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It’s about to be a great day📈.

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“You can start changing our world for the better daily, no matter how small the action.”

–Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

It’s been nearly a year-and-a-half since Russia first invaded Ukraine, and Americans’ views on their government’s role in the conflict are changing.

A newly-published CNN/SSRS poll found a majority of the US public (55%) says Congress should not authorize any additional funding to support Ukraine in its war against Russia.

This marks a sharp uptick from as recently as June, when Gallup found just 28% of Americans thought the US was giving too much support to Ukraine – though opinions have been slowly trending in that direction since the early days of the war.

While there isn’t an official tally for how much aid the US government has provided Ukraine since the war began, estimates range from $66 billion to $100 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian assistance over the past 17+ months. For context, the second-largest recipient of US foreign aid over the same period was Israel, at $8.6 billion.

There’s been a recent legislative push in Congress to cut back on funds towards Ukraine, though the movement doesn’t appear popular enough to affect policy just yet.

• A group of House Republicans last month proposed a series of five amendments to the annual military spending bill that would have restricted foreign aid to Ukraine, but none of the measures received more than 30% support in the chamber.
• One week later, a GOP-backed Senate bill that would’ve limited US spending towards Ukraine until every NATO member commits to minimum defense spending levels was defeated by a 71-13 vote.

🇺🇦🪖 An update on the war: Ukraine is in the midst of a counteroffensive, launched at the start of June, that’s aimed at retaking some or all of the nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory Russia has captured and occupied since the war began.

But the slow pace of Ukraine’s troops in recent weeks indicates the conflict has no clear end in sight, which would likely challenge the US government’s ability to keep sending funds to Ukraine, officials told the WSJ.

📊 Flash poll: In your opinion, should Congress keep authorizing additional funding to support Ukraine in its war against Russia for the foreseeable future?

Yes

No

Unsure/other

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🇦🇪 The world’s largest Ferris wheel, located in Dubai, has been dormant for over a year – and officials won’t say why. The Ain Dubai, which stands twice as tall as the London Eye and contains more steel than the Eiffel Tower, was supposed to be the centerpiece of an artificial island featuring some of Dubai’s most expensive real estate. But when the attraction was closed last summer for “one month” of repairs, its owners kept extending the shutdown one month at a time until quietly revealing this past April that the ride was closed indefinitely. UAE officials have publicly said very little about Ain Dubai, in keeping with the country’s culture of secrecy around high-profile projects which are often halted or demolished without explanation, per WaPo.

🌊 Humanity is dumping significantly less plastic into oceans than previously thought. That’s the conclusion of a new peer-reviewed study published in Nature Geoscience, which found about 500,000 metric tons of plastic end up in the ocean each year – a number far lower than the 8 million metric tons per year reported in a widely publicized study from 2015. Though the new findings weren’t all positive – the researchers said the total amount of plastic in the oceans is still growing by 4% per year, and will likely double within the next two decades.

🌍 European scientists officially confirmed July was Earth’s hottest month on record (dating back to 1940). July’s global average temperature of 62.51°F was more than half-a-degree higher than the previous high set in 2019, and 1.3°F warmer than the 1991-2020 average for July, the Copernicus Climate Change Service announced yesterday. The world’s previous single-day heat record, initially set in 2016 and tied in 2022, was exceeded on every day last month except for July 1st and 2nd, Copernicus scientists said.

The US government isn’t the only one at the ratings downgrade party.

This week, Moody’s downgraded the credit rating of 10 small and mid-sized US banks by one rung, and placed several big Wall Street names – including BNY Mellon, U.S. Bancorp, State Street, and Truist Financial – on negative review.

🤔 What does this mean?... Bank credit ratings are estimates of how likely a bank is to go out of business or default. Though, as a consumer, you’re likely not at risk if your bank has a bad credit rating, as long as your accounts are FDIC insured.

The reasons for the downgrades, per Moody:

• Increased funding costs, profitability pressures, a looming recession, rising risks tied to commercial real estate, and slowing loan growth were a common theme in banks' Q2 earnings.
• For the bigger banks, issues vary by lender. Some, including U.S. Bancorp and Truist Financial, have low capital buffers that could make them vulnerable in a time of renewed crisis, Investopedia reports. Others, including State Street and BNY Mellon, have experienced significant outflows in non-interest bearing deposits (i.e., people are increasingly taking money out of checking accounts).

🏦📉 Blast from the past: Not that long ago – this past March – Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed and triggered a run on deposits across the banking industry. The panic eventually spread to Europe and resulted in the emergency rescue of Swiss giant Credit Suisse by domestic rival UBS.

Yesterday, two big things happened in the world of gambling and sports media:

• Penn Entertainment signed a $2 billion deal to create ESPN Bet, a sportsbook for audiences in the US. It’ll replace the Barstool Sportsbook.
• Penn sold its stake in Barstool to founder Dave Portnoy – who now reportedly owns 100% of the brand for the first time since 2016.

📝 Deal points: Not much is known about the price Portnoy paid for Barstool, but the deal does include him signing a noncompete, as well as a stipulation that Penn receive 50% of the gross proceeds should Barstool be sold in the future.

Much more is known about Penn’s deal with ESPN, which is the Disney-owned sports brand’s first foray into the gambling world.

• Penn will rebrand its current sportsbook to ESPN Bet later this fall in the 16 states where it’s licensed.
• ESPN will receive $1.5 billion in cash over the next ten years from Penn, as well as $500 million of warrants to purchase Penn stock.

📈 Behind the move: In a video posted to social media platforms yesterday, Portnoy framed the deal as a win-win-win. “We underestimated just how tough it is for myself and Barstool to operate in a regulated world,” he said.

Penn is now able to leverage the ESPN name, a less-controversial brand whose founder won’t send its stock price swinging. And when it comes to Barstool: “for the first time in forever, we don’t have to watch what we say, how we talk, what we do,” Portnoy said. “It’s back to the pirate ship.”

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💬 Quoted… “Acoustic hacking.”

• The era of people in relationships asking for each others’ logins has come to an end. In a new study, UK researchers created an AI model that’s capable of identifying passwords and other private data with 95% accuracy – simply by listening to a person’s keystrokes😳.

⚽🏟️ Stat of the Day: 1.37 million = the total attendance for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup as of Monday, good for a new all-time record. And there are still eight matches left to play.

🤔 Did You Know?... The amount of credit-card debt collectively held by Americans surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in history this past July.

📰 Worth a Read: The Struggle Is Awesome: How a lighthearted runner became a TikTok star → (Runner’s World)

• ☝️ NASA’s James Webb telescope recently spotted this question-mark-shaped structure that shows a pair of actively forming young stars located 1,470 light-years from Earth.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Pendulum

• 💰 US markets closed down across the board on Moody’s bank rating downgrade (S&P: -0.4%; Dow: -0.5%; Nasdaq: -0.8%). | 📈 Penn Entertainment stock up ~20% in after-hours trading.
• 🚫 The SEC announced a combined $549 million in penalties against some banks, including Wells Fargo, for allowing employees to use unsupervised side channels such as WhatsApp and Signal to conduct business; the penalties add to nearly $2 billion in similar record-keeping fines levied by regulators on banks last year.
• 🍔📉 Beyond Meat’s revenue decreased ~31% in Q2 to reach ~$102 million; its stock dropped ~14% on the day; the share price is now trading at ~$13 vs. an all-time high of $234.90 four years ago. | 📦 Amazon is running a second Prime Day in October.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚖️ Rapper Tory Lanez sentenced to 10 years in prison for the 2020 shooting of Megan Thee Stallion.
• 🍔⚖️ MrBeast countersued for $100 million by Virtual Dining Concepts, the ghost kitchen company behind his virtual burger restaurant chain; it comes after MrBeast Burgers sued Virtual Dining Concepts last month seeking a contract termination and $10 million in damages over allegations that it “tarnished” the YouTuber’s reputation with bad food and poor customer service. | 📲 Apple is planning to move the “End Call” button away from the middle of the screen to the lower right-hand corner as part of iOS17, per beta versions of the operating system.
• 🎤🙅 The 2023 Made in America music festival, a two-day event in Philadelphia slated to feature Lizzo and SZA as headliners in early September, was canceled due to “severe circumstances outside of production control.”

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Life Atlas

• 🤖 Generative AI systems like ChatGPT can be tricked into helping with scams and cyberattacks by people with little technical expertise, per a report published yesterday by IBM researchers.
• 💉 New obesity drug Wegovy cuts the risk of serious heart problems in obese patients by 20% compared to a placebo, per the results of a large-scale Phase 3 trial published yesterday by drugmaker Novo Nordisk.
• 🍺♀️ Alcohol-related ER visits, hospitalizations, and deaths have been increasing faster for women than for men since the pandemic began, doctors and public health experts told the WSJ.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🪧 More than 11,000 LA city employees – including lifeguards, traffic officers, and sanitation officers – went on a 24-hour strike yesterday demanding higher wages and alleging unfair labor practices by the city government. | 🗳 Ohio voters rejected a ballot measure that would have raise the threshold for passing constitutional amendments to 60% from a simple majority.
• 🌿🗽 A NY judge temporarily blocked the state from issuing new retail licenses for cannabis dispensaries yesterday; it marks the latest setback for the state’s recreational cannabis program, which has struggled to get up and running since full legalization was approved in 2021. (Background)
• 🗳️ Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) yesterday replaced his campaign manager with the chief of staff from his state office; the move comes two weeks after DeSantis laid off about a third of his presidential campaign staff. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 🏥👶 The best and worst US states to have a baby in 2023.

🚀 To infinity... Anastatia Mayers and her mother Keisha Schahaff will be the first-ever mother-daughter duo to travel into space.

The pair entered a sweepstake a few months ago to win a spot on the Virgin Galactic 02 flight, which is scheduled to take off on August 10, 2023, from New Mexico. 

• "Suddenly months later I'm getting correspondences saying that you're a top 20 finalist, then a top five finalist, to becoming a winner," Keisha said. "Suddenly, who's walking into my yard? Richard Branson. The whole team just swarmed into my house saying, 'You're the winner, you're going to space.'"

💫 And beyond... The pair will not only be the first mother/daughter duo to make it to space – they'll also be the first people from the Caribbean to do so. 

How to play: We provide an incorrect stat. Then you guess whether the actual number is over or under the stated value.

1. 🦖 1,250: The total number of dinosaur species that have been discovered to date.
2. 👁️ 10 million: How many times an average human blinks their eyes in one year.
3. 💍 25,000: The number of Americans injured by a piece of jewelry each year.

(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. 🦖 Under, 700
2. 👁️ Under, 4.3 million
3. 💍 Over, 50,000