First, a correction. Yesterday’s free guide — how to calculate your retirement number — was broken for a few readers. Here’s the new link.
Plus, stocks are at record highs. So why do 95% of Americans say they can't afford groceries? (forwarded this email? Join 523k readers).
TOP STORY TODAY
$5 Billion Twinkie
Smucker paid $5 billion for Hostess in 2023, with its CEO biting into a Twinkie onstage and declaring it tasted like growth. Three years later, the company has written off nearly $3 billion of that bet (WSJ).
The culprit is partly food science. Twinkies last just 65 days, while Smucker's jams and coffee sit for a year, and its slower systems caused late orders and lost shelf space.
Add GLP-1 drugs and health-conscious shoppers (sweet snack sales down 17% in four years), and an activist hedge fund now holds two board seats. One bright spot: Donettes sales just jumped 13%.
Everyone Feels Broke
A new Harris Poll out this morning finds 95% of Americans believe the US is in an affordability crisis, with roughly half struggling to pay for groceries and gas. That cuts across Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike.
The pessimism is climbing fast. Some 57% now say the economy is getting worse, up from 46% in February, as war-driven inflation hit 4.2% in May and wiped out a year of wage gains.
The kicker: stocks sit at record highs and hiring has averaged 111,000 jobs monthly. Two-thirds of Americans still doubt Washington can fix it, a warning sign heading into the fall midterms (restaurant prices up 35% before tip, daycare up 39% since 2019).
Messi's Magic
Argentina pulled off the comeback of the tournament yesterday, erasing a two-goal deficit to beat Egypt 3-2 and punch the final ticket alongside Switzerland into the World Cup quarterfinals.
The Swiss needed no goals at all. After a 0-0 grind against Colombia, they advanced on penalties, the least satisfying and most heart-stopping way to survive.
Here's the stat that reframes the whole tournament: teams fail to score on 98% of possessions, and 47 of 48 teams will go home losers. Argentina just made sure they're not one of them yet.
TOGETHER WITH TRIBETOKES
70 Million Americans Can't Sleep. This Science-Backed Formula Changes That
Roughly 50 to 70 million Americans have a sleep disorder — and long-term poor sleep can shave nearly five years off your life and spike your risk of heart attack by up to 55 percent. The available solutions aren't great: melatonin causes nightmares, Ambien is being studied for links to early-onset dementia, and meditation isn't exactly knocking out real insomniacs.
A TribeTokes co-founder was one of the 50 million, which is why she formulated a four-ingredient gummy — CBN, CBD, Vitamin B6, and L-Tryptophan — that supports your body's own melatonin production instead of replacing it. 343 verified reviews mention sleep improvement. No grogginess. No dependency. Just sleep.
Oh. And they're giving away a free CBD/CBN Sleep Gummy with every order.
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GET 1% BETTER
5 movements to build a more capable body
A 66-year-old who still trains hard and works full time has a rule: don't train for the gym, train for real life. Strength that shows up when you are carrying firewood, moving stones, or getting up off the ground.
He says five movement patterns are all you need:
Hinge. The king. Lifting heavy off the ground without wrecking your lower back.
Squat. Get down, and back up. This is what keeps you independent for life.
Push. Pressing and bracing, horizontal and overhead. Build control, not ego.
Pull. Healthy shoulders, strong posture, a back that supports everything you do.
Carry. The most underrated of all. Builds grip, core, and real-world resilience.
No fancy equipment, no perfect program. Just the patterns your body was built for, plus a little natural movement, crawling, balancing, sprinting. Follow Greg Carver here.
Sleep checklist we’re testing this week
Dropping the bedroom to 65F before bed. It sounds too simple, but your body has to shed about a degree of core heat to fall asleep, and a cold, dark room does the work for you. It is one of seven levers in our new free guide, The Sleep Fix, sitting right next to the one that matters most: the same wake time every day, weekends included.
TRENDING
5 Stories
▲ Walmart beef drops 12% after USDA calls top grocers, though cattle herds sit at a 75-year low
▲ Prince Harry loses Daily Mail privacy lawsuit and may owe the $53.5 million legal bill
▲ Manhattan high-rise nears partial collapse as columns buckle during 1,600-apartment conversion, freezing five midtown blocks
▲ Alaska gas hits $9 a gallon as war-timed barge orders lock rural prices in for months
▲ Cartel smuggling flows backward as Texas gasoline nets billions in Mexico, where a third of fuel is illicit
TOGETHER WITH GALAXY TRANSLATE
Dating apps are hiding 75% of your matches. They speak another language.
Most guys fish in the same pond: English speakers within 25 miles. Meanwhile, roughly 6 billion people on this planet don't speak English, and the ones on dating apps never make it past your first "hey."
GalaxyTranslate removes the wall. Its AI keyboard translates your texts inside any dating app instantly, and its phone calling assistant handles real-time voice calls in 100+ languages. Tone, slang, flirting, all of it carries over. You type your charm, she reads it in hers.
Match in Tokyo. Call in Madrid. Have an actual conversation on the first call instead of a copy-paste standoff with Google Translate.
Fun Links
Tom Holland can’t say Spider-Man [Video]
An easy boxed cake + soda combo [Recipe]
How Tony Robbins rebranded himself [Video]
The world’s most livable city [Blog]
9 subtle signs you’ve been hacked [List]
A domino effect leads to a messy house [Video]
Try this translator for free [Partner*]
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