Good Morning. Pacific trade winds are changing, gold just flipped Treasuries for the first time since 1996, and CBS ousted a four-decade veteran. The reliable is reversing.
We also cover a $911,400 surprise bill for parents, professors begging for the SAT, and GQ’s pick for the next 007 (forwarded this email? Join 523k readers).
TOP STORY TODAY
Super El Niño?
There's now an 80% chance El Niño develops between June and August, the UN's weather agency announced this week. The naturally recurring Pacific pattern could ripple through the global economy, touching trade, agriculture, and energy markets.
El Niño hits every two to seven years when Pacific trade winds weaken, pushing warm water back toward the Americas. It tends to dry out Australia and southeast Asia while raising flood risk across the southern US and Central America.
The odds of a stronger "Super El Niño" have jumped to 37% from 25%, which could make 2027 a record-hot year. One Dartmouth study tied the 1997 event to a $5.7 trillion drop in global GDP over five years.
CBS Fires Pelley
CBS News fired veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley yesterday (WSJ), effective immediately, one day after he publicly criticized the program's new leadership during a staff meeting. He had spent nearly four decades at the network, including six years anchoring the evening news.
Pelley reportedly interrupted the show's new executive producer at Monday's meeting, questioning his qualifications and accusing editor in chief Bari Weiss of gutting 60 Minutes. The termination letter cited his conduct as the cause. He is the latest of several recent exits.
The shakeup follows Paramount's purchase of Weiss's news site for $150 million last year. Anderson Cooper and three other correspondents have also departed, as Paramount works to close its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, the owner of CNN.
Gold Beats Bonds
Gold just passed US Treasuries to become central banks' favorite reserve asset, according to a European Central Bank report released this week. Gold now makes up 27% of official global reserves, edging out Treasuries at 22% and the euro at 15%.
The shift tracks gold's blistering run. Prices climbed roughly 60% last year, closing 2025 near $4,322 an ounce. Geopolitics is the other driver, with central banks in China, Poland, Turkey, and India stacking bullion as a hedge against sanctions and instability.
Meanwhile, US debt keeps swelling, with the debt-to-GDP ratio now topping 120%. Treasuries held at the New York Fed fell $82 billion in March to $2.7 trillion, the lowest since 2012. This is the first reserve flip since 1996. Forbes’ best places to buy gold.
TOGETHER WITH GRANOLA
The AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings
Looking for an AI notetaker for your meetings?
Most AI note-takers just transcribe what was said and send you a summary after the call. Granola is an AI notepad. And that difference matters.
You start with a clean, simple notepad. You jot down what matters to you and, in the background, Granola transcribes the meeting.
When the meeting ends, Granola uses your notes to generate clearer summaries, action items, and next steps, all from your point of view.
Then comes the powerful part: you can chat with your notes. Use Recipes (pre-made prompts) to write follow-up emails, pull out decisions, prep for your next meeting, or turn conversations into real work in seconds.
Think of it as a super-smart notes app that actually understands your meetings.
Download Granola and try it for your next meeting.
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TODAY’S LIFE ADVICE
Which AI Picks the Best Stocks?
A creator who'd never traded options handed $1,057 to three AI models and let them pick overnight trades. Live on camera. By morning, $1,057 became $1,244. The scoreboard:
ChatGPT (QQQ call): +$356
Grok (Apple call): +$271
Gemini (QQQ put): -$440
One loss nearly erased both wins. The lesson:
Pick one thesis, not both sides
Size bets so a single miss can't sink you
15 Minute Bodyweight Military Workout
No gym, no gear, no excuses. Fifteen minutes of real work to build strength, burn fat, and expose how good your conditioning actually is.
The structure:
6 rounds, 4 exercises each
30 seconds on, 30 seconds rest between rounds
Six targets: legs, push, core, posterior chain, pull, full-body finisher
The only rule: pause to breathe if you must, but never quit. Finish all six without stopping and you're in a rare category.
One round is upper-body pull with no bar, no band, nothing. Curious how that's even possible? Train here.
TRENDING
5 Stories
▲ $1.8B "anti-weaponization" fund dies after Republican objections; Trump audit-ending provision survives
▲ Bill Pulte replaces Tulsi Gabbard as acting intelligence chief while keeping his housing finance job
▲ Autism therapy billing abuse surges as one provider hits parent with surprise $911,400 bill
▲ 1,100 professors beg UC to reinstate SAT after one-third of Berkeley calculus students show severe deficits
▲ Trump AI order pushes cyber defenses to rural hospitals, community banks, and local utilities against threats
TOGETHER WITH SLACK
What Free Slack Quietly Costs You That Has Nothing to Do With Price
Nobody warns you until you go looking…
On the free plan, anything older than 90 days disappears from search. The client sign-off from last quarter, the file buried in a thread, the answer to "wait, who approved this." Still in there. Just not in the free search, usually right when you need to prove it.
For a growing team, that missing history is the expensive part. Not the subscription.
Slack Pro hands the full archive back, plus unlimited integrations with the tools you already run (Drive, Zoom, Salesforce) and group huddles that quietly kill half your meetings. One team at Gozney pushed nine pieces of content through review in a single day.
The teams that scale clean didn't get lucky. They stopped losing their own decisions.
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Fun Links
Elon Musk earns $3.6M per hour [Graph]
America’s most dysfunctional zoo [WSJ]
Being “busy” is a form of laziness [Post]
Use Claude to sort 4,000 photos [Video]
Inside Obama’s $850M library [Photos]
Paris timelapse from 300BC to today [Video]
Next 007 is this guy, according to GQ [Blog]
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