This week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ is about how high energy prices are driving Europeans towards solar power in record numbers. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

Now: News!

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

• Amazon expands its 30-minute delivery push

• 80+ users made suspicious Polymarket bets

• Could oil prices spike again this summer?

• Princeton changes honor code over AI cheating fear …

• It’s a good time to get an MBA on the cheap

• Poll of the day: 30-minute delivery?

• Poll of the day: You didn’t get a raise

What’s the stock market up to, eh?

$SPX ( ▲ 0.58% ) $DJI ( ▼ 0.14% ) $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$AMZN ( ▲ 1.62% )  $DPZ ( ▼ 0.54% )  $POLYMARKET ( 0.0% )  

Amazon expands its 30-minute delivery push

Urgently need mouthwash before your next Zoom call? Well, modern society has found another way to feed your impatience. Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 1.62% ) is expanding "Amazon Now," a 30-minute delivery service for when you absolutely, positively need a toilet plunger and a lime right this very second but you don’t want to go downstairs to the bodega.

Amazon’s head of transportation, Beryl “Today” Tomay, dropped this absolute bombshell of an insight to the Associated Press: “We know that customers love speed and always have.” 

Reminds me of my brother, actually, that quote. She also gleefully noted, “What we see customers doing, when we offer faster speeds, are they purchase more from Amazon.”  

So, that’s the reason behind the whole affair. Prime members only have to fork over an extra $3.99 for this magic trick, while non-members pay $13.99 a pop. Tomay assures us, “There’s no rushing either in our building workers or the gig workers.” Although I’d be interested to hear from the workers themselves whether that’s true, in due course.

Domino’s $DPZ ( ▼ 0.54% ) in 1984 pushed a guarantee that customers would receive their pizzas for free if they weren’t delivered in under a half-hour. The company amended the “30 minutes or it’s free” policy after two years, providing only a $3 discount for late deliveries. The promotion helped Domino’s win market share, but it ended up tarnishing the company’s reputation. It dropped the guarantee in December 1993 after a string of crashes and lawsuits involving drivers racing to meet the deadline.

Quote of the Day

80+ users made suspicious Polymarket bets

A new New York Times investigation reveals more than 80 users who placed suspiciously well-timed Polymarket $POLYMARKET ( 0.0% ) bets. In one glaring case, a user pocketed over $400,000 after betting that Nicolás Maduro would be ousted just days before U.S. forces arrested him. A U.S. Army Special Forces soldier was later charged with using classified intel for that wager.

In another wild coincidence, 13 users wagered $140,000 that Israel would strike Iran right before it happened, hauling in over $600,000. Someone even won $200,000 betting on a preemptive pardon for Joe Biden’s brother, Jim, less than 40 minutes before the White House announced it.

How is the platform responding? A Polymarket spokeswoman insists the firm “continuously monitors its markets for suspicious activity and regularly engages with relevant authorities when appropriate.” Yet, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan previously called insider trading “an inevitability” with “a lot of benefits,” arguing, “What’s cool about Polymarket is that it creates this financial incentive for people to go and divulge the information to the market.”

With $25 billion in monthly trading volume, it seems the site has become exactly what Donald Trump recently lamented: "somewhat of a casino." Although Trump’s son, Donald Jr., holds a significant financial and advisory stake in the company through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital. The investment, reportedly in the double-digit millions, coincided with a shift in the regulatory environment where the Trump-era Commodity Futures Trading Commission dropped investigations into the firm. 🤷

Could oil prices spike again this summer?

As the 2026 summer travel season begins, the outlook for energy markets remains volatile, with war geopolitical tensions adding a significant risk premium to crude prices. Rob Thummel, senior portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital, told us there is "probably $20 or more plus in the oil price right now for geopolitical risk premium.”

Thummel warns that if "oil inventories continue to fall, and they probably will throughout the summer, and we don't get the Strait of Hormuz opened up, that puts at risk the price. In other words, the price of oil probably moves even higher." For the average American consumer, this translates directly to the pump, where they "probably will continue to see higher gasoline and jet fuel prices throughout the summer.”

If you’re a warmongering investor, of course, then you can profit from this by buying oil stocks. #NotFinancialAdvice

Thummel recommends that investors maintain exposure, suggesting "five to 10% allocations to the energy sector because there's a lot of free cash flow coming from the sector, a lot of dividends, a lotta stock buybacks.”

I bought $100 worth of Chevron $CVX ( ▲ 0.03% ) stock on January 3 when we invaded Venezuela, which certainly represents about 10% of my net worth today. #NotFinancialAdvice. And here’s how the stock has done since, compared to the S&P500 index:

Still, I made a total of $20 on the trade, which is hardly enough to cover the increase in gas prices over the same period…

Thummel sees "probably the bigger opportunity" in natural gas, capitalizing on the U.S.’s “real competitive advantage.” Natural gas demand is poised to increase dramatically due to the AI revolution, as "all of this AI basically, at its core is two things, it's data and it's energy.”

So, there you go. It all comes back to AI on the stock market lately.

Song of the Day: The Rolling Stones, ‘In The Stars’

“In The Stars” is a highly polished, stadium-ready rock single that leans into a melodic, radio-friendly sound while retaining the core identity of The Rolling Stones. It should really be called “It’s A Miracle We’re Still Alive,” though, in my opinion. Let alone making rock music.

Princeton changes honor code over AI cheating fears

The era of the unsupervised Ivy League exam is officially over. For 133 years, Princeton University proudly relied on a ridiculous honor code that banned proctors from exam rooms, trusting students to simply sign a pledge promising they wouldn't cheat. But thanks to the rise of AI, faculty have recently voted to mandate proctors for all in-person exams starting this summer.

AI has made academic dishonesty incredibly easy and exceptionally hard to catch. Whether it's flipping to a hidden laptop window during a test or sneaking a peek at a smartphone in the bathroom, the modern temptation to cheat is everywhere. In fact, a student newspaper survey revealed that 30% of seniors admitted to cheating on an assignment or exam. Shockingly, while nearly half of the surveyed seniors knew about an honor code violation, less than 1% actually reported one.

It turns out students are terrified of being publicly shamed on social media for snitching on their peers. According to Nadia Makuc, a Princeton senior and recent chair of the student-run honor committee, most students actually support the new policy because it relieves them of the heavy burden of policing their own classmates. Welcome to the future of higher education; snitches no longer risk getting stitches.

It’s a good time to get an MBA on the cheap

One of America’s most expensive graduate degrees is officially on clearance. With applications slumping, business schools are slashing tuition by up to 50% on specialized, AI-focused programs to lure hesitant professionals back to the classroom.

The price cuts are massive: Johns Hopkins Carey Business School is offering a 50% scholarship to certain recent grads, Purdue University is knocking 40% off its online program, and UC Irvine is cutting tuition by up to 38%, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Why the desperation? In an uncertain job market, workers are clinging to their current roles. Admissions consultant Petia Whitmore told the paper that many professionals are skipping two-year MBAs altogether, saying, “I can continue to just learn on the job. I’m actually OK the way I am.”

Schools hope shorter, cheaper AI degrees will change their minds. Joe MacDonald, a deputy dean at Washington University's Olin Business School, notes, “We wanted to provide as little friction as possible for displaced workers in order to be able to upskill and get back into the workforce.” For student Christien Wong, the pitch is working: “Almost every job posting I’ve seen... wants some kind of AI skills and expertise," he told the Journal. "I think it’s the right move to give me the right skill sets for the future.”

However, higher-education consultant Tim Westerbeck warns that this discount strategy has “gotten too expensive, and they still haven’t figured out how they’re going to sustain that model over time.”

Perhaps the deans should all go back to business school.

Free yourself from advertising forever!

Should you check your 401(k) today?

👍️ 

Yes.

Poll of the day: 30-minute delivery?

Poll of the day: You didn’t get a raise

We asked: Do you remember getting a 3.6% pay rise over the last year?

You answered:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Oddly enough, no. (354)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Sure. My pay has definitely risen in line with the Labor Department's national data on private sector earnings. (22)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, and I'm planning to spend all of my extra 3.6% on a nice, relaxing vacation. Wait, never mind. Airfares just jumped 20.7% thanks to the spike in jet-fuel costs. (59)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ I'm actually a blue-collar production worker, so I put in longer hours just to see my weekly earnings essentially stall out at a 0.1% increase. (26)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ "An enforced increase in wages would not win either for the worker or for labor their human status and dignity." —Karl Marx (33)
494 Votes via @beehiiv polls

Need2Know is covered by Cheddar’s Terms of Service

P.S. So, you remember the cheese puns that used to open this newsletter? Suffice to say, they were divisive. Now, thanks to a thing called “dynamic content options,” I can offer you the option to see cheese puns again, if you’re one of the thousands who got in touch bemoaning their departure six months ago. All you need to do is answer “true” on this survey, and submit it. If you never want to see cheese puns in this newsletter again, don’t click that link, don’t fill out the survey, don’t submit it. Just keep reading and pretend this conversation never happened. Mmmkay? Thank you.