📬 Daily Brief: Delta tumbles

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Here’s what you need to know

Delta Air Lines’ stock tumbled. Its profits are way down thanks to cheaper airfares.

The EU is making Apple share its “tap to pay” tech. A European Commission investigation accused Apple of abusing its mobile wallet market dominance.

Pfizer is joining the weight loss drug market. The pharma giant is advancing the development of a once-daily pill.

Tesla’s stock is falling back to Earth. Delays to its robotaxi launch brought down Tesla’s stock price after a big rally. Meanwhile, CEO Elon Musk has big plans that stretch far beyond Earth.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is shelling out $1.7 billion to automakers. The funding will help convert shuttered assembly plants into electric vehicle factories.

Donald Trump keeps coming for the Bitcoin bros

Former U.S. President and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is reversing his stance on crypto and trying to earn the support of those with a passion for blockchain-based economies. Never mind that, in the not-so-distant past, Trump called Bitcoin “a scam against the dollar.” Now he wants to be the Crypto President — and to take donations in Bitcoin, Ether, Dogecoin, Solana, and other cryptocurrencies, thank you very much (President Joe Biden also said he’d consider taking crypto campaign donations).

Trump said this week he’ll speak at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee in late July. That’s a smart move, a former advisor to Biden told Quartz, especially at a time when support for Biden is faltering (Vinamrata Chaturvedi has more on that opinion here).

But Trump’s newfound love of crypto may not bode well with some residents in a key red state: Texas. Quartz’s Chaturvedi also reports that Texans are suffering from health impacts as more and more Bitcoin mining facilities set up shop in the Lone Star state.

One big number: $14.6 billion

The value of two mega venture capital deals for AI startups in the second quarter of 2024.

AI hype has venture capitalists extra giddy, and funding for AI companies has accounted for 45% of private capital funding so far this year. That’s before AI has even hit its “exponential growth phase,” according to one Amazon Web Services executive.

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Surprising discoveries

Some leotards for the U.S. women’s gymnastics team have 10,000 hand-placed crystals. Simone Biles has a lot more bling in this Olympics than she did eight years ago, when she had a measly 5,000 crystals on her leotard.

Whataburger’s app turned into the go-to power outage map in Houston, Texas during Hurricane Beryl. The Whataburger effect is kind of like the “Waffle House Index.”

Italian police are searching for a teenager who scaled the top of Florence’s Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore to take a selfie. The Italian press said the same 17-year-old also climbed the Milan Cathedral in May.

Local Hawaiian leaders are using the aftermath of the Maui fires to revive its pre-colonial ecosystem. That includes a fishpond on the island of Moku‘ula, the domain of the former Hawaiian Kingdom’s freshwater deity.

People with strong inner voices have better verbal memories. If you don’t have an inner dialogue, it’s a disadvantage for certain cognitive skills, researchers say.

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Our best wishes on a safe start to the day. Send any news, comments, leotard crystals, and Whataburgers to talk@qz.com. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Laura Bratton and Morgan Haefner.