Mic Drop

Seventeen people will receive the country’s highest civilian honor next Thursday. Among them: Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt in 2011 and became a gun control advocate, and actor Denzel Washington will receive honors. Athletes Simone Biles and Megan Rapinoe will each get another medal they can add to their already extensive trophy cases. They join the exclusive club of only four other women athletes and coaches to receive the award. A few other awardees: Posthumous medals will be given to former Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs, Republican Senator John McCain, and union leader Richard Trumka. Civil rights leaders Fred Gray Sr., the attorney who filed the petition to challenge Alabama’s bus segregation, and Diane Nash, one of the most important student civil rights organizers of the 20th century. Sandra Lindsay, the NYC Covid nurse who was the first person in the US to get the Covid vaccine outside of clinical trials. The Presidential Medal of Freedom award was established by JFK in 1963, but was first presented by President Lyndon B. Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination.

Drug cartels have taken over control of smuggling operations and increased their cut of the profits, squeezing smugglers’ take to a third of what migrants pay them. What doesn’t go to the cartel in charge of the smuggling is often doled out to local crime bosses and used to pay bribes to Mexican security forces. To keep profits up, Honduran smugglers say they charge more than triple what they used to per migrant ($13,500, up from $4,000), according to the WSJ. Still, what’s left over to pay for actual travel costs isn’t much, and conditions for migrants have deteriorated. While the San Antonio incident is the deadliest on record, it’s far from the only one: 650 people died crossing the Mexico–US border last year, the most the International Organization for Migration has ever reported since it started tracking deaths in 2014. Last year, the Biden administration launched an operation to target smuggling organizations, and last month the Department of Homeland Security announced it had arrested 2,000 suspected smugglers during the previous two months.

After their worst first half since 1970, stocks climbed to kick off the second half of the year, led by homebuilding companies. But it still wasn’t enough to notch a winning week

Klarna, the Swedish fintech company that wants to help you pay for your Abercrombie haul in four easy installments, is nearing a fundraising deal that would value it at just $6.5 billion, per the WSJ. We say “just” because it was worth $45.6 billion in June 2021. Fintech and e-commerce, the two sectors Klarna straddles, have taken some of the worst licks from the recent market downturn.

At least four SPAC mergers were called off in the 24 hours after market close on Thursday, including one that would have taken Panera Brands public, according to Bloomberg. You can understand their hesitancy—an index that tracks companies that went public via SPAC has plunged 67%. For the year to date, 30 proposed SPAC deals have been nixed.

Crypto brokerage Voyager Digital said it’s temporarily suspending all trades, deposits, and withdrawals on its platform due to current market conditions. In other words, crypto is hurting bad, and Voyager can’t maintain liquidity if its customers drain their accounts or fail to pay back loans. Voyager is the latest in a string of crypto asset-holding companies struggling to stay alive, which includes BlockFi, Celsius, and Three Arrows Capital.

looks similar to My local Philly Bilmo’s in Vancouver, WA

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https://twitter.com/i/events/1534528112578334720

Kraft is rebranding its iconic product from the buttoned-up “Kraft Macaroni and Cheese” to a chiller, shortened version in order to better “reflect the way fans organically talk about the brand.”

Stat: More than 40% of home sellers are cutting their prices in markets that boomed during Covid, including Salt Lake City, Sacramento, and Boise, according to Redfin. One Boise real estate agent said that the city grew so much during the pandemic that people who arrived there for peace and quiet are now leaving, because too many newcomers (like them) have ruined the rustic charm.

US Patent and Trademark Office The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has approved Ohio State’s application to trademark the word “THE,” which has become a popular rallying cry for sports fans of THE Ohio State University (shhh…no one tell them it’s the most common word in the English language). The process took years: As trademark attorney Josh Gerben explained on Twitter, Ohio State first filed the application in 2019. But that was held up for a couple of reasons, including a) a dispute with fashion label Marc Jacobs, which had tried to trademark the word a few months earlier and b) the USPTO’s claim that the trademark was “merely ornamental.” Both issues, apparently, have been resolved. Good news is, we don’t owe Ohio State $2 million for the 85 times we used “the” in this newsletter, and you won’t owe them anything for using it in regular conversation. The trademark only applies to certain types of sports-related clothing.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in Vancouver, WA has no ice cream IMG_0422.MOV

How many babies in the US were fed this way you think?

This picture might explain why the WEF is pushing LGBTQ+ agenda on corporations so fiercely in recent years...

Thank you @Peter Carroll.... Interesting update.... although this section still raises some eyebrows: "The police badges with a WEF logo are used by local officers in Graubunden to mark the organization’s annual conference." A "badge" is used by police and military to confer authority..... Either way this place into the narrative that they are becoming more powerful with each step.... Check out the info I just posted above about Klaus Schwab's father.