Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Camping, salad, and cool music sets, oh my! ☕️ Tenderfoot, thanks to Morning brew

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: The Essentials <crew@morningbrew.com>
Date: Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 3:08 PM
Subject: ☕️ Tenderfoot
To: <odellconnie@gmail.com>

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TOGETHER WITH

Hi there, Essentials readers. My Grandpa Forrest just turned 90, so I'm going to celebrate his 20-ish years as an NPS ranger (his name's perfect for the job, right?) by passing down some outdoorsy knowledge...

—Jamie Wilde

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Leading Off

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Camping is a) perfect for social distancing b) surrounded by natural air filters and c) an excellent excuse to go offline. And, for my fellow single readers, in the words of Mary Bennet: "What are men compared to rocks and mountains?"

Here are two ways to camp during COVID-19:

Frontcountry: Throughout the U.S., campgrounds where you pull up to your spot with a car are reopening, but you'll want to check the individual reservation sites. Yosemite, Glacier, and other parks are all keeping their availability pretty limited. You can also show up at 5am for campsite lotteries.
Backcountry: No luck with designated sites? You can try dispersed camping, or popping up your tent off the beaten path. This USDA Forest Service guide explains it in more depth. And for multi-day treks, do your research: You might need permits and site reservations along the way.

If you opt for the road less traveled...

Look for: high ground a short walk away from a water source (too close = bug invasion), with a level, dry area for your tent or tarp (if you're going al fresco).

Check the area for prints, tree markings, and yes, scat, to make sure you're not Goldilocks-ing the neighborhood. Here's a beginners' guide.

What to bring: This guide's a good place to start. But if I had to travel light? Tarp, sleeping bag, food, first-aid stuff, iodine tablets, lighter, flint, trowel, sunscreen, camp stove, extra fuel, knife, map, compass, headlight, and whistle. The rest is gravy. Highly recommended gravy.

Stay Sharp

Get lost in a hole: Exercise your brain by trying some famous thought experiments. There's the trolley problem, as seen in The Good Place, and my personal favorite: brain in a vat. (Its progenitor is Descartes's Evil Demon.) You can also contemplate the age-old question: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Aeon is also full of mind-melting philosophy articles. My personal favorite? "Against cheerfulness" by Mariana Alessandri.

Level up: Learn about Native Americans from Native Americans on TikTok. Discover culture and customs with @the_land, hear how COVID-19 is impacting the Navajo Nation with @jojojaxn, and laugh with @brettstoise.

Monday, June 29, 2020

☕️ Free weekly crossword, masks, buybacks, boycotts, more, thanks to morning brew!

And here's the subscribe link:

https://link.morningbrew.com/click/20756514.1588178/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubW9ybmluZ2JyZXcuY29tL2RhaWx5L3IvP2tpZD1mZjBjZGMxOQ/5e6aa6aa954fcf1a923115daBf2dd95e7

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From: Morning Brew <crew@morningbrew.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 4:59 AM
Subject: ☕️ Big announcement

June 29, 2020

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TOGETHER WITH

Good morning. As a company dedicated to bringing you daily news, we're not typically known for keeping secrets. But...we have been keeping a pretty big one. Today we're launching Marketing Brew.

Three times a week, we'll be delivering the most important news in the marketing industry—curated, distilled, and written with typical Brew flair. If you work in the sector, this will be a must-read for you and your colleagues.

The first edition hits inboxes in just a few hours, so sign up to get Marketing Brew today.

MARKETS YTD PERFORMANCE

NASDAQ

9,757.22

+ 8.74%

S&P

3,009.05

- 6.86%

DJIA

25,015.55

- 12.34%

GOLD

1,784.80

+ 17.42%

10-YR

0.647%

- 127.30 bps

OIL

38.16

- 37.66%

*As of market close

COVID-19: Total coronavirus cases topped 10 million yesterday, and more than 500,000 deaths have now been linked to the disease. Check whether cases are rising or falling in your state.
Markets: Sure it's been choppy sailing recently, but the S&P 500 is still on track for its best quarter since 1998. This week, investors will be focusing on the jump in cases across the U.S. as well as the June jobs report on Thursday.

REOPENING

Masks: A More Controversial Accessory Than Croc Charms

John Paraskevas/Newsday via Getty Images

Gotten into an argument with a stranger recently? Here's a guess—it was because one of you wasn't wearing a mask.

As coronavirus cases jump in the U.S., a small piece of fabric has become a hot-button issue across politics, business, and health. And the conversation is only growing more heated.

What are leaders saying? Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a national mask mandate is "long overdue." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell emphasized on Friday that Americans should wear masks in public. Joe Biden said he'd make them compulsory if elected.

President Trump, however, has called masks a "double-edged sword" and doesn't wear them in public. VP Mike Pence encouraged Americans to wear masks in affected areas, but said the White House will continue to "defer to governors" about setting policies.

When you let states decide...

You get a fragmented approach. 21 states have some form of public mask requirement, per CNBC research. Which means 29 don't...

Nebraska threatened to cut off counties from COVID-19 relief if they pass mask mandates.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has said, "Government cannot require individuals to wear masks...local governments can require stores and business to require masks."

Why the controversy?

Studies show mask mandates help reduce the spread of COVID-19—even a simple cloth mask cuts transmission 10%. Another study revealed that countries with policies and norms more favorable to mask-wearing had lower coronavirus death rates.

But some Americans have called mask mandates an infringement on their individual liberties, which has led to chaotic scenes in grocery stores and airplanes as a result of customers who don't comply.

Plot twist: It's not just the U.S.—European countries also have lower acceptance of masks, a study by Germany's University of Bamberg shows.

The situation leaves businesses and their employees the stressful job of refereeing mask-wearing. Yesterday, one LA-area taco stand temporarily closed locations after employees faced verbal and physical harassment by angry customers who refused to don masks.

Bottom line: Mask squabbles show just how political America's pandemic response has become, and companies are caught in the crosshairs.

+ Learn more: We wrote about the future of face masks as a retail category. Tl;dr...no one really knows what's going to happen.

AVIATION

737 Max Enters Phase 1 of Its Reopening

If you see a plane doing lazy passes over Seattle today, it's not the Patriots filming Seahawks practice—it's the Boeing 737 Max on its first certification flight since being grounded 15 months ago.

The test flights, which are expected to start today and last for three days, represent a key milestone in getting the Max back into the air.

All 737 Maxes have been parked since March 2019 following two fatal crashes that killed 346 people. Boeing has suffered a severe financial and reputational crisis as a result—the 737 Max was its best-selling aircraft.
In January, Boeing said costs associated with the 737 Max grounding will add up to more than $18 billion.

So what's the point of the test flights? Pilots from Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration will be doing various flight maneuvers and intentionally triggering the automated stall-prevention software system that malfunctioned in both crashes, Reuters writes.

Looking ahead...even if it aces these certification flights, the 737 Max has months to go before it's back in the skies.

ENERGY

We're Far From the Shale-ow Now

Chesapeake Energy filed for bankruptcy yesterday, and if you've never heard of this company before...the things you are about to read will blow your mind.

Let's start at the beginning. Chesapeake was cofounded and led by a character named Aubrey McClendon, who saw the promise of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and gobbled up land for oil and gas exploration.

Then came fantastic growth...and fantastic debt.

In the early 2010s, Chesapeake spent about $30 billion more on leasing and drilling than it earned in revenue from energy production, the NYT writes.
In 2012, Chesapeake's market value was 1/27th the size of Exxon's, but its net debt load was double, per Bloomberg's calculations.

McClendon was forced out in 2013 after accumulating more than $20 billion in debt.

Fast forward to 2020...the coronavirus and ensuing lockdowns caused a crash in oil and gas prices, and Chesapeake reported a more than $8 billion loss in Q1.

Bottom line: "The COVID-19-driven collapse in world energy prices merely added one more exclamation point to a tale of risk, hubris, and debt," Bloomberg writes.

The Final Chapter in Our Investing Saga

As you may have noticed recently, we've been pumping a lot of brain power into creating "The Ultimate Guide to Investing" with our stock-guru friends at The Motley Fool.

Well, other friends, the sixth and final installment of that guide is finally here.

In this closing piece, we break down what you should think about when investing on a budget and how even a little can go a long way.

We're super clever and titled it "A Little Goes a Long Way: Investing on a Budget."

For those hearing of this guide for the first time, check out the full feature—it's packed with all sorts of helpful insights from The Fools of The Motley Fool, including thoughts on the current market and how to diversify your portfolio.

Read, absorb, and cherish the entire guide right here.

ADVERTISING

This Boycott Just Got a Caffeine Shot

Looks like Zuck is joining team Dunkin'. In a stand against hate speech, Starbucks announced it's pausing advertising on social media platforms—including Facebook, the recent subject of a boycott by nearly 100 brands.

There's a reason we're giving Starbucks the spotlight: The coffee chain spent almost $95 million on Facebook last year, making it the platform's sixth-largest advertiser, per Pathmatics.

Before you prep Facebook's obituary...know that just 6% of the platform's 2019 ad revenue came from its 100 biggest spenders. So while Zuck lost his whales, like any good pit boss he knows the money's in the slots.

Which, in this case, are the small- and mid-sized businesses that make up the vast majority of Facebook's 8 million advertisers.
"It would likely take tens of thousands of them, acting over a significant period of time, to put a big dent in Facebook's bottom line," CNN reports.

Looking ahead...the boycott runs through July, the start of Q3, so we won't know the financial impact until later this year.

CALENDAR

The Week Ahead

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On Wednesday we'll head into the locker room for halftime of 2020, and boy do we need a pep talk.

Monday: Wimbledon was supposed to start

Tuesday: Fed Chair Jerome Powell will testify about pandemic relief efforts; earnings (Conagra Brands; FedEx)

Wednesday: July begins; USMCA trade deal goes into effect; Canada Day; MLB players report to camp; earnings (Constellation Brands; General Mills)

Thursday: June jobs report (one day early); initial jobless claims; World UFO Day

Friday: Markets closed pre-July 4; Hamilton arrives on Disney+

ANNOUNCEMENT

The Ad Industry Is Overwhelming

Getty Images

So let us break it down for you.

Introducing Marketing Brew, our newest and most, well, marketing-centric newsletter. As an industry that loves talking about itself, we thought we could add a bit of the Morning Brew je ne sais quoi (i.e. GIFs) to the marketing and advertising conversation.

Helmed by our very own marketing maven, Phoebe Bain, Marketing Brew will be a 3x a week, in-depth look at everything from ad tech to campaign executions to platform revolutions. And just to reiterate, there will of course be GIFs.

We'll be hitting send on the first issue in just a few hours.

Get Marketing Brew in your inbox today.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

President Trump retweeted a video that included an apparent Trump fan yelling "white power," a white supremacist slogan, at protestors. Trump later deleted the tweet.
The White House will give Congress all the details of where $515 billion worth of small business loans have gone, but warned lawmakers not to make the information public.
Germany is overhauling its accounting regulation following the Wirecard scandal.
The Fed revealed a list of its first corporate bond purchases for coronavirus relief efforts. Its portfolio includes AT&T, Walmart, and tobacco company Philip Morris.
QB Cam Newton has reportedly signed a 1-year deal with the New England Patriots.

BREW'S BETS

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Whiskers the cat is no match for cat burglars. But SimpliSafe is. From video doorbells and smart locks to entry, water, and glass break sensors, you can protect your home like a pro with SimpliSafe. Pounce on their limited time offer today.*

Take a focus quiz: Get a personalized blueprint on how to scratch your distraction itch by completing a quick 10-question assessment of your work behavior.

Name a business horror story in three words: We asked Twitter, and Twitter did not disappoint.

RIP Milton Glaser: The legendary graphic designer who created the "I NY" logo died on his 91st birthday on Friday. Check out his work, then read the 10 things he learned.

^{*This is sponsored advertising content. See Masterworks' disclaimer here.}

FROM THE CREW

Start Talking

On Mondays, we're going to present some of the thorniest business topics of the day, give you a jumping-off point with balanced resources, and encourage you to debate it with friends, family, and coworkers.

Today's prompt: On Friday, the Fed ordered banks to suspend share buybacks in Q3 (which, granted, many of the largest banks already promised to do through next spring). The practice of share buybacks has generated criticism in recent years, including earlier this spring when the airline industry sought a massive government bailout.