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Top stories today:
1. Senate approves debt ceiling bill, with no amendments, by 63 × 36
2. Meta announces Quest 3: lighter, $499, coming out in the fall
3. Biden falls after Air Force Academy's commencement ceremony

0. Data and calendar

1. Senate approves debt ceiling bill, with no amendments, by 63 × 36

• “No” votes came overwhelmingly from the GOP. With 4 more No votes, the bill would not have passed, as it required 60 votes to avoid filibusters.

All 11 proposed amendments were rejected

We highlight 2 major ones, both anti-business:

• Sen. Kaine (D) wanted to strip the Manchin pipeline deal from the bill. The deal, kept in the bill, requires federal agencies to issue the remaining permits needed for a natural gas pipeline in West Virginia. The amendment got 30 Yes votes. - Bloomberg

• Sen. Hawley (R) wanted higher tariffs on Chinese imports: he got 17 Yes votes. - NYT

Our view: it's good to see this problem solved, albeit the long-term debt problem still exists

• Once again, the can is kicked down the road. As we've said many times, based on Japan's 226% debt-to-GDP, it could take decades for the U.S. debt to really become a problem.

  • So politicians have the incentive to ignore the problem, and let the next generation deal with it (likely by inflating the debt away).

2. Meta announces Quest 3: lighter, $499, coming out in the fall

• The major new feature is color passthrough, significantly improving the mixed reality aspect of the Quest. - The Verge, Meta, Mark Gurman's review

  • Our view: these headsets will be popular once they are super light (like sunglasses) and with perfect passthrough, aka, when they reach Augmented Reality.

The Quest 3 is 40% slimmer than the Quest 2, not counting the foam facial interface

The Quest 2 is seeing its price reduced from $399 to $299

• $299: $128GB version

• $349: $256GB version

Our view: this was clearly an attempt to beat Apple to the punch

• First, Meta gave a Quest 3 to Mark Gurman, the renowned Apple-focused journalist, to test.

  • Now, they are announcing the Quest 3 just 4 days before Apple's WWDC keynote, on June 6, when Apple's mixed-reality headset is expected to be announced.

  • Meta is also calling the technology mixed reality, Apple's preferred term.

• Unfortunately for Meta, Apple could have a last-moved advantage here.

  • Like Apple did with the iPhone, iPad, and Watch, it wasn't the first to market, but it learned from the others and released a product that completely dominated its segment.

  • Tim Cook in 2016: “It doesn't bother us that we are second, third, fourth or fifth if we still have the best. We don't feel embarrassed because it took us longer to get it right. For Apple, being the best is the most important and trumps the other two by far. - CNBC

3. Sidebar is a private community for exceptional leaders with bold goals*

• Once accepted, Sidebar gives you a Personal Board of Directors, matching you with a small group of brilliant peers.

• Users can message their group 24/7 and attend fast-paced meetings to solve their biggest challenges at work, faster.

• Employer reimbursements possible: many Sidebar members get their membership fees covered by their employer. - Sidebar

• *Sponsored.

4. Biden falls after Air Force Academy's commencement ceremony

Trump reacted: “bad fall,” but asked Hannity not to make jokes about it

Our view: not that relevant, but all the buzz on social media

• Presidential candidates should be judged by their mental capacity and ideas, not their physical capacity.

5. Charts: the state of multi-manager hedge funds

Multi-manager assets have 2.4x to $311B since 2017, vs. 1.1x for the wider industry

Performance-wise, Citadel leads the charts

• Top multi-manager performance still lags behind quant and venture capital funds.

  • Medallion and Founders Fund, among the top in each category, are said to have returned around 40% per year.

Multi-manager funds have been hiring aggressively, while the broader industry has been stable

6. Study: pessimistic headlines have 2x’ed to 35% since 1950

Neutral headlines have been in decline

And optimistic headlines have been stable

• The study was done with ChatGPT.

• Potential causes? “Decreasing social trust, decreasing fertility, decreasing social ties, decreasing pair bonding, increasing loneliness, worsening mental health3, increasing political polarization, increasing suicide rates (in the U.S. at least) and dysfunctional institutions.”

• But so much good has happened since: “Microprocessors, Internet, smartphones, electric cars, CRISPR and more recently, AI, just to name a few. Simultaneously, since the 1950s several longitudinal trends are supportive of optimism about the present and future: worldwide poverty reduction, declining child labor, decreasing child mortality, increasing leisure time and increasing disposable income.” - David Rozado

Our view: pessimism sells, but it is the wrong way to view the world

• Pessimism and an us-vs-them mentality help attract and keep eyeballs to all sorts of media. You see that successfully with Fox News and New York Times, for example.

• Yet, the world is getting better every day and is amazing (at least for most Bay Area Times readers). First, it is important to recognize that all human development metrics improve every year around the world. Second, being ungrateful has been correlated with sadness and depression in multiple studies, so avoiding it is wise.

7. Other headlines

Small/mid tech

• Twitter's head of trust and safety says she has resigned.

• Stripe launches credit card capabilities (previously only debit).

• Starlink: Pentagon buying terminals and services for use in Ukraine.

• Airbnb sues NYC for “de facto ban” of short-term rentals.

• Wordpress.com launches paid newsletters.

• AI drones: military source says it killed its human operation in a simulation.

• Bluesky: invites being sold for 3 digits, app now has 100K users.

• Reddit revalued from $10B to $6B by Fidelity.

Big Tech

• Microsoft signs ~$1B+ contract with Coreweave, which rents GPUs.

• Microsoft Teams communities coming to Windows 11.

• Apple plans 53 new stores over the next 4 years.

• Meta requires most office workers to return 3 days a week starting Sep.

• Meta prepares to block news in Canada, if forced to pay up.

Biotech

• Medicare to cover Alzheimer's drugs that get full FDA approval.

• Longevity science skeptic: why you shouldn’t be one.

Business

• Skip June rate hike: FOMC voting member Patrick Harker.

• Jamie Dimon to visit Taiwan after China trip.

• China + 1: a look at how manufacturers seek to diversify away to other regions.

• Apple Savings: some customers say it's hard to get money out.

• Federal government warns against keeping money on Venmo, Paypal.

• Most expensive/cheap states to raise kids: CA and TN, respectively.

• Airplane parties: Dubai hotel offers them for $14K/hour.

Crypto

• USDT returns to its all-time high market cap of $83B.

• Silvergate agrees to file self-liquidation plan within 10 days.

U.S. politics

• DeSantis-Disney judge recuses himself because relative owns 30 shares.

• “More conservative” now means pro-Trump: FiveThirtyEight research.

World

• START: U.S. to offer to abide by treaty until 2026 if Russia does the same.

• Iran plans to escalate attacks against U.S. in Syria: leaked docs.

• NATO leaders discuss whether to admit Ukraine.

• UK's Sunak supports Ukraine in NATO.

• Russia says 1000s of iPhones were hacked, Apple denies.

• Prigozhin is also in a fight with Chechen leader: analysis.

• Lula to appoint personal attorney to Brazil's supreme court.

• Brazil's foreign policy adviser: Russian concerns must “be taken into account.”

8. Interesting tweets, memes, and images

Chart: Android users switch to iPhone due to phone problems, not cost

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