🌊 A Billionaire's 100 Kids

Wait… we almost had a 7.5-cent coin?

From 1886 to 1959, the price of a bottle of Coke at a vending machine stayed at a nickel — yep, same price through three wars, the Great Depression, and decades with cocaine as an ingredient. Naturally, when it was time to raise the price, Coke had to make a decision: Do you raise it to a dime? Do you make people use two coins? Do you go full Arizona Iced Tea and keep it a nickel no matter what? Instead, they decided to petition President Eisenhower to mint 7.5 cent coins. Unfortunately, Eisenhower said no. Probably a Pepsi guy.

–Max, Max, and Owen

KEY STORY

China’s Digital IDs

China’s government proposed rolling out digital IDs for internet users

• The IDs would be used to sign up for platforms like Weibo (China’s X) in place of personal info. The IDs would theoretically allow the government to track citizens’ travel plans, search histories, and online purchases

• Chinese officials said that the move would protect user data, as they would no longer have to provide their info like phone numbers to service providers

• Critics said the proposal is a ploy to shift the ownership of data from companies to the gov’t

Dig Deeper

• The plan, released jointly by China’s Cyberspace Administration and Ministry of Public Security, envisions initial ID signup being voluntary, although critics claimed the system would eventually become mandatory

KEY STORY

Middle East Tensions

Iran vowed retaliation over Israel’s strike on Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh

• Haniyeh, who lived in Qatar, was in Iran to attend Iran’s new president’s swearing-in ceremony when an airstrike struck his residence, killing him

• Hours prior, Israel announced that a strike in Beirut, Lebanon, killed Hezbollah’s top military leader

• The strikes are extremely embarrassing for Iran, which has been shown to be unable to protect its clients even in its capital city. Iran’s supreme leader said Iran must “avenge [Haniyeh’s] blood,” while the US called for a ceasefire in Gaza as a means to de-escalate

Dig Deeper

• While a leading US official had said days earlier that fears of a regional war were overblown, the back-to-back strikes have put the region on even more of a knife’s edge than it already was

• Turkey warned that they could bring “the war in Gaza to a regional scale,” while the UK said, “Regional destabilization is now more acute than ever”

• While the US wants a ceasefire, Haniyeh was a lead negotiator in the ceasefire process

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KEY STORY

Venezuela Crackdown

Venezuelan Pres. Nicolas Maduro is cracking down on the opposition after an apparently rigged vote

• Maduro claimed to win 51% of the vote in Sunday’s election. The opposition – whose leading candidate Maduro disqualified – entered the race with a large polling lead; irregularities throughout the voting day made it impossible to monitor how the election was conducted; and ballot data collected by the opposition shows Maduro lost 2.8M votes to 6.3M

• In response to ongoing protests and clashes, Maduro has called his supporters to the streets and had the police arrest protesters

Dig Deeper

• President Biden has been trying to get Brazil’s President Lula to help resolve the situation. However, Lula’s leftist party has already recognized Maduro as the winner

• It’s unclear what Biden will do next: His administration had taken sanctions off Venezuela in exchange for holding fair elections. Now that that hasn’t happened, Biden could reimplement sanctions, but that would likely cause oil prices to rise – something he wouldn’t want in an election cycle

KEY STORY

Billionaire’s 100 Kids

Telegram founder Pavel Durov revealed that he has fathered 100 children

• Durov is one of the world’s most successful tech entrepreneurs, having founded both the Russian equivalent of Facebook and Telegram

• Durov revealed Tues. that he has fathered over 100 kids: “The boss of the [fertility] clinic told me that ‘high-quality donor material’ was in short supply and that it was my civic duty to donate more sperm to anonymously help more couples…Fast forward to 2024, my past donating activity has helped over a hundred couples in 12 countries to have kids”

Dig Deeper

• Durov then wrote, “Now I plan to open-source my DNA so that my biological children can find each other more easily. Of course, there are risks, but I don’t regret having been a donor. The shortage of healthy sperm has become an increasingly serious issue worldwide, and I’m proud that I did my part to help alleviate it”

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🍖 Boar’s Head is recalling an additional 7M pounds of ready-to-eat products due to a listeria outbreak that has killed two people and sickened nearly three dozen in 13 states. It adds to a previous recall of over 200,000 pounds of sliced deli poultry and meat  

🛫 Boeing named aerospace exec Robert “Kelly” Ortberg as its next CEO. Ortberg – who retired in 2021 – previously ran one of Boeing’s suppliers and has decades of experience in the aerospace and defense industries

⚠️ Delta’s CEO said the CrowdStrike outage cost the airline $500M. The outage forced Delta to cancel 5,000+ flights and led to a federal investigation. It plans to sue CrowdStrike and Microsoft

🔥 Rioters clashed with police, burned cars, and attacked a mosque in northern England. The riot broke out after a vigil for three young girls stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, fueled by rumors that the assailant was a Muslim

🗣️ At the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention, Donald Trump said, “I didn’t know [Harris] was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black…So I don’t know: Is she Indian or is she black? I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she became a black person” 

COMMUNITY

🧠 Yesterday’s question: In your lifetime, what celebrity death hit you the hardest?

🤔 Today’s Question: One breakfast to have for the rest of your life. What are you having?

Reply to this email to let us know what you think!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🌯 Who would’ve thought? Authorities charged a 41-year-old Florida woman with multiple drug possession offenses after a traffic stop led to the discovery of several drugs in a bag labeled “Bag of Drugs”

🏊‍♂️ Seine-sational: Olympic triathletes swam in the Seine after days of delays and uncertainty over water quality. Days earlier, a rainstorm swept sewer water into the river, raising E. coli levels

🥺 No good deed goes unpunished: Authorities charged an Ohio man with criminal mischief after he spray-painted around potholes on city streets. The man did so out of frustration with the city’s slow repair response

🎮 Least random linkup: Streamer Adin Ross announced a stream with Donald Trump on August 5. Ross – a well-known internet personality with a cult following – streams video games to millions of young people

🧟‍♂️ Another man’s treasure: A New Zealand woman called the police after discovering what she thought was a headless body on a beach but turned out to be a “very realistic” sex doll

ROCA WRAP

Lost and Hound

A dog is a (wo)man’s best friend, as a new story out of Utah shows. 

Last month, an elderly woman with dementia went missing after wandering from her family’s cabin in Utah’s central mountains during an evening walk with her dog. Her family searched throughout the night but couldn’t find her and sought help in the morning. Search and rescue crews scoured the area in triple-digit heat but found no trace.

A conservation officer and his dog, Kip, were then called in to assist.

They searched through the evening and night when cooler temperatures allowed Kip to work longer. One night, around 3:30 AM, they heard barking but found nothing.

The next day, a neighbor reported hearing barking in the early morning hours. Security footage showed the woman and her dog walking up the mountainside, prompting the officer and neighbor to search higher terrain.

That evening, they again heard barking and moved closer. Eventually, Kip found the woman and her chocolate Labrador, who had stayed by her side despite not being on a leash.

The woman was barefoot, scratched, bruised, and severely dehydrated. The officer stayed with her until help arrived, and a helicopter transported her off the mountainside for treatment.

“She thought she’d only been gone for about 10 minutes,” the conservation officer said. 

“She’s really lucky that she had her dog with her.”

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

The three preview stories in the intro should be our new default: 1) Middle East on brink; 2) Boeing names new CEO; and 3) Florida woman hides drugs in bag labeled “Bag of Drugs.”

If we’re ever running behind, we’re just gonna run with these. Have a great Thursday!

–Max and Max