Daily Brew // Morning Brew // Update

June 01, 2026

Welcome to June. The Atlantic hurricane season starts today, and the World Meteorological Organization has a list of names ready to assign to this year’s storms that reach sustained winds of at least 39 mph. If your name is…

Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gonzalo, Hanna, Isaias, Josephine, Kyle, Leah, Marco, Nana, Omar, Paulette, Rene, Sally, Teddy, Vicky, or Wilfred…

…prepare for the possibility that public perception of you will be forever negatively altered by the time the season ends on November 30. Perhaps try out a new nickname now. We hear people really like Olivia and Liam.

—Holly Van Leuven, Brendan Cosgrove, Neal Freyman

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

Zero-payment home insurance claims on the rise
Ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz in “dark” mode
An AI company that will clean your home for data

MARKETS: YEAR-TO-DATE

Nasdaq

26,972.62

+16.05%

S&P

7,580.06

+10.73%

Dow

51,032.46

+6.18%

10-Year

4.453%

+29.0 bps

Bitcoin

$73,339.41

-16.19%

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

$43.04

+80.34%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 10:00pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: After a strong April and May, the three major stock indexes enter June at record highs. Investors expect Iran war developments and Friday’s jobs report to help shape the coming weeks.
Stock spotlight: Hewlett Packard Enterprise rode the AI wave to all-time highs during the past few weeks. The company will report earnings after the closing bell today.

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HIGH CEILINGS

What’s up with home insurance nonpayment rates?

If the arrival of the Summer House reunion special didn’t already tip you off, the US is entering disaster season. But, according to the Wall Street Journal, “many Americans face a near flip-of-the-coin chance” that they’ll get relief from home insurance carriers when weather damages their house.

Insurance, not assurance

In the outlet’s analysis, the five biggest home insurance groups—Allstate, Farmers Insurance, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, and United Services Automobile Association (USAA)—didn’t pay out on more than 44% of claims resolved last year. That’s up from 36% in 2015. Some of the reasons why include:

New risk-assessment methods. Traditionally, insurers based underwriting on historical data—what has happened—but are increasingly using predictive models—what they believe will happen—to set premiums. The use of drone footage to calculate a home’s “risk score” is also driving up costs for some customers.
Reinsurance costs. The term essentially refers to insurance for insurance companies, and those prices have increased, too.
The rise of extreme weather. A report produced by the Treasury Department last year found that the number of weather and climate disasters causing more than $1 billion in damage increased 5x from 2018 through 2022.
Covid-19. Yes, really. Experts say that pandemic-era supply chain snarls and insurance companies’ losses from them continue to be a hidden driver of price hikes.

But insurance companies want you to know…that people aren’t super good at filling out claim submissions. Several insurers said that the rise in claims filed by text or through an app has led to more submittals that aren’t up to snuff.

A USAA spokesperson said that the WSJ’s number-crunching did not account for “losses below a deductible, claims not pursued by customers, or claims later reopened and paid.” With those accounted for, he said, fewer than 6% of USAA claims were denied.

Zoom out: In a Pew Research Center survey of homeowners conducted in March, 42% of respondents said that home insurance premiums have increased by “a lot” over the past few years. Since homeowners insurance is required to secure a mortgage, the ramifications impact consumer spending, the housing market, and more.—HVL

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WORLD

Tour de headlines

AFP/Getty Images

US military is guiding commercial ships through Strait of Hormuz, per officials. Anonymous federal officials who spoke with the New York Times said that the US military has guided nearly 70 commercial ships through the strait in the last three weeks, though they would not identify what kind of ships were assisted. The sources said most vessels turned off their transponders to make “dark” passages, so that they would not have to get permission from Iran or pay a toll to make the crossing. While last week the US seemed close to making a deal that would reopen the strait, officials said yesterday that President Trump requested a revision to the framework his team negotiated.

Berkshire Hathaway to buy Taylor Morrison Home for $6.8b. The all-cash deal, which was jointly announced by the companies yesterday, would provide the homebuilder with a long-term investing horizon to support the yearslong nature of housing development, while adding a site-built-homes company to Berkshire’s portfolio. It has owned Clayton Homes, the US’ largest builder of manufactured homes, since 2003. Berkshire CEO Greg Abel said the two companies may combine operations over time, and that expanding access to homeownership is an objective of the acquisition.

Today is the Marilyn Monroe centennial. Born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, the movie star would have been 100 years old today. From the 1950s and into the early ’60s, the actress known as Marilyn Monroe was one of Hollywood’s highest earners. Her films grossed the equivalent of $2.2 billion in today’s terms by the time of her death in 1962 at age 36. Expect tributes of all sorts to flood the internet today. In Los Angeles, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened its “Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon” exhibit yesterday featuring scintillating memorabilia, including the pink dress she wore to sing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” in the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.—HVL

AI WASHING

Tech startup offers to clean your home for ‘free’

Getty Images

AI training app Shift is giving away professional home cleanings to people who live in New York City…as long as they let the company record the process and use the data to train the next generation of autonomous robot housekeepers. Because, despite all of the hype around it, AI still needs more help cleaning our clocks.

Dirty work: If you’re worried your home is too messy, don’t. Shift calls them “challenging cleaning environments” and says they’re especially useful. Take that, mom.

Scrubbing data

According to Shift, since the first-person footage will be used to train up the next Rosie Jetson, it’s more than valuable enough to cover the cost of the cleaners, for a limited time. Shift also promises to blur out sensitive details to ensure customer privacy.

Shift work: The promotion all ties into the app’s primary function: paying people to wear cameras while they perform a range of everyday tasks. Ars Technica reported that Shift US General Manager Harry Kilberg said the platform has paid tens of thousands of people in 15 countries to record daily work and chores.

AI training isn’t new. Companies like Mercor and Handshake are already worth billions of dollars, but they’ve typically been geared more toward white-collar work. Shift, and other companies like Encord, Micro1, and DoorDash, are focusing on physical tasks.—BC

READER POLL

How would you feel about letting an AI company clean your home for free if they get to keep the data?

Yes, sign me up.
No, the most sensitive data I have is what’s living in my doom piles.
No, I don’t like people coming into my space.
No, just clean up after yourself, ya filthy animal!
All of the above, even though they are somewhat contradictory.

Vocabulary trivia

Still buzzing over the spelling bee? In today’s quiz, we’ll give you the winning words in past Scripps National Spelling Bees and their definitions. But three are real and one is fake; can you spot the impostor?

Vivisepulture: the act or practice of burying someone alive
Gleumsch: hailing from the Swiss canton of Gleum
Psammophile: an organism that prefers or thrives in sandy soils or areas
Spoliator: one who spoils or damages the value of something

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ANSWER

We made up Gleumsch.

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: snuff, which in this instance means “sufficient quality.” Thanks to J. Flint from Oak Hill, WV, for a suggestion that absolutely met our standards. Submit another Word of the Day here.

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