Good morning. It’s almost summer time, which means it’s almost… wedding season!! And from the looks of a recently released Axios report, things are gonna get a wee bit pricey for all involved.

The price of just about every specific wedding-related item has gone up over the past three years except… the groom’s attire! Listen up, fellas: if you’re gonna have a wedding, you might as well be looking fly. Treat yo self and get that baby blue suede suit. You deserve it.

And now, NEWS.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.67 minutes to read.

“Wrong turns are as important as right turns. More important, sometimes.”

–Richard Bach (b. 1936)

This spring, the number of US students attending college across all sectors fell for the tenth consecutive year to reach 17.1 million, per a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. And that’s despite seeing the first increase in community college enrollment in at least a decade.

📈📉 A deeper dive… The percentage of US high-school graduates who attended college in 1990 was 60%. By 2010, it was 70%.

But then, in the early 2010s, that figure reversed course and began to decline, eventually reaching 62% by the fall of 2022, according to Labor Department data published last month.

Experts say the overall decrease in US college enrollment can be attributed to three main factors:

1. The rising cost to attend. Average tuition and fees at US universities have increased 73% since 2008, per a US News & World Report analysis of the top 440 schools in its annual rankings. (For comparison: US inflation was 41% over the same period.)
2. More HS graduates are opting for specialized training programs. Over the past decade, the number of young Americans entering apprenticeship programs – sponsored by companies working in construction, consulting, cybersecurity, auto repair, banking, software development, and more – has risen by more than 50%, per data from the WSJ.
3. They’re also choosing to enter the workforce. The unemployment rate for Americans between the ages of 16 and 19 fell last month to its lowest level in over 70 years. Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate among that age group (aka the percentage actively seeking work) has risen from 33% in 2011 to 37% today.

📊 Flash poll: In your opinion, what’s the No. 1 reason behind the recent decline in US college enrollment?

It costs too much

There are better post-grad education options

More teens are choosing (or are forced) to enter the workforce

Other

🇬🇧🧀 A Canadian woman who was knocked unconscious during an annual UK cheese race ended up… winning the race. The Gloucester Cheese Roll, which (and this is all real) involves a group of contestants chasing after a wheel of cheese as it rolls down a steep hill, has been held in western England every year since at least 1826 (or maybe even 600 years earlier). And yet – it's unclear why the tradition first started. This year’s winner on the women’s side took home first prize, aka the cheese wheel itself, despite not remembering what happened after bumping her head and going unconscious seconds into the race.

🇷🇺 Moscow was attacked by drones yesterday morning, in the first strike on its residential areas since Russia invaded Ukraine. Russian officials said all eight drones were shot down or diverted with electronic jammers, causing damage to a handful of buildings and forcing some local residents to evacuate. President Vladimir Putin claimed the attack was retaliation by Ukraine’s military for recent Russian airstrikes, while a presidential spokesperson in Kyiv said Ukraine had “nothing directly to do” with the drone strike.

🇨🇳🇦🇪🇰🇵 It was a big day for government space programs: 1) China unveiled plans to put people on the Moon by 2030, and also launched three astronauts to its new Tiangong space station (with the launch, a record-high 17 astronauts are currently in space at the same time). 2) The UAE announced plans to send a spacecraft to our Solar System’s main asteroid belt in 2028 to search for clues about the origin of life. 3) North Korea launched what it said was the country’s first-ever military spy satellite, which will be used to boost monitoring of US activities.

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If you want to make a chart-topping TV show, here’s the secret formula: Kevin Costner playing football.

Variety recently released a list of the top 100 most-watched series of the 2022-2023 TV season, according to Nielson data. And we double-dog dare you not to have the same exact show idea that we did after reading the top three:

1. Sunday Night Football: With an average viewership of over 18 million people per week, the NFL on NBC took down the #1 spot.
2. Yellowstone: The Kevin-Costner led drama on Paramount Plus took the #2 spot, with 11.5 million viewers/week. Though the show is in its last season, a Matthew McConaughey spin-off has been confirmed.
3. Monday Night Football: The NFL’s Monday night game on ESPN rounded out the top three, with 10.1 million viewers a week.

🥇 CBS, ftw: Of the top 15 shows on the list, eight of them are on CBS, including NCIS, FBI, and Young Sheldon, the top comedy on the list. CBS also took down the title of Most Viewed Network, with a total of almost 828 billion minutes watched (head-and-shoulders above #2 NBC, which recorded just under 500 billion viewing minutes).

🧠 In the know: This list does come with a big ol’ asterisk – it’s missing all of the shows on streaming. That’s because streamers don’t often share their data publicly – and, when they do, it’s measured in total hours watched vs. the weekly averages of linear TV.

But, by using total minutes viewed, we can get to a more apples-to-apples comparison. This would put Netflix in an almost-tie with CBS for first place on the network chart, with about 827 billion total minutes viewed.

💬 Quoted… "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

Over 350 of the AI industry’s leaders, CEOs, and researchers released a 22-word statement yesterday, stating that AI’s spread through the world could cause - *checks notes* - global extinction.

• The statement didn’t include any proposed solutions because, as the Center for AI Safety’s executive director’s Dan Hendrycks put it, the experts don’t agree about the details of the risk and how exactly to mitigate them.

🏈💰 Stat of the Day: The NCAA recently surveyed college-aged students to better understand their relationship with sports gambling. About 58% of all students polled had bet on at least one game, with the majority of these bets (67%) coming from students living on campus. Interestingly, the legality of betting didn’t make a big difference for students – areas where betting is legal and illegal had roughly the same levels of engagement.

🤯 Did You Know?... When adjusted for inflation, Gone With the Wind is the highest-grossing movie of all time, with a cool total earn of $3.4 billion.

📖 Worth a Read: A Chance Event 1 Million Years Ago Changed Human Brains Forever → (ScienceAlert)

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• ☝️ You’re looking at a series of “coral guardian” statues recently created by artist Jason deCaires Taylor; the pH-neutral, low-carbon statues depict some of the world’s most famous conservationists, and are intended to serve as a home for sea creatures in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 US markets closed mixed across the board yesterday (S&P: +0.002%; Dow: -0.2%; Nasdaq: +0.3%).
• 📈 Nvidia became the seventh US-listed company ever to reach a $1 trillion market cap during trading yesterday, before slipping to $990 billion by market close; there are four current companies with a market cap over $1 trillion – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft.
• ⚖️ Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes reported to a federal prison in Texas yesterday to begin serving her 11-year sentence for defrauding investors.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

in partnership with DeLo-xx

• 📺 Succession’s series finale drew 2.9 million live viewers Sunday night, marking a new series high; Season 4 is currently averaging 8.7 million viewers per episode, up 21% over Season 3.
• 🐦 Twitter is currently worth one-third of the $44 billion Elon Musk paid to acquire it last October, according to a new Fidelity assessment.
• 🏀 The Philadelphia 76ers are hiring Raptors head coach Nick Nurse to the same position, per a report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski; 🗣️ Golden State Warriors General Manager Bob Myers said he’s stepping down from his role after winning four championships in 11 seasons.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Ice Barrel

• 🤖🏥 ChatGPT provides higher quality advice to common medical questions than licensed doctors nearly 80% of the time, per a new peer-reviewed study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
• 🏡 Prosper Robotics, a startup founded by a former OpenAI employee, is building a household robot it says will be able to do laundry, load and empty the dishwasher, clean surfaces and floors, and prepare simple meals.
• 🦜 Parrots consistently show an interest in video chatting with other parrots when trained and given a choice to do so, per new research presented at the 2023 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• ✈️ Nearly 9.8 million US travelers passed through airport security over the Memorial Day long weekend, representing a 300,000-person jump over the same period in 2019, the TSA revealed yesterday.
• 🇺🇬 Uganda’s president signed a new anti-LGBTQ law on Monday that, among other things, establishes a penalty of life imprisonment for “engaging in acts of homosexuality."
• 🏛️ The bipartisan debt ceiling agreement cleared the House Rules Committee by a 7-6 margin yesterday, setting up a vote in the full chamber later today. (Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 📺 The best TV finales of the 21st century, ranked.

*Sponsored post

Who didn't love recess when they were little? 

Darling’s Auto Group in Bangor, Maine, is helping make recess even more exciting for students at Stillwater Academy. The auto group recently donated brand-new playground equipment that allows kids to just be, well, kids. 

• Stillwater Academy is a private school serving special needs students from ages 5 to 22. And when Darling's heard of their need for a new playground, they didn't hesitate to make it happen. 

💬 What they're saying: "Anytime that we can do something like this to help out people in our local community is huge to us,” said owner Connor Darling. “ That’s really what we thrive on and what all our people believe at its core value at Darling’s. So, it’s what we love to do.”

❓ Trivia: Why would coal miners bring a canary down into the mine with them?

🐜 True or False?... Ants don’t sleep.

🤔 Riddle Me This: I’m part of a belt that's too big to wear, and if I fall off it could lead to despair. What am I?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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Start referring.👇

❓ Trivia: To detect the presence of carbon monoxide and other toxic gases

🐜 T/F: False… they aren’t that hard of workers😉

🤔 Riddle: An asteroid