Good morning. In this edition:

• Keurig Dr Pepper🤝Peet's
• 🤖 Musk sues Apple and OpenAI
• 👫 “Shrekking,” a new dating term

…and much more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~3.57-minute read (949 words).

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“The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Keurig Dr Pepper yesterday agreed to buy Dutch coffee giant JDE Peet’s for $18.4 billion, marking the biggest European acquisition since 2023 and also ensuring that Peet will be a recurring guest on Keurig’s pod.

• Once the deal is complete, the company says it’ll combine Keurig and other coffee brands with Peet’s, then spin that off into the world’s largest pure-play coffee business.
• Its remaining standalone beverage business will include soda brands like Dr Pepper, Snapple, and 7UP, as well as energy drink brands like Bloom and Ghost.

Company officials say this two-step plan will effectively undo the multibillion-dollar combination of Keurig and Dr Pepper that occurred in 2018.

How we got here

In recent years, Keurig Dr Pepper has seen a tale of two beverages unfold:

• The company’s coffee division has lost steam, due in large part to droughts in Brazil and Vietnam—two of the biggest global coffee exporters—as well as a fresh round of US tariffs, including 50% on coffee imported from Brazil.
• On the other hand, its soda business has bubbled over with success. The company’s US beverage sales grew by ~11% last quarter on an annual basis, while Dr Pepper recently overtook Pepsi as the #2 overall soda in terms of US market share for the first time ever.

Grounds for growth: The acquisition of JDE Peet’s—parent company of Peet’s Coffee, Jacobs, Douwe Egberts, and other global coffee brands—is expected to boost Keurig Dr Pepper’s earnings and its geographical reach, as well as deliver ~$400 million in cost savings, CEO Tim Cofer said.

Zoom out: Volatility in the coffee industry means more moves are brewing. Kraft Heinz is reportedly planning a similar separation that would effectively undo the 2015 merger that created it. And Coca-Cola is exploring a sale of Costa Coffee, which the beverage giant purchased in 2018 for $5.1 billion.

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Pop Mart, the Chinese tchotchke purveyor behind the charmingly creepy Labubus and other dolls, may have stumbled onto an infinite money glitch in China: “blind boxes,” where items are packaged in a way that the exact contents are a mystery to their buyer.

This sales model is catching on across the country’s economy, as businesses are finding it can encourage repeat purchases from consumers.

• At the main Confucius temple in Beijing, visitors can buy a variety of items packaged in the blind-box format, including an ice cream treat with a blessing from the famed Chinese philosopher for $4.50.
• Fliggy, Alibaba’s travel services platform, is offering blind-box flight tickets, where travelers select a Chinese departure city and get assigned one of multiple options for dates and destinations.
• The NYSE-listed Chinese retailer Miniso offers blind boxes of watches, adhesive tape, stationery, and ballpoint pens.

But not everyone’s saying “you do you Labubu.” The People’s Daily, a Chinese state-run newspaper, recently called for stricter regulations of the trend, calling the practice a “‘commercial trap’ that precisely targets the psychological vulnerabilities of minors.”

Coming to America: As of July, Labubu sales in the US—where each doll retails for $27.99 or more—jumped 5,000% from a year earlier, catapulting parent company Pop Mart to a market cap bigger than US toy giants Mattel and Hasbro combined.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🤖 Elon Musk’s xAI sues Apple and OpenAI, alleging an “anticompetitive scheme” to favor OpenAI in the App Store and deprioritize other AI rivals.
• ✌️ Chinese developer Evergrande delisted from Hong Kong stock exchange yesterday; the firm was once China’s premier developer (worth $50+ billion), but it collapsed in 2021 under $300+ billion worth of debt.
• 🏛️ Top White House adviser says US government could take stakes in more companies in addition to Intel moving forward, potentially through an American sovereign wealth fund.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

in partnership with Fat & Weird Cookies

• 📺 KPop Demon Hunters receives its own sing-along version on Netflix, following success in a one-weekend-only theater run; the animated hit film has dominated streaming charts since its June 20 release.
• 🍿 Domestic box office is projected to reach ~$3.75 billion this summer (from May 1 through Labor Day), per new Comscore data; that’s up 2% from last year, but shy of the $4+ billion seen in 2023 and many years pre-Covid.
• 🏈 Cincinnati Bengals reportedly agree to one-year deal with DE Trey Hendrickson, last year’s NFL sack leader, that nearly doubles his 2025 salary to $30 million. | Washington Commanders reportedly sign WR Terry McLaurin to three-year deal worth up to $96 million.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🤖 Meta partners with AI startup Midjourney to license its image and video generation technology for future Meta AI models and products. | Google says it’s dropped the median energy usage of its AI text-only queries by a factor of 33x over the past year.
• 🪱 First human case of flesh-eating parasite "New World screwworm" detected in the US.
• 🫁 Chinese scientists perform first-ever pig-to-human lung transplant; the genetically-modified pig organ sustained damage, but functioned to some degree after being transplanted into the brain-dead human patient.

US, WORLD & POLITICS

in partnership with Upwork

• 👮 National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, by President Trump this month began carrying firearms Sunday evening; weapons are authorized for self-protection and "as a last resort" in response to an "imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm," officials say.
• 🏛️ Trump admin arrests Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was previously mistakenly deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador, and plans to re-deport him to Uganda; Garcia’s deportation was temporarily blocked hours later by a federal judge. | Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, co-founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel alongside El Chapo, pleads guilty in Brooklyn courthouse to federal drug, money laundering, and weapons charges; plea deal includes life in prison and an agreement to forfeit $15 billion.
• 🏥 Israeli strikes on Gaza hospital kill at least 20 people, including five journalists, per local health workers; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls the attack a mishap, says military will investigate.

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☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners from DarkSky International’s 2025 Capture the Dark photography contest, which featured 2,200+ entries from 22 countries.

🤔 Did you know? The most reliable record-high IQ score belongs to mathematician and UCLA professor Terence Tao, 50, who has a confirmed IQ of 230. He earned a bachelor’s degree by age 16, a PhD by 21, and later went on to earn the Fields Medal (aka the Nobel Prize of mathematics).

📰 Worth a read: Why can't we walk through walls if atoms are mostly empty space?

🖱️ Clickbait: The new dating term 'Shrekking' sounds innocent. It's not what you think

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Yesterday, we covered a New York Times analysis of voter registration data that found the Democratic Party saw a mass exodus of registered voters during the Biden administration (2020-2024).

❓ Our question to you: In your opinion, what’s the main reason(s) behind the decline in Democratic support among registered US voters since 2020?

• “They keep doing things the way they always have done them instead of changing with the times. The Democratic party is unfocused, outdated, and ineffective - it needs a rebuild from the ground up if it wants to stay relevant.”
• “The Democrats, trying to be inclusive of all fringe and marginalized groups, forgot to include the fundamental issues of their base. These interests include respect for individuals and lived experience, equity for all, hands up instead of hands out, safety, and access to affordable education, food, and housing. The Democrats lack a clear message. Last, when Biden was in the White House, illegal immigration was not addressed. “
• “Simply put, the voters are willing to switch party affiliation because their current party is not living up to its promises, and not making the compromises needed to benefit more people, especially working class voters. With the rising cost of living, especially in the blue states, people want change, especially after seeing how affordable the cost of living is in some of the red states, such as Florida. Voters are becoming willing to make the changes that their party leaders are not.”

Click here to read more of the most thoughtful longform responses.

+Note: Some responses may be slightly edited for clarity/length; Sample size: We received 141 longform responses.

🎨 Trivia: On the color wheel, which color is on the exact opposite side of purple?

🥚 True or false? Ostriches produce the largest eggs of any known creature.

🤡 Riddle me this: Where is 61 greater than 100?

🤠 Elmo and Abby Cadabby swapped Sesame Street for cowboy boots when they co-hosted the Grand Ole Opry’s 100th anniversary in Nashville earlier this month. Experience some of the highlights here. 

🎨 Trivia: Yellow

🥚 T/F: False, whale sharks produce the largest eggs (though they’re incubated internally)

🤡 Riddle: A microwave (61 seconds is longer than 1:00, or one minute)