|
Good morning and welcome to Tuesday.
-
We have a correction to report from yesterday: we mistakenly referred to the CRAF as both the Civil Reserve Air Force and the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. It is, in fact the Civil Reserve Air Fleet.
⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s newsletter takes 3.18 minutes to read – it still packs a mighty punch, we're just a little graphic-heavy today. (With the 360° view: +3.62 minutes.)
|
|
👇📰 Quick Bits
|
 |
💉 Pfizer Vaccine Fully Authorized
Image: Dado Ruvic/Reuters
|
🎁 DONUT Headline: The two-dose COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech, which will now be marketed as Comirnaty (a blend of community, immunity, COVID, and mRNA), received full approval from the FDA yesterday for people 16 years and older.
|
-
The vaccine was first cleared by U.S. regulators in December on an emergency-use basis for ages 16 and up following a clinical trial of more than 40,000 people. The same approval was granted to children aged 12-16 in May.
🤔 So, what's the difference?... It boils down to two things: 1) more time and data and 2) more manufacturing scrutiny.
-
Emergency use approval requires drug companies to follow clinical trial volunteers for two months after vaccination, while full approval calls for at least six months of data.
-
Full approval also requires companies to provide more detailed info about the drug-making process and submit to additional inspections of manufacturing facilities.
📈 U.S. vaccine update... All 50 states reported an increase in first doses administered over the three weeks ending August 3, with the national rate up by more than 73%.
Image: CDC
-
The U.S. administered over one million doses for the third straight day on Friday, according to the White House.
👁️ Looking ahead... Moderna submitted relevant clinical trial data to the FDA roughly one month after Pfizer, meaning full approval of its vaccine is probably weeks away.
-
Johnson & Johnson has not submitted its application yet but said it hopes to do so before the end of the year.
From the Left: NPR
From the Right: WSJ
|
|
|
🧳 Wanna Get Away?
Image: Giphy
|
🎁 DONUT Headline: Now may be your chance. The country town of Maenza recently became the first city near Rome – and the most recent Italian town – to make historic homes available to purchase for 1 euro.
|
-
Obviously, there’s a catch: the homes are largely abandoned, decrepit, and require government-mandated restoration work.
📜 The backstory: Selling houses for a symbolically low amount to counter population decline in rural towns and villages is a trend that started in Italy around a decade ago. Many of these towns are in southern Italy or Sicily, places known for beauty but not necessarily economic prosperity.
-
In the early 2000s, over half a million people left southern Italy due to a growing financial crisis and increasing poverty. The “economic exodus” was largest among people aged 15 to 34, leading to an inevitable population decline over time.
While the regulations differ depending on the town, they usually require buyers to hand over a deposit guarantee, typically between $2,000 to $6,000, which is returned when the restoration is complete.
🏠 If you’re not up for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition... Prices of empty turnkey dwellings in some towns start below $10,000, no restoration work necessary.
🗺️ Does Italy not float your boat?... A growing number of towns in Switzerland, Croatia, and even Japan offer similar incentives. Other options include:
-
You may be able to buy an entire Spanish village for less than the price of a typical American home.
-
Last month, Costa Rica enacted the “Law for the Attraction of Investors, Rentiers, and Pensioners” to create new perks in order to attract people from other countries who are interested in investing and/or living there.
🇺🇸 And if the U.S. is more your speed… Moving to Morgantown, West Virginia, Topeka, Kansas, or Tulsa, Oklahoma could net you $10,000+. Some other places that pay you to move there.
🔭 Zoom out… Most of these incentives predated COVID, the Great Resignation, and Zoom calls.
-
Travel publication International Living reported a 504.97% increase in traffic to its “How to Move Out of the U.S.” website page in the three months preceding July 2020. The top searched destinations? Belize, Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Italy.
+Bonus: How the U.S. population is shifting.
+Double-Bonus: How the global population is shifting.
|
|
|
🍩 DONUT Holes…
Image: China National Space Administration
-
☝️ China’s Mars rover completed its primary mission. (We recently wrote a Dose of Discussion piece exploring the future of space. Read it here.)
-
🗽 New York news: Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul is now officially Governor Kathy Hochul, becoming the first woman to ever hold the position. (From the Left | From the Right) | 💉 NYC will require all education staff, including teachers and principals, to be vaccinated; it’s expected to affect ~148,000 workers. (From the Left | From the Right)
-
🇦🇫 The German military reported that a deadly firefight broke out at Kabul Airport early yesterday, with one dead and three injured.
-
🛍️ Target plans to triple the number of Disney shops within its U.S. stores to more than 160 by the end of the year.
-
🎃☕ The Pumpkin Spice Latte is back – but so is the Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew, which actually outsold its hot counterpart last year.
+Bonus: Some Good News from Afghanistan… The members of an all-girl robotics team from Afghanistan were given scholarship offers at U.S. universities; the ten girls escaped the country this weekend, landing in Qatar en route to the U.S.
|
|
|
🔥 The Hot Corner
💬 Heard Through the Grapevine… “I’ve been called The Rock and Vin Diesel’s love child. I go along with it. It’s humorous. It’s flattering. It could be worse people, I guess.” – Morgan County Sheriff's Office Patrol Lieutenant Eric Fields, explaining people’s reactions when they meet him.
-
Judge the resemblance for yourself. 👇
Image: Morgan County Sheriff's Office
🔢 Stat of the Day… Average published college tuition and fees have more than doubled for public two-year schools and private nonprofit four-year schools, and close to tripled for public four-year schools between the 1990-1991 and the 2020-2021 school years, according to the College Board.
📖 Worth Your Time… The Mysterious Figure Stealing Books Before Their Release
|
|
|
🗣👂 Dose of Discussion
🏛️ Government & Misinformation
|
|
🎁 DONUT Headline: A Pew Research Center poll published last week found nearly half of the nearly 12,000 Americans surveyed believe the government should step in to restrict misinformation on social media.
|
🏫 Eleven score and ten years ago… The Bill of Rights, containing the first ten amendments, was adopted. The First Amendment protects the free speech of all private actors - both social media users and the companies themselves - from government censorship. It applies to federal, state, and local government actors.
-
HOWEVER. It does not prohibit private individuals, companies, or employers from restricting speech.
📝 Now, back to the poll… Partisan divisions on the role of government in addressing online misinformation have also emerged since the first such poll in 2018.
|
|
|
🛸🌄📲 Calling from the Future…
|
🚀 Taking Flight
 Artist’s rendition; Image: NASA
|
🎁 DONUT Headline: Bolstered by the success of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, a new and far more powerful flying drone is set to explore Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
|
In 2005, a NASA lander managed to briefly transmit data from the surface of Titan. Shortly after reaching that historic milestone, the space agency began to develop the Dragonfly – a flying lander that will be able to soar up to 13,000 feet into Titan’s methane atmosphere
-
Unlike Mars's atmosphere, which is very thin, Titan’s is four times thicker than that of Earth, making the moon “the easiest place to fly in the solar system.”
Dragonfly is scheduled to launch from Earth in 2027 and will arrive near Titan by 2034.
Keep reading.
|
|
|
🤗 Daily Dose of Positive
🏥 The Singing Phlebotomist
|
Images: TikTok
Twenty-eight year old Enrique Rodriguez became somewhat of a TikTok star after posting videos of himself singing for patients in the ICU where he works.
-
But it wasn’t always this way. If you had told Enrique ten years ago that he would be working in a hospital and singing for patients every day, he probably wouldn’t have believed you.
In 2009, Enrique joined a local gang as a “blood member,” intrigued by the idea of a tight-knit group and the opportunities to make quick and easy money. Soon after, Enrique began to realize he had made a horrible mistake.
-
Enrique later transitioned to a job as a housekeeper at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, and his life began to change.
Keep reading.
|
|
|
💡 Dose of Knowledge
🚂 The Little (Search) Engine That Could
|
What was Google's original name?
A) BrinPage
B) BackRub
C) Googol
D) TypeSearch
|
(keep scrolling for the answer) |
|
|
🍩 Share The DONUT
|
Access exclusive rewards and even an all-expenses-paid round trip to Austin, TX, just for sharing this newsletter. 
Simply:
1. Copy your unique referral link.👇
2. Post said link on social media, drop it in your group chat, write it in invisible ink on the back of the Declaration of Independence, etc.
3. Watch the rewards roll in.
|
|
|
|
Ambassador Rewards and Progress → |
|
💡 Dose of Knowledge Answer
|
|
B) BackRub
Google's initial foray into the world of search engines was called “BackRub” because it analyzed the web’s “back links” to understand how important a website was and what other sites it related to.
-
The name 'Google' later arose from an accidental misspelling of 'googol' – a term describing the digit 1 followed by 100 zeroes.
|
|
|
🍩 Daily Sprinkle
"Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts."
–John Wooden (1910-2010)
|
|
|
