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Colby Carson won last week’s world famous news haiku competition™ with this beauty about your summer vacation being a “retirement killer”…

Congratulations, Colby, here’s your celebratory gif!

And here’s how Colby fared against the competition:

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Money goes to trip, Not retirement? Fun fact: I have no such fund ~ Lodro Rinzler (54)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Retire one day, eh? Enjoy your vacation now! You only live once. ~Colby Carson (102)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Release the Whimsy. Now Eighty-Six Retirement. Take Summer Vacay. ~Kaitlyn Pino (18)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Pry my summer trip, From my cold, dead hands. Retire? I’ll work ten more years. ~Erika Ettin (65)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Planning to retire? Nice vacation you got there, Now keep on working ~Stephen R. Balzac (81)
320 Votes via @beehiiv polls

This week’s world famous news haiku competition is all about how gambling companies have had to make record payouts because World Cup players have been scoring so many pesky goals. Send me your entry—to haiku at cheddar dot com—by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers. (Don’t worry if you get a bounceback email. The mailbox is working, it’s just been inundated with haikus lately, thank Goodness!)

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News you Need2Know

• World Cup Goal Spree Emptying Bookies' Pockets

• Tesla Sales Surge 25% on Recovery in Europe

• We Went Robot Shopping in NYC

• Anthropic Moves to Close Chinese Loopholes

• Why Your 4th of July Hot Dog Was So Expensive

• Poll of the Day: Hot Diggity Dawg! 🌭

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▲ 0.0% )  $DJI ( ▲ 1.14% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$DKNG ( ▲ 0.47% )  $TSLA ( ▼ 7.49% )  $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 0.14% )  $MSFT ( ▲ 1.62% )  $NATH ( ▲ 0.15% )  $COST ( ▲ 2.92% )  

World Cup Goal Spree Emptying Bookies' Pockets

World Cup strikers are absolutely destroying defensive lines, and bookmakers' bank accounts. What is usually a goldmine for sports betting companies has turned into a massive payout party, all thanks to Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland, and Kylian Mbappé suddenly deciding to score two goals each in the second week of the tournament.

Bettors who backed this trifecta of superstars to each score twice hit a 1% probability jackpot, sending sportsbooks into a financial tailspin. DraftKings $DKNG ( ▲ 0.47% )  took a bruising $50 million hit during the group stage alone. It seems DraftKings CEO Jason Robins got his wish when he called the tournament "a huge focal point for customer acquisition," though he probably didn't expect those new sign-ups to immediately run off with his wallet. Meanwhile, the U.S. team’s success has become "the biggest liability" for sportsbooks, according to Bank of America $BAC ( ▲ 0.63% ) analyst Julie Hoover.

In England, betting firm Flutter took a £4.1 million beating on England’s 4-2 win over Croatia. But Flutter CEO Peter Jackson kept a brave face, telling the Financial Times: "Even now... I don't think about that money we lost, because actually, we provided great entertainment.”

Don’t bet on sports. #NotFinancialAdvice

Quote of the Day

Tesla Sales Surge 25% on Recovery in Europe

Elon Musk has officially found his mojo again—well, at least in Europe. While U.S. buyers are giving Tesla $TSLA ( ▼ 7.49% ) the cold shoulder after lawmakers axed local tax breaks, Europeans are purchasing electric vehicles in droves.

Tesla delivered a whopping 480,000 cars worldwide in Q2, a 25% surge that smashed Wall Street’s expectations. This European love affair is a major plot twist, considering consumers recently side-eyed Musk's, let’s say, “old-fashioned” political alignment and his role as a government cost-cutting czar depriving developing countries of AIDS treatment. However, cheap monthly leases under 300 euros ($340) and expensive gasoline driven by the war in Iran won them right back. #Principles

The demand is so intense that Tesla's plant outside Berlin is working overtime. Andre Thierig, senior director of manufacturing at the plant, shared on LinkedIn that “the factory will be able to produce 6,200 Model Y sport utility vehicles a week” starting this month, scaling to “7,500 vehicles a week” by autumn.

Meanwhile, U.S. sales plummeted 20%. But with Europe buying and Germany building, Musk is cruising. It turns out cheap leases and pricey petroleum are the ultimate comeback recipe!

We Went Robot Shopping in NYC

Tucked between the trendy clothing boutiques and sneaker shops of SoHo, a pop-up store has opened on Lafayette Street. But they aren't selling overpriced streetwear. Instead, the KOID Shop is a physical storefront trying to sell us the future in the form of general-purpose humanoid robots.

Our producer, Chris Castellino, went to investigate if everyday consumers are ready to drop luxury-car money on a metal roommate. As Chris put it, "For decades, robots lived in labs inside factories and science fiction, but today New Yorkers are walking in off the street meeting these humanoid robots face to face." The big question is, "Are consumers ready to buy?"

Well, at $40,000 to $60,000 a pop, your wallet might need some serious therapy first. For that price, these droids promise to handle daily chores, elder care, and security. However, there is a hilarious catch. For liability and safety reasons, some robots currently only have rigid plastic hands. Why? Because, as one representative explained, "we don't want her to be able to hold a knife." Good call. No one wants to get sliced up by their own vacuum cleaner. Unless, of course…you’re into that.

To see what else these machines can do, Chris suited up in a 50-sensor motion-capture suit to test "Avatar technology," which lets you control a robot's body as your "physical digital twin." Or, if you prefer something more extreme, you could enter your robot in the "Arc League" — a robot combat sport described as "F1 meets UFC meets eSports.”

If violence isn't your vibe, there’s Intbot’s "Chief Vibe Officer" robot, which can entertain you by debating whether Kendrick Lamar or Drake has the better songs.

Is it a total gimmick, or are we on the cusp of a revolution? My guess is the former. But who knows!

Song of the Day: Madonna, ‘Danceteria’

“Danceteria” is widely considered the absolute centerpiece and most purely joyful standout track on Madonna's newly released studio album, “Confessions II.” Reunited with producer Stuart Price, Madonna delivers a euphoric, nostalgic anthem that serves as both a musical autobiography and a tribute to the legendary 1980s Manhattan nightclub where she was first discovered. Critics are hailing the parent album as her most vital and focused body of work in over two decades. I, personally, love it.

Anthropic Moves to Close Chinese Loopholes

It turns out that telling Chinese tech giants they can’t play with your AI is like putting a "Do Not Touch" sign on a wet paint wall. Anthropic $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 0.14% ) is furiously trying to lock down its golden child, Claude, after discovering that Chinese engineers have been treating its strict bans like mild suggestions.

Anthropic prides itself on having the absolute toughest, most ironclad ban on China. But where there’s a VPN, there’s a way. ByteDance engineers have been casually putting personal Claude subscriptions on their corporate expense reports. Meanwhile another firm, Ant Financial, apparently hooked up its staff with corporate Claude accounts routed through a Singapore-based entity. And if that wasn't sneaky enough, others simply used Microsoft's $MSFT ( ▲ 1.62% ) Azure cloud services via foreign subsidiaries to get their Claude fix.

Why the desperation? Chinese devs absolutely adore Claude Code for "distillation"—which is just a fancy term for training their own smaller AI models to copy the smart kid's homework. Anthropic is fighting back by using Claude Code to check if a user's computer timezone is set to Beijing. Intelligent.

Why Your 4th of July Hot Dog Was So Expensive

Your Independence Day cookout may have hit your wallet harder than a fireworks blast, thanks to wholesale beef costs surging 40% since the pandemic. The humble frankfurter is almost a luxury item, now, with Nathan’s Famous $NATH ( ▲ 0.15% ) reporting its franks cost 19% more to make than last year.

Why the massive premium? It is a digest of tariffs, a war with Iran still sending gas to $3.85 a gallon, and rancher nightmares like drought and screwworms. Stephen Gaffney, a manager at Paul’s Daughter on the Coney Island boardwalk, told the FT: “Food costs are increasing on everything.”

Customers are weeping into their mustard. Andrew Flory, who shelled out almost $5 for a basic frank on Coney Island, lamented, “Otherwise I’d be at Costco $COST ( ▲ 2.92% )  eating their hot dog” (where the $1.50 combo still reigns). Nearby, stall worker Alex watches hungry patrons ask the price “and then walk away”. As customer Zach Williams warned, “Our small pay cheque is being eaten up kind of notch by notch.”

But hey, it’s America’s 250th birthday! Go into debt for your hot dog like a patriot!

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Should You Check Your 401(k) Today?

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Still a no, I’m afraid. It could be years. Probably be weeks, of course. 🤞🏼

Poll of the Day: Hot Diggity Dawg! 🌭

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