🐤 Orange is the new gray

🏦 Markets: Investors hope a string of positive days on Wall Street will turn into a trend as all three major indexes posted gains once again to start the week. It was the fourth-straight winning day for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but both the Nasdaq and S&P 500 outperformed it with respective gains of more than 1%.

In addition to strictly market-related news, reported moves toward a possible ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war helped bolster a market that had been sagging in recent weeks.

🩺 Robodoc: The immersion of artificial intelligence into the healthcare industry has been in the works for some time, but Google seems to have made a huge leap forward with its suite of Med-Gemini products. According to a new study, these AI models can perform tasks above and beyond advancements by other tech companies. It has been designed to analyze medical records, search for explanations, formulate responses, and communicate with doctors with impressive accuracy … but experts say more research and refinement is needed.

🌪️ Gimme shelter: A trend that has impacted much of the U.S. in recent weeks is continuing as millions of Americans find themselves under advisories for tornadoes, floods, hail, and other forms of damaging weather. As of last night, roughly 18 million people from Texas to Illinois were buckling down due to severe storms — and that number is expected to increase today. Some of the hardest-hit communities this week have included Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Lincoln, and Des Moines, with various Midwestern cities targeted by storms today.

🪧 Change of plans: With disruptive protests continuing on college campuses far and wide, at least two universities have confirmed that their graduation ceremonies will look different this year. At Columbia University in New York, a main commencement event has been replaced by a number of smaller celebrations. Officials at Emory University confirmed that its planned ceremony will not take place in Atlanta but will be moved to a location about 20 miles away from the campus in Duluth, Georgia.

🦗 Dueling broods: If you’re living in the Midwestern or Southeastern U.S., prepare for the bugs. Whenever a fresh brood of cicadas emerges from underground, their numbers can be impressive. But this year will put most others to shame. That’s because two large populations — Brood XIX and Brood XIII — are coming out together for the first time in 221 years. The arrival of billions of cicadas will create a cacophony and provide a feast for birds, not to mention causing serious damage to the trees they’ll be calling their temporary homes.

Criminal justice is a controversial topic that has fueled debates for generations. But no matter which side of the issue you find yourself, there’s no denying the fact that the number of older folks doing time in prison has steadily increased in recent decades … and many of them won’t make it out alive.

Here’s what the statistics show:

• In 1991, only about 3% of the U.S. prison population was above the age of 55.
• Thirty years later, that percentage had ballooned to roughly 15%.
• Between 2020 and 2022, the number of inmates over 55 grew from 166,000 to 186,000.

Exploring the causes

There are several significant reasons for this trend, including some that have little to do with how crime is prosecuted in the U.S. The average life expectancy has gone up over time and as the Baby Boomers age, the number of elderly Americans continues to grow.

But there are also two more direct reasons that so many more older Americans are locked up.

First, longer prison sentences and the world’s highest incarceration rate means inmates of all ages are simply living out much of their lives in prisons. And secondly, research shows that older Americans (particularly those experiencing homelessness or mental health issues) are being locked up at a higher rate than in the past.

Examining the effects

Even with the prison system’s healthcare expenses skyrocketing in recent years, inmates get sick and die on average at a younger age than the general population. One report showed that a 59-year-old behind bars can expect to develop diseases with the same frequency as a 75-year-old who isn’t in prison.

That’s why activists are not only calling for prison reform, but also for investments in programs designed to help those most at risk.

Job hunts have never been particularly enjoyable experiences. But as technology continues to play a central role in the process, many job-seekers say it’s only gotten more complex and annoying.

And there’s one platform that seems to be receiving the lion’s share of the complaints.

What is Workday?

If you haven’t yet tried to apply for a position at a company that uses Workday, you probably won’t fully understand what all the fuss is about. After all, about half of all Fortune 500 companies use it, so it must be doing something right … right?

While its software ostensibly streamlines the process by automatically filling in online applications, countless applicants say the experience is imperfect at best.

Common complaints assert that the platform doesn’t enter information in the correct locations, requires different login information for each new application, and takes longer to complete than it would have by filling in all the information manually.

Nevertheless, in its less than 20 years of existence, Workday has managed to find a home inside the human resources department of some very influential companies — so if you’re in the market for a new job, chances are you’ll encounter it at some point.

Why is it everywhere?

Lest you think HR staffers are big fans of Workday, they’re not. Many of the complaints come from these professionals, who say it’s a pain in their neck too. But it’s still ubiquitous, which leads to the underlying issue.

Workday doesn’t directly serve applicants or employees, but the companies they work (or aspire to work) for. And since it provides a service that keeps an insane amount of HR-related documentation — from onboarding to taxes to performance reviews and beyond — in one place, companies clearly see the value of keeping Workday around … even if the average worker doesn’t.

For ordinary working-class Americans, receiving $2 million would be a life-changing windfall. But that’s how much the federal government paid every 60 seconds last month just to maintain the interest on its debt!

And with interest rates remaining high, we can only expect these staggering interest payments to continue.

How we got here

There’s plenty of blame to go around, but the fact is that the U.S. government is currently in debt to the tune of $34 trillion. That’s an absurdly high number that is constantly accruing interest.

In March, the Treasury Department paid $89 billion in interest alone, which did nothing to reduce the overall debt. Essentially, all the taxes you and everyone you know will ever pay in your entire lives won’t put a dent in the amount it takes just to make interest payments on the debt for even a few minutes.

Annual interest payments are expected to top $1 trillion this year for the first time, representing a sum nearly twice as high as before central bankers raised rates in response to inflation.

Where we go next

In many ways, the damage seems to already be done. Arguments can be made about how the government can cut spending and/or raise taxes, but this whopping debt load isn’t going anywhere.

And while investors in the bond market are benefiting from the 10-year Treasury yields that have risen alongside interest rates, most of the country is anxious for rate cuts. Although it seems counterintuitive, JPMorgan strategist Jack Manley says lowering rates could help bring consumer costs down.

“You’re not going to see meaningful downward pressure on inflation until you see meaningful downward pressure on shelter costs,” he said. “And you’re not going to see meaningful downward pressure on shelter costs until the Fed lowers interest rates.”