Good morning. It’s Thursday, May 22 — and if you’re reading this, congrats: you’ve officially entered the fake-work phase before a long weekend.

Memorial Day is coming in hot — and by hot, we mean 62% of Americans are firing up their grills and hoping they don’t burn down the deck. (Spoiler: Memorial Day also brings a spicy 25% jump in home cooking fires. Good luck out there, grill gods.)

A quick rewind: Memorial Day became a federal holiday in 1971, and in 2000, Congress asked us all to pause at 3 p.m. local time to remember the fallen. Just a moment. No, not for your overcooked corn on the cob — for real heroes.

So yeah, only today and Friday left before it’s legally acceptable to ghost your inbox and blame “bad service” for not answering texts.

Wishing you a long weekend full of peace, naps, and perfectly cooked hot dogs. Scroll on, you legend.

Today’s stories:

• Alzheimer’s blood test finally approved

• OpenAI burns cash, seeks profit magic

• Apple opens AI to developers — finally

• Earth’s crust hides hydrogen treasure

• Toyota RAV4 goes hybrid-only 2026

• Baltimore crime drops — seriously

• Tesla CFO bags $139M payday

• Windows XP won’t die quietly

• Posting nudes is now a felony

• Takeout is now a daily ritual

• Cruise vows to film at 100

  and more…

Stocks took a nosedive Wednesday as bond yields spiked and traders remembered — oh right — the U.S. is spending money like there’s no tomorrow. The Dow dropped a dramatic 817 points (cue gasp), while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq slid 1.6% and 1.4%, respectively.

The real drama? Long-term Treasury yields surged, with the 30-year hitting 5.08% — its highest since October 2023 — and the 10-year climbing to 4.59%. Why? A shiny new budget bill, naturally. It’s expected to pass soon, thanks to lawmakers playing nice over tax breaks for blue states. But investors aren’t thrilled — they’re worried it’ll blow an even bigger hole in the deficit.

And just to rub salt in the wound, a weak auction for 20-year bonds made it look like fewer folks want to keep lending Uncle Sam money. Translation: the U.S. might be running out of people willing to fund its spending habit.

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Takeout Isn’t a Treat Anymore. It’s a Lifestyle. 75% of restaurant orders are for takeout 

Takeout used to be lazy-day food. Now it’s a full-blown personality trait. According to a new report, 75% of restaurant orders are for takeout — and nearly everyone expects it fast, hot, and stress-free. Nearly 95% of people say speed is everything. Value and convenience are now the holy grail of modern dining, especially for Gen Z and Millennials, who are ordering more than ever. Half of all Americans say drive-thru and takeout meals are essential to life. You know, like air and Wi-Fi.

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Tesla’s CFO just got $139 million. While most CFOs are busy budgeting snacks, Tesla’s number cruncher Vaibhav Taneja just secured a $139 million pay package. That’s more than most CEOs make — and yes, it’s mostly stock. Taneja’s been climbing the Tesla ladder since 2017, finally becoming CFO in 2023. Musk, ever the humble boss, says he’s staying CEO “for the coming years.”

Can OpenAI ever make a dime? Sam Altman’s living his best billionaire-influencer life — hanging with Trump, partying with Katy Perry, and calling his job “the most important in history.” Meanwhile, his CFO Sarah Friar is stuck with the actual impossible mission: figuring out how to make OpenAI profitable. The hype is real. So are the bills. Despite $3.7B in revenue last year, the company still lost maybe $5B. AI models are insanely expensive to run — especially the new ones. GPT-4 was pricey. O3 might be 100x worse in operating costs. Imagine selling a product that gets more expensive every time you improve it. Now try building a business model around that. Add cutthroat competition, price wars, and free open-source rivals, and it’s clear: OpenAI’s brain is sharp, but its business plan is duct-taped together. Investors are still throwing money at it, but at some point someone’s going to ask the obvious: is this genius, or just very expensive magic?

Say goodbye to gas-only RAV4s. America’s top-selling SUV is saying goodbye to the good old gas guzzler. Starting in 2026, the Toyota RAV4 will only be sold as a hybrid or plug-in hybrid. No more pure combustion engine. Just a 2.5-liter four-cylinder paired with batteries and a moral high ground. All because EV sales are dragging and full electrics still scare people. So hybrids — the diet soda of green tech — are getting their moment. Toyota, hybrid king since the Prius days, is flexing hard while everyone else keeps fumbling their all-electric rollouts. 

Our World Still Runs on 90s Tech

Some elevators, trains, ATMs, art printers, and actual city infrastructure are still chugging away on Windows XP — or worse. We're talking MS-DOS, Windows 3.11, and floppy disks. Turns out upgrading is expensive, and if ancient software still technically works, no one’s rushing to swap it out. From German railways to San Francisco’s metro to woodshops and hospital elevators — old Windows is everywhere. Like glitter. Or mold. Microsoft moved on years ago, but the world hasn’t. XP officially died in 2014, but try telling that to your ATM. Or that one printer in San Diego hooked up to a Windows 2000 server the size of a sofa. Modern tech is cool, but the ghosts of Bill Gates’ glory days are still running the show.

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Alzheimer’s blood test gets FDA green light. The FDA just approved the first blood test to detect early Alzheimer’s — which means no more waiting for brain scans or spinal taps to find out what’s going wrong upstairs. The test finds sticky brain plaques in your blood, so doctors can catch signs earlier and maybe slow the disease before it steamrolls everything. It’s only for people 55+ showing symptoms, and yes, a doctor still has to order it (no DIY brain checks yet). There’s still no cure, but new meds from 2023 and 2024 are doing more when they’re started early. So this test is kind of a big deal. 

Earth’s been hiding 170,000 years of clean energy. Turns out, there’s a jackpot of hydrogen buried in the Earth’s crust — enough to power humanity for the next 170,000 years. That’s according to scientists who just realized our planet’s been cooking up clean fuel like it’s meal prep Sunday. Currently, almost all hydrogen energy is made the dirty way — fossil fuels + steam = pollution. Only 0.1% of it is actually “green.” But if we can start mining the natural hydrogen that's just sitting there underground (including in 30 U.S. states), the planet might actually stand a chance. This hidden reserve has been bubbling below the surface for over a billion years. And somehow, no one noticed.

Apple finally lets developers play with its AI. Apple is cracking open the gates (slightly) and letting third-party developers use its AI models, according to Bloomberg. They’re working on a software kit that’ll let outsiders build on top of the same large language models behind “Apple Intelligence.” In other words, Apple is finally doing what OpenAI, Google, and half the internet did years ago, and you’ll love it anyway.

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Tom Cruise Says He’ll Make Movies Into His 100s

Tom Cruise is on a press tour and he’s not just promoting Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning… he’s promoting himself as immortal. At the New York premiere, Cruise clarified he doesn’t plan to make movies into his 80s. Nope. He’s going all the way to 100+. “I will never stop,” he said. The man’s aging like a CGI render and refuses to sit down. We get it, Tom. You love movies. You hate stillness. You’ll be dodging explosions in orthopedic shoes until the end of time.

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Trump signs anti-revenge law. Trump just signed the Take It Down Act, a new law making it a federal crime to post or threaten to post someone’s nudes — real or AI-generated — without their consent. Melania helped push it through Congress, so Trump handed her a pen and told her to sign it too, despite her awkward “uh, I’m not elected” vibe. The law forces websites to take down explicit content within 48 hours if the victim asks — and yes, that includes deepfakes. Platforms also have to scrub duplicates. It has already been banned in many states, but this one actually puts the feds on the case. 

Crime is down, and even Baltimore’s surprised. Violent crime is dropping fast across America — and Baltimore, long the poster child for urban violence,, is suddenly... chill? The city has only clocked 45 homicides so far this year — a third less than last year. And 2023 was already its best year in over a decade. Kids aren’t showing up with gunshot wounds. Drug dealers are bored because fentanyl is too cheap to hustle. And cops are finally acting like human beings again (mostly). Programs like Roca and YAP are giving young men therapy and jobs instead of just a jail cell — and somehow, it’s working. But surprise: federal funding is now getting slashed, because nothing gold can stay — especially if it’s paid for by Washington. Still, for now, things are quieter. Just don’t say it’s quiet. That’s how you jinx it.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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