Morning Brew - ☕️ Cookies & Macrophages

Good evening, Essentials readers. Fantasy football season is upon us, and this year I intend to improve my standing by getting second-to-last place. Wish me luck!

—Jamie Wilde

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Like oil and water or Oreos and orange juice, Greek life and social distancing don’t pair well together. When one sorority or fraternity member gets sick, the bug slip-’n-slides through bedrooms and crowded keggers until it’s infected the entire row. Norovirus is a recurring visitor, swine flu hit Greeks hard in ’09, and now organizations are seeing their first COVID-19 outbreaks. 

• As of Tuesday, the NYT has linked 251 coronavirus cases at U.S. colleges to fraternities and sororities...and school just started. 

A case study: Pi Beta Phi, where I was a member at USC, sent a statement saying their houses are “following the lead of the college or university” at which they’re located. Over half of their facilities have closed based on that guidance. One of the houses that remained open at Oklahoma State is currently under quarantine after 23 members tested positive for COVID-19. 

• The cause of the outbreak? Some members skirted the National Panhellenic Council’s virtual recruitment plan to meet rushees IRL. 

The equivalent governing body for fraternities, the North American Interfraternity Conference, hasn’t stipulated that recruitment go virtual. Instead, they’ve outlined talking points for their member fraternities to make decisions on their own. 

Some of the individual house rules so far:

• Restricted gathering sizes and in-house occupancies
• Guest policies tightened to one per resident
• Wellness pledges and promises to do daily temperature checks

Level up your knowledge of the immune system with a modern-day Osmosis Jones: Netflix’s Cells at Work!. It’s pretty accurate, informative, and yes, it’s anime. Plus, a real-life doctor added his own commentary to several episodes of the show, including the one about viruses.

Learn why Americans got $600/week in added unemployment benefits from the CARES Act. Not $700, not $350, but exactly $600. Planet Money’s excellent TikTok account posted a one-minute explainer, while their podcast went into why that number’s so important.

Get lost in a hole: To what extent I believe personality tests and astrology are “correct,” I can’t say. But I do think they a) are fun and b) make you reflect. My favorite self-analysis tools:

• Primal Astrology mixes the Eastern and Western Zodiacs to assign you an animal spirit. 
• This quiz determines which TV/film character you’re most like. 
• Everyone is one of these nine Enneagram personality types.

We’ve never used a scale that sent us skipping.

Unless you count skipping the scale altogether.

Instead of letting the scale exist as a neglected fixture in our bathroom—right next to the floss—switch to the Body+ Body Composition Wi-Fi Scale.

This advanced, clinically-tested smart scale from Withings doesn’t focus on flashing scary numbers—it provides motivation to reach your health and fitness goals.

The way it works is like this: 

Within seconds of stepping on Body+, it performs a full body composition analysis, providing total body fat percentage, water percentage, plus muscle and bone mass. It then syncs the data instantly via Wi-Fi to the free Health Mate app which gives you personalized advice and coaching to help you reach your goals.

Upgrade to the Body+ smart scale so you can stay healthy at home—and skip your old scale for good.

Get 20% off Body+ until September 7th.

Tasty

Bake: I asked readers for their favorite cookie recipes months ago, and they sent me more than I could possibly create or consume in one lifetime—though I will try. Here’s the Ultimate Cookie Guide, featuring DoubleTree’s no-longer-secret recipe. 

• My personal favorite you won’t find on the list? Nutella-stuffed brown butter + sea salt chocolate chip cookies from Ambitious Kitchen.

Play: It’s a big week for gaming. Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War was announced, but there are two other releases I’m more excited about...

1. Spiritfarer was released on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch. It’s a game about grief, death, and Greek mythology that’s getting rave reviews. 
2. Untitled Goose Game is getting an online two-player mode on September 23. All you do in this viral game is run around wreaking havoc as a “horrible goose.” It’s a lot of fun, and available to download for major consoles and PC/Mac.

Reddit has a reputation for fostering conspiracy theories and memes. But it can also be used for something much more practical: career advice. Some popular general forums include r/careerguidance, r/AskHR, and r/AskManagement.

The subreddits I find most useful, though, are the career-specific ones, where peers in your field can anonymously answer the questions you don’t want to ask your friends and coworkers. For me, r/Journalism is a great resource. For you, try the following forums or Google “your career + Reddit”:

• Salespeople: r/sales
• Consultants: r/consulting
• Finance folk: r/FinancialCareers

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Welcome to Rolf’s, an NYC bar and restaurant that’s decked out in thousands of Christmas lights all year round. I’d love to slide up to the bar and order an amaretto cocktail this weekend, but alas, I’ll be at home in California dreaming of future yuletide revelry.

Hope you enjoyed today’s read and have a great weekend. If you have any feedback, questions, or suggestions, let me know by hitting reply. And to any fellow 3w2 Elizabeth Bennets with woodpecker spirits out there, I see you.