like neural networks, with groups of the insects weighing up both external inputs and internal principles when making decisions about what to do as a collective, per new peer-reviewed research.
• 🦖 Tyrannosaurus rex isn’t actually three separate species – as was purported in a controversial paper published earlier this year – according to new peer-reviewed research.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🙅‍♂️📰 Elon Musk denied a recent WSJ report that alleged he had an affair with the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
• ⚖️ ​​Two-thirds of Americans (67%) favor term limits for Supreme Court justices, per a new AP/NORC poll, including 82% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans.
• 🤔 80% of millennials have moved less than 100 miles from where they grew up, while only 10% moved more than 500 miles away, according to a new study from the Census Bureau and Harvard.
• 🗺️✈️ Join thousands of travel-preneurs and receive a weekly newsletter sharing a curated collection of paid opportunities & useful resources for travel bloggers, location-independent freelancers and digital nomads who want to create a freedom lifestyle. Subscribe today, it's free!*

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💬 Quoted… ​​“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the indigenous peoples.”

Pope Francis visited the site of a former residential school for Indigenous Canadian children yesterday, issuing a historic apology for the Catholic Church’s role in government-sponsored “projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation.”

• It was the first event in the pope’s weeklong “penitential pilgrimage” across Canada to meet with – and apologize to – various Indigenous communities.

🚢 Stat of the Day: A record 887 superyachts (aka boats at least 295 feet long) were sold in 2021, a roughly 100% increase from the previous year, per The New Yorker.

• This trend shows no signs of slowing, either. More than 1,000 superyachts have already been commissioned this year.

🌎 Around the World: Russia announced gas exports through the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany will be cut in half starting on Wednesday, due to what Moscow claims is maintenance that’s held up by Ukraine-related sanctions. The EU has called the situation “energy blackmail.” (Background)

🤯 Did You Know?... People who grew up in the era of black and white television and movies mostly reported dreaming in black and white. People raised before or after that time period mostly reported dreaming in color.

📖 Worth a Read: ‘Bend and Blaze’: High Yoga Classes Are All the Buzz These Days→ (WSJ)

📊 Poll results: Yesterday, we asked what you all thought of California’s gig-worker law AB5, which inspired ongoing trucker protests that closed down the third-busiest port on the West Coast for all of last week.

• 17% of y’all support AB5, 29% are against it, and 54% were unsure or had a more nuanced opinion.

See the full 360° view here.

Questions this week were pretty overwhelmingly focused on details of the newsletter, so we picked one that cuts right to the heart of our mission. Let’s rock ‘n roll.🤘

• Have a question you’d like to ask us (and our rolodex of contacts)? Just submit it here.

This is a great question.

📝 Tl;dr: When covering any political topic or story, it’s our editorial policy to always include links to reporting from left-leaning and right-leaning publications, since the words used, angles taken, and context provided differ between news outlets.

✍️ Longer answer: Let’s break down the most recent example of us doing this in our coverage. That would be last Friday, when we wrote about the Jan. 6 hearings in the “Everything Else” section of DONUT Holes.

How we covered the story: “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,“ a neutral description of the events that occurred. We also provided links to left-leaning and right-leaning coverage.

• How the left-leaning link framed it: “Trump instigated his supporters’ attack on Congress and threats against Pence, Jan. 6 committee says”
• How the right-leaning link framed it: “Testimony Depicts the Former President as Content to Let the Riot Rage”

Note the difference in word choices. And to go a step further, publications almost always provide additional context surrounding the events they’re covering… which mostly depends on the narrative/angle the publication or author wants to illuminate (even the “center-leaning” ones).

At the end of the day, our goal is to provide you with factual information that you can peruse to make up your own mind on the news. We believe the way we go about including partisan links for political stories furthers that mission.

Hopefully this answers your question!

🤔 Have a question you’d like to ask us (and our rolodex of contacts)?... Just reply to this email or submit it here.

Alonzo Colman recently won $250,000 from the Virginia state lottery... all thanks to a dream he had. 

He was running errands when, on a whim, he decided to buy a lottery ticket with the same numbers he had dreamed of. Later that night, Alonzo found out that he'd won a quarter of a million dollars.🤯

🗯 What he's saying... “It was hard to believe,” Alonzo told Virginia state lottery officials. “It still hasn’t hit me yet!”

• The odds of him winning the top prize were 1 in 3.8 million. Now that's a lucky dream!

Disclaimer: We don't advise trying this at home.

🏛️ True or False?... Julis Caesar and Cleopatra’s son was named Caesarion.

🤔 Riddle Me This: I start with 'M,' end with 'X,' and have a never-ending amount of letters. What am I?

(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.

🏛️ T/F: True

🤔 Riddle: Mailbox