Morning Brew - ☕ Trouble at Reddit

Why the Unabomber still captivates us...
June 12, 2023 View Online | Sign Up | Shop 10% Off

Morning Brew

Babbel

Good morning. You come across a lot of weird headlines in this job, but “Conor McGregor sends the Heat mascot to ER” in The Athletic is among the strangest.

During the NBA Finals game Friday night, the former UFC champ clocked the Miami Heat’s mascot, Burnie, twice as part of a choreographed bit to promote McGregor’s pain relief spray. But apparently he forgot he was an elite mixed martial artist, because he punched the man who plays Burnie so hard that the poor guy had to be briefly treated in the hospital (he’s fine now).

UFC President Dana White said having a pro fighter punch a mascot “doesn’t seem like the brightest thing in the world.”

Neal Freyman

MARKETS: YEAR-TO-DATE

Nasdaq

13,259.14

S&P

4,298.86

Dow

33,876.78

10-Year

3.742%

Bitcoin

$25,926.96

Ethereum

$1,754.88

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 3:00am ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

  • Markets: Last week, the S&P notched its fourth consecutive winning week and the Nasdaq its seventh as investors find fewer things to be worried about. In a sign of that cautious optimism, Goldman Sachs slashed its probability of a recession in the next year from 35% to 25%.
  • Crypto: SEC Chair Gary Gensler dramatically escalated his war on crypto last week, and prices took a big hit. Four of the 10 most valuable cryptocurrencies fell by at least 15%, per CoinMarketCap.
 

SOCIAL MEDIA

Today I learned that Reddit is facing a revolt

Simpsons joke about Reddit The Simpsons/20th Television via Giphy

You’ll need to find a site other than Reddit to distract you from work today, because thousands of subreddits are going dark in protest of the company’s recent API updates.

Nearly 3,500 subreddits will be inaccessible for the next 48 hours and perhaps much longer, according to the BBC. The protest includes five of the 10 most popular forums, such as r/gaming, r/aww, and r/todayilearned.

What are they protesting?

In April, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said the company would begin to charge for access to its application programming interface (API), which allows third-party developers to tap into Reddit’s vast trove of data to build their own apps or train AI chatbots like ChatGPT.

Huffman told the NYT that this data is valuable and that it doesn’t make business sense to keep giving it away for free. (Elon Musk made a similar decision at Twitter earlier this year, revoking free API access and introducing paid tiers.)

But it’s being called way too expensive

Key players in the Reddit ecosystem say they can’t afford to pay for API access and will need to shut down, sparking outrage toward Reddit’s leadership.

Who are these key players? Third-party Reddit apps.

  • If you’re not deep in the Reddit world, you might not know that many users consume Reddit not through Reddit’s official app, but through third-party apps that use Reddit’s API.
  • These apps show Reddit content but aim to improve the site’s famously janky user experience by adding features like customizable gestures and an easier-to-read comments layout.

And the new pricing plan would put them out of business. The developer behind the most-used Reddit app, Apollo, shocked the internet when he wrote that Reddit’s new API pricing would cost him $20 million per year to keep operating the app. Unable to afford that, Apollo and other third-party Reddit apps will shut down on June 30, the day before the pricing plan goes into effect.

Big picture: Reddit’s push to monetize its API right now is not a coincidence—the company is planning to IPO this year, and adding a new revenue stream could boost its valuation before hitting the public markets. But by trying to beef up its stats line, Reddit has lost the trust of its most engaged users.

     

TOGETHER WITH BABBEL

Language skills taking off

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WORLD

Tour de headlines

A part of I-95 collapsed near the Cottman Avenue exit in northeast Philadelphia. City of Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management

A section of I-95 in Philadelphia collapsed. Youse guys are going to be in for a rough commute around Philly after a burning tanker truck caused an elevated chunk of Interstate 95 to fall to the ground yesterday. Officials said that northbound lanes were gone entirely, and southbound travel was closed, meaning drivers were sent on a 43-mile detour. I-95 will likely take months to repair, disrupting travel along a critical transportation corridor for people and goods.

George Soros names his successor. The investor and philanthropist is handing the reins of his $25 billion organization to his 37-year-old son, Alex. Alex will now hold the pursestrings at Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which donates vast sums (about $1.5 billion annually) to advance human rights and democratic governments. The younger Soros told the WSJ that he’s “more political” than his liberal dad and will push to fund projects for gender equity and abortion rights.

Novak Djokovic earns GOAT status in Paris. The Serbian tennis superstar claimed his 23rd major title at the French Open yesterday, breaking a tie with Rafael Nadal for the most majors won in men’s tennis (Nadal, the dominant force on the Paris clay, did not play this year due to injury). On the women’s side, Poland’s Iga Swiatek, the top-ranked player, won her third French Open in four years.

CULTURE

Why the Unabomber still captivates us

Theodore 'Ted' Kaczynski (in orange) is guided to his arraignment by federal marshals, Helena, Montana Michael Macor/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

One of the most notorious American criminals of the 20th century, Ted Kaczynski, died by suicide on Saturday in prison at 81 years old, the AP reported.

Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, was a convicted terrorist who orchestrated a bombing campaign from his shack in Montana, eluding authorities for nearly two decades. From 1978–1995, Kaczynski killed three people and injured 23 using homemade pipe bombs that unleashed nails and razor blades on his victims. The FBI gave him the nickname the Unabomber because he targeted universities and airlines.

Kaczynski’s reign of terror gripped the world—not only because of his grisly crimes, but because of why he purportedly did them. A Harvard-trained math prodigy, Kaczynski came to reject technology and science and claimed that humans were slaves to machines.

But his urge to share his anti-tech beliefs with the world ultimately led him to be caught. After the Washington Post and the New York Times published the Unabomber’s manifesto in 1995 at the request of the FBI, Kaczynski’s brother recognized his writing style and tipped off authorities.

Big picture: Kaczynski has remained in the public imagination long after he sent his final bomb. The 2017 docuseries Manhunt: Unabomber on Netflix introduced the sprawling FBI investigation to a new generation, while online communities that draw inspiration from Kaczynski’s politics have sprung up.

     

TOGETHER WITH LIQUIDPISTON

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CALENDAR

The week ahead

Former President Trump walks up the stairs to his plane Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Trump will surrender to authorities. Former President Donald Trump will be arraigned for the second time in 2023—this time in a Miami courthouse—on Tuesday. That afternoon, a judge will read the 37 counts Trump has been charged with relating to his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left the White House. Trump has called on supporters to rally around the courthouse on Tuesday afternoon.

A Fed pause? At its meeting this week, the Federal Reserve is expected to do something it hasn’t done in the last 15 months: not raise interest rates. Chair Jerome Powell has suggested it might be time to take a breather as the gargantuan series of rate hikes filters through the economy.

Sports calendar: The Denver Nuggets and Las Vegas Golden Knights are each one win away from clinching their respective championship. Plus, the US Open for golf will tee off on Thursday—it’s the first major since the PGA Tour and LIV agreed to link up (but it’ll be hard to top the drama of this weekend’s golf tournament.)

Everything else…

  • Bonnaroo starts on Wednesday.
  • All the TikTokers are about to get one-upped, because the real Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City hits select theaters on Friday.
  • Father’s Day is Sunday.

GRAB BAG

Key performance indicators

Tourists enjoy the popular surf beach at Batu Bolong on December 8, 2022 in Canggu, Bali, Indonesia. Agung Parameswara/Getty Images

Stat: Some of y’all just can’t keep your clothes on in Bali. The Indonesian island getaway has kicked out 136 misbehaving foreigners so far this year for infractions including indecent exposure, Bloomberg reported. In one instance, a German strolled naked across a stage during a show at an Ubud temple. To combat the party fouls, Bali is cracking down on rowdy tourists and trying to promote itself as a more wholesome destination for retirees and scientific researchers.

Quote: “Every commercial flight forced upon our players is a threat to their health and safety.”

The WNBA players’ union is demanding the league provide charter flights for players after Brittney Griner and her teammates were yelled at by a social media personality at the Dallas airport. Charter flights for WNBA players have been a source of tension for a while: The league has refused to provide charter flights for all games, saying it would cost a prohibitive $20 million, but it recently expanded the amount of charters it will pay for. Griner’s team, the Phoenix Mercury, said it will be making “adjustments” to future travel.

Watch: Why all American diners look like…that. (Architectural Digest on YouTube)

NEWS

What else is brewing

  • A 13-year-old Colombian girl is credited with saving her siblings while they survived for 40 days in the Amazon jungle before being found Friday night.
  • Kimberly Akimbo won best musical at the Tony Awards, which went unscripted amid the ongoing writers strike.
  • Nicola Sturgeon, the former leader of Scotland, was arrested and later released from custody over allegations of financial misconduct at her Scottish Nationalist Party.
  • Manchester City won the Champions League final, putting together a compelling case for their being among the top soccer squads ever.
  • A Florida professor emerged from his record-breaking stint living underwater for 100 days. He says he’s half an inch shorter.

RECS

Monday to-do list image

Thirty-one lessons about money: One of them? The less expensive stuff you have, the less there is to worry about. Read the full list here.

Messy bookshelf? Here are 18 different ways to organize your book collection.

Nana knows best: One woman posts TikToks sharing her grandma’s life hacks.

Aging celebrities: This Instagram account shows famous people next to their younger selves.

Squishing smishing: Learn how to protect your personal info and company data from SMS-based phishing attacks, or “smishing,” with expert advice from Computer Forensic Services.

Take a time-out: Meet the card with a solution for high-interest credit card debt. It’s offering a 0% intro APR on balance transfers for 21 months. Sign up.*

Earn those creds: Give your career a boost. We’ve partnered with CFA Institute to learn how you can get the practical experience you need and the gold-standard finance credential, the CFA charter. Check it out.*

*This is sponsored advertising content.

GAMES

The puzzle section

Turntable: See how many of the 44 words you can find in today’s Turntable, which features “u” and “e” as the vowels. Play it here.

Nutritional facts

This game is always a good time—we’ll present you with an ingredient list for a popular food product, and you have to name the product.

Enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, vitamin B1 [thiamin mononitrate], vitamin B2 [riboflavin], folic acid), water, vegetable oil (soybean, palm, canola, and/or cottonseed), sugar, leavening (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate), contains 2% or less of salt, dextrose, spice, whey, eggs, soy lecithin. Vitamins and Minerals: Calcium carbonate, iron, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin B6 (pyridoxine hydrochloride), vitamin B12.

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AROUND THE BREW

Message in a bootcamp

Message in a bootcamp

Good news: Reaching your target audience is possible. Experts will share their best advice for getting your messaging just right at a Tech Brew virtual event. Join us on June 28.

Become the world’s best boss with our New Manager Bootcamp course, now offered on-demand so you can complete it on your own time.

Everyone is talking about AI—but who is actually using it? If you make six figures in a white-collar job, it’s likely you. Read more here.

ANSWER

Eggo waffles

         

Written by Neal Freyman

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