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• Mark Cuban said that “only idiot startup founders” will stay in California if the wealth tax passes.
• Business Insider put Cuban’s theory to the test by asking founders whether they’d leave.
• One said he would. Another said he’d consider it. A third said founders want to be close to the epicenter of AI.

Mark Cuban said startup founders would leave under a proposed wealth tax. The founders themselves are split.

California will vote on its statewide “billionaire tax” in November. In an X response to Rep. Ro Khanna, Cuban said the tax would adversely affect founders, who may be billionaires in stock but lack the cash to pay it. “If this passes, only idiot startup founders stay,” he wrote.

In an email to Business Insider, Cuban clarified that “not every founder will face the tax.” There are “a lot of incentives to go elsewhere,” he wrote.

“Cali isn’t the only place with a nice climate,” Cuban wrote.

Business Insider put Cuban’s theory to the test. We asked three startup founders: If the tax passed, would you leave? The results were mixed.

The founders ready to run

Jesse Tinsley said the billionaires will flee California if it passes.

Tinsley founded Mainstreet.com, a holding company that houses Employer.com, Bench, and others. He wrote to Business Insider that he’d personally leave the state if the tax passed.

“It’s not just me,” Tinsley wrote. “It’s every CEO or founder over a billion dollars in net worth minus a handful.”

Tinsley said that billionaires don’t want to speak out publicly because they don’t want “the public backlash.” He also cited the Laffer curve, the economic theory that tax revenue will revert to zero as the tax rate increases past a maximized point.

Where would he go? Tinsley said he’d head to Florida. “If I was moving there permanently, I would get a home in Miami/Palm Beach area,” he wrote.

The state — and Miami specifically — has grown increasingly popular with a class of tech leaders.

Others were less committal but expressed frustration. Jaspar Carmichael-Jack said that he’d “seriously consider leaving California in the medium term” if the tax passed.

Carmichael-Jack cofounded Artisan, the AI startup behind those viral “Stop Hiring Humans” billboards. He grew up in the United Kingdom, but moved to San Francisco to build his company.

“It’s a direct hit to illiquid founders building companies, and it makes it harder to justify staying when other states are actively competing for startups,” Carmichael-Jack wrote.

The founders intent on staying

Not everyone is rushing for the exit.

Jensen Huang said he was “perfectly fine” with the tax. “We chose to live in Silicon Valley, and whatever taxes they would like to apply, so be it,” Huang said in January.

There are perks to being physically in Silicon Valley: the startup scene, ample investors, accelerators, and hacker houses. San Francisco has grown more prized in the AI era as opportunities and money pour in. Why leave?

HiJenny founder Michal Cieplinski wrote to Business Insider that founders “are not going anywhere” while the Bay Area remains central to the AI boom and engineering talent.

“The wealth tax mostly affects founders of public or large private companies and they, on their own, can move,” Cieplinski wrote.

“The companies and most of their employees will remain.”

What do you think of the wealth tax proposal? Tell us in the comments below.

• Jason Kelce’s viral ad pokes fun at data center water usage and tells people to “pee on computers.”
• The ad ends with a chorus of supposed pee-ers handing over yellowish jars to a post office worker.
• USPS rules say most people aren’t allowed to mail their urine.

Former NFLer Jason Kelce is jokingly telling people to send their urine to data centers over the mail.

USPS rules say most people should just flush.

On Tuesday, Kelce, the co-owner of Garage Beer, starred in a now-viral ad campaign featuring the canned water brand Liquid Death. After standing next to a toilet, he turns to the camera, revealing a glass jar containing a (concerningly) dark yellowish liquid.

“AI data centers waste millions of gallons of water,” he says, before launching into a song with lyrics like, “Let’s pee on computers together.”

The ad ends with a chorus of supposed pee-ers at the “Post Office,” complete with an American flag, handing over jars of their “data center coolant” to a postal worker. (Those jars are now available for $18 on Liquid Death’s site, with a description that reads, “Mailing your pee to AI data centers has never been easier with these limited edition resealable jars.”)

“The suits want us to tell you to please don’t actually send your pee,” small print at the bottom of the ad says.

That’s probably good advice.

USPS rules do, in fact, allow some urine to travel through the mail. Human “excreta” sent for certain routine tests — such as drug or alcohol testing — can qualify as an “exempt human specimen.” The mailing service requires those samples to be carefully packaged, including in leakproof containers with absorbent material and rigid outer packaging.

A mason jar of pee destined for a data center is another matter. The exemption applies to specimens being transported for routine testing, not bodily fluids being mailed as a prank or as an unconventional computer-cooling system.

USPS rules also say nonhazardous liquids must be properly packaged, and that anything producing an “obnoxious odor” is nonmailable.

USPS declined to comment on this story.

Data center back(sp)lash goes viral

Garage Beer previously told Business Insider that the campaign was designed to tap into an area of common agreement.

“There are many things that Americans can’t agree on, but opposition to AI data centers is the one thing almost everyone can agree upon across the political and cultural spectrum,” Andy Pearson, Liquid Death’s vice president of creative, said.

Opposition to data centers has become a potent issue across the political spectrum, with communities raising concerns about their water use, power demand, and impact on local infrastructure. That backlash has continued, even as the AI industry argues that developers have responded to criticism by improving water efficiency, investing in communities, and trying to reduce their strain on electric grids.

Drew Pusateri, a communications officer at OpenAI, highlighted that tension Tuesday in a post on X featuring an image of Kelce holding his jar of supposed urine.

But the ad and its online virality point to a long road ahead for AI labs on the public-persuasion front.

• Kristi Hemric began decorating her Manhattan stoop after scaffolding covered her townhouse.
• Her changing displays have featured Lego, the Knicks, flowers, and interactive installations.
• She says the project unexpectedly created connections throughout her neighborhood.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kristi Hemric. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I had always dreamed of buying a townhouse in Manhattan, and when I did, I knew I had to decorate my stoop. I’m from Dallas, and everyone decorates the front of their houses for every single holiday.

But soon after moving in, the building next door had work being done, and scaffolding had gone up and crossed onto my property line, covering my skinny townhouse.

Instead of complaining about it, I decided to make it as pretty as I could — less ugly — with pink flowers. I thought my neighbors wouldn’t like it, but they loved an injection of color through the sunless months of January, February, and March.

This was the start of my stoop creations. Three years later, I’m still decorating my stoop, and the themes have attracted a lot of attention — both organically, with people passing by, and through social media.

I decide last-minute what to do next

As a creative, my theme turnover isn’t well organized. After the pink flowers, I decided lemons would make a great summer theme. When the Knicks started winning, we decorated with basketballs, and as the World Cup started, we strung up country flags and soccer balls.

The decision about what to do next and when to do it is often made at the last minute, but I like it this way. It means that it doesn’t feel like work — that it is purely creative fun. It’s easy to get stuck in our day-to-day jobs, and learning something new — for me, working with flowers — is a way to switch off for a bit.

My husband (the organized one) and I (the creative one) work as a team, and my four kids, ages 6 and under, like to help too.

We have storage units in the Bronx where we store used items so we can recycle decorations for future themes. We don’t buy anything that we can only use once. If we can’t buy it, we make it ourselves.

In the past three years, we’ve given away decorations too — to the restaurants down the street and the hair studio nearby.

Someone proposed on our stoop

One Mother’s Day, we had used real flowers — something we don’t typically do because they don’t weather well — and when it was time to take them down, we gave them away to children to give to their moms. They’d tell me the color their mom loved most, and we’d find a flower of that color.

One of my favorite stoops was our first Lego theme — we built every single Lego botanical flower. A guy who had planned a date around Lego asked if he could propose to his fiancé on our stoop. They ended up inviting us to dinner and to their wedding.

For a later Lego-themed stoop, a local boys’ school sent some of their 8^th graders to help build the sets. The parents messaged us to say how amazing it was that the boys were away from screens.

When we decorated with a Knicks theme, the whole city was enamored, and people kept passing by our house in jerseys to take pictures. That was a magical month.

Who would have thought that my stoop — initially just to beautify scaffolding — would have brought community cohesion and joy?

• Demand for “Dune: Part 3” tickets overwhelmed AMC’s ticketing systems on Tuesday.
• AMC CEO Adam Aron said its IT department was instructed to “take whatever steps are needed.”
• “We thought we were ready, but we weren’t,” Aron said on X.

Some fans of the “Dune” franchise had to duke it out like Paul Atreides to snag tickets during AMC’s latest ticket launch.

In an X post, AMC CEO Adam Aron said high demand for “Dune: Part Three” temporarily slowed or “glitched” its online ticketing system on Tuesday.

“Ticketing traffic across AMC’s website and mobile app reached levels approximately three times higher than what we experienced during the Spider-Man: Brand New Day ticket launch, which itself followed strong advance sales for The Odyssey ticket launch before that,” Aron said.

Aron said the ticket issues plaguing customers were “intolerable and inexcusable.”

“There was much discussion internally ahead of and preparing for the Dune 3 launch. We thought we were ready, but we weren’t,” he said.

In response, Aron said AMC has instructed its IT team to “move at a whirlwind speed to take whatever steps are needed so that our ticketing systems are — in all situations and in all quantities —again top shelf.”

AMC initially released a small batch of tickets for “Dune: Part Three” in April, which quickly sold out, disappointing many fans. Tuesday marked AMC’s second ticket drop for coveted IMAX 70mm screenings and other premium large formats.

AMC experienced similar fan hysteria earlier this year for “The Odyssey,” which debuted in theaters this July and also had a staggered ticket release. Fans of the Greek epic rushed online ticket drops, causing platform crashes, while resellers hawked tickets for as much as $600.

Now “Dune: Part Three” is whipping up similar hype among fans, some of whom camped outside theaters on Tuesday. Business Insider’s Juliana Kaplan reported that fans began forming a line at New York City’s AMC Lincoln Square 13 around midnight, and the queue stretched around the block. The Lincoln Square theater is home to the largest IMAX in the country and shows films in 70mm, making it one of the most in-demand theater experiences of the summer.

Some of those waiting in line for “Dune: Part Three” were likely resellers. Tickets almost immediately landed on eBay, where they were going for outrageous prices. One listing on Wednesday morning was selling IMAX 70MM tickets for $600.

Ticket resellers are major players in the entertainment and events industries, despite pushback from artists, studios, and the US government. They’ve caused ticketing drama for high-profile events like the 2026 World Cup and concerts for Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour.”

Timothée Chalamet is reprising his role as Atreides in “Dune: Part Three,” which explores the consequences of his reign after he took power of the empire. Zendaya, Florence Pugh, Robert Pattinson, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, and Anya Taylor-Joy are among its star-studded cast.

• Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard veterans had higher ALS rates than Army veterans.
• Male officers had a 64% higher ALS rate than enlisted veterans, a study found.
• The study points to possible service-related exposures but does not identify them.

Veterans who served in the Air Force, Navy, or Coast Guard had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, rates 15% to 29% higher than Army veterans, according to a new study.

The study, published in the journal Neurology last month, analyzed records for nearly 10 million veterans receiving Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare between 2000 and 2024, including nearly 14,500 with an ALS diagnosis.

Officers were found to face a 64% elevated risk of developing ALS, compared with their enlisted counterparts. The researchers did not determine whether particular military jobs or exposures were responsible for the difference.

ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a degenerative disease that damages the nerve cells that control voluntary movement. Over time, patients lose the ability to control muscles that needed to speak, eat, move, and breathe independently. It is often difficult to diagnose and is fatal.

“Military service is a known risk factor for the development of ALS, but little is known about what factors may contribute to that risk,” Marc Weisskopf, an environmental epidemiologist at Harvard and one of the study authors, said in a Harvard announcement.

Weisskopf cautioned that ALS is rare and the overall risk of developing it remains small, “so even statistically significant increases associated with branch and rank represent only modest increases in risk among military personnel.”

Previous studies have also found ALS is more common in veterans, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, perhaps because veterans face exposure to risk factors like lead, pesticides, and other toxins. While ALS can affect all populations, it’s more frequently found in older white men.

What could explain the branch and rank differences remains unclear. Weisskopf said in an American Academy of Neurology press release that officers and enlisted personnel may face different work conditions.

“Officers tend to experience more psychosocial stress, with pilots experiencing high G-forces, noise and vibration as well as circadian disruption, while enlisted personnel usually experience more extreme physical exercise, heavy weapons use and handling of fuels and solvents,” he said.

Around 46% of veterans with an ALS diagnosis served in the Army, roughly in line with the Army’s share of the overall veteran population examined,

After accounting for age, sex, race, and ethnicity, male Air Force veterans had a 29% higher ALS rate than male Army veterans, while male Coast Guard veterans had a 26% higher rate and male Navy veterans had a 15% higher rate. Male Marine veterans had a 22% lower rate than Army veterans, researchers found.

Differences were more pronounced among men under age 61 than among those over 75.

The researchers said they had limited ability to assess differences among women because ALS is so rare and women make up a smaller share of the military population, just 18%. But among the women who were included, female officers faced a 72% higher risk compared with enlisted women.

“Our findings suggest that officers and those serving in the Air Force, Navy, or Coast Guard may have been exposed to military environments that increase risk for ALS,” Weisskopf said in a release. “Future research should aim to identify these exposures.”

• Amazon Prime Air is expanding its drone delivery service to almost 500 US cities and towns.
• That’s a major ramp up. Amazon now offers drone delivery to 11 US locations.
• Customers can check whether they have access to Amazon’s drone delivery service on its website.

The sight of Amazon’s delivery drones buzzing over their homes could soon be the norm for a growing chunk of Americans.

Amazon said Prime Air is expanding its drone delivery service to almost 500 US cities and towns by the end of this year. The company plans to make the service available to customers in Illinois, Georgia, Ohio, Idaho, and New York.

That’s a major ramp up. Seven states, including Nebraska and Florida, already have access.

The company says that any items that weighs 5 pounds or less, and that can fit in a large shoe box, can be delivered by a drone. That’s the majority of the millions of packages ordered on Amazon every day.

“Orders arrive in as fast as 30 minutes, with most orders arriving around 60 minutes after checkout,” Amazon sad in a press release.

Amazon said it uses “multiple” independent systems to keep the autonomous aircraft performing safely, including its “Detect-and-Avoid” system that monitors airspace and the environment. “It’s similar to a trained pilot who scans the surrounding airspace, and it allows the drones to independently see and make real-time decisions while in flight.”

Although Amazon hasn’t shared the full list of locations, customers can check if they’re currently eligible for the service through the company’s website. On the homepage, customers can click into the drop-down menu and find “Drone Delivery” under the “Programs & Features” section.

Once a customer selects “Drone Delivery,” they’ll be taken to the drone delivery webpage, which includes a map of current and future locations. Additionally, clicking the “Shop Now” button in the drone delivery section will reveal a customer’s status.

Launched in 2022, Amazon is positioning Prime Air as the next horizon in delivery services. Customers can order everything from groceries to medications and electronics.

Walmart has also ramped up its own drone delivery service over the last year, bringing it to 100 more stores in places like Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa.

While that sounds convenient, the sounds of the drones themselves might prove an issue for some residents — as anyone who has tried to chill on a beach while someone flies a consumer drone to get that sweeping shot for Instagram can attest.

Are you worried about the noise from delivery drones? Privacy issues? Something else? Share your thoughts about delivery drones in the comments.