Wednesday, May 25, 2022

☕️ Texas tragedy

The worst school shooting since Sandy Hook...
May 25, 2022 View Online | Sign Up | Shop

Morning Brew

CardCritics

Good morning. Here's a fact: This is the second time in the last nine days that we've led the newsletter with a story about a mass shooting in America.

Neal Freyman, Max Knoblauch, Jamie Wilde

MARKETS

Nasdaq

11,264.45

S&P

3,941.48

Dow

31,928.62

10-Year

2.754%

Bitcoin

$29,531.70

Snap

$12.79

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 12:00am ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

  • Markets: The stock market's fragility was on full display yesterday when a recession warning from a small and unprofitable company (Snap) sent the entire tech industry spiraling. But...not as much as Snap. The company had its biggest one-day drop ever and fell below its 2017 IPO price of $17.

NATION

Elementary school kids killed in Texas

A man comforts a child following a school shooting in Texas Allison Dinner/Getty Images

At least 19 children and two adults have been killed after a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a town about 80 miles west of San Antonio. It's the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook Elementary, when 20 children and six staff members were killed in Newtown, CT, in 2012.

The gunman in Uvalde, an 18-year-old man who was a native of the area, also died after being fatally wounded by police who were responding to the scene. He was armed with a handgun and an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, law enforcement told CBS News.

As news of another massacre of innocent little kids in America splashed across TV networks and the internet, Democrats said, "Enough with your thoughts and prayers," and demanded that their Republican colleagues help them pass commonsense gun reform legislation.

  • In remarks at the White House, President Biden said, "As a nation we have to ask when in God's name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?"
  • An emotional Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat who represented Newtown as a congressman, pleaded with lawmakers to take action. "I'm here on this floor to beg—to literally get down on my hands and knees—to beg my colleagues. Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely," he said.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas called the shooting "truly horrific," but rejected Dems' calls for gun reform and instead proposed stepped-up security at schools. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton suggested arming teachers as a potential solution.

Big picture: Guns surpassed car accidents as the No. 1 cause of death among children in 2020, jumping nearly 30% between 2019 and 2020, per a research letter in the New England Journal of Medicine. Yesterday's shooting in Texas was the 27th school shooting this year, which means one has occurred roughly every five days in 2022.

It was also just one of several mass shootings across the country in the past couple weeks.

  • Milwaukee, WI: 21 people were injured in three shootings in downtown Milwaukee on May 13.
  • Buffalo, NY: 10 Black people were killed and three wounded in a racist massacre at a supermarket on the East Side of Buffalo on Saturday, May 14.
  • Laguna Woods, CA: A day after the Buffalo shooting, a man was killed and four others wounded at a shooting at a Taiwanese church.

And that doesn't include other recent deadly gun violence. This weekend, a man killed a 48-year-old Goldman Sachs employee, Daniel Enriquez, on a moving NYC subway car in what police are calling an unprovoked attack. The suspect was taken into custody yesterday.

Looking ahead…the National Rifle Association (NRA) is set to host its annual meeting in Houston beginning on Friday. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Cruz are slated to speak.—NF

        

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WORLD

Tour de headlines

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen testifies before the House Finance Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building November 4, 2015. She is wearing a purple blazer and in the act of removing her glasses from her face. Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images

US sets Russia on path to default. The Treasury Department will not allow Russia to pay its debtholders through American banks beginning today, revoking a special license that it had granted Russia since sanctions were first placed. Because Russia can't use American banks to pay its IOUs, it's almost guaranteed to default on its debts for the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution.

Another Netflix controversy over trans jokes. Netflix released Ricky Gervais's new comedy special, SuperNature, yesterday, and within hours viewers noted how Gervais made graphic transphobic jokes during his set. It's the second time a Netflix stand-up special has been criticized for transphobia—Dave Chappelle's The Closer led some Netflix employees to walk out last year.

Pandemic babies make a comeback. No millennial on Instagram will be surprised, but American women had more babies last year than predicted. The US birth rate rose 1% compared to 2020, marking the first time the infant population has grown since 2014 and dispelling concerns of a massive pandemic baby bust. Still, the number of births remains below the "replacement level" that's required for a population to sustain itself from one generation to the next (minus immigration).

Back to the jobbing board

A Severance gif of Helly R. attempting to quit Severance/Apple TV+ via Giphy

Just as the grass isn't always greener on the other side, the ironic Zoom backgrounds aren't always funnier at the next job. New research into the American job market shows that many people who recently quit their job for another one are pretty quickly itching to quit the new job, too.

According to a survey of 5,000 employees conducted by consulting firm Grant Thornton, 21% of American workers took a new gig in the last year. But 40% of that group is actively looking for another job, compared to 29% of all full-time employees—revealing some significant buyer's remorse among job jumpers.

LinkedIn data backs that up: The company found that the share of job switchers who'd been at their previous job for less than 12 months rose by 6.5% in 2021 compared to 2020.

That being said, job switching continues to be one of the best ways to boost your stats on celebritynetworth.com. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, hourly wages for job jumpers rose 5.6% in April, compared to 4.2% for those who opted to keep their uniforms. And, per the Grant Thornton survey, 40% of workers who took a new job reported a pay increase of at least 10%, more than double all other survey respondents.—MK

        

CRYPTO

This startup passes gas on the blockchain

Adam Neumann Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images

The blockchain startup Flowcarbon landed $70 million in its first round of funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz's crypto division. Flowcarbon was co-founded by former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, but this time he's looking to solve a more complicated problem than infusing all office water with fruit: managing carbon offsets.

Refresher: A carbon offset or credit represents a net reduction in CO2 emissions (for instance, planting trees that suck up the gas). And companies buy them to "offset" their own polluting behavior, such as General Motors purchasing carbon offsets to counter tailpipe emissions.

As it stands, carbon credits can be bought through private companies or through carbon exchanges. Flowcarbon wants to cut middlemen out of the process by turning carbon credits into tokens (its first is called GNT, for "goddess nature token") that can be bought and sold on the blockchain. The goal: faster funding for projects, more transparency for buyers.

Zoom out: Startups are swarming into "regenerative finance" (ReFi), a Web3 movement attempting to use blockchain tech to bring about positive environmental and social outcomes. Two of them, JustCarbon and Likvidi, opened carbon-token marketplaces earlier this year.—JW

        

GRAB BAG

Key performance indicators

Record-setting wave surfed in Portugal 37-year-old surfer Sebastian Steudtner rode a record-breaking wave in October 2020 in Nazaré, Portugal. Sopa Images/Getty Images

Stat: Surfing monster waves is cool, but have you ever heard of measuring monster waves after someone has surfed them? The World Surf League, with the help of scientists, has concluded that pro surfer Sebastian Steudtner broke the world record for tallest wave ever surfed by catching an 86-foot Goliath off the coast of Portugal in 2020. It took 18 months to measure the wave, given that you can't exactly have someone in a nearby boat eyeball it with a yardstick.

Quote: "This is not Covid."

You're probably not going to get monkeypox from someone by brushing past them in the grocery store, CDC official Dr. Jennifer McQuiston explained yesterday. It's mostly spread through continuous physical contact with a person who has an active rash, and sometimes can be spread through respiratory droplets, but that's "not the predominant worry," McQuiston said.

Read: Two years after George Floyd's murder, the street art created during that summer's uprising is fading away. (New York Times)

BREW'S BETS

Window or aisle? Hotel or Airbnb? Help us settle the most hotly debated travel takes ahead of Saturday's special newsletter. Vote here.

Millennial nostalgia: Most of you remember an Abercrombie & Fitch store circa the 2000s: loud music, low lighting, cologne strong enough to make your mom wait outside. Well, one full rebrand later, A&F had its best social-selling quarter ever in Q4 '21. Learn from the marketers that made it happen.

Maybe this will help you read better: It's called bionic reading, and it involves bolding the first few letters of a word.

Beep-boop, order up: Miso's robotic kitchen assistants help restaurants solve their labor shortages and boost margins by up to 300%. They've already partnered with 10 of the top 25 quick-service restaurant brands. Invest here—you've got 'til 6/23.*

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*This is sponsored advertising content.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

  • The DOJ announced a new use of force policy requiring federal officers and agents to act if they see other officers using excessive force.
  • Glossier CEO Emily Weiss is stepping down after eight years of running the beauty company she founded.
  • More signs of a housing slowdown: Sales of newly built homes plunged 16.6% in April, exceeding predictions.
  • Get ready for an unusually active Atlantic hurricane season, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said yesterday.

GAMES

The puzzle section

Word search: This puzzle will make you think about snow globes differently. Play it here.

The state of sports

What is the most populous US state without a professional sports team in the top four leagues (NHL, NBA, MLB, NFL)? And what is the least populous state with all four?

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ANSWER

Virginia is the most populous with none, and Minnesota is the least populous that has all four.

         

Written by Neal Freyman, Jamie Wilde, and Max Knoblauch

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