Hi! Living for The Weeknd: Spotify released lists of its most-streamed artists, albums, and songs of all time yesterday. While Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny dominated the rankings, the number one song was — you guessed it — “Blinding Lights.” Today we’re exploring:

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Washington, D.C. lost over 100,000 jobs in 2025, the most in the US

For those living there, or those predisposed to political irony, it may not come as a surprise that the home of the US government has the highest unemployment rate of anywhere in the nation.

Data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last Thursday revealed that the largest year-over-year decrease in nonfarm payroll employment of any US metropolitan area last year was in Washington, D.C., where almost 104,000 jobs were lost over that period. 

In context, that’s about 3.5x the job decline observed for Boston, MA, the metro area that saw the next most jobs lost in 2025.

Generally, it follows that the largest nominal changes in employment are seen for the most populous metro areas, like Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, and Washington, D.C. However, as the BLS outlined in a separate release on Tuesday, DC was also among the 6 metro areas that saw statistically significant declines last year, with employment down 3.1% to 3.26 million in January 2026.

Doge days

Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that DC had the highest unemployment rate in the country, and pointed to the drop in the federal workforce, since the government is the region’s largest employer.

Indeed, the BLS’s Employment Situation report for March detailed that ~355,000 jobs have been cut from the government since October 2024 (-11.8%), with the number of federal employees currently sitting at ~2.66 million, the lowest level since 1966.

However, even as initiatives like DOGE — the single greatest cause of job cuts in the US last year, according to Challenger data — have, as intended, caused a large number of civil servants to lose their jobs, it seems there are a cocktail of other issues that are also driving joblessness in DC.

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How do you stop teens smoking? The UK thinks a lifetime ban is the only way forward

The dull and unending debate around whether smoking is “in” or “out” might be about to get a more definitive answer for the youngest people in the UK, after a bill placing a lifetime ban on the sale of cigarettes, vapes, and other tobacco products to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009 passed through Parliament earlier this week.

Stubbing out

While the Tobacco and Vapes Bill still needs royal assent from King Charles — a formality, given the last time a ruling monarch refused it was more than 315 years ago — it may still go down as “the biggest public health intervention in a generation,” according to a health minister speaking to the House of Lords. 

The UK bill follows world-first legislation in New Zealand, where lawmakers passed a bill in 2022 that would prohibit the sale of smoking tobacco products to the same cohort from 2027 — although that move was reversed by the very next government.

If (and it’s a quite monumental if, but let’s speak hypothetically) the US were to pass similar legislation, it would have a big impact on the current crop of American middle and high schoolers’ lives moving forward, 7.5% of whom already reported using a tobacco product in the last 30 days when the FDA asked in 2025.

The most recent National Youth Tobacco Survey — released without comment unlike in previous years, leaving analysis of the data to industry giants like Altria — showed usage dropping across most tobacco products even compared to the 25-year lows recorded in 2024, though the share of middle school and high school students who smoked cigarettes in the last 30 days stayed steady at 1.4%. 

That proportion rises sharply once they’re legally able to light up, with the latest CDC data showing that roughly 10% of American adults still smoke cigarettes.

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Position Your Portfolio For Gold’s New Paradigm

Central banks are getting hotter on gold. In a recent World Gold Council and YouGov survey, a record 95% of representatives expected global central bank gold reserves to increase from 2025 to 2026. Persistent central bank buying is just one factor indicating long-term, structural momentum behind gold’s price — but most investors haven’t considered all the options for capitalizing on it.

With a royalties-based model like Versamet’s (NASDAQ: VMET), investors get a stake in the ownership portion of gold mining. By helping to provide capital to world-class mining projects around the world, Versamet stakeholders receive a percentage of their gold production typically for the life of the mine.

The upside? Versamet's cut remains inflation-protected and generates consistent cash flow. Having executed nearly $750 million in acquisitions, the Versamet portfolio is anchored by high-growth assets across all stages of the business cycle. By prioritizing returns and diversification over rigid structures, Versamet offers a high-margin gateway to gold’s new era.

A simple and genius app idea with one of the worst business models of all time

What3words, a completely free-to-use platform that’s literally saved lives, is a cash incinerator.

The app, which maps every 3-by-3-meter square in the world onto a unique address made up of three random words, is just one of those very good, very simple, and therefore very rare ideas. Anywhere on Earth you might need rescuing, you can communicate a precise location using the 57 trillion squares the company has mapped.

But looking purely at the numbers, the British startup just doesn’t live up to the brilliance of its concept. Since its founding in 2013, the company’s balance sheet shows cumulative losses of 146 million British pounds ($197 million). In 2024, the company did just £2.1 million in revenue, a little under what the typical US McDonald’s restaurant brings in each year (~$4 million).

The McDonald’s restaurant also probably doesn’t spend 8x its revenue on administrative expenses, an outlay that meant an operating loss in 2024 of some £14 million for W3W. (For what it’s worth, that was a £46 million loss in 2022, so it’s still progress of a kind.)

need.more.cash

Now, the company is running another crowdfunding campaign at a pre-money valuation just shy of £50 million, with 1,591 investors already taking.the.plunge — a huge haircut to the £250 million valuation that The Times reported in 2020. 

The raise is set to be a mix of primary and secondary equity, giving some employees or investors an exit route from the company’s cap table. In fairness to What3words, revenue did double in 2024, as the company pushed its enterprise product and API access.

Nevertheless, an 80% cut to its peak valuation, secondary sellers, a lack of institutional buy-in, and a second go at the crowdfunding table, especially for a company that spent 8x its revenue on operating expenses, is a lengthy string of red flags — red bunting, perhaps.

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A recent World Gold Council and YouGov survey shows that a record 95% of respondents from central banks expect global reserves to increase from 2025 to 2026. In the new era of gold, discover a diversified precious metals investment with Versamet.

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Off the charts: Earlier this week, we told you that Jersey Mike’s is the fastest-growing sandwich concept in the US by store count — but which chain brings in the most money per store? [Answer below]. 

Answer here.

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