Good morning. For the Dunkers out there who were under the impression that the only way to win a Super Bowl ring was to, ya know, win the Super Bowl, boy howdy we’ve got news!

NFL refs who crew the big game also take home those shiny sweet rings. Which is cool, but why stop at refs? Halftime performers, hot dog vendors, and yes, even fans all deserve rings. Why not?

At that point though, it’d be cruel not to give rings to the losing team. Everyone gets a ring!!

NFL Commissioner Goodell, we await your reply.

Until then, NEWS.

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

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

–John Wooden (1910-2010)

The standing ovation is, by design, a rare event.

Except at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival, where it seems like every film premiere is followed by a standing O. And not only that – the length of each ovation becomes a central part of the film’s press at the festival.

So far, Martin Scorcese’s Flowers of the Killer Moon starring Leonardo DiCaprio tops the list of longest ovations at this year’s fest (which runs through May 27 in Cannes, France).

Tied for second longest at eight-minutes of standing and clapping are Firebrand, the Jude Law and Alicia Vikander drama, and May December, starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman.

Why all the applause? Simple — at Cannes, standing ovations are the rule, not the exception. Meaning: they happen, by design, at every premiere.

• As soon as a movie finishes, a camera begins filming live footage of the film’s stars and projects it onto the big screen for the entire crowd to see.
• This means the length is largely determined by the size of the film’s cast and how much each star hams it up for the camera (or, in Adam Driver’s case, lights a cigarette).

According to Vulture’s Nate Jones, the minimum length of applause for any film at Cannes is about four to five minutes. So if the audience hates a film, they will nonetheless rise from their seats and applaud for four minutes. (Now, if an applause goes seven minutes or longer? That might mean the crowd loved it.)

👏 Historic round of applause: This year’s clap-fests don’t come close to the festival’s longest ever standing ovation — 22 entire minutes. That honor goes to Pan’s Labyrinth, which went on to win three Oscars.

🇬🇷 Greece will hold a second set of elections in the coming weeks, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis confirmed yesterday. Mitsotakis’ center-right New Democracy party won 146 seats out of 300 in Sunday’s general election, more than doubling up the main opposition party in Greece’s largest election victory since 1974. But since his party remained shy of the majority needed to form a coalition-free government, PM Mitsotakis has opted to hold a second vote no later than July 2, in which his party will receive a bonus of up to 50 seats.

🇪🇺 The EU imposed a record $1.3 billion fine on Meta for sending user data to the US. EU regulators ruled that Facebook since 2020 has illegally stored European user data on its US servers, where officials say it can be accessed by American spy agencies without a way for users to appeal. The ruling stems from a case filed a decade ago in response to leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

🇨🇳 Youth unemployment in China hit a record-high last month, per government figures. More than 20% Chinese residents aged 16 to 24 were unemployed in April, up from 16.7% in December and far above the pre-pandemic rate of 13% or lower. Experts say China’s elevated youth unemployment rate can be mostly attributed to a mismatch between the white-collar jobs college graduates want, and the blue-collar jobs that are currently available.

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The seven states that rely on water from the Colorado River reached a breakthrough agreement yesterday. It’ll keep the water supply for some of America’s most productive farmland, as well as major cities like Phoenix and LA, from falling to critically low levels.

🌊 A deeper shallower dive… The Colorado River's “high quality H₂O,” to quote The Waterboy, was divided among seven Western states a century ago, in a pact giving half of the river's water to the Upper Basin states (CO, NM, UT, & WY) and half to the Lower Basin (AZ, CA, & NV).

But over the past two decades, its flow has steadily declined amidst an ongoing megadrought, which represents the area’s driest 22-year period in the past 1,200 years. The Colorado River and its reservoirs first hit record-low levels in late 2021, prompting states and the federal government to start discussing water cuts.

• As part of yesterday’s agreement, Arizona, California, and Nevada will reduce their water intake by a combined 3 million acre-feet by 2026, in exchange for a total of $1.2 billion in federal compensation to local farms, cities, and Native American tribes affected by the water cuts. (For reference, an acre-foot is enough water to last a typical family of four about one year.)
• Renegotiations to reach a longer-term deal for after 2026 are set to begin next month.

📸 Big picture: The Colorado River is the primary water source ​for ~40 million Americans between Denver and Los Angeles, fueling $1.4 trillion in annual economic activity and accounting for 16 million jobs across the basin states, per a 2015 study by Arizona State University.

A fake image of an explosion near the Pentagon went viral on Twitter yesterday morning, causing a brief dip in the US stock market before government officials confirmed it was a hoax.

💥 Here’s what happened: It’s unclear who initially tweeted out the fake image – but it was later posted by a verified account resembling Bloomberg News called “Bloomberg Feed,” as well as an account run by RT, a Russian state-media outlet with 3+ million followers.

At 10 am ET, as the image started to circulate widely, all three major US stock indexes, which had risen to start the day, began to fall. They dropped ~0.3% over the next half-hour, but recovered minutes after the Arlington, VA, fire department publicly confirmed the explosion was fake around 10:30 am.

• Officials have yet to officially verify whether the picture was created using AI, but experts say it carries several hallmarks of AI-generated images. For example: the columns on the building vary in size, and the fence appears to blend into the sidewalk in some places.

🤖 Zoom out: With new tech comes new (and sometimes unexpected) ways to manipulate and scam. A growing number of con artists are using AI programs that can imitate the voices of peoples’ loved ones or colleagues in an effort to obtain money or personal info – including an ongoing string of virtual kidnapping scams targeting Americans across the country, per FBI spokesperson Siobhan Johnson.

💬 Quoted… “You know what I went through, and everything just means a little bit more to me now.”

Over the weekend, Brittney Griner played in her first two WNBA games since being released from a Russian prison in December following 10 months in custody. And though she already looks to be back in top form – averaging 22.5 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 blocks over the two contests – one thing was different.

• Since 2020, Griner had elected not to stand for the national anthem to protest racial injustice against Black Americans. But on Friday before her team's opener, she stood as the Star-Spangled Banner played.
• “Just being able to hear my national anthem, see my flag, I definitely wanted to stand," she told The Atlantic.

📈 Stat of the Day: The cost of rent in the US has increased by 134.9% since 1999, while wages have grown by 76.8%, per a new report from Moody’s Analytics.

🤯 Did You Know?... Just under half of all Americans (49.6%) say they have no doubt about the existence of God, per a 2022 survey published last week by NORC; that’s down from 60+% prior to 2010.

📖 Worth a Read: Three lessons from Aristotle on friendship → (The Conversation)

• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners of this year’s Food Photographer of the Year awards held by Pink Lady.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

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• 💰 US markets closed mixed yesterday (S&P: +0.02%; Dow: -0.4%; Nasdaq: +0.5%).
• 🛢️🤝 Chevron agreed yesterday to acquire shale producer PDC Energy for $7.6 billion in stock and debt.
• 💵 📉 The Fed released its 2022 Survey of Household Economics and Decision Making (SHED) report yesterday; the percentage of US adults who said they were worse off than a year prior increased from 20% to 35%.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📺 Max, the new streaming platform from Warner Bros. Discovery, goes live today; the app will include HBO Max and Discovery+ content. | 📅 Paramount+ With Showtime, the rebranded app from Paramount, will launch next month in the US; Paramount+ will still be available as a standalone app, but Showtime’s app will be removed by the end of the year.
• 🍿 Fast X topped the box office this weekend with a $67.5 million domestic opening; the film’s worldwide gross came in at $318.9 million, the second biggest opening of the year (Mario was #1).
• 🏀 The Denver Nuggets beat the LA Lakers last night to complete a 4-0 series sweep and clinch a spot in the NBA Finals; on the Eastern side, Miami (3-0) tips off against Boston (0-3) at 8:30 ET tonight.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 💊 An oral diabetes drug from Pfizer causes a similar amount of weight loss as the Ozempic injection method, per a peer-reviewed study published yesterday in JAMA Network.
• 👂 Positive human sounds like laughter trigger stronger brain activity when they are heard from a person’s left side, as compared to the center or right side, per a new peer-reviewed study published in Frontiers in Neuroscience.
• 🌊🌕 NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently discovered that plumes of water ejecting from Saturn's moon Enceladus travel much further than previously thought, carrying the essential ingredients for life at least several thousand miles out into space.

MISCELLANEOUS

• ⚖️ TikTok filed a lawsuit yesterday challenging Montana's new statewide ban of the social media platform, alleging that it violates the First Amendment and other federal laws.
• 🏛️ Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) announced yesterday that he won’t seek re-election in 2024.
• ✍️ Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) signed a bill into law yesterday banning nearly all abortions in the state after 12 weeks of pregnancy (instead of the previous 20-week limit); the bill also sets new restrictions on gender-affirming care for residents under 19 years old. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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Yesterday we covered the ongoing standoff between Republicans and Democrats over raising the federal debt ceiling to avoid an impending default on US government debt.

❓ Our question to you: Overall, which side do you agree with more in the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations?

• 🔴 Republicans: 47%
• 🔵 Democrats: 37%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 16%

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

+Note on sample size: We received 10,974 votes and 1,029 longform responses.

Kayley Stead woke up at 6:30 am on the morning of her wedding excited for the day ahead. By 11 am, however, her world had crumbled. Her fiancé was nowhere to be found... and she realized she'd been stood up.

💒 The show must go on: Kayley was understandably confused and devastated – but decided to carry on with her nuptials anyway. "I was like, I'm going to do it," she said. "I'd spent all this money, I'd been looking forward to the food, a dance with my dad, spending time with my family, so why not?”

• Kayley and her wedding guests danced the night away, turning the wedding into a celebration of family and friendship.
• "There were so many special moments, like my wedding entrance, the sparkler walk, the first dance and punching the wedding cake," she shared. "So there was still happiness in the day."

Note: an earlier version of this story ran on October 25, 2022. Our Positive DONUT writer Kailyn is currently deep in 50-hour/week rehearsals for another slate of upcoming live shows in Europe (which is taking a lot of her focus).

❓ Trivia: What mythological figure flew too close to the sun?

👑 True or False?... Throughout history, red was considered the color of royalty.

🤔 Riddle Me This: I know a word. Six letters it contains. Take away one. And twelve is what remains.

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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❓ Trivia: Icarus

👑 T/F: False, it's purple

🤔 Riddle: Dozens

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