Good morning. Did you know Friday was named after the french fry? No that’s not true, but imagine if it was? Sports arenas are brand names now – the Miami Heat play in the FTX Arena Kaseya Center, for example.

So why not Frontier Friday or Meta Monday or even perhaps DONUT Duesday?

Tuesday would be better if it was Duesday right? When will the government tackle these important issues?

Anyways – TGIFF.

And now, the Nokia News.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.73 minutes to read.

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

–Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Whether you’re ordering food through a delivery app, using a self-serve kiosk at an airport, or buying products online, Americans are being asked to tip on a wider range of services than ever before.

But while the opportunities have increased, Americans are currently leaving fewer tips than in previous years, according to a newly-published report from financial services firm Bankrate.

🔢 By the numbers: Since 2019, Bankrate has asked ~2,500 US adults a series of questions regarding their tipping habits. Compared to past surveys, the percentage of Americans who say they always tipped this year fell across every single industry.

A few examples:

• Sit-down restaurants: 65% of Americans say they always tip, down from 73% last year and 75+% in 2021 or earlier
• Hair stylists and barbers: 53% of people always tip, compared to 66% last year
• Food delivery: 50% always leave a tip, down from at least 57% prior to 2022
• Hotel housekeepers: 23% always tip, versus 27+% in all previous years

Overall, two-thirds of US adults say they hold a negative view on tipping, with men, Gen Z, and millennials being the most likely groups to not leave a tip across all industries.

📉🤔 What’s behind the trend?... Bankrate analysts said the recent decline in tipping can largely be attributed to historic levels of US inflation, as well as general economic unease among consumers.

• Outside of their personal economic situation, Bankrate found Americans’ biggest tipping complaint is that businesses should pay their employees better, with 41% saying they agree.
• A significant number of folks also say they feel annoyed about pre-entered tip screens (35%), and they feel US tipping culture has gotten out of control (30%).

📊 Flash poll: In general, how do you feel about the practice of tipping?

Positive

Negative

Neutral

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⛰️ A pair of Chinese climbers abandoned their Mount Everest summit attempt to rescue an unconscious climber. Fan Jiangtao and Xie Ruxiang from China’s Hunan province were just 1,000 feet away from the summit late last month, when they spotted an unconscious woman who was out of oxygen and showing signs of severe frostbite. While it’s neither uncommon nor frowned upon for Mount Everest climbers to prioritize their own summit over helping others, Fan, Xie, and their two sherpas instead carried the woman for four hours to a base camp below.

🌊🌡️ El Niño has officially begun after a four-year hiatus, per US officials. The natural climate phenomenon is marked by particularly warm surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, which drives hotter weather across the globe. El Niño is associated with dryer seasons in the northern US and Canada, while the opposite is true for the US Gulf Coast and Southeast (which typically experience increased flooding). Experts predict the current El Niño will last for about a year, and will likely make 2024 the world’s hottest year on record.

🇨🇺🇨🇳 Cuba has reportedly agreed to host a secret Chinese spy base. China will pay “several billion dollars” to the Cuban government in exchange for allowing it to build a secret eavesdropping facility ~100 miles from Florida, per a new WSJ report citing US officials with knowledge of highly-classified intelligence. China’s new facility will reportedly allow it to intercept electronic communications throughout the southeastern US, which is home to dozens of military bases. Officials in the US and Cuba have denied the WSJ’s claims, while Beijing declined to comment.

From "Crunchy Flamin’ Hot” to “Crunchy Flamin’ Hot Limón,” all the way to “Crunchy XXtra Flamin’ Hot,” there’s no single best flavor of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. They are all perfect in their own way.

And none of them would have been possible without one man – Richard Montañez, the alleged inventor of the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto and subject of the Eva Longoria-directed film Flamin’ Hot, out today on Hulu and Disney+.

We’ll come back to that "alleged" in a sec.

⏪ Origin story: Flamin’ Hot tells Montañez’s story exactly as it’s written in his memoir, A Boy, a Burrito, and a Cookie: From Janitor to Executive. The book follows Montañez as he rises through the ranks of Frito-Lay from a janitor to the company’s head of multicultural marketing. And at some point in there, he invented the stain-your-fingers snack that’s since been outlawed at several US school districts (based on research that suggests the snack creates a brain response similar to that in people addicted to drugs).

• There was just one little issue. When Flamin’ Hot went into production in 2021, an LA Times investigation was published claiming that, according to interviews with over a dozen Frito-Lay employees, Montañez wasn’t actually involved in the invention or testing of Flamin’ Hot.
• But that didn’t stop Longoria and her team from continuing. According to one of the film’s writers, Linda Yvette Chávez, the film is not meant to be a biopic, but a "Rocky for Latino Americans" underdog story about “how complicated it is to be a person of color in this country.”

🍿 Now in theaters: Flamin’ Hot isn’t the only movie coming out this weekend. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts debuts across the country today.

💬 Quoted… “I have been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM.”

In a series of social media posts last night, former President Donald Trump said he’s been indicted on federal criminal charges stemming from his storage of classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. 

• Trump’s lawyer later confirmed he’s facing a total of seven counts, which have yet to be unsealed.

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

👪 Stat of the Day: It’s racket sports all the way down. The number of public pickleball courts (say that five times fast) in the 100 biggest US cities has increased from 420 to 2,788 over the last six years. And it’s not just pickleball. Padel, another racket-based game that started in Mexico (basically a mix of squash and tennis), has already garnered 20 million players worldwide, per the NYT.

🤯 Did You Know?... While shooting Blues Brothers, actor John Belushi walked off set and into a nearby neighborhood, where a local saw him walking and invited him in. Belushi then ate everything in the fridge and fell asleep on the couch.

📖 Worth a Read: He ran out of countries to visit, so he created his own → (CNN)

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• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners of the tenth annual UN World Oceans Day photo contest, which featured thousands of global entries.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Pendulum

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board yesterday (S&P: +0.6%; Dow: +0.5%; Nasdaq: +1.0%); the S&P 500 officially ended its longest bear market since the 1940s and entered into a new bull market (aka up 20% from a recent low).
• 🚘 Uber is bringing its peer-to-peer car-sharing service to North America; Uber Carshare will allow users to earn money by loaning their car to strangers while they're not using it.
• ⚡ General Motors is partnering with Tesla to use its EV charging technology; GM cars will be able to access 12,000 of Tesla’s US fast-charging stations via an adapter starting next year, while new GM EVs will come with a Tesla charging port installed by 2025; it mirrors a similar deal between Tesla and Ford announced last month.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏒 Stanley Cup Final: The Florida Panthers beat the Vegas Golden Knights 3-2 in overtime last night; Vegas now has a 2-1 series lead.
• 📱 TikTok allegedly gave members of the Chinese Communist Party access to “god credentials” allowing them to monitor users’ personal data, including that of US residents, per ByteDance's former US head of engineering Yintao “Roger” Yu.
• 📺🏈 The CW has bought the rights to Inside the NFL; the weekly series, which has been running since 1977, was dropped by Paramount+ earlier this year.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Ice Barrel

• 🤖💻 AlphaDev, a new AI system based on Google’s AlphaZero AI, can create algorithms that sort data up to three times as fast as human-generated algorithms, per a peer-reviewed study published Wednesday in Nature.
• 🪜🧽 The Ascender from Miso Robotics is the first robot vacuum that can climb and clean stairs.
• 🐙 Octopuses can edit their own genetic information in order to adapt to different temperatures, per a peer-reviewed study published yesterday in Cell.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🌁🔥 Air quality was above levels considered unhealthy across the Northeast US for a third straight day due to smoke from ongoing Canadian wildfires; weather experts say the smoke will likely begin to clear this weekend due to strong western winds. (Background)
• 🛸 The House Oversight Committee said it’s in the “early stages” of preparing a hearing on UFOs in response to unconfirmed claims by a former intelligence official that the US government secretly possesses vehicles of non-human origin. (Background)
• ⚖️ In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama illegally gerrymandered its voting districts in 2021 to undermine Black voters; the Court ordered Alabama to redraw its maps to create two out of seven districts with a majority of Black residents instead of one; about 27% of the state’s population is Black. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 🧀⛽ Cheez-It pumping rest stop opens in California.

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Find out how your news superpowers stack up against the team.

Three men enjoying a beach day in England were recently swept out to sea on a giant inflatable duck. 

🐤 Their ducky lucky day... After blowing up the inflatable while out on a kayak, the three men were quickly swept up by the current and soon found themselves more than 650 feet from shore. 

• Luckily, members of the Appledore RNLI were already out on their lifeboats completing a training exercise, and were able to rescue the men (and giant duck) safely.

Below are three lists of ingredients. All you have to do is give us the completed dish they make.

☝️ Recipe #1:

• Garlic
• Chinese five spice powder
• Honey
• Hoisin
• Soy sauce
• Ketchup
• Sesame oil
• Chicken thighs

✌️ Recipe #2:

• Northwest cherries
• Sugar
• Grated orange zest
• Orange juice
• Salt
• Balsamic vinegar

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Butter
• Diced ham
• Yellow onion
• Red & green bell pepper
• Salt & pepper
• Eggs
• White cheddar cheese

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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☝️ Recipe #1: Char siu chicken

✌️ Recipe #2: Fresh cherry compote

3️⃣ Recipe #3: Denver omelet