July 16, 2026

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Listen up. We’re about to find out how honest classical music fans are. In honor of the 270th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birth, his hometown of Salzburg, Austria, began displaying 300 small gold-colored statues of the composer and his dog yesterday. But they had 400 made in anticipation of sticky-fingered symphonyheads helping themselves to the statues—and the Mozarteum Foundation told the Associated Press two were pinched in the first few hours. More scrupulous Mozart fans can purchase one for 100 euros a pop. There hasn’t been anything this divisive in the classical fandom since Mozart took on Salieri.

—Matty Merritt, Molly Liebergall, Dave Lozo, Holly Van Leuven, Abby Rubenstein

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

The possibility of permanent daylight saving time
OpenAI’s plans for its first physical device
China’s crackdown on chatbot romances

Markets

Nasdaq

26,269.23

+0.62%

S&P

7,572.4

+0.38%

Dow

52,658.64

+0.29%

10-Year

4.545%

-4.0 bps

Bitcoin

$64,791.83

+0.24%

SpaceX

$135.27

-0.59%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 6:00pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: Like well-trained students when the principal walks in, stocks rose yesterday. Investors appeared to move money out of chip stocks, which declined, and into Big Tech names. One technology company that had a bad day, though, was SpaceX, which fell below its IPO price for the first time.

Markets Sponsored by EnergyX

Last day to invest: Backed by General Motors, POSCO, and 50,000+ people, EnergyX is turning heads. Final call to join them. Invest by midnight PT.

ABOUT TIME

Congress is trying to get rid of the time change again

Elisa Schu/Getty Images

In a win for anyone who doesn’t know how to change their microwave clock, the House passed legislation on Tuesday to make daylight saving time permanent.

But don’t throw out the appliance manual yet: The Sunshine Protection Act—a bill championed by President Trump that would do away with all the “spring forward/fall back” business—faces an uncertain future in the Senate. Similar bills have stalled in Congress twice in the last four years.

Everyone hates changing the clocks twice a year. Just 12% of US adults approve of the current time change system, while 47% oppose it, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted last October, which is about what you can expect public opinion to be when you ask if people want their sleep schedule messed with. Plus, researchers have linked the time changes to an increase in heart attacks and strokes, and an uptick in car accidents.

But there’s a debate over the best fix

Lawmakers across party lines are divided over which is better: permanent daylight saving time or permanent standard time.

On one side:

Proponents of setting everything to daylight saving time say that later sunsets are good for businesses like retail and restaurants.
One Brookings Institution study from 2015 found a 27% drop in robberies with an extra hour of sunlight in the evening. And a 2012 Stanford study showed a significant decrease in violent crime.

On the other side:

Fans of sticking with standard time argue that later sunrises would mean some areas of the country might not get light until 10am—which could be a nightmare for farmers and others working early mornings.
Advocates also believe that standard time better aligns with our bodies’ natural circadian rhythms.

We’ve tried this before: When the country tested making daylight saving time permanent in the 1970s, people feared that children walking to school in the dark mornings would lead to more accidents. There was no evidence to show this actually happened, but shifting public opinion ended the trial in less than a year.—MM

Reader poll

Do you want permanent daylight saving time?

Yes, I want that later daylight and no changing the clock.
No, I don’t want the morning darkness, and I’m willing to switch twice a year.
I wish it could be permanent standard time instead.
I don’t care what they change as long as I don’t have to switch my clock.

Sponsored By EnergyX

America’s hottest land grab isn’t for oil

Two of the world’s three largest energy companies have been buying land in America’s lithium hotspot. Now they’ve got a new neighbor.

EnergyX has ~50,000 gross acres of lithium-rich land next door. And they’ve just opened the largest lithium demo facility of its kind in the US to begin unlocking it.

Their tech can recover up to 3x more lithium than traditional methods. With EnergyX’s portfolio now holding up to 15m tons of untapped lithium and demand projected to grow 5x by 2040, the timing couldn’t be better.

General Motors invested. And oil supermajor Eni just agreed to invest up to $225m in EnergyX’s Chilean project. Last call to join them.

Become an early-stage EnergyX shareholder by midnight PT.

World

Tour de headlines

Haze from Canadian wildfires blankets the Manhattan skyline as seen from a Brooklyn pier on July 15, 2026 in New York City.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

💨 Canadian wildfire smoke is an unwelcome US visitor. Smoke from wildfires burning in Canada spread across the US’ Midwest, Northeast, and mid-Atlantic yesterday, and is expected to stick around, creating unhealthy air quality conditions through tomorrow. The smoke has already turned New York City hazy and prompted evacuations of campers in Minnesota. And with a heat dome bringing unusually high temperatures, there’s little wind to help get rid of the smoke. Experts recommend people in affected areas stay indoors to avoid both the heat and smoky air.

🇮🇷 The US continues strikes after Iran threatens to block more oil transport routes. With tensions over the Strait of Hormuz continuing to escalate and the US reimposing its blockade of Iranian ships, the US launched another round of attacks on Iran yesterday in an effort to degrade its military’s ability to attack commercial ships in the waterway. Earlier in the day, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said the US should expect “other oil and gas export routes that serve the interests of the United States and its allies to be closed as well.”

💰 Stripe and Advent offer $53b for PayPal. In a transaction that would certainly require a call to the bank, payments company Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have offered to acquire PayPal at $60.50 per share, which would value the company at over $53 billion, Reuters reported. That’s a 28% premium ‌to PayPal’s closing share price on Tuesday, though the news sent PayPal soaring 17% yesterday. If the deal goes through, a tie-up between Stripe and PayPal would create a massive online payments company, with $3.7 trillion of annual payments flowing through it.—AR

ANYONE HOME?

OpenAI wants to live in your house

Adobe Stock

The first device from the maker of ChatGPT will be an Amazon Alexa competitor that’s designed to seem…alive, Bloomberg reported this week.

Currently in development, the product will be a screenless smart speaker meant to serve as a corporeal vessel for ChatGPT and a companion for you. According to Bloomberg:

Set to release next year, the device is equipped with ChatGPT’s latest and most conversational version of Voice Mode, as well as moving “mechanical elements” that are intended to create “a sense that it is alive.” Welcome back, i-Dog.
The product also has a camera and sensors to help “understand a user’s surroundings and context,” plus a rechargeable battery that invites you to tote it from room to room.
It’ll become more “personalized and proactive” over time by reading your ~~diary~~ digital information, like emails.

Speaking of confidential material, last week Apple filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI of stealing trade secrets through some of the 400+ former Apple employees whom the iPhone maker said defected to OpenAI. The company—which has several former Apple designers and engineers working on its new hardware—denied the accusation.

Looking ahead…the smart speaker is one of several devices OpenAI wants to release: The company is also eyeing home robotics, an AI necklace, and a smartphone-like device, per Bloomberg, but Apple’s lawsuit could derail the timeline.—ML

Three Headlines and a Lie

Three of these headlines are real and one is faker than the repair tech’s promise to be there by 2pm. Can you spot the odd one out?

Astronomers detect sugar in interstellar space for the first time
AI-generated Odyssey movie adaptation coming from Dreams of Violets director
They’re strangers united by one goal: Drink 1 million beers
Could red peppers hold the key to really good sugar-free ice cream?

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Answer

We made up the one about red pepper ice cream.

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: interstellar, meaning “located, taking place, or traveling among the stars, especially of the Milky Way galaxy.” Thanks to JP Rotta from São Paulo, Brazil, for reaching for the stars with the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.

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Written by Abigail Rubenstein, Matty Merritt, Molly Liebergall, Dave Lozo, and Holly Van Leuven

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