Tip News Daily Brief

Your Daily Brief

June 15th, 2023

Good morning, and happy Thursday! We were a little slow on this week’s optical puzzle, which is actually kind of perfect, considering that it involves snails. If you’d like to kickstart your brain in a fun way, take a look at this drawing and see if you can spot the one snail with a unique shell. This one took our team over a minute to figure out, so reply to this email and let us know how well you do!

In Today’s Brief

Sudan: More than 2M people flee homes
UPS: Drivers on track to get AC in trucks
Marvel: Longtime comic book artist dies
Oracle: Having its best year since 1999

...and more

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Top Tips

Fed pauses rate hikes

The U.S. Federal Reserve announced yesterday that it is pausing interest rate hikes, marking the first break after 15 months of consecutive increases.

The decision to hold off on a rate hike this month was unanimous between all members of the Federal Open Market Committee. In a statement, the Committee said that it “decided to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 5 to 5-1/4 percent.” This is the range where the Fed lifted rates at their last meeting, and it marks the highest level of its key interest rate since 2007. The Committee also said that it “would be prepared to adjust the stance of monetary policy” going forward to bring inflation back to its target level of 2%.

The Fed’s decision to pause rate hikes comes one day after the Labor Bureau released a report showing that U.S. inflation rose by 4% in May (as measured by the Consumer Price Index). That 4% annualized increase in the CPI marks a decline of 3.1% from its November 2022 level, which saw an annualized increase of 7.1% from November 2021.

Modelo overtakes Bud Light

Modelo Especial surpassed Bud Light in sales this May, according to Nielsen data from consulting firm Bump Williams, overtaking Bud Light as the highest-selling beer brand in the U.S. for the first time in two decades.

Modelo–which is manufactured in Mexico and owned by Constellation Brands in the U.S.–received 8.4% of sales in the four weeks ending June 3rd, while the American-made Bud Light received 7.3%. Bud Light sales fell 24.6% compared to the same period last year, while Modelo sales jumped 10.2%, the data shows. However, Bump Williams stated that Bud Light still retains its number-one sales ranking on a running year-to-date basis (9% vs. Modelo’s 8%).

Bud Light’s sales in the U.S. and overall market share have fallen in the weeks following the brand’s April partnership with social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Since the campaign began, the stock price of Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, has fallen around 15%.

New Beatles record

Decades after the band broke up, Paul McCartney said that artificial intelligence was used to extract John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to create “the last Beatles record.”

McCartney said that in order to use Lennon’s voice, he turned to Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson for help. Speaking on the process, McCartney said that Jackson “was able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette that had John’s voice and a piano.” He added that Jackson “could separate them with AI–he could tell the machine, ‘That’s the voice, that’s the guitar, lose the guitar. And he did that.” While McCartney didn’t specify the name of the track, it is speculated to be titled “Now and Then” which Lennon composed before his death in 1980.

AI has become more prevalent in the creation of music this year. One of the more notable examples was a song called “Heart On My Sleeve” which used AI to clone the voices of Drake and The Weeknd. The song was removed from streaming services after it began charting.

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Quick Tips

Around the Globe

A fishing vessel carrying migrants off the coast of southern Greece caused at least 79 people to lose their lives when it capsized; while more than 100 were rescued, the shipwreck is the deadliest off Greece this year and the International Organization for Migration said hundreds more migrants may have been on board (More)
Over 2M people in Sudan have been forced from their homes due to two months of fighting between the country’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, according to the United Nations (More)
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to China this weekend to “keep lines of communication open” between Beijing and Washington, per an announcement from the State Department (More)

On the Homefront

24-year-old Marine veteran Daniel Penny was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely last month in the NYC subway (More)
Union leaders & shipping carrier UPS announced a tentative deal to add air conditioning to the company’s brown delivery vehicles for the first time as part of contract talks that are underway (More)
President Biden issued a veto on a congressional effort to roll back an Environmental Protection Agency standard governing pollution from heavy-duty vehicles including trucks and buses (More)

Glitz & Games

In partnership with Xero Shoes

No hip-hop songs or albums have reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 or Billboard 200 charts so far in 2023, according to a report from Billboard; it marks the most prolonged period in a calendar year without a rap album at No. 1 since 1993 (More)
Olympic ski jumper Patrick Gasienica, who competed for the United States last year in the Beijing Games, passed away at age 24; Gasienica died after being involved in a motorcycle crash in a Chicago suburb, per local police (More)
Marvel comic book artist John Romita Sr., known for co-creating characters including Wolverine, the Punisher, and Mary Jane Watson, has passed away at 93 (More)

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Business & Markets

Major indexes in the stock market ended mixed, with the Dow closing lower and the Nasdaq and S&P 500 moving higher (Dow -0.68%, Nasdaq +0.38%, S&P 500 +0.08%)
Twitter is being evicted from its Boulder offices due to owing three months’ rent to the building’s landlord; court documents show that a judge has signed off on evicting the social media company from its offices there (More)
Shares of Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) closed at a record high for a fifth straight day and the eighth time this month; the stock is up 73% over the past 12 months, marking its best-performing year for shareholders since 1999 (More)

Tips & Tricks

Feel Good: Meet Thomas Dambo, a Danish rapper-turned-artist who spent the last nine years building 100 enormous trolls out of recycled material on almost every continent in the world, each with its own unique name, story, and Earth-loving message
Bump This: Sad-boy pop duo LANY bring forth an ode to dysfunctional relationships in their new single “Love at First Fight” - listen on Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube
Chow Down: Anyone who hasn’t tasted authentic Georgia peaches is missing out, especially if they haven’t had them baked into a pie - if you’re in the mood for something sweet, try out this recipe for sweet tea peach pie from Georgia that will make for amazing leftovers after you bake it
Nerd Out: Read up on how scientists from the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells, sidestepping the need for eggs or sperm
Go Deep: Check out this new solar system researchers recently discovered where the planets orbit two suns just like on Luke Skywalker’s home planet in Star Wars
Hot Goss: Ezra Miller appeared publicly for the first time in two years at The Flash’s Los Angeles movie premiere, thanking Warner Bros. executives for their support during several controversies, including arrests in multiple states
Life Hack: Warmer weather is upon us, and a lack of hydration can cause heat intolerance, dizziness, and periods of fatigue - here’s how many glasses of water you should be drinking each day and how to stay hydrated beyond plain water, according to a nutritionist

Tip-Offs

The world’s most and least-competitive job markets.

…and see the world’s most common blood types.

The latest enemy of Musk’s Twitter: music publishers.

One teen breaks the record for solving a Rubik’s cube.

Different rooms affect the sound of balloons popping.

Starbucks gets dinged in a case of racial discrimination.

A first-ever wild hatching of endangered Burmese turtles.

…and four things to know about the holiday Juneteenth.

Looking Back…

On June 15th: Bob Barker steps down as host of The Price Is Right after more than 30 years (2007); the U.S. Marines attack Saipan in the Mariana Islands while fighting in Word War II (1944); George Washington is named commander in chief of the colonies by the Continental Congress (1775); rapper and actor Ice Cube is born (1969).

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