🐤 In the weeds

🏦 Markets: The first trading day of the month was a bit of a letdown despite the ostensibly good news that the threat of a federal government shutdown has been postponed.

The Dow Jones was down a fraction of a percent, the Nasdaq ticked up a fraction of a percent, and the S&P 500 finished almost exactly where it started.

Utilities experienced an industry-wide selloff as rates continue to increase whereas tech and communication stocks saw some of the day’s only major gains.

👩‍💼 Feinstein’s replacement: This week, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom selected an interim replacement for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat following her death last week. Making good on a prior promise to select a Black woman, he chose Laphonza Butler, the president of abortion rights group EMILY’s List. Touting her status as the “first Black lesbian to openly serve in Congress,” Newsom said she would “continue to break glass ceilings” like Feinstein did.

👨‍⚖️ SBF on trial: After rising to prominence and amassing untold wealth through his crypto firm FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried became a villain overnight when the brokerage collapsed and claims of fraud began to pile up around him. Now, the disgraced investor is on trial and faces a lengthy prison sentence if convicted. Insiders say his defense team faces an uphill battle as he attempts to convince jurors that he simply made some mistakes and didn’t intend to run a Ponzi scheme.

☢️ Russian nuke threat: As tensions between Russia and much of the rest of the world remain elevated, there’s new reason to be concerned about a possible nuclear attack. As surveillance footage from planes and satellites appears to show, Russia is in the process of staging new missile tests in a remote region of the country. Between 2017 and 2019, Russia conducted more than a dozen tests, including one that crashed and later exploded, leaving seven people dead.

🚗 Autoworker deal: While the United Auto Workers union remains mired in negotiations with the Big Three U.S. automakers, it has reached a tentative agreement with Mack Trucks to end a strike involving about 4,000 of that company’s workers. Stephen Roy, the truck company’s president, said that the deal “would deliver increased wages and continue first-class benefits” for employees and their families. The UAW celebrated the achievement in a social media post.

Although many states have implemented laws legalizing the sale of marijuana for medicinal and/or recreational use, federal restrictions have made operating such a business incredibly complicated for many reasons.

One of the primary pitfalls involves banking regulations that have forced weed dispensaries to conduct all of their transactions in cash. But thanks to a new bill currently being debated in the U.S. Senate, this problem could soon find a solution.

What it would accomplish

Members of the Senate Banking Committee are currently discussing the particulars of the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation — or SAFER — Banking Act, which proponents say would benefit banks, business owners, consumers, and the government if it is enacted.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) is a sponsor of the proposed legislation and offered a few reasons that he believes it should be passed:

• It would cut down on robberies by reducing the amount of cash at dispensaries.
• It would allow banks to conduct business with clients connected to the cannabis industry.
• It would address systemic injustices in the prosecution of weed-related crimes.

Although these are important issues that are being increasingly recognized by lawmakers and other leaders in many states, the bill’s future is anything but certain.

An eight-year battle

The SAFER Banking Act is just the latest attempt to pass such reform on Capitol Hill, with the first effort surfacing way back in 2015. There is some indication that this version stands a better chance than its predecessors, however, since it was the first one to advance through the banking committee and is headed toward a debate among all 100 senators.

Plus, as more states enact their own marijuana legalization laws, Merkley said that there is growing support for a federal response, noting that “more senators are aware of the challenges in their home state.”

Beauty might be in the eye of the beholder, but those who are generally seen as attractive appear to benefit in a variety of ways.

On the surface, this might seem like common knowledge. After all, beautiful people make up a disproportionate segment of the entertainment industry and the most attractive person in a group of friends often gets the most attention during a night out.

But experts say the benefits of good looks go much deeper than that.

The ‘Halo Effect’

According to multiple studies, people who possess stereotypically attractive features such as symmetrical faces and bodies considered conventionally fit are afforded far more leeway by those around them than they might otherwise receive.

This is commonly known as “pretty privilege,” but a deeper study of this phenomenon has led to the discovery of a so-called “Halo Effect.”

People overwhelmingly believe that attractive individuals — based on nothing more than the way they look — are more trustworthy, healthier, successful, intelligent, and talented.

Evolutionary roots

Some scientists think that our innate bias toward beautiful people is hard-wired by human evolution. People have always wanted to preserve and reproduce genes associated with “biological strength,” explained neuropsychologist Judy Ho.

Furthermore, making such assumptions based on a first visual impression appears to align with how the human uses other types of input to understand the world around us.

There’s a downside

Life for attractive people might sound great, but don’t rush out for your glow-up just yet. While some people with “pretty privilege” try to live up to the expectations of others, many of these folks develop a sense of entitlement that can make them resistant to criticism or even damage their relationships with people close to them.

So if you’ve got this genetic superpower, be sure to use it responsibly.

To start a zoo you need at least 2 pandas, a grizzly, and a polar.

It's the bear minimum.

Frank Rubio and the two Russian cosmonauts who joined him on a mission to the International Space Flight have touched down on Earth safely after more than a year in space. That gives the NASA astronaut a record for the longest spaceflight by an American.

It wasn’t supposed to last that long

The three space explorers were scheduled to end their mission after just six months, but a snafu along the way meant their stay was more than doubled. After taking off in September 2022, the Soyuz space capsule docked with the ISS. Then a piece of debris struck the craft and caused it to lose its coolant, prohibiting a timely return

In total, Rubio and his colleagues remained in orbit for a staggering 371 days, which shattered astronaut Mark Vande Hei’s previous record.

Cosmonauts still hold the world record

Although Rubio claimed the longest U.S. spaceflight, his Russian counterparts did not even come close to eclipsing the record set in their homeland. Almost three decades ago, a mission from that country’s space agency spanned 437 days from blastoff to landing.

Nevertheless, the trio engaged in a truly impressive tour of Earth’s orbit, making the trip around our planet almost 6,000 times during their flight and traveling roughly 157 million miles in all.

The long-awaited rescue mission

A replacement spacecraft was sent to the ISS in February and the capsule that carried the team there in the first place was sent back to Earth unoccupied as a precaution against overheating that could have destroyed sensitive hardware on board.

But it wasn’t until earlier this month that a qualified crew was available to relieve the astronauts on board the space station.

After returning to Earth this week, Rubio offered a succinct and understandable statement: “It’s good to be home.”