In Other Brews…

• Around 10,000 hotel workers took early checkouts (from work) this week. Employees at major hotel chains––including Hilton, Marriott, and Hyatt––went on strike in eight cities, demanding higher pay and a return to pre-pandemic staffing levels. They say cuts made during the pandemic were never reversed, even after customers returned. 

• An attempted jailbreak at Congo’s largest (and notoriously overcrowded) prison left 129 dead on Monday. The majority of deaths were caused by a stampede; authorities also reported that multiple female inmates were sexually abused, and part of the prison was burned during the chaos. The prison houses over 12,000 inmates despite an official capacity of 1,500. 

• Disney-owned channels, including ESPN and ABC, went dark for millions of DirecTV customers on Sunday amid tense contract negotiations (Disney wants more money for its content… DirecTV wants to pay less). The U.S. Open was in full swing when coverage cut out, and would-be watchers of the USC-LSU game enjoyed 3 hours of an error message instead of football.

• A “covert” white Beluga whale, accused of spying on behalf of Russia, has died off the Norwegian coast. The agent—jokingly named Hvaldimir, a combination of the Norwegian word for whale “hval” and Russian President “Vladimir” Putin—made international headlines in 2019 after being discovered harnessed with a camera labeled “Equipment, St. Petersburg.” He became a beloved celebrity whose passing is mourned. 

• Goodbye, lava lamps and pizza-box end tables; hello, designer dorm rooms. It’s back-to-school season, and the National Retail Federal reported that students spent an average $1,365—almost double what dorm dwellers spent 10 years ago—to decorate their rooms. To be fair, some kids are drawing up the average with a viral new trend: paying $10k+ for dorm designers.