Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. What’s going on with gold prices, why not give a bone broth cocktail a try, how laughing at yourself is good for you, and what daters can learn from the great white whale 🐳

Let’s get into it!

Typically speaking, gold is a safe haven for investors during a crisis. Yet, since war broke out in Iran over the weekend, gold has been volatile at best and in decline at worst.

Here’s what’s happening. When the supply of oil is called into question and demand rises, it causes the U.S. dollar to soar, since the price of oil is measured in U.S. dollars. When the U.S. dollar rises, the price of gold goes down — which is what has mostly been happening this week.

On top of that, gold’s surge over the last year has been largely driven by uncertainty surrounding the long-term strength of the American economy, as tariffs have hamstrung the country’s reputation as a beacon of free enterprise.

“One of the issues with gold right now is it had such a run recently and the speculation has reached a fever pitch,” said Colin White, CEO of Verecan Capital Management. “It’s more fragile right now at this moment in time.”

If there’s uncertainty and, therefore, a lack of confidence in commodities like gold and oil, the safe haven ends up being the U.S. dollar, which is what’s been driving its value in recent days and, in turn, depressing the value of gold.

Yep, that’s right. Even alcohol has now pierced the wellness threshold, and it’s doing so via the strange actions of the few who’ve decided to start making cocktails with bone broth for a hit of protein.

Has protein maxing gotten out of hand, or are the social media influencers wading into this uncharted territory onto something?

Well, it turns out this isn’t actually uncharted territory, and real ones have been experimenting with these types of cocktails for quite some time.

“The bone broth actually gives the drink a much richer, savory taste with a natural source of umami flavor,” says Braithe Gill, the current manager of Brennan’s in New Orleans, which has been putting beef broth in Bloody Marys for over 75 years. On the bayou, they call it a Bloody Bull.

Up in Motor City, the Caucus Cafe has been making the Bullshot for just as long. It’s comprised of a mix of vodka and beef broth. A newer version of the concoction uses gin and beef consommé.

The savory-flavored cocktail may sound a little strange, but it’s quietly been a hit for decades. And these days, if you’re looking to take a little bit of guilt out of your Friday night indulgences, there’s nothing a shot of the good stuff and ten grams of protein can’t handle.

It’s possible that when a baby falls and cries, the tears are due more to the reaction of caregivers than to actual pain. Embarrassment isn’t really part of the equation, but in adulthood, when we trip over something on the sidewalk or break wind in public and get caught, the blushing that follows is usually due to embarrassment.

A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology involving 3,000 participants suggests instead of being embarrassed, we should try laughing it off.

The researchers tested the reactions of observers when a person stumbled into an awkward or typically embarrassing moment, and those who laughed or shrugged it off were ranked by observers as having more warmth, competence, morality, and authenticity.

“Owning your mistake and laughing first can completely shift the room—you move from being judged to being relatable,” says study co-author Övül Sezer, an assistant professor at the Cornell University SC Johnson School of Business.

Everyone falls down, so what do you have to be embarrassed about? Humility is admirable and even enviable, and when people see that side of you, it can rid the situation of undue judgement and introduce joy to an otherwise awkward moment.

If you want to know what 25,000 daily visitors does to the climate of a chapel, look no further than the Sistine Chapel and the film-like layer of salt the Vatican is currently cleaning off Michelangelo’s depiction of The Last Judgement.

“This salt is created because, above all, when we sweat, we emit lactic acid, and unfortunately lactic acid reacts with the calcium carbonate present on the wall,” said Fabio Moresi, who’s heading the scientific research team handling the cleaning.

Scrubbing away at what Vatican Museums CEO Barbara Jatta calls a “cataract” sounds like it would be simple enough, if not for the fact that this one has accumulated on one of the most important and magnificent pieces of artwork humanity has ever produced.

Still, according to the Associated Press, who spoke with Jatta about the project, the method goes like this: “dip sheets of Japanese rice paper into distilled water and apply them to the fresco, and carefully wipe away the salt film.”

As a monolith, the average observer may not even notice the chalk-like coating that’s built up on the fresco during the 30 years since it was last cleaned. However, the parts of it that have already been treated provide a striking juxtaposition of vibrant, living color next to the areas that are yet to be restored.

The project is expected to be finished by the first week of April, ahead of both Palm Sunday and Easter Weekend.

A study published in Current Biology by the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland analyzed two decades of humpback whale research data from New Caledonia in the South Pacific Ocean.

The team was interested in the long‑term implications of commercial whaling on mating habits, and how those habits have evolved in the decades since humanity agreed to stop hunting whales.

While the early post‑whaling years usually saw younger humpback males siring the most offspring, what’s clear today is that experience is what gets you a date with the whale prom queen—specifically, experience singing.

Humpbacks are known for their beautiful and wildly complex songs, but mastering the craft takes time and practice. The research team observed that as time went on, older males were siring more offspring than younger ones, with females appearing to become more selective in an environment that once endangered the species’ survival.

“As the population recovered, there were more older males than expected singing, escorting females, and successfully fathering calves compared to younger animals,” said senior author Dr. Ellen Garland.

Another odd one

This time we’re quizzin’ you on odd one out, musician edition, in today’s trivia.

Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 eGift Card ;)

Winner will be notified on Friday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and don’t forget to check your spam folder! *

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. NASA overhauls the Artemis program, higher altitudes appear to minimize diabetes risk, and Robert Plant steers clear of the Stairway 🤘

Let’s get into it!

A study published in Cell Metabolism searched for missing clues as to why people who live at higher altitudes seem to have a much lower rate of diabetes. After years of confoundment within the scientific community, researchers believe they finally have an answer.

Working off a hypothesis based on observations that mice living in low-oxygen (hypoxic) environments exhibited significantly lower glucose levels, the research team gave mice sugar and then looked for areas of the body where the glucose might have gone.

70% was unaccounted for, prompting the team to look in unconventional areas with the capacity to store so much missing glucose.

They found that red blood cells of both mice and humans ravenously consume glucose when oxygen is limited. They also found that when oxygen levels are normal but red blood cell count increases, glucose levels decline.

When oxygen is low, hemoglobin—a protein that carries oxygen to muscles and tissue—changes molecular structure, releasing enzymes from red blood cells that allow the faster glucose metabolism.

In other words, it’s possible that a byproduct of the body adapting to high altitudes may be lower blood sugar levels, which could help explain why diabetes is less common among people living in those places.

NASA announced last week that the Artemis program is getting a makeover that includes the introduction of a new mission and a delay to what would be the first moon landing since 1972.

Artemis I launched in 2022 and sent an uncrewed spacecraft around the moon and back to Earth.

Artemis II was supposed to launch a few weeks ago, but issues arose during the dress rehearsal of the launch sequence, pushing the mission back to what could be only a few weeks from now. The mission will be similar to Artemis I, except it will feature the first crewed flight to the moon in 54 years.

Artemis III was initially intended to be a crewed moon landing in 2027, but the program has been overhauled to establish a launch cadence NASA believes is more appropriate for the stability, success, and consistency of future missions to the moon and Mars.

“Launching a lunar rocket every three years is not a strategy consistent with success,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a video posted Feb. 27 on X.

Artemis III is still slated for 2027, as a low‑Earth‑orbit flight, and will allow astronauts to test the spacesuits being designed for lunar walks ahead of the planned 2028 moon landing during Artemis IV.

The Arnold Palmer Invitational begins tomorrow morning at Bay Hill, kicking off what many consider the greatest stretch on the professional golf calendar.

While a hefty purse will certainly be on the mind of the PGA Tour’s best when they tee off, there’s another special prize the winner has received each year since 2017: their very own red cardigan.

While Arnie wasn’t the first on tour to wear a cardigan (credit for that goes to Ben Hogan), he sure did make it popular and a signature staple of his attire when he was on top, including during victories at the 1960 and 1964 Masters. The cardigan he wore for the latter sold for $15,000 a couple years before he passed and would likely fetch a lot more today.

“I remain proud of the style, high quality, and functionality that came out of the Arnold Palmer clothing of that era,” Palmer wrote in his autobiography, A Golfer’s Life. “I still own half a closet full of Arnold Palmer alpaca cardigan sweaters myself! Wouldn’t sell them for anything, either.”

By Sunday night, someone at Bay Hill will be introducing a new one to their closet, too.

Stairway to Heaven was a signature hit not just for Led Zeppelin, but for the mythological history of rock ‘n’ roll itself.

Part of the band’s monumental success and storied history is owed to the song but, as often happens with hits of such magnitude, it went from being a highlight of Robert Plant’s night throughout the 1970s to something he couldn’t wait to get away from.

By the time the band broke up in 1980, Plant had basically resigned himself to never to play the tune again.

“I’d break out in hives if I had to sing that song in every show. I wrote those lyrics and found that song to be of some importance and consequence in 1971,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1988. “But 17 years later, I don’t know. It’s just not for me.”

By 2002, he’d developed so much disdain for the song that he paid KBOO—a Portland, Ore., radio station—$10,000 to prevent them from ever playing it again.

"I was driving along in my car, heading for Lincoln City, which is out on the coast. I wanted to drive down to Eureka,” he told NPR. “And just before the black-and-white [the highway patrol] caught me doing 90mph, [I was listening to] KBOO.

“The guy came on saying they were looking for sponsorships. You know, ‘Please send in $10’ or $15 or whatever, and if people in the area did that, KBOO would promise never to play Stairway to Heaven. So I called him up and pledged my money. I was one of the KBOO sponsors."

Asked why he made the $10,000 donation, he simply said because he’d heard the song before.

Movie magic

Today we’re taking a look at the epic catalogue of iconic actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner. We’ve got 10 questions that cover it all, from early sitcom stardom to Academy Award nominations, with today’s trivia.

Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 eGift Card ;)

Winner will be notified on Thursday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and don’t forget to check your spam folder! *

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. AI is taking over businesses faster than software but comes with unique risks, where to ski without breaking the bank, and more evidence suggests the shingles vaccine fights dementia 👨‍🔬

Let’s get into it!

AI is being rapidly adopted by businesses everywhere. When it comes to Silicon Valley, the goal is always to move as fast as possible, and use agile workplace structures to patch holes in the ship without slowing it down.

The problem with this methodology when it comes to AI is that this type of technology doesn’t fail in a way that software does.

As described by John Bruggeman, chief information security officer at technology solution provider CBTS, while software will breakdown because of a bug in the architecture, AI automation systems will often fail because they’re doing exactly what humans told them to do, but in a way humans didn’t anticipate.

In an interview with CNBC, he described an IBM-deployed AI service agent that was convinced by a customer to issue a refund that made logical sense, but didn’t line up with the refund policy. The customer left a positive review, prompting the automation to issue more unwarranted refunds to earn more positive reviews—a goal it was trained to pursue, but not in a way its human programmers anticipated.

Experts say the human failure to understand how this technology functions could have colossal implications, particularly given how fast companies are moving to adopt it and how insistent they are on deferring troubleshoots to AI makers like Anthropic, Google, or OpenAI.

Prices for goods and services aren’t rising as quickly as they were a few years ago, but consumers are still adjusting—often unsuccessfully—to the still-sky-high prices of things they once rarely thought twice about.

For recreational skiers today, committing to their usual resort feels like staring down a double-black-diamond mogul run. As individual mountains have been bought up by major conglomerates, resort and lift fees have risen so sharply that they’ve left skiers are left with two options: go elsewhere or buy a season pass.

New York resident Evan Glassman is feeling the pain. He used to take his family to Deer Valley in Utah, where single-day lift tickets now cost as much as $340. Multiply that by four or five days, and then again by three or four family members, and the costs become exorbitant.

That’s why he’s shifted gears and is now taking his family to neighboring Solitude Mountain and Brighton, where lift tickets rarely exceed $137.

On the East Coast, Vail Resorts is now the king of the hill and encourages skiers to buy the $1,050 Epic Pass, which brings per-day prices down but forces customers to decide early and likely commit to more skiing than they want to in order to get their money’s worth.

The Indy Pass, however, costs $599 and gives families access to Bolton Valley in Vermont, Saddleback Mountain in Maine, Pats Peak in New Hampshire, and multiple other non-conglomerate-owned hills across North America.

We covered several studies published last year that found a striking side effect in patients who received the shingles vaccine: they were less likely to develop dementia, suffer its symptoms, or die from it.

Multiple additional studies published early this year supported that finding, accounted for healthy‑user bias, and concluded that the vaccine may be even more effective than previously believed as a defence against dementia.

Earlier research examined the dementia‑related impact of the 2006 Zostavax shingles vaccine produced by Merck, which was found to reduce the risk of shingles in older adults by 51%. In 2017, the Shingrix vaccine—developed by GlaxoSmithKline—became widely adopted due to its efficacy of between 90% and 97%.

A 2024 study published in Nature Medicine compared dementia rates among Zostavax users and Shingrix users. Although not fully conclusive, it found that Shingrix users experienced 17% more time dementia‑free.

One of the 2026 studies, published in Nature Communications, compared dementia rates among 66,000 Shingrix users and 260,000 unvaccinated patients, finding that the vaccinated group had a 51% lower risk of developing dementia.

Another study—published in the Journal of Gerontology—found that the shingles vaccine may slow biological aging more broadly. By reducing inflammation and slowing aging at the molecular level, cognitive decline may also be delayed or prevented.

In the Congo Basin (also known as “the lungs of Africa”), blackwater lakes are emitting carbon dioxide at an unusual rate, despite the region being considered one of the largest carbon sinks on Earth.

The region accounts for just 0.3% of the world’s landmass but holds roughly one-third of the organic carbon stored in tropical peatlands across the entire planet.

A study published in Nature Geoscience found two of the blackwater lakes are releasing CO₂  into the atmosphere, 40% of which comes directly from ancient peat dissolved in the water.

“It is entirely possible that this is a natural, balanced cycle: The vast peatlands slowly release carbon from below while sequestering a comparable amount from above, resulting in no net loss,” said lead author Travis Drake, a carbon biogeochemist at ETH Zürich. “However, the more alarming possibility is that climate or land-use changes are actively destabilizing the system, causing it to lose its stored carbon.”

Drake noted some paleoenvironmental markers were found in the peat samples he and his team analyzed, suggesting climate change—both natural and anthropogenic—could cause peatlands to dry out, face more oxygen exposure, and release CO₂  faster and in greater volumes.

C3PO’s body parts have been flying all over the galaxy for nearly 50 years, so it’s not surprising that one of them is ending up on the auction block this month.

However, the Propstore sale starting on March 25 will feature what the famed movie memorabilia auction house says is “the only known example of Threepio’s head from the second film to appear on the collector market.”

That’s right; the droid known for providing information folks rarely ask for but almost always end up using is donating his expressionless face and wisdom-filled animatronic skull to the auction block.

The ultra-rare prop from 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back is expected to fetch between $350,000 and $700,000 as the highlight of the annual prop sale.

Another Star Wars item up for grabs is the lightsaber hilt Rey obtains in The Force Awakens before she scales the summit of Ahch-To to return it to its owner—a guy by the name of Luke Skywalker.

While the young Jedi Rey may not yet command the same star‑power as Darth Vader, if her lightsaber hilt sells for its estimated $50,000–$100,000, the buyer will likely be getting a bargain—especially considering that Vader’s hilt sold last year for $4 million.

’70s sitcom savvy

Think you know your ’70s sitcoms? Then go on, give today’s trivia a try! Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 eGift Card ;)

Winner will be notified on Wednesday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and don’t forget to check your spam folder! *

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. Google’s AI tool Gemini is snooping around your emails, there’s a total lunar eclipse on the way this week, and a first look at a new doc about Willy and Waylon 🤠

Let’s get into it!

Google’s AI platform Gemini has been active on Search, Maps, and several other Google products for a while but about a month ago it showed up in Gmail in a way that may be a little too invasive for some users.

According to several information security experts, Gemini isn’t literally “reading your emails,” but it does have the ability to scan them for information that could be useful for tasks like prioritizing replies, crafting to-do lists, and updating your calendar.

Recently you may have noticed there’s an automatic “AI Overview” option at the top of long email threads, allowing the Gemini to give you a summary of the message.

The tool also recommends words for finishing a sentence as you’re writing an email. It does this based on your writing style, meaning it does have some “read only” access. That’s also how it’s able to update your calendar when an email clearly indicates you have an event at a specific time and place.

According to Google’s own terms, it will not use your data to train its AI models without your permission. However, like many tech tools, it can be tricky to determine exactly what you’re consenting to.

You can read on here for more details about how Gemini may be a little too close for comfort, along with how to turn off access.

A total lunar eclipse is a special occasion and tomorrow’s is particularly eventful given it will be the last one until New Year’s Eve, 2028.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon, causing the Moon to get caught in the shadow of its planetary big brother.

During the period of partiality, the Moon will look like the Cookie Monster took a bite out of its side for a little over an hour.

The Cookie Monster will continue nibbling until the Moon falls completely into Earth’s shadow, causing it to turn a blood red hue as the Sun’s rays are filtered through the Earth’s atmosphere, and illuminating the lunar surface in a way that will surely drive werewolves everywhere mad.

The partial eclipse will begin at around 4:50 a.m. ET, so if you’re living on or towards the east coast of North America, you’ll need to get up pretty early to see the whole thing.

Totality will occur at about 6:04 a.m. ET, which—at this time of year—is still night time, and dark enough to see the blood red Moon take form. The catch, however, is that the Moon will also be pretty low to the horizon by that point, so you’ll need to be viewing from a relatively flat area with few obstructions.

For more than a decade the most in-depth look at the founding fathers of outlaw country music has been in the works. Entitled They Called Us Outlaws, what started as a one-off documentary film will premiere as a ten-part miniseries at SXSW in Austin, Texas on March 15.

“Before its early cult-like following and now mainstream legions of emulators, the American outlaw country ‘movement’ was just a core group of wildly talented singer-songwriters in Nashville’s underground and Austin’s counter-culture, throwing convention to the wind and doing things their own way,” said an official statement by filmmakers Eric Geadelmann and Kelly Magelky.

Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson are among the most famous pioneers of what’s one of the few remaining true American art forms.

In making the film, and interviewing the dozens upon dozens who’ve imitated outlaw country music, it became clear the story needed to be told in ten parts.

The series was produced in partnership with the Country Music Hall of Fame. It’s not yet clear if it will be released for public viewing after debuting in Austin in just under two weeks.

’77 was some kinda heaven

Let’s take a trip back to this week in 1977, with today’s trivia. Blow off the cobwebs, put on your thinking cap, and let’s go!

Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 eGift Card ;)

Winner will be notified on Friday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and don’t forget to check your spam folder! *

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. AI is giving hackers a huge advantage, there’s a reason you’re easily distracted, GLP-1 drugs are changing how food manufacturers do business, and a look at this year’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame nominees🤘

But first our weekly poll!

According to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike's 2026 Global Threat Report, hackers are getting increasingly proficient at retrieving information once they've made the initial intrusion behind a target’s security infrastructure.

Called "breakout time,” it refers to a hacker’s ability to move through a secured system. The global average has been in freefall for the last five years, and has sped up recently with significant help from AI.

“For a long time, people thought hackers were people from movies who had a hoodie on spending lots of time online trying to learn all of this, that’s been cut short by AI,” said Ian Lin, director of research and development at Packetlabs.

“The technical bar of being able to execute this is lowered by AI. It’s not the AI systems themselves that are going after targets, it’s hackers who still have hands on keyboards, but using AI to help them.”

Average breakout time fell to 29 minutes last year, according to CrowdStrike, marking a 65% decrease in just one year.

The faster a hacker can move laterally through a system, the faster that system’s security protocols or officers must be in order to prevent the theft of valuable assets or information.

The rise of semaglutide-based GLP-1 drugs is something food makers aren’t sure about yet in terms of whether it’s a trend or something more permanent in the consumption habits of their customers.

Many manufacturers aren’t waiting to find out. They’re preparing for a long term shift, given how many people are on drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy already.

A recent KFF poll found one in eight American adults are taking semaglutide, and nearly half of the country is eligible to do so. As the drugs become cheaper and more accessible, they could become a permanent staple and an existential threat to the food industry.

These drugs not only stifle the appetite, but they also tend to make consumers less inclined to buy processed foods. A Cornell study found grocery sales in general were down 6% last year in households where at least one person was taking a GLP-1 drug.

At the same time, other studies have shown 50% to 75% of people who take these medications stop doing so within a year of starting, supporting the theory that it could all just be a trend.

Nonetheless, companies are making overtures to GLP-1-using consumers anyway, offering new products with smaller portions and higher protein and fiber content. Their belief is that even if it is a trend, customers could become loyal to the brands that served them during their visit to semaglutide city.

Having trouble focusing is something most people deal with, even if only occasionally. It turns out being easily distracted isn’t really anyone’s fault and likely has to do with natural rhythms in the brain.

Attention itself is tethered to these rhythms, and is wired to be able to shift between seven and ten times every second, according to a study published in PLOS Biology that looked into focus, distractibility, and how the two can be impacted by the sometimes overwhelming stimulation of the digital world.

40 participants’ brains were monitored with electroencephalograms as they looked at a gray square containing gray dots. Colored dots would surface to measure distractibility; those whose brains registered the colored dots were deemed more easily distractible.

"For our ancestors who had to continue to monitor the environment for predators while foraging for food, this was a beneficial trait," said senior author Ian Fiebelkorn, Ph.D., assistant professor of Neuroscience at the University of Rochester.

"But in our modern environment, with laptops open in front of us and a smartphone nearby, rhythmically occurring windows for beneficial attentional shifts might also work against us. That is, rhythmically occurring windows for attentional shifts are also associated with increased susceptibility to distracting information."

It’s that time of year again when fans of rock music can come together and roll their eyes at the annual list of nominees for the Cleveland-based museum that calls itself the Rock & Roll Hall Fame.

While some of the announced artists absolutely deserve the esteemed honor of being called Rock & Roll Hall of Famers, there are also a few that will surely turn a few heads.

For example, it’s understandable that bands like Iron Maiden, Oasis, and the Black Crowes have been nominated once again. The latter expressed gratitude and excitement upon hearing the news, while the first two have repeatedly mocked and dismissed the museum's authority on the topic of rock 'n’ roll immortality.

Other nominated artists who are surely long overdue for induction include Phil Collins, Joy Division, INXS, Jeff Buckley, and Billy Idol.

Then there’s the list of nominees some may roll their eyes at, including Mariah Carey, Shakira, Wu Tang Clan, and Lauryn Hill, all of whom are undoubtedly megastars in their own right...but rockstars? The museum in Cleveland seems to think so.

Should we all prepare for All I Want For Christmas Is You to be performed at this year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony? 😝

Film critics were granted early access to view the upcoming space-themed blockbuster Project Hail Mary and the reviews have been pretty glowing.

“Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s must-see space odyssey blasts off as the first great blockbuster of 2026,” critic Eric Marchen wrote on X. “Out-of-this-world cinematography from Greig Fraser reaches for the stars while anchored by a stellar Ryan Gosling performance. This movie ROCKS!”

The Globe & Mail’s Barry Hertz—known for being tough and blunt, though ultimately fair—gave the film a few demerits, but generally applauded the performance of his fellow Canadian.

“Not quite faster-than-light script with too many endings and one crucial plot point that evaporates, plus a seeming corporate obligation to Amazon’s ROCKY catalogue, cannot suppress the galaxy-sized charms of Ryan Gosling,” he wrote.

The movie is out March 20, and is based on the 2001 novel’s story of a scientist who wakes up on a ship lightyears from Earth with no memory of how he got there. His recollection slowly returns and he remembers his purpose is to stop a “mysterious entity” from destroying the Sun.

Mixin’ it up

It’s Friday and you know what that means! Time for trivia à la carte. It’s a little of this, a little of that, and a whole lotta fun.

Give today’s trivia a try and you might just win a $25 e-gift card.

Winner will be notified on Monday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and don’t forget to check your spam folder! *

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. What Tik Tok gets wrong about coffee, how reading combats loneliness, and tips on starting your day like a millionaire 🤑

Let’s get into it!

Influencers on TikTok have many convinced that it’s important to drink one or two cups of water an hour or two before their first cup of joe in the morning; otherwise, dehydration will be more likely and cortisol levels will spike.

According to several experts, none of this is really true. The reality is that after six to eight hours of shut-eye, you’re likely to be a little dehydrated anyway, since water is always evaporating from the body’s skin, and going that long long without water will cause fluid loss.

It’s a good idea to drink one or two cups of water when you wake up for that reason.

Does coffee exacerbate dehydration? Not really. Like anything, too much coffee isn’t a good idea, and caffeine’s diuretic properties could expedite fluid loss if you aren’t a regular coffee drinker, but experts mostly agree it’s by a fairly negligible amount.

Regular coffee drinkers also aren’t as sensitive to the jitters some TikTok influencers have claimed will be amplified if you drink coffee too soon after waking up. Cortisol levels spike anyway in the first hour of wakefulness, which is a natural response to consciousness.

While caffeine can influence the nervous system and cortisol production, some people are just naturally more sensitive to it; in general, regular coffee drinkers probably have nothing to be worried about.

A study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships suggests a daily reading routine can be an antidote to loneliness in older adults—particularly ones who have strong relationships with friends and family.

Socializing can be more difficult for older adults due to mobility issues or personal loss. The study, which looked into data for 31,935 adults above 54 from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement, found reading every day can act as a fill-in for friends and family in certain ways.

The survey had participants list seven confidants they’d relied on in the last year, rank their satisfaction with their social network from 0 to 10, and describe the details of their lifestyles. This included things like how they socialized and how often, and what types of solitary activities they regularly participated in, such as reading or puzzles like crosswords and Sudoku.

The data revealed participants who regularly socialized and participated in solitary activities had lower levels of loneliness. It found socializing typically improved network satisfaction levels and, indirectly, lowered loneliness.

However, reading daily was found to both increase network satisfaction and directly lower loneliness levels, independent of network satisfaction.

“Our findings suggest it may help to develop an enjoyable, cognitively engaging hobby (that is sustainable into older age) early on, as it can serve as a helpful second line of defense against loneliness,” the researchers wrote.

As with most AI slop generators causing a stir around the tech world today, practically nobody has asked for a generative music platform. Naturally, therefore, Google just bought one and intends to introduce it to its suite of products under the Google Labs banner.

ProducerAI is still in its infancy, at least according to the experience Gizmodo senior writer James Pero had with it.

“For instance, I entered a prompt to ‘make grungy rock music,’” he wrote. “About a minute later, I was listening to an AI-generated song with a corny blues riff, basic drums, and a couple of pretty repetitive parts.”

The platform is being powered by Google’s Lyria3 model, which is promising enough if you’re a musician that no longer has the intention of participating in 95% of the activities that constitute being a musician. The platform can generate riffs, lyrics, produce layers of licks, and just about everything that typically requires a soul and a wealth of lived experience to create.

Google, nonetheless, says, “our focus is on enhancing human artistry, enabling exploration and expression,” which most can probably agree is at least a step up from the CEO of rival generative music platform Suno, who blanketly stated, “people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.”

It’s never too late to adjust your morning routine, and the fact that so many millionaires have similar ones may just be the motivation you need, even if you think you might be set in your ways.

A five-year study conducted by author Tom Corley found over half of those in the self-made seven figure club set their alarms at least three hours before their work day officially begins.

Getting a head start on the world is one thing; getting a head start on the sun is quite another, and can open the door to a potential you might not have been aware of.

Oprah Winfrey and Arianna Huffington are two of many who work out every morning, and countless studies have shown even just a 10 minute bout of moderate/intense exercise can have significant mental and physical health benefits.

Tony Robbins does a ten-minute “priming” exercise every morning, which is a type of meditation he describes as “the act of taking time to adjust your thoughts and emotions, so you can live your life in peak state.” The same goes for those who start their day with prayer.

Spending time with loved ones or anyone with whom you share a cherished relationship is another success-driver. A 75-year study by the Harvard Medical School found success in life is dependent more on “warm relationships” than literally anything else.

Let’s get lyrical

Yep, it’s right there, on the tip of your tongue…we can practically see it 🤪 That’s right, we’re back with another round of complete the lyric, with today’s trivia.

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