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Good morning and welcome to Friday.
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⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s newsletter takes 4.60 minutes to read. (With the 360° view: +3.55 minutes.)
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🍩 Daily Sprinkle
"New beginnings are disguised as painful endings."
–Lao Tzu (b. 571 B.C.)
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👇📰 Quick Bits
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✋📲 Let’s Talk Ticketing Tech
Image: Red Rocks on Facebook
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🎁 Earlier this week, Amazon introduced its palm-recognition technology, Amazon One, to Denver's famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre. In practice, concertgoers can now link their palm print to their ticketing account and enter the venue with a swipe of the hand.
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This marks the first time the tech is being used outside of Amazon’s stores, and the company plans on rolling it out in more venues through a partnership with entertainment giant AEG.
🔒 Yes, but… Adoption so far has been muted; users are only in the “tens of thousands.” Plus, privacy experts have raised concerns about how the data it collects will be used.
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Amazon has sold biometric facial recognition services to law enforcement in the U.S. and its facial recognition technology was the subject of a data privacy lawsuit.
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The company was found to be still storing Alexa voice data even after users deleted their audio files.
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A WSJ investigation last year found the e-commerce giant used data from its own sellers to launch competing products.
🤜 Zoom out: Amazon is trying to make the case that its tech is more convenient than RFID wristbands, QR codes, and contactless cards. So what’s the next step ? Deploying the service in more entertainment venues and public spaces like offices and stadiums.
🎟️ Ticketing takeaway: Whether biometric, electronic, or RFID-wristband-enabled, cashless venues are the future. In addition to being more user-friendly, cashless event tech also provides access to data and detailed audience insights that just aren’t available in a cash or token-based environment.
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And the dirty little secret: cashless events see an average revenue increase of 46%, and up to 87% in the first year, according to RFID provider Intellitix.
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🧲 The Nuclear Option
Rendering of SPARC, a compact, high-field nuclear fusion reactor currently under design; Image: MIT
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🎁 A team of MIT researchers created the most powerful magnet ever made on Earth last week in a quest to make a functional nuclear fusion reactor.
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Nuclear fusion has been the holy grail of energy for decades – promising immense amounts of clean energy without the Chernobyl downside – but it’s been a tough nut to crack.
It's how the sun generates 100% of its energy, so, as you can imagine, fusion only occurs at immensely high temperatures that would melt any material known to humans.
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But in the 1950s, scientists came up with a solution:
Using a magnetic field, researchers can create an artificial ‘bottle’ where nuclear fusion can occur. The MIT team plans to eventually arrange their powerful new magnets into a doughnut-like object known as a tokamak.
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The process itself isn’t the ground-breaking work; artificial fusion reactors have been produced before. The problem is that every attempt so far has resulted in a system that takes more energy to run than it can produce.
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The MIT team used a new superconducting material applied as a ribbon-like tape, which ended up creating the strongest magnetic field ever recorded. It was also generated in a smaller space.
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In other words, this new magnet is more powerful than anything before it, and this team of researchers believes the path of working to make it more efficient (like this breakthrough) is the path to net-positive nuclear fusion.
🛣💡 Another path with a breakthrough: Achieving nuclear fusion using powerful magnetic fields isn’t the only game in town. There's also...
Last month, an experiment at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, CA, used a powerful laser to heat atoms into a plasma state where fusion is possible.
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They directed and amplified 192 powerful laser beams onto a target roughly the size of a pencil eraser for a few billionths of a second, producing 10 quadrillion watts of power.
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The scientists ultimately hope to create plasma that produces more energy than it requires to power up. This experiment resulted in a ratio of roughly 70%, an all-time high.
👁️ Looking ahead... The MIT researchers and their commercial partner, a startup named Commonwealth Fusion Systems, set a tentative timeline of 2025 to produce a nuclear-fusion reactor that creates more energy than it uses.
📝 The takeway: Whether it's using magnets or lasers, scientists appear closer to net-positive nuclear fusion than ever before.
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🍩 DONUT Holes…
Images: Rolls-Royce/Carnegie Mellon
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☝️ Rock Down to Electric Avenue: Rolls-Royce’s first all-electric aircraft completed its maiden flight, soaring across skies in the U.K. for around 15 minutes. | Carnegie Mellon University and rail freight company Wabtec unveiled the world's first battery-electric freight train.
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📺 In TV Host Land: Piers Morgan signed a global deal with Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Media and News Corp; will host a show on Fox News starting next year. | Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings will split "Jeopardy!" hosting duties for the rest of the year; the show still hasn’t named a permanent host.
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💰Over to Startup Land: Canva raised $200M at a $40B valuation; becomes the world's most valuable female-founded and led startup and the fifth most valuable overall. | Discord raised $500M at a $15B valuation.
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⚖️ South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh turned himself in on Thursday in relation to allegations that he paid a hitman to kill him in a botched $10M insurance fraud scheme.
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📈 U.S. retail sales increased 0.7% in August; analysts expected a decrease of 0.8%.
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🛻 Ford is adding 450 jobs to meet pre-order demand for its electric Ford F-150 Lightning pickup; the company has 150,000+ orders to fill.
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🔥💸 Sponsored by Munk Pack 🐿️🔥
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🔮The One About Magic Snacks…
What if we told you there was a magical snack that granted you superpowers ? That it makes you all-knowing, invisible, able to fly – and 100% guarantees each and every day is better than your last ?
Obviously, we’d be lying.
But here’s the next best thing:
Though it won’t grant you invisibility or the power of flight, Munk Pack’s crazy-delicious nut & seed snack bars are GMO-free, gluten-free, plant-based, and keto friendly. Plus, they pack a power-punch of flavor – and you’ve got seven different ones to choose from.
Seriously, we’ve never met a team more obsessed with creating super-tasty and healthy snacks.
Take the snack bars with you on the go, eat before or after a workout, satiate your hunger in between meals – or even use as a meal replacement when the need arises. Whatever you decide, Munk Pack is waiting to serve you for the greater good.
Kind of like… a superhero.
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*Superpowers not included.
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🔥 The Hot Corner
💬 Heard Through the Grapevine… “This is not done between allies.” – France’s minister of foreign affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian.
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France canceled a gala in Washington in protest over America’s deal to help Australia deploy nuclear-powered submarines; agreeing to the Indo-Pacific alliance with the U.S. and UK meant Australia scrapped a 2016 nonnuclear sub deal with a French shipbuilder. (From the Left | From the Right)
🔢 Stat of the Day: Almost half of new gun buyers since 2019 have been women.
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For context: Other surveys over the past few decades have found that around 10% to 20% of American gun owners were women.
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Federal background checks for gun purchases hit an all-time high of 21 million last year.
📖 Worth Your Time… Margaritaville and the Myth of American Leisure
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🗣👂 Dose of Discussion
💉 Are Vaccine Boosters Necessary?
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Image: Cleveland Clinic
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🎁 An independent review panel is convening later today to advise the FDA on whether or not to approve COVID-19 vaccine booster shots – and if so, who needs them when.
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📜 Background… Last month, the Biden administration set a target date of September 20 to begin rolling out booster shots from Pfizer/BioNTech to anyone 18 or older (despite a lack of FDA approval at the time).
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On Monday, a group of international health experts published a letter in The Lancet saying booster shots are not necessary for the general population right now based on the current evidence.
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They argued the original vaccine regimens have thus far shown to be highly effective at preventing severe cases over time, even against the delta variant, but said booster doses could be appropriate for immunocompromised people.
On Wednesday, FDA staff released a report saying it's unclear whether the effectiveness of Pfizer’s vaccine is waning over time. They ultimately declined to take a stance on whether or not to back the company’s booster shot.
🏢 What about Moderna ?… The pharmaceutical company announced this week that new data shows the effectiveness of its primary two-dose vaccine regimen weakens slightly over time, though protection against severe cases remains strong.
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Moderna previously submitted an application seeking FDA authorization of its booster shot on September 1.
👁️ Looking ahead… The FDA advisory panel convening later today will vote on whether or not to recommend Pfizer’s booster dose for approval.
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If approved, a separate advisory committee convened by the CDC will vote next week on how to best administer the shots.
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🌎 The Weird Wide World
Image: Namibian Ministry of the Environment, Forestry, & tourism
☝️ Science says rhinos are best transported hung upside down, according to this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes.
Um, what ?... The Ig Nobel prizes are an annual spectacle created as an ode to strange scientific discoveries, with real Nobel laureates in attendance to announce the spoof prizes.
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Last week’s event also saw the world premiere of a mini opera called “A Bridge Between People.” It’s about children who literally build tiny suspension bridges to join two angry adults. 😂
Some of the honorees:
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Peace: Three American researchers tested whether a full beard pads the face from a punch. A beard’s ability to absorb nearly 40 percent of a blow could be one reason they evolved into existence, the study authors speculate.
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Economics: A French researcher compared hundreds of photographs of politicians in post-Soviet countries and found that obesity correlated with corruption.
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Chemistry: An international team analyzed the air in movie theatres to identify the volatile organic compounds emitted by the audience. They found buildup of a certain organic material was a reliable indicator of the amount of violence, sex, and profanity contained in the movie.
See the full list.
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🛸🌄📲 Calling from the Future…
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🚗🔌 Baby, You’re So Classic
Image: London Electric Cars
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🎁 A new UK startup is converting vintage cars into zero-emission vehicles using upcycled electric car batteries.
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There are currently ~40 million vehicles on the UK roads – and many of them are now in conflict with the government’s goal of having 46% of the vehicles on the road be all-electric by 2030.
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London Electric Cars aims to help motorists transition their classic cars into EVs using 3D printers and pre-owned Tesla and Nissan Leaf lithium-ion batteries.
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This creates a new outlet for existing EV batteries and eliminates the potential environmental negatives of creating brand new battery packs.
🎃➡️🎠 From pumpkin to carriage... On average, London Electric takes about three months to convert a classic car into a fully-electric vehicle, though some models can take as little as six weeks.
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🤗 Daily Dose of Positive
🛹🐕 Furry Friends Friday: Skateboard Saves The Pup
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Image: Arlington School District
Zoey, a fifteen-year-old dog, had been missing for days when locals began hearing faint whining sounds from a nearby storm drain.
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When the fire department arrived, they estimated Zoey was 400 feet away from the entrance to the drain. To make matters worse, the elderly dog was deaf and unable to hear their calls.
Hours later, Zoey’s rescuers thought they'd exhausted all of their options when Hunter Polland, a kindergartener, offered them his skateboard to slide into the drain.
Images: Facebook
“We told Hunter his skateboard was probably going to go through some sewage and get wet, and he still insisted we use it to help rescue Zoey,”
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The skateboard strategy was a success, and Zoey was safely rescued 11 hours after the operation began.
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💡 Dose of Knowledge
💵 The Other Side of the Coin
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How many ways can you make change for a single U.S. dollar?
A) 78
B) 144
C) 208
D) 292
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(keep scrolling for the answer) |
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🍩 Share The DONUT
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Simply:
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Ambassador Rewards and Progress → |
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💡 Dose of Knowledge Answer
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D) 292
Technically, if you count swapping a dollar bill for a dollar coin, there are 293 ways to make change. (They did the math.)
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