Good morning. Did you know it’s illegal for a US Senator to be mean to another US Senator while on the floor?

That’s according to Section 2 of Rule XIX of the Standing Rules of the United States Senate:

No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.

The “indirectly” in there is nice. Don’t you dare try to passive aggressively be mean to another Senator THAT ISN’T ALLOWED.

It’s funny, because the same exact law exists in the DONUT Nation bylaws:

No Dunker in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Dunker or to other Dunkers any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Dunkers.

NICE. And now, NEWS.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.94 minutes to read.

“The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.”

–Plato (428 B.C. – 347 B.C.)

Have y’all heard the new Drake x The Weeknd banger, “Heart on My Sleeve”? It’s great, but there’s just one...little...problem.

It’s 100% made with AI-generated voices. And they honestly do sound a lot like Drake and The Weeknd (listen here).

• The track was first posted this weeknd weekend to TikTok by a producer named, aptly, “Ghostwriter.” It racked up over 10 million views on the platform and 650,000 streams on Spotify before being taken down yesterday.

🎤 The artists’ response: Universal Music Group (UMG), the representative for both Drake and The Weeknd, released a statement yesterday denouncing the song. In it, UMG says that using its artists' music to train generative AI is a breach of copyright law. Plus, doing so prevents the artists themselves from ever getting paid.

🖼️ Zoom out: Music isn’t the only art-form that’s being infiltrated by AI. Last week, the German artist Boris Eldagsen won a Sony World Photography Award with a photo entitled, "Pseudomnesia: The Electrician" – but there was just one problem.

Yup, you guessed it: the photo was made by AI. Eldagsen ended up not accepting the award, saying he entered the image as a way to spark a discussion about AI. He also said that AI-generated images should not compete with traditional photography.

🏛 What’s the US Copyright Office have to say about all this?... The key, according to the agency, is about whether a human or AI is the primary "author" of the artwork. Last week, the agency ruled that Zarya of the Dawn, a comic book with human-written text and AI-generated artwork, is eligible for copyright protection for the text and the visual arrangement of the AI-generated images, but not for the images themselves.

📊 Flash poll (long-form): In your opinion, how will AI affect art over the next 20 years?

• Click here to leave a response.

🇷🇺 A Russian court denied the appeal of WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich. It was the first public appearance in nearly three weeks for the 31-year-old American journalist, who was arrested last month for allegedly spying on Russia’s military-industrial complex on behalf of the US government. A conviction in the case – which is highly likely given over 99% of espionage cases in Russia turn out that way – carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. The Journal and US State Department have denied the claims, and called for Gershkovich’s immediate release. Separately, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky made rival visits to troops stationed in Ukraine ahead of an expected Ukrainian offensive in the coming weeks.

🌍 EU lawmakers approved the world’s first carbon import tax. The vote, which capped nearly two years of negotiations, represents the final hurdle before the tax officially comes into effect in October. The measure will eventually impose a tax on all imports based on the level of greenhouse gasses that are emitted during their manufacturing process. It’s framed by EU officials as an attempt to level the playing field for domestic companies, which already have to pay taxes on their emissions.

🇮🇳 India’s Supreme Court began hearing final arguments in a case seeking to legalize same-sex marriage. If the court ends up ruling in favor of legalizing gay unions, it would become the 35th country in the world to do so – and just the second in Asia. India's government said its LGBTQ+ population stood at 2.5 million in 2012, but more recent global estimates say it could be at least 10% of the country (more than 135 million residents).

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The FAA temporarily grounded all departing Southwest Airlines flights nationwide yesterday morning at the request of the airline itself. In a statement, Southwest said a vendor-supplied firewall went down unexpectedly, causing a brief loss of connection to some data that’s essential for flight operations.

While the incident wasn’t anywhere near as bad as Southwest’s system failure in December – which led to 16,700 canceled flights compared to ~2,000 delayed flights yesterday – it still added an extra ~30 minutes to nearly half of the airline’s domestic flight schedule in the morning.

✈️ Zoom out: If you’ve grown used to looking at flight monitors and seeing bad news, there may be some good news on the horizon. Following a past few years marked by widespread delays and cancellations, the airline industry has taken a number of steps to address the issue.

These efforts – which include cutting flight capacity, lowering requirements for pilots, and hiring more air traffic controllers – have coincided with a decline in delays and cancellations. Some 26% of all US flights were delayed or canceled this past January, per the latest federal data, down from 31% in January of last year.

And this drop is better-timed than in an Odesza song; it comes as Americans aren’t just tweeting about #wanderlust – they’re living it.

• In a CNBC interview last week, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said the airline is projecting “record advance bookings for the summer.”
• Late last month, the State Department revealed it was receiving an “unprecedented” 500,000 passport applications per week, about 40% higher than the previous all-time record set last year.

The end of flu season is just around the corner – that is, unless you have four paws and a constantly-wagging tail. Nearly a half-dozen US metro areas have reported outbreaks of canine influenza, aka dog flu, over the past week.

🐶 More details... Thousands of dogs have fallen ill in animal shelters located across the country, including Philadelphia, Oklahoma City, Chicago, eastern Minnesota, and southern Kansas. As a result, many shelters in those areas have been forced to temporarily close their doors and humanely euthanize a handful of dogs with severe symptoms.

🤔 Should I be worried for my dog?... While canine influenza is highly contagious and easily spreads via direct contact between dogs, it typically only results in asymptomatic cases or mild symptoms similar to the human flu (like a cough, fever, and/or decreased appetite).

A “very small” number of dogs who contract the disease end up dying, many after developing secondary bacterial infections leading to pneumonia, per the CDC. Dog flu is considered especially dangerous for puppies (<1 year), older dogs (>7 years), and those with preexisting health conditions.

• There’s also a preventative dog flu vaccine, though CBS reported in mid-February that vets across the US have been in short supply after a similar nationwide outbreak occurred late last year.

+Worth mentioning: No hooman human cases of canine influenza have ever been reported.

💬 Quoted… “The settlement dwarfs any prior settlement of a defamation action by several multipliers.”

Yesterday, Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, which had accused the news org of knowingly promoting false claims that its voting machines were connected to a plot to fraudulently steal the 2020 presidential election. 

• It represents the largest known media defamation settlement in US history, per multiple sources.

+Dive deeper: Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right

🦖 Stat of the Day: $6.2 million = the winning bid for a 67 million-year-old composite Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton named Trinity, which was sold yesterday in the first-ever such auction in Europe.

🤯 Did You Know?... Cal Ripken Jr. holds the MLB record for most consecutive games played, with 2,632. And if you read that and thought "meh, light work" here's a bit more context: out of the 20,000+ people who have ever put on an MLB uniform, only 38 have even played in that many games, period.

📖 Worth a Read: The mysterious symbols found carved in Qatar’s desert → (CNN)

• ☝️ Five major architecture firms have submitted designs to build a new 270,000-square-foot National Museum of the US Navy located in Washington, D.C. (See them all here.)

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 US markets closed mixed yesterday (S&P: +0.1%; Dow: -0.03%; Nasdaq: -0.04%).
• 📺 Netflix reported Q1 earnings yesterday; the streaming service gained 1.75 million subscribers (~500,000 below expectations); its global total now stands at 232.5 million; the streamer will also roll out its password-sharing crackdown in the US in Q2.
• 🍎 Apple is set to launch a 15-inch MacBook Air at its annual WWDC on June 5th, per a Bloomberg report.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎭 Jonathan Majors, the Creed III and Ant-Man actor who was arrested on charges of assault and harassment in March, was dropped by his manager and PR firm yesterday.
• 🔗📱 Instagram is allowing users to have up to five links in their bio.
• 🏈 Damar Hamlin, the Buffalo Bills safety whose heart stopped during an NFL game in January, said yesterday that he’s been cleared to resume football activities.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 💉 An experimental mRNA vaccine from Moderna and Merck was shown to reduce the risk of recurrence of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, when combined with immunotherapy.
• 🛰️ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center announced a partnership with Axiom Space that will see both organizations attempt to produce stem cells aboard the ISS for the first time.
• 🌿 An estimated 70% of dispensary-sold weed in Colorado contains at least 15% less THC than advertised, per a new peer-reviewed study published in PLOS One.

MISCELLANEOUS

• 🚨 An 84-year-old Kansas City man accused of shooting a Black teenager who mistakenly rang the wrong doorbell was charged with two felonies; he turned himself into police yesterday.
• 🍄 The first magic mushroom “facilitators” in Oregon have been issued licenses, state officials said yesterday; these workers will accompany clients as they experience the now-legal drug psilocybin.
• 🏛️ Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and John Fetterman (D-PA) have officially returned to the Senate after weeks of absences.

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A trio of aerospace engineers just broke the world record for the farthest flight by a paper airplane (yes, there's a record for that). 

✈️ Committed to the cause... Garrett Jensen, Nathaniel Erickson, and Dillon Ruble worked together to engineer the perfect paper plane (M.I.A. would be proud), spending 500+ hours over the course of multiple months studying aerodynamics and origami to design it.

• Their plane set a new world record on its third attempt, flying a grand total of 289 feet, 9 inches – or nearly the length of an entire football field.

Name the movies described by the following poorly-explained plots.

1. Infant extraterrestrial gives hugs to space crew.
2. Filthy, uncultured, illiterate man gains affection of sophisticated woman
3. Nerdy guy takes magic pill, becomes superhero.

(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 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.👇

1. Alien series (1979-2017)
2. Tarzan (1999)
3. The Matrix (1999)