INBOXIFY ORIGINAL's [11/August/2023]

Hello, Friday! Welcome to our weekly newsletter filled with captivating stories, exciting updates, and valuable insights. Get ready to embark on a journey of discovery and inspiration as we dive into the highlights of the week. Sit back, relax, and enjoy your Friday read!

FINANCE

Credit card debt reaches $1 trillion (but don’t panic)

Americans are spending like they’re Isla Fisher in a 2009 rom-com. A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that Americans charged more than ever to their credit cards last quarter, bringing credit card debt to over $1 trillion for the first time.

Booming credit card debt is the result of higher prices caused by inflation, rising interest rates, and strong consumer confidence, as well as 24 million new credit cards issued in the last quarter.

• As debt has risen, so have late payments: The report found that in Q2, 7.2% of credit card accounts were 30 days overdue—the highest level in 11 years—and delinquency rates rose to 3.18% (up from 3%).

Yes, but…according to the Fed, neither of these numbers is shocking. Delinquency rates are returning to pre-pandemic levels after plummeting in 2020 when everyone collected stimulus checks and saved money.

Big picture: While $1 trillion in credit card debt seems alarming, economists are as unbothered as the guy holding up the line at Chipotle. Consumer debt is still just 6% of total deposits Americans have in their bank accounts, the lowest percentage in 20 years, per Axios. Plus, New York Fed researchers said, “There is little evidence of widespread financial distress for consumers.

MUSIC

Hip-hop turns 50

The music genre that’s said to have begun at a back-to-school party in the Bronx is celebrating its 50th birthday this weekend.

Hip-hop has grown from a style of musical expression for young people living amidst poverty and crime to the most popular music genre in the US and a worldwide phenomenon whose influence can be seen in everything from a house party playlist to the courtside seats at a Brooklyn Nets game.

How it grew into an economic force

Music history experts say hip-hop’s impact on the $16 billion music industry is so extensive that it’s not easily quantifiable. But even Run-DMC—one of the most influential hip-hop groups in history—struggled in the genre’s early days. “Nobody involved in Bronx hip-hop made big money,” Fordham University history professor Mark Naison told the Associated Press.

But in 1986, Run-DMC (who hailed from Queens) released “My Adidas.” An endorsement deal from the brand followed…and everything changed.

Since then, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, and Sean Combs are a few of the savvy hip-hop players who’ve leveraged their celebrity status to start companies, build brands, and amass fortunes:

• Dr. Dre and a partner sold Beats Electronics to Apple in 2014 for $3 billion. It’s Apple’s largest acquisition to date.

• Some of Jay-Z’s most valuable assets are Armand de Brignac, a luxury champagne line, and his entertainment agency, Roc Nation.

• Combs, up until June, had a partnership with liquor company Diageo. He also founded Bad Boy Records, which was worth $100 million at its height, according to Insider.

• Puma, Nike, and Reebok have partnerships with hip-hop stars Rihanna, Travis Scott, and Cardi B, respectively.

• Late fashion designer Virgil Abloh, who snagged a Grammy nomination for art directing a Jay-Z and Kanye West album, found fame with his line Off-White, which gained popularity with hip-hop icons. Luxury conglomerate LVMH acquired 60% of Off-White in 2021.

Looking ahead…industry experts predict that the genre’s economic impact will only increase in the future as brands continue to explore relationships with hip-hop artists.

WORLD

Tour de headlines

Disney’s streaming services are about to cost you more. The prices of ad-free versions are going up on October 12: Disney+ by 27% and Hulu by 20%, though in good news for cheapskates, the lowest-tier plans will stay the same price. The House of Mouse revealed the price hikes after reporting mixed results for the second quarter—including that it’s still losing subscribers (though most of those were from Disney+ Hotstar, which took a beating after losing cricket broadcast rights in India). Disney’s losses from streaming lessened last quarter, and the company is trying to make it profitable by September 2024.

Economic trouble alert from China. While most of the world is worried about inflation, China has the opposite issue: Consumer prices there fell 0.3% last month compared to 2022. Economists attribute the deflation to weak demand caused by record youth unemployment, an embattled housing market, and fewer exports. Chinese factories churned out an oversupply of products, making producer prices fall as well. That could help ease inflation in the US and Europe, but a prolonged slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy would spell trouble for global economic health. In another economic blow to China, President Biden signed an executive order yesterday restricting US investment in some Chinese technology.

Special Counsel Jack Smith has been reading Trump’s Twitter. Court documents released yesterday showed that Smith obtained a search warrant earlier this year for records and data from former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account—and that the Elon-Musk-owned app was fined $350,000 for failing to immediately comply with it. Twitter was a major platform for Trump until he was kicked off the app in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” restored Trump’s account after he bought Twitter (now called X), but Trump has not tweeted since.

ENVIRONMENT

At least 36 dead in Hawaii wildfires

Fires tearing through Maui this week have killed at least 36 people, stranded thousands, and reduced much of a historic town to ash.

The Maui town of Lāhainā—a tourist destination and nationally recognized historical landmark—has been largely destroyed. Hundreds of families were displaced, and the US Coast Guard rescued at least 12 people who jumped into the ocean to escape the fire.

Meanwhile, Maui hospitals were inundated with injuries but not equipped for “extensive burn treatment,” according to Hawaii’s lieutenant governor, so some people have been airlifted to Oahu.

Sixty-mile-per-hour gusts, partially due to a passing Category 4 hurricane, fanned the blazes, blocked roads, and grounded firefighting helicopters. Downed cell towers also left authorities reliant on satellite phones to communicate with people in scorched areas.

Hawaii is forecast to be at an above-average risk of wildfires through November, but fires were rare in the region before humans arrived—making them especially damaging when they do hit.

Zoom out: Extreme weather events in 2023 have already cost insurers $50 billion. This is the biggest billion-dollar natural disaster year since at least 1980, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration started tracking such events.

TRAVEL

Space: The ultimate mother-daughter road trip

Now that space tourism is a thing, it’s not just pals like Neil and Buzz who go barreling out into the atmosphere together—you can be accompanied by the relative who’ll nag you about whether you packed enough clean socks for the journey. Today, Virgin Galactic is sending the first mother-daughter pair into space together on its second commercial flight.

The Galactic 02 mission—which will last about 70 minutes (just shy of a full viewing of March of the Penguins) and includes a few minutes of zero gravity—is set to leave the New Mexico desert around 11am ET. And one lucky contest winner, Keisha Schahaff, is taking her daughter Anastatia Mayers as her plus-one. They will also be the first people from the Caribbean to go to space.

Eighty-year-old Olympic canoeist Jon Goodwin will also be on the flight. He will be the first Olympian and the second person with Parkinson’s disease to go to space.

Space is a vast business: For most of us, a contest is probably the most likely way to visit the stars. Tickets on a Virgin Galactic flight have reached as much as $450,000, which is pretty cheap compared to SpaceX’s $55 million and Blue Origin’s purported $28 million ticket prices.

GAMING

A Holocaust museum is coming to Fortnite

Epic Games just approved a virtual Holocaust museum for its popular online video game Fortnite. It’s probably the last thing anyone would expect from the battle royale that lets users play as Optimus Prime and do a TikTok dance after 360-no-scoping a walking fish.

But the digital gallery’s designer, who also created the educational Holocaust game The Light in the Darkness, tweeted that this museum—existing separately from Fortnite’s main play—will be “game changing” for Holocaust awareness: Fortnite has about 239 million active monthly users, according to ActivePlayer, and 80% of Americans have never visited a Holocaust museum, according to a 2018 study.

Fortnite players who visit the Voices of The Forgotten Museum…

• Can: Walk through exhibits resembling those found at in-person Holocaust museums, minus photos of dead bodies and concentration camps, which would violate the game’s age rating.

• Cannot: Use weapons, break anything, or dance. Epic learned its lesson after players kept doing the floss and the robot at a 2021 in-game event celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.

Once the virtual museum opens (no release date yet), it could be a potent tool to deploy against a rise of white supremacy in online gaming spaces.

Zoom out: Roblox and Minecraft, two popular sandbox games, have also been used for educational purposes, like teaching students during the pandemic. Reporters have also used Minecraft to make a library of censored journalism available in restricted countries.

GAMES

The puzzle section

Word Search: Make International Cat Day a two-day celebration with today’s Word Search—all about cartoon cats. Play it here.

Battle for the box office

We mentioned earlier that Oppenheimer is now the highest-grossing World War II movie ever. But what about films set during other wars?

For today’s trivia, we’ll give you a war and you have to name the highest-grossing film set during that war.

1. Iraq War

2. Vietnam War

3. World War I

4. American Revolution

5. Greco-Persian Wars

6. First War of Scottish Independence

MEME

ANSWER

1. American Sniper

2. Platoon

3. Wonder Woman

4. The Patriot

5. 300

6. Braveheart