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Good morning, welcome to Thursday, and happy Sports Equinox. For ony the 25th time ever, all four major U.S. sports will be in action today (NHL, NFL, MLB, NBA).
We also have a minor correction to report:
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Yesterday we said that Apple announced the move to an in-house processor for the iPhone last year – and that’s not correct. Apple announced it would move its line of laptops and desktops to an in-house processor, but has been using one for phones since the iPhone 4. Shoutout to Eric R. for being the first to point this out !
⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s newsletter takes 4.77 minutes to read. (With the 360° view: +3.10 minutes.)
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🍩 Daily Sprinkle
"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself."
–Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
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👇📰 Quick Bits
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🏆 Viva New Jersey
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🎁 The Garden State became the first U.S. territory to bring in over $1 billion worth of sports bets in a single month. More than 90 percent of those were placed online.
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⚖️ Alright, bet… New Jersey has quickly become America’s sports betting capital following a 2018 Supreme Court decision that opened the door for any state to legalize the industry (previously, it was only allowed in Nevada).
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Over the past three years, the Garden State has taken in $19 billion worth of sports bets, narrowly beating out second-place Nevada ($16.8 billion) but well outpacing third-place Pennsylvania ($8.8 billion).
That’s resulted in ~$1.4 billion in revenue for NJ sportsbooks and $169 million in tax revenue for the state.
✋ Yes, but… Thus far, New Jersey has benefitted from a lack of legal, online options in New York. That’s on track to change by next year’s Super Bowl after NY legislators voted to approve mobile sports betting in April.
🇺🇸 The big picture: Twenty-eight states plus Washington, D.C., currently have legal sports betting markets, with an additional four states – FL, MD, NE, and WI – preparing to launch soon.
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🗺️ Vikings Did It First
 Image: DeAgostini
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🎁 A new look at wooden artifacts found amid the ruins of an ancient homestead shows Vikings had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and settled in North America as far back as 1021, according to a study published in the peer-reviewed Nature.
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🤔 Why it’s important: That’s exactly 1,000 years ago and almost five centuries before Columbus’s famous voyage.
📖 Quick backstory… Researchers have long known Vikings reached North America near the end of the first millennium, but a couple problems stood in the way of pinpointing a more exact date.
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Previous radiocarbon dating techniques were only accurate to within a few hundred years, so scholars combined this guesstimate with the info in ancient Icelandic sagas to try and paint a picture of European arrival in the “New World.” New techniques provided the ability to pinpoint a more exact date.
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Forgeries have also been a problem. For almost fifty years, scientists debated the authenticity of a chart that seemed to prove the Vikings were the first Europeans to reach North America – all the way up until last month, when Yale University, which owns the map, announced it was a fake.
👁 Looking ahead: We can’t wait for the new educational rhyme to drop in schools: “In 1021, Vikings got the job done.”
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🍩 DONUT Holes…
 Image: Gary Hershorn
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☝️The Summit One Vanderbilt observation deck in NYC opens today. (Pro tip: If you’re looking to save money, don’t go at sunset – tickets cost $10 extra.)
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🥽 Facebook reportedly plans to rebrand under a new name to try and position itself as a "metaverse" company, not just a social media company.
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🪙 Bitcoin hit a new record high of more than $66,000.
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💰 PayPal has offered to buy Pinterest for $45B.
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🩱 Blackstone is buying a majority stake in Spanx; the deal values the company Sara Blakely started out of her home with $5,000 at $1.2 billion.
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💉 Vaccine News: The FDA authorized booster shots of both J&J and Moderna’s COVID vaccines last night and also backed “mix and match” boosters; the ruling now heads to the CDC and its vaccine advisory committee. | The Biden administration detailed plans to vaccinate America's 28 million children aged 5-11 for the coronavirus; Pfizer is expected to soon receive emergency use authorization for the age group.
+One more for the road: The EU awarded its top human rights award to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
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Get Ready For A Controversial Statement…
Kenny Chesney taught us that everything gets hotter when the sun goes down, but did you know that everything gets darker, too ? 🤯 I know… crazy, right.
And for when it gets darker, we’ve got just the thing to brighten your space: lighting from Bellacor.
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🏷 Wait, this gets even better: Bellacor is currently in the midst of its Semi-Annual Lighting Sale, where you can enjoy up to 75% off lighting items from top brands.
Let there be light with Bellacor.
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🔥 The Hot Corner
💬 Heard Through the Grapevine… “What I should have led with in those emails was humanity… I should have recognized the fact that a group of our employees was really hurting.” – Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told the WSJ, referring to earlier communication with Netflix staff regarding the company’s handling of Dave Chappelle’s Closer.
🔢 Stat of the Day: Con artists pretending to be Amazon employees scammed Americans out of $27 million from July 2020 through June 2021, the Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday.
📖 Worth Your Time… A Secretive Hedge Fund Is Gutting Newsrooms
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🗣👂 Dose of Discussion
🎓 A New Legacy
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 Image: Common App
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🎁 Amherst College will no longer give admissions preference to the children of alumni, also known as legacies, the school announced yesterday.
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The private liberal arts school in Massachusetts joined Johns Hopkins, Caltech, UC Berkeley, and MIT in the handful of highly selective schools that have opted against legacy admissions.
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This spring, Colorado became the first state to ban public universities from considering legacy status as a factor in admissions.
📊 Zoom out: A 2019 study found 43% of private, nonprofit colleges and 14% of public universities consider legacy status in admissions. When it comes to schools that admit less than one-quarter of applicants, that number jumps to 73%.
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Supporters of legacy admissions say the practice encourages alumni to donate and is only used as a tiebreaker in close decisions.
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Critics argue the policy does little more than reinforce the privilege of students and leaves fewer slots for more deserving applicants.
⬆️ How much does it actually help ?... The scope of advantages granted to legacy applicants is kept secret at most schools, but the topic came up during a 2018 civil trial involving Harvard University.
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An economist hired by the plaintiffs – who unsuccessfully argued Harvard discriminates against Asian American applicants – examined data reports entered into the court record and found children of Harvard graduates were admitted at nearly six times the rate of those who weren’t legacies (34% vs. 6%).
💬 What they’re saying: “We want to create as much opportunity for as many academically talented young people as possible, regardless of financial background or legacy status,” read a statement from Amherst College President Biddy Martin.
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🚭 Can Psilocybin Help You Quit Smoking ?
 Image: STAT News
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🎁 We don't know either – but Johns Hopkins Medicine received the first federal psychedelic grant in more than 50 years to find out.
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“The historical importance of this grant is monumental. We knew it was only a matter of time before the NIH would fund this work because the data are so compelling, and because this work has demonstrated to be safe,” principal investigator Matthew Johnson, Ph.D., said in a press release.
📝 Details, details: As the title suggests, the funding is to conduct a double-blind randomized trial to determine whether psilocybin sessions mixed with cognitive behavioral therapy, a type of talk therapy focused on pinpointing negative patterns of thought that can lead to behavioral and mental health problems, can help people quit smoking.
The idea is that a combo of the two might help break the addictive pattern of thoughts and behaviors, thus helping people drop the habit.
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Johnson started testing psilocybin for tobacco smoking cessation 13 years ago. A pilot study published in 2014 showed abstinence rates that more than doubled those seen with traditional smoking cessation medications and therapies.
💊 Zoom out: Psychedelics like MDMA, psilocybin, and LSD — combined with cognitive behavioral therapy — have shown promise for treating a range of addictions and mental health disorders, including treatment-resistant depression and PTSD.
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📣🗣💬 This Week's Poll Responses
Yes – We asked those who voted yes what they would change. Quick note: Since we asked respondents to “check all that apply,” the percentages will add up to more than 100. (From left to right: more justices, term limits, limit the Court's power, change the Court's internal procedures).👇
“A regular rotation of new Supreme Court justices must be established to avoid nominating based on age, and to allow each new president at least one nomination per term. This would also mean that for one party to “take over” the bench, the party would have to win the presidency at least three times in a row.”
No – “Changes to the proceedings of the Supreme Court should be handled internally. The whole point of the Supreme Court is to be above political skulduggery. Using Congress to force the Judicial branch to adapt the changes currently being proposed would undermine the whole point of division of power and end up making the Supreme Court more beholden to partisanship than it already is.”
Unsure – “The Supreme Court might claim to be ‘a-political,’ but in some cases they clearly aren’t. However, I’m not sure an act of Congress would ultimately reduce the perceived political nature of the Court.”
+Note on Sample Size: We received 2,421 responses. 👏🥳 Some may have been lightly edited for grammar or clarity.
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🛸🌄📲 Calling from the Future…
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🐷 New Kidney In Town
 The surgical team examining the pig kidney during the operation; Image: Joe Carrotta/NYU Langone Health
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🎁 A pig kidney was successfully transplanted into a human patient without triggering an immediate rejection by the patient’s immune system for the first time ever.
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There are currently 100,000 Americans on organ transplant waiting lists, 90% of whom are waiting for a kidney donation. Wait times for a kidney average three-to-five years.
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Researchers have been working for decades on the possibility of using animal organs for transplants, but have struggled with preventing immediate rejection by the human body.
💡 How they pulled it off: This procedure involved the use of a pig whose genes were altered so that its tissues no longer contained a certain molecule known to trigger immediate rejection.
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The recipient was a brain-dead patient with signs of kidney dysfunction whose family consented to the experiment before she was due to be taken off life support.
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The new kidney was attached to the patient’s blood vessels and maintained outside her body for three days, during which it "looked pretty normal," according to the surgeon who led the study.
👁️ Looking ahead… The researchers said their experiment should pave the way for similar trials in patients with end-stage kidney failure, possibly in the next year or two.
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🤗 Daily Dose of Positive
💪 The Power of Kindness
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 Images: Cedarsstory.com
Dawn’s young son Cedar has Down syndrome. While out at the playground playing catch one day, another child around the same age ran off with Cedar’s ball.
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In that moment, as she’s experienced “so many times before,” Dawn expected the child’s parents to “return the ball, apologize, and then go play elsewhere.”
To her surprise, the response was quite the opposite. Encouraging the two kids to play together, Dawn “watched in amazement” as Cedar and the neurotypical child rolled the ball back and forth.
🤗 Bottom line: “This didn’t feel like the typical, oh give the ball back to the little boy who is different and then move on,” she shared, "This felt genuine and special.”
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💡 Dose of Knowledge
🇺🇸 State of Affairs
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Can you name this U.S. state ? 👇
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(keep scrolling for the answer) |
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💡 Dose of Knowledge Answer
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