Good morning. It’s Tuesday, June 17 — and if you’re still emotionally recovering from Father’s Day family group chats, same.

Also, rise for the GOAT: Kendrick Lamar turns 38 today. While most of us were barely mastering Google Docs in 2018, Kendrick was out here making history — first rapper to win a Pulitzer for Music. 

Meanwhile, New York City basically turned into a rain-soaked mess of frizzy hair, soaked sneakers, and collective depression. So here’s to better weather, fewer family obligations, and pretending this week will be “productive.” 

Thanks for reading — now go do something your therapist would approve of.

Today’s stories:

• Amazon, Walmart explore launching dollar-backed crypto

• WhatsApp adds ads — chats still safe, for now

• Wojcicki buys back 23andMe after bankruptcy

• Pentagon used alien rumors to mask weapons

• How To Train Your Dragon crushes box office

• Solar Orbiter reveals first-ever polar sun pics

• AI lets paralyzed man speak using thoughts

• Creators now earn more ad cash than CNN

• Robbery fail: curry powder, chaos, no cash

• China moves buildings using robot legs

• Meta AI chats accidentally go public

  and more…

Wall Street bounced back Monday as Middle East tensions eased and oil prices backed off the panic pedal.

The Dow climbed over 300 points (up 0.8%), the S&P 500 added nearly 1%, and the Nasdaq rallied 1.5%. That’s a sharp U-turn from Friday’s meltdown, when the Dow tanked 700+ points in full-blown risk-off mode.

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23andMe’s Founder Just Bought Back Her Own Mess

Remember 23andMe? The company that told you your DNA says you're 3% Viking? Well, it went bankrupt. And now, its founder, Anne Wojcicki, just bought it back — after years of being pushed out. Anne’s $305 million bid (with help from a mystery Fortune 500 buddy) beat out drug giant Regeneron, who offered $256 million. Fun twist: when Anne tried to take the company private before, the board said “nope” and literally quit over it. Now she’s back in charge, and all it took was some bankruptcy and a fat check.

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Walmart and Amazon want to mint their own money. Because apparently running the world’s biggest stores isn’t enough, Walmart and Amazon are now thinking about launching their own money — specifically, stablecoins. That’s crypto that doesn’t freak out every time Elon Musk tweets. Both retail giants are looking into digital coins tied to the U.S. dollar, which could help them skip banks, cut payment fees, and keep you buying stuff without touching old-school financial systems. Cute. Expedia and a few U.S. airlines are also poking around the idea. One small issue: there’s a regulation bill (GENIUS Act) that might rain on their crypto parade. Lawmakers aren’t thrilled. But hey, when has that ever stopped billion-dollar companies?

Influencers are beating CNN at the ad game. For the first time ever, content made by everyday creators is set to rake in more ad money than traditional media. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram — they’ve officially outpaced cable news, movie studios, and legacy networks. WPP Media says creators will see their ad revenue jump 20% this year, thanks to brand deals, sponsorships, and a global obsession with watching strangers talk to their phone cameras. The number is expected to more than double by 2030, hitting $376 billion. This isn’t just a shift. It’s a total media takeover. Pajama-clad creators with iPhones are bringing in more than entire newsroom floors. And brands aren’t looking back.

WhatsApp is getting ads, like it or not. Meta’s creeping monetization continues: WhatsApp is rolling out new ad features worldwide. Ads won’t show up in your private chats — yet — but they’re coming to the “Updates” tab, aka the part of the app nobody asked for. Meta promises your encrypted messages are safe, but it will use your location, language, and how you click around to decide what ads to show. Enjoy those personalized offers for things you mentioned out loud five minutes ago.

We Finally Looked at the Sun’s Butt

Solar Orbiter, a European spacecraft with a rebellious streak, tilted its orbit and snapped the first-ever pics of the Sun’s poles. Until now, every sun photo you’ve ever seen was from the equator — aka the same boring angle Earth’s been stuck with. But this little overachiever dipped 17° south and gave scientists a never-before-seen look at the Sun’s mysterious pole. Why care? Because the Sun has moods — magnetic storms, solar flares, general drama — and this new view could help us finally predict its tantrums. 

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Turns out the Pentagon made up the UFO hype. The U.S. government didn’t just let UFO rumors spread — it planted them. A new report reveals that for decades, the Pentagon used alien gossip as cover for secret weapons testing. Back in the ’80s, an Air Force colonel casually dropped off fake flying saucer pics at a bar near Area 51. Locals ate it up, and the military let the legend grow — all while they quietly tested stealth fighters like the F-117. They even briefed new recruits on a fake alien unit called “Yankee Blue” to mess with them and confuse foreign spies. Cute hazing tactic, if you're into psychological ops. The Pentagon now admits it pushed UFO myths to protect Cold War secrets — not to cover up aliens, but to hide how advanced our war toys had gotten. No aliens, just strategy with a tinfoil hat.

Mind-reading AI gives man his voice back. A new brain-computer interface just pulled off something wild: it let a man with paralysis speak — and sing — in real time using only his brainwaves. Electrodes in his brain decode what he wants to say, then a synthetic voice speaks it out loud with his pitch, tone, and emotions. All in 25 milliseconds. That’s faster than a bad joke at a dinner party. Older speech neurotech takes forever to spit out a sentence, making conversations feel like you're arguing with a fax machine. But this new system keeps up like a real voice. The tech still needs polishing — the voice can sound a little off — but the man using it says it feels like him. And that alone is massive.

China moved a city block like it was no big deal. In Shanghai, hundreds of little robot legs just shuffled a 7,500-ton chunk of history across the street. A full complex of old Shikumen buildings was moved — not demolished, not destroyed — just relocated to make room for an underground project. The whole thing crawled at a turtle’s pace: 10 meters per day. Imagine a city block going for a very long, very heavy walk.

Meta AI is quietly exposing your prompts. Meta AI, launched earlier this year, is now blending private chats with public chaos. Available through Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and its own standalone site, Meta AI includes a “Discover” feed — a public gallery of user-submitted prompts and AI responses. The problem: many users don’t realize their chats are being broadcast. While Meta says nothing is shared unless users choose to post it, the sharing process is vague, easy to miss, and now resulting in AI chats about test cheating, NSFW content, and deeply personal issues being linked to usernames and profile pictures. Some of the posts are traceable back to Instagram accounts, creating an unintentional hall of shame filled with math problems, gender identity explorations, and disturbingly specific cartoon underwear requests. Meta’s April press release promised control, saying “nothing is shared to your feed unless you choose to post it.” But cybersecurity expert Rachel Tobac calls it a massive UX fail, warning that most people don’t expect their AI chats to appear in a social feed — especially not next to their real identity.

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Four Men Try to Rob Boss With Curry Powder. It Ends Exactly How You Think.

In Japan, where guns are rare and criminals have to get creative, four men decided to spice things up — literally. They tried to rob their boss by throwing curry powder in his face. Not pepper spray. Not even chili flakes. Curry. From the kitchen shelf. The victim, a 52-year-old CEO of a staffing company, got blinded with biryani ingredients on the street in broad daylight. One of the attackers was an actual employee at the company, which adds a special flavor of dumb to the whole mess. Despite being temporarily seasoned, the CEO screamed, held on to his bag like it was filled with gold bars, and scared the group off. He ended up at the hospital with inflamed eyes but zero long-term damage.

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“How to Train Your Dragon” live-action blows up the box office. Universal’s live-action How to Train Your Dragon just raked in $84M in the U.S. and $198M worldwide — the franchise’s biggest opening ever. Audiences loved it. Critics loved it. Gen Z turned up in force. Nostalgia did what it always does: made studios rich. A sequel’s already locked for 2027. The dragon era is back, and it’s profitable.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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