💬 Quoted… ​​"If you have more than 100 million people sign up [over five days], ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We're not there yet."

A physical Musk vs. Zuck cage-match may not be happening, but a virtual cage-match between the two has already started – and it’s getting interesting. In a recent internal town hall, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to confirm a recent WSJ report indicating Twitter-competitor Threads’ engagement has dropped significantly since its launch. The Zuck doesn’t seem too worried, however: “The drop in users is normal. I'm optimistic about retention rates improving as we add more features to the app.”

• Data from online traffic service SimilarWeb revealed Thread’s daily active Android users dropped from 49 million to 23.6 million within a week of the platform's launch. For context, the lower number is around 22% of Twitter’s daily active Android user base, vs. ~45% for the higher number.

☀️🥵 Stat of the Day: The temperature in Phoenix, Arizona, was over 110 °F for the 31st straight day on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. The city’s previous record stretch of temps 110 °F and above was 18 days in 1974.

🤔 Did You Know?... Baseball is referred to as “America’s pastime,” but cricket actually came to the country first. The British game’s roots in the US date back to the 1750s, and cricket scores graced the front page of major newspapers well into the 1860s, the Financial Times reports. But the game faded in popularity following the Civil War, in which many of the US players died.

📰 Worth a Read: The Research Scandal at Stanford Is More Common Than You Think → (NY Times)