Here comes the sun

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. Our taste buds are tingling to try a new breakfast sandwich, a proven technique to help you reach your goals, and the Ozzy Grammy tribute takes shape.

But first our weekly poll!

A good old English breakfast is a pretty rare find on menus this side of the pond, but luckily for those looking for one, Chef Gordon Ramsay has what he calls “the perfect breakfast sandwich,” comprised of ingredients from a traditional English breakfast.

While he omits the black pudding and baked beans, you can be sure the sandwich is packed with sausage, bacon, fried eggs, cherry tomatoes, and his added ingredients of balsamic vinegar, siracha, and Worcestershire sauce.

He starts by searing the bacon and sausage in a cast iron pan with butter and a little pepper for seasoning. After the meat starts to exude some bubbling fat, he adds the cherry tomatoes, and once the tomatoes start to crisp and the sausage shows color, he puts the skillet in the pre-heated oven.

While the oven is doing its thing, he takes the opportunity to fry the eggs in bacon/sausage fat, butter, and some cooking oil, aiming for maximally hearty sunnyside-up eggs seasoned in balsamic vinegar, siracha, and the Worcestershire sauce.

Choose whatever bread you like, though sourdough is probably the best option. Drizzle each side with the fatty extract from the egg pan, remove the cast iron skillet from the oven, slice the sausage down the middle, and layer it and the bacon on the bread. Top them with the cherries, followed by the eggs, and enjoy the perfect breakfast sandwich.

Microsoft reported $37.5 billion in capital expenditures during its Q2 earnings call the other day, outspending expectations by $1 billion and sending the company’s stock on a 7% tumble.

While major spending usually signals healthy investment in a company, investors are growing nervous about slowing demand for Microsoft’s cloud services, and its growing reliance on OpenAI for that demand.

According to the report, 45% of Microsoft’s cloud business came from OpenAI alone. Even though the AI bubble scare that rocked markets late last year has somewhat subsided, the reality is investors are increasingly questioning the growth potential of some of these companies, including OpenAI.

The firm entered into deals last year driving expenses into the trillions, yet it still only generates $20 billion in annualized revenue. Markets are asking if a path to profitability still exists for the company, even if demand for AI and the servers that power it continues to grow.

Tech and AI stocks are currently responsible for a significant portion of U.S. market growth. If investors decide these companies won’t be able to generate returns on their mounting commitments, the market correction could and likely would be catastrophic.

Setting goals is key to actually achieving them, and the key to setting them—according to neuroscientist and author, Erin Clabough—is by writing letters to yourself.

In 1978, scientists coined the term the “generation effect,” which refers to a person’s ability to generate their own ideas, and how doing so makes it more likely the person will remember them, rather than if they just heard the idea somewhere else.

Writing an idea down reinforces the generation effect, given the broader understanding of how writing is more effective for long-term memory.

In the case of goal-setting letters to oneself, Clabough says it starts with asking the right questions: what’s working and what’s not working for me? What parts of my life aren’t aligned with what I want to do with it? How do I spend my time? What are my values?

By asking these questions, you can—at minimum—determine what you don’t want to do or where you don’t want to go. Answering them can both illuminate what your goals are and how you can achieve them, even by just gently holding yourself accountable to your own written word, and doing so on some sort of routine basis (monthly, weekly, annually).

“Do the best that you can towards that intention, every day. You’re going to make progress towards that, but sometimes it won’t be in the way that you thought you were going to do it,” says Clabough.

The Grammys will take place this Sunday, and will feature a special in memoriam section to honour too many legends of the industry that passed on in the last year.

The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, and Sly Sloane will be honored during the segment, along with the departed Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne.

Ozzy passed in July, just weeks after his farewell concert at Birmingham’s Villa Park. Guns N’ Roses’ Slash and Duff McKagen, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, and producer Andrew Watt all participated in the concert, and will also be joining each other on stage at the Grammys to pay tribute to Ozzy during the memorial.

All of them worked with Ozzy in various ways during his pioneering career, writing songs together, touring together, playing together, and in the case of Watt, producing music together. Watt was a key producer on Ozzy’s final two albums, 2020’s Ordinary Man and 2022’s Patient Number 9.

Post Malone will front the tribute band, having also collaborated with Ozzy on the hit song Take What You Want, which appeared both on Malone’s 2019 album Hollywood’s Bleeding and Ozzy’s Ordinary Man.

Quizmaster’s choice

Happy Friday! It’s time for another round of trivia à la carte.

We’ve got a set of 10 random questions—the only thing connecting them is that they’ll make sense if you’re a Staker! So walk on down memory lane with today’s trivia!

Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 eGift Card ;)

Winner will be notified on Monday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and don’t forget to check your spam folder!*