The wackiest headlines from the week as they would appear in a Classifieds section.

Careers

PARENTAL UMPS: Parents who yell at umpires of Little League Baseball games in one Philly suburb will now be required to ump three games themselves to see if they can do the job better.

HIRING WINDY CITY SECURITY: In an extremely Chicago move, a Chicago bar owner saw burglars break into her establishment via a live security system and yelled, “What do you think you’re doing?” through a two-way audio system. The perps took off into the night without responding.

REALLY CREATIVE LAWYER: Tesla’s lawyers claimed Elon Musk’s statements about  Autopilot software might actually be deepfakes and, therefore, he shouldn’t be held accountable for a fatal car crash.

Personal

ISO LEFTOVER SCHOLARSHIPS: New Orleans high school senior Dennis Barnes broke the US record by receiving 125 college acceptance letters this year and has racked up over $9 million in scholarships. We’d watch the Disney Channel original movie where he tries to attend every single school.

ART SEEKING MORE ART: Blue crayon marks were found on a 230-year-old statue in England. The culprits? A bunch of kids who used their activity packs for evil.

WILL ACCEPT YOUR COUPONS: Big Lots and The Container Store said they would accept Bed Bath & Beyond coupons that the bankrupt retailer won’t honor anymore.

For sale

DUBIOUS SECOND CHANCES: Fyre Festival co-founder Billy McFarland is out of prison and ready to plan another event…the sequel to his scam’s first go-around. He tweeted this month that “Fyre Fest II is finally happening.” We love an underdog story.

CARPOOL KARAOKE MACHINE: James Corden signed off this week as host of The Late Late Show after eight years behind the desk. Instead of replacing Corden, CBS is canceling the show entirely.—MM

Bassist Troy Sanders of the heavy metal band Mastodon gives a power-pose clinic at a show in Concord, CA. Even the keyboardist is peeking over like, “I did not know my dude had kangaroo quads.”

Not sure about you, but this makes us want to go to a concert ASAP.

Here are some illuminating scientific discoveries from the week to help you live better and maybe even make your parrot feel less alone.

Polly wanna FaceTime? Parrots, for one species, don’t think Zoom happy hours are cringe. A new study had parrot owners in the US teach their feathered pets to use tablets to make video calls. And just like humans in the early days of lockdown, the birds felt less lonely when they could virtually hang out with one another. The parrots could choose who they wanted to ring, and the popular birds turned out to be the ones who initiated the most calls.

Hot off the press: stick-on vaccines. Researchers at MIT have created a new type of tabletop printer that spits out vaccine doses on demand in the form of thumbnail-size microneedle patches. Once scaled, this mobile technology could produce hundreds of doses per day, revolutionizing pandemic response. And in a boon for warmer or more remote parts of the world, the vaccine patches can be stored at room temperature for months before they’re slapped on—no refrigeration or professional administering required.

It’s official: AI will make you more productive at work. The first real-world study of AI in the workplace just concluded after more than a year, and it confirmed what tech enthusiasts already believed: Using AI tools can significantly boost employee productivity and save managers dozens of hours each week. Customer service agents at a Fortune 500 software company got their work done 14% faster with the help of generative AI tools, and new hires who used AI rivaled workers with more than six months of experience.—ML

What are the youths into these days? A centuries-old board game. Chess is the talk of recess but now, just like everything else, it’s happening online.

At the center of the frenzy is Chess.com, a site where folks can face off against each other or play against a bot (like the insolent cat Mittens). It’s seen an influx of players since 2020 when many turned to the game of kings as a way to avoid pandemic lockdown boredom.

The game’s popularity during Covid was helped along by the Netflix miniseries The Queen’s Gambit, whose barrier-smashing, chess prodigy heroine inspired millions to play. But the latest chess boom is fueled not by Beth Harmon, but by influencers helping young people realize online chess can be just as fun as Minecraft and Fortnite.

Keeping chess in check at school

Schools nationwide are dealing with an epidemic of distracted kids sneakily playing matches on their phones during classes, according to the Washington Post. While some teachers have been confiscating phones, at least one teacher on Reddit said they are happy it’s chess the kids are into and not Andrew Tate.

Maxim Dlugy, who runs a Manhattan chess school, told us his student body has increased more than threefold, from about 200 to 700 since the start of the pandemic.

And Chess.com’s traffic has soared: The site’s servers crashed multiple times as its daily user count doubled from November 2022 to December 2022, and reached 12 million this month, according to Polygon.

The sport was likely helped along last year by a perfect hype storm created by Magnus Carlsen, the world’s No. 1 chess player, accusing an opponent of cheating in an in-person game, as well as a Louis Vuitton campaign in which Messi and Ronaldo faced off across a chess board. But the biggest boost came from a cadre of influencers working to win over teens.

• The top chess streamers on Twitch have over a million followers each who are eager to see them play and break down their moves.
• TikTok videos with #chess have been viewed 11.6 billion times.

Unlike in the chess heydays of the last century, one need not be a Bobby Fischer-level genius to achieve chess stardom now. Though some chess influencers are among the best players on the planet, many are merely decent and make up for their lack of big-league skill with charisma.

One of the most popular chess YouTubers, Levy Rozman, is a pro, but he lacks the grandmaster designation of top-tier players. That doesn’t bother the 3.6 million followers who tune into his strategy tutorials and his breakdowns of the epic moments in famous chess matches played by others.

Embracing the esport

With the online game becoming dominant, the esport versions of rapid and blitz chess are increasingly getting professional buy-in. Carlsen said he’s taking a break from in-person matches until at least 2024 and will be focusing on online chess tournaments. He recently sold a chess app to Chess.com and announced this week that he’s starting a Fantasy Chess game (Carlsen is an elite fantasy soccer manager).

And the Champions Chess Tour, a series of online tournaments now hosted by Chess.com, features some of the biggest names in the sport, including Carlsen. The matches are time-limited to just a few minutes, similar to the ones amateurs play on Chess.com and influencers stream on Twitch.

The company hopes that the Champions Chess Tour will become the flagship event “for all of chess” in the future, a spokesperson for Chess.com told Morning Brew.

Looking ahead…some players like Carlsen and US champion Fabiano Caruana predict that hourslong IRL matches will get phased out as pro chess moves online and shorter games dominate.—SK

Meal tip: There is nary a dish that can’t be improved by truffle-infused hot sauce.

Book rec: The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann is a retelling of survivors’ stories from a British shipwreck in 1742. Think Moby Dick meets Life of Pi. (Grann also wrote Killers of the Flower Moon, which is being adapted into a movie this fall.)

Streaming binge: Fans of Homeland or The Americans should check out The Diplomat for juicy political drama. All episodes are on Netflix.

Read this: With so many dating shows, it’s hard to keep track of which couples are still together. Vulture details the 19 reality show couples still saying “I love you.”

Music rec: Labrinth, the genius behind Euphoria’s score, released his new album, Ends & Begins, on Friday. It will almost certainly get you in your feels, but it’s worth it.

For a laugh: John Mulaney’s newest stand-up special, John Mulaney: Baby J, premiered this week on Netflix. In his fifth special, the comedian talks about his drug addiction and recovery.

Tech tip: When Microsoft and Apple play nice, we all win. Windows launched Phone Link for iOS so PC owners with iPhones can connect their devices for messages, calls, and contacts.

Hey, big spender: Earn cash back on groceries, on gas, and at your fave restaurants using Upside’s free app. Plus, Brew readers get an extra 25¢/gal on their first fill-up with code DAILYBREW1.*

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It’s a big world out there. In this section, we’ll teleport you to an interesting location—and hopefully give you travel ideas in the process.

On Saturday, King Charles III, like every British monarch since 1066, will be coronated at Westminster Abbey in London.

What is this place? It’s undoubtedly the most important church for the British monarchy, having hosted dozens of royal coronations, weddings, funerals, and other important ceremonies over its nearly 1,000-year history. Westminster Abbey hasn’t been the site of a coronation since Queen Elizabeth II’s in 1953, but it was the location of her funeral last year, Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997, and the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011. 

In addition to hosting royal pomp and circumstance, Westminster Abbey has a number of, er, permanent installations, such as the interred bodies of some of the most notable figures in British history. Legendary artists such as writer Geoffrey Chaucer and composer George Frideric Handel are buried in a section known as Poets’ Corner. Charles Dickens was buried there, too, though he didn’t want to be.

If you do want to be there, you’re probably into history because Westminster Abbey is a great place to visit if you enjoy looking at really old things. There’s an old chair, an old door, and, currently en route from Scotland, an old stone. Westminster Abbey is typically open to the public, but it’s closed April 25–May 8 for reasons.—NF

Last week we asked: What not-necessarily-expensive item/service/etc. represents luxury to you?

• “A ceramic or glass butter dish/platter. Instantly elevates the butter game compared to scraping butter straight from the tub.”—Kevin from New York, NY
• “You definitely know someone has made it when you walk into their house and find an unusually large glass jar of pistachios that they willingly share with all visitors. I’ll get there someday.”—Ben from Heber City, UT
• “Pillars on the front of your house. When I was a kid, I always thought that pillars made your house a mansion.”—Tanya from Indiana
• “Tissues. Actual tissues and not just half-used rolls of toilet paper mean you’ve reached a kind of bougie status I’ll never be able to match.”—A.C. from California
• “Having several pairs of scissors in my house. Growing up, we only had one pair of long skinny scissors that were used for everything.”—Bonita from Vermont
• “Gouda cheese—there is something about a cheese that comes packaged in a wax casing that makes it seem like a luxury.”—Janyce from Omaha, NE

This week’s question

Taking inspiration from Rob Walker’s newsletter, we want to know: What’s something you want to experience every single instance of? (For example, ordering every item on The Cheesecake Factory menu, etc.)

Matty’s answer to get the juices flowing: “I desperately want to try every state’s signature sandwich. Catch me rolling into Kentucky for a Hot Brown sandwich, scarfing down a green chile cheeseburger in New Mexico, and devouring whatever that loose meat monstrosity Iowans love is.”

Share your response here.

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