Good morning. After much deliberation, a little in-fighting, and several days' worth of rock-paper-scissors (most of which was spent deciding if you “shoot” on “shoot” or on “scissors”), the finalists for what we should call our readers are in!

Thank you for all of your amazing submissions🙏. We’ll be featuring a few of our favorites that didn’t make it to the final round in the coming weeks.

AND also, we realized that we were really asking two questions:

1. What should each individual reader of The DONUT be called?
2. What should the collective group of DONUT readers be called?

The link to vote for both the individual and group finalists is here. Please vote with your heart, and ideally while eating a doughnut. Feel free to discuss with your families and CLOSE friends (no tagalongs!). Again, the link is here.

Now, yes, you guessed it – THE NEWS.

P.S. From all of us at The DONUT, we’d like to wish a Happy Passover and an early Happy Easter to all who celebrate. We’ll be off today thru Monday, so no DONUT ‘til next Tuesday. We miss you already.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.87 minutes to read.

“The more one judges, the less one loves.”

–Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)

There are an estimated 9.2 million lead pipes that carry water into homes across America, according to a first-of-its-kind survey published Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The survey data will be used to dictate how to spend billions of federal dollars set aside as part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which set a goal of removing all of America’s lead water pipes. If this scenario was in the board game Clue, the winning answer would be Uncle Sam, with the lead pipe, in the water treatment plant.

For those unaware, lead is toxic to humans at any dose – and unlike most other toxins, the human body can’t purge itself of lead through metabolism and excretion. Instead, the metal becomes deposited in the bones and stays with that person for the rest of their life.

• High levels of lead exposure can be fatal, but even a small amount can result in symptoms like learning difficulties, increased aggression, hyperactivity, kidney damage, and infertility. The after-effects of lead exposure can take years to fully emerge, especially in young children.

🚰 Why was lead so widely used?... It wasn’t until the late 1970s that scientists discovered the dangers of lead exposure in smaller amounts. Prior to that, lead was incorporated into a wide variety of products – like pipes, cans, gasoline, paint, and children’s toys – due to its high levels of durability, malleability, and corrosion resistance.

🧠 Zoom out: Lead that can come into contact with humans, if left unaddressed, could also cause America to play out Idiocracy irl. Lead exposure was responsible for the loss of a combined 824+ million IQ points among the 2015 US population – or an average of 2.6 lost IQ points/person – according to peer-reviewed research from last year.

🇿🇦 *Samuel L. Jackson voice* I’ve had it with this… South African pilot Rudolph Erasmus had a real-life Snakes on a Plane moment on Monday, when he discovered a highly-venomous cobra under his seat while carrying four passengers 11,000 feet in the air. Thankfully he was able to make a safe emergency landing without upsetting the Cape cobra, which is considered one of Africa’s most-deadly snakes (a single bite can kill within one hour).

🇮🇱🇵🇸 Israeli police clashed with Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem yesterday. Israeli law enforcement raided the mosque in an attempt to remove what they said were masked agitators, who locked themselves inside after attempts to remove them by dialogue failed. Palestinian witnesses said Israeli forces disrupted peaceful worshippers who were praying during Ramadan, and accused them of using excessive force including stun grenades, tear gas, and beatings with batons. The Al-Aqsa Mosque is considered the third-holiest site in the Islamic faith; it’s also the location of Temple Mount, the most sacred site in Judaism.

🌎 Law enforcement from 17 countries successfully took down the dark web marketplace Genesis Market. The international sting, dubbed Operation Cookie Monster, led to the arrests of 120 suspects involved in Genesis Market, which officials called “one of the most dangerous marketplaces selling stolen account credentials to hackers worldwide." The dark web marketplace featured more than 80 million stolen credentials and digital fingerprints from more than two million people up for sale, per the British National Crime Agency.

💭 Imagine ... It's 2:30 pm, time is flying and you still have deadlines to meet before the end of the day.

You’ve been here before... except one thing is different.

This morning you finally had your first matcha 🍵.

🤔 Why?

Real talk – the 5 cups a day of whatever else you’ve been drinking wasn’t cutting it anymore… it’s time for something with a better track record.

🏯 The Zen Monks who single-handedly created matcha 1,000 years ago needed a source of energy to get through long meditations without crashing. Thus, Matcha was born! 

And it's not just powdered green tea:

• Time-released caffeine that won’t crash you
• Doesn’t impact sleep (in fact, it may improve it)
• Lots of L-theanine, a calming amino only found in matcha
• Supports cognitive and mental health
• More antioxidants and some studied against cancer

🏆 Matcha.com is the #1 Trusted Matcha Brand, and some of their partner farms in Japan are more than 400 years old! Coffee isn’t even that old...

Use the code DONUT for an exclusive 25% off 🍩👍

The character of Michael Jordan’s mom wasn’t a central part of the original script for the movie Air, which debuted in theaters across America yesterday. But that all changed when Ben Affleck met with Michael Jordan to get his blessing to make the film.

After Affleck pitched Jordan on the idea, a docudrama about the historic sneaker deal behind Air Jordans, he asked MJ for some stories about his dad. Affleck believed he was central to the storyline. But Jordan’s memories of that time were all about his mom, and he said there was only one woman who could play her: Viola Davis.

Jordan got his wish, and Affleck got his movie. Also starring Affleck’s long time collaborator Matt Damon, Chris Tucker, and Jason Bateman, Air will have a wide release in theaters before coming to Amazon Prime later this summer.

🎥 Zoom out: The film is the first release for Artists Equity, a company Affleck created with Damon in November of last year. Its mission, Affleck says, is to wrestle back some of the “backend participation” that ties someone’s salary to how well a film performs.

Rather than just giving equity to the director, actors, and producers, Affleck and Damon’s plan to share a project’s profits with anyone who makes a substantial contribution to the film – i.e., editors, costume designers, and cinematographers.

• With Air, the cinematographer, assistant director, editor, and production designer all shared the profits of the film’s sale to Amazon. According to Affleck, that makes them “the highest-paid crewpeople in history, by a multiple.”

An estimated 44 million US adults report feeling loneliness “a lot of the day yesterday,” according to new Gallup polling data from over 100,000 Americans.

That figure, which equates to 17% of the US adult population, is actually down from a high of 65 million lonely adults in March 2021 – a trend Gallup attributes to the nationwide lifting of Covid restrictions.

Some other key insights:

• In the US, loneliness is inversely related to population density (aka more people = more loneliness). Americans who live in big cities are the most likely population to report feelings of loneliness (20%), while those in rural areas are the least likely (12%).
• Residents of New England (20%) report the highest levels of loneliness across all nine US sub-regions, while Americans living in the Mountain region – AZ, CO, ID, MT, NV, NM, UT, and WY – have the lowest levels of loneliness (14%).
• Adults under the age of 30 and those earning less than $24,000 per year report higher levels of loneliness than their older and higher-income counterparts.

💥 The impact: Like Inside Out showed us, emotions play a huge role in humans’ daily lives – and in this story, Anger and Sadness are the main characters. Lonely US adults are nearly 6x more likely to report feelings of significant anger or sadness than Americans who aren’t lonely.

💬 Quoted… “I was just gobsmacked."

• An amateur gold prospector in Australia recently discovered a 10-pound rock containing ~$160,000 worth of gold while scouring the country’s famous “golden triangle” area with a low-end metal detector.

⚡🚘 Stat of the Day: Electric vehicles accounted for 7.0% of all new US vehicle registrations this January, up from 4.1% in January of last year, per data from S&P Global. One interesting thing: over the same period, Tesla's share of the EV market fell from 72% to 54%.

🤯 Did You Know?... Soon-to-be empty-nest moms, you can rest easy. The average US adult lives only 18 miles from their mother – and 80% of US adults live less than a two-hour drive away.

📖 Worth a Read: Who Owns SpongeBob? AI Shakes Hollywood’s Creative Foundation → (WSJ)

• ☝️ In Madawaska, Maine, a group of volunteers cut an enormous circle in a frozen lake last weekend and set it in motion, claiming a world record for world’s biggest ice carousel at nearly six football fields in diameter.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰🏠 US markets closed mixed yesterday (S&P: -0.3%; Dow: +0.2%; Nasdaq: -1.1%). | Mortgage applications declined 4.1% week-over-week, according to data published yesterday by the Mortgage Bankers Association; year-over-year demand is down 35%.
• 🚗 US auto sales in Q1 increased by 11.7% year-over-year to 3.68 million vehicles, per the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
• ​​✈️ American Airlines is modifying its frequent flyer rewards program, as the airline moves to dynamic pricing for mileage redemptions.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎮🍿 The Super Marios Bros Movie is expected to open to a year’s-best $225+ million worldwide ($125+ million US, $100+ million abroad).
• 💃🕺 Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, the 10-episode prequel to the 1978 classic, premieres on Paramount+ today.
• 🏌️ The Masters Tournament tees off today at Augusta National Golf Club. (Fun fact: attendees can purchase the entire concessions menu for $66.)

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🥜🧬 UCLA researchers developed what they say is the first mRNA-based medicine to successfully treat peanut allergies in mice; the experimental treatment was inspired by mRNA Covid vaccines.
• 💤🚗 Driving on less than five hours of sleep makes you as likely to cause a car crash as drunk driving, per a peer-reviewed study published this week in Nature and Science of Sleep.
• 🤖💻 Google published details about one of its AI supercomputers yesterday, claiming it is “1.2x–1.7x faster and uses 1.3x–1.9x less power” than competing systems from Nvidia.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🙏 Cash App founder Bob Lee, 43, was fatally stabbed in San Francisco early Tuesday morning.
• ⛪ Maryland’s attorney general published a report yesterday accusing Catholic Church officials in Baltimore of engaging in a yearslong cover-up of the sexual abuse of more than 600 children by 150+ clergy members over 60 years; the report followed a four-year investigation into the allegations.
• 🏛️ North Carolina Republicans now hold a veto-proof majority in the state House of Representatives, after Rep. Tricia Cotham switched her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican yesterday. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 🎶 The happiest and saddest artists in the charts, according to their lyrics.

Yesterday we covered an annual report from the Social Security Board of Trustees, which found its trust fund that helps pay benefits to ~70 million retired Americans will become insolvent by 2033 – one year earlier than previously thought. After that point, Social Security will only be able to pay out 80% of all benefits.

❓ Our question to you: Which of the following potential solutions to Social Security would you support?

• 💰 Tax hike: 30%
• ✂️ Benefits cut: 9%
• 🤝 Combination of both: 22%
• 📈 Raise the minimum retirement age (like recently done in France): 21%
• 🙅‍♀️ Do nothing: 5%
• 🤷‍♀️ Other/unsure: 13%

Click here to read more of the best responses from yesterday’s poll.

+Note on sample size: We received 11,488 votes and 1,040 longform responses.

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

• Locals throw baby puffins off clifftops on a remote island in Iceland to help the stray birds take flight → (Insider)
• Chinese woman discovers her adopted son's bride is her long lost daughter → (NextShark)
• Arizona Dairy Queen on the hunt for missing red spoon statue → (APNews)
• Texas man claims little boy's ghost pushed shopping cart into his car, causing damage → (Fox News)
• ​​Buffalo calf born with bear-like claws → (UPI)

Eleven years ago, Lexi Donelson wore a turquoise gown to prom with her high school sweetheart, Dewey. After holding on to it for more than a decade, she finally found another use for her favorite dress – her daughter's school dance🥰. 

👗 Full-circle: Lexi and Dewey were married four years after their prom night, and now have a five-year-old daughter named Sterling.

• When it came time for Sterling to go to her first school dance, Lexi broke out the sewing machine to alter her prom dress for the kindergartener. 
• “When I first told Sterling, before it was altered, ‘This is going to be your dress now,’ she was really confused," Lexi shared with GNN. “But she was so excited once we started cutting and sewing. When she tried it on, she didn’t want to take it off. It looked adorable on her!”

Which US state, pictured above, is the only state whose name has one syllable?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

👆 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 who you think would like the DONUT. Once you hit each milestone, you'll get an email with a link to claim your prize. (Pro tip: there's no need to ration points, you're entitled to a prize at each tier.)

Start referring.👇

Maine