Morning Brew - ☕️ Ousted trio

What is up my Essentials people. Don’t worry, you didn’t get the days mixed up, this really is The Essentials rolling into your inbox on a Thursday. Consider this the first step into the brave new world of Essentials 2.0. Going forward, we’ll still bring you all the best recs from around the web, but on Mondays and Thursdays rather than our usual MWF. 

—Toby Howell

P.S. Was this forwarded to you? Sign up here.

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On Monday, we reported that three companies—oil conglomerate ExxonMobil, pharma giant Pfizer, and defense company Raytheon—are being dropped from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Honeywell, Salesforce, and Amgen are jumping aboard to replace the ousted trio. 

Everyone’s heard of the Dow

But not everyone knows how it works. The Dow includes 30 large companies and is meant to reflect the state of the U.S. stock market and economy. It’s a weighted index, meaning that the higher a company’s share price is, the greater its influence on the index. This differs from that other index you’ve heard of, the S&P 500, which weighs companies by their total market cap, rather than their share price. 

So why the switch? The three-company purge was in response to Apple’s upcoming 4-1 stock split that will quarter its stock price and reduce Apple’s influence and the influence of the information technology sector as a whole. So, the purveyors of the Dow set to rearranging, bringing on a slate of companies to "help diversify the index” by adding “new types of businesses that better reflect the American economy." Translation: Less oil, more tech. 

Bottom line: You can read more about the updated Dow here, or just brush up on some Dow basics. And if you like obituaries, read CNN’s breakdown of how ExxonMobil went from being the most valuable company in the world in 2013 to losing its seat at the big kid’s table in 2020. 

Stay up to date: Our Emerging Tech Brew writer Ryan Duffy put together a guide to artificial intelligence that will have you hunting down Terminators in no time. Seriously, if you’re curious about AI’s impact on self-driving cars or whether you can beat an algo in chess (you can’t), check out the guide. 

Get lost in a hole: Italian startup Gamindo developed a custom Morning Brew computer game that is almost as addicting as our newsletters. My high score of 4,812 is tops in the company...but I know the internet is a big place. If you beat me (or just play the game), send me a screenshot on Twitter with a snide remark, please. 

Level up: Sometimes, just observing people doing smart things makes me feel smarter. I recently watched a mini-documentary on Netflix called The Speed Cubers which charts the backstory of the two fastest Rubik’s cubers of all time. Let me tell ya, seeing people solve a cube in under six seconds will have you looking at your fingers differently.   

• If you want to give those fingers a spin, here is a guide to help you solve your first cube without manually peeling off and rearranging the stickers. 

Our personal trainer lives in our bathroom…

Because our trainer is actually the Body+ Body Composition Wi-Fi scale. 

Before you roll your eyes at our new-found enthusiasm for scales, let us set the record straight. 

We don’t love regular Joe Schmo scales. We love Withings Body + Smart Scale because of its anti-scale-ness. Body+ provides a full body composition analysis (total body fat, water percentage, plus muscle and bone mass), and tracks trends over time via the free Health Mate app.

It also helps you set attainable health goals and track your progress instead of just taunting you with a scary number.

Put a personal trainer in your bathroom, and get 20% off Withings Body+ until September 7th.

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Playlist: After plugging the Brew’s dedicated playlist, “Big Desk Energy,” last time I wrote The Essentials, I listened to it nonstop for two weeks straight. Though it's still my go-to for work, I’ve also started dabbling in movie soundtracks, specifically those from the GOAT Hans Zimmer. That man gets me typing 400 words a minute. 

• I’m also a fan of this film-focused playlist because I like guessing which movie each song is from. 

Food list: The infamous pumpkin spice latte is back on the menu at Starbucks. To celebrate, here are three pumpkin-themed recipes you can use to annoy your friends who still think it's March:

• Brown butter pumpkin bars with caramelized white chocolate mascarpone buttercream (drool)
• Fancy pumpkin agnolotti (basically ravioli) 
• Pumpkin bread with salted maple butter (better than banana bread)

Productivity list: Our head of paid product at the Brew, Ashna, launched an online productivity store called Get Your Sh*t Together. You can get her monthly habit tracker for free and it is as visually appealing as it is effective. 

Though most of our lives have shrunk to the size of our houses over the last few months, there is still a big world out there waiting to be explored. And if you can’t leave your couch, maps are a great way to tap into something larger than yourself. Three options for some cartographical shenanigans: 

GeoGuessr is an insanely fun game that drops you into a random location around the world then asks you to pinpoint where you are. You have to create a free account to play but it is so worth it. 

If physical maps are more your thing, learn all about how our perceptions of the world are skewed by Mercator maps that hang on school walls and make Greenland the same size as Africa. 

• The butterfly map is my favorite representation of the world because it’s beautiful and accurate.

And if you want some high level, high flying, and high-resolution cartography, check out Microsoft’s latest edition of its Flight Simulator program that had reviewers almost weeping in admiration. 

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That beaut above is Mount Rainier, located just outside Seattle. After spending a good chunk of 2020 in the Pacific Northwest, I gotta say—it’s a heck of a place to soak in the summer months.

And that’s that! Hope you have a stellar Wednesday afternoon and seriously, if you beat my score in that Morning Brew game, I want to hear about it. Also, I’m currently in a Twitter competition with Morning Brew CEO Alex Lieberman. It would mean a lot if you tossed me a follow. Rumor has it if I beat him to 10K followers, I get his job...