🤫 The $70 Billion Question...

Image: SCIplanet

📜 Background: Two years after mining the first bitcoin in 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto – who never identified a location, nationality, or even a real name – disappeared off the face of the earth, only surfacing briefly in 2014 to refute media reports claiming to have discovered their identity.

• What didn’t disappear was a wallet belonging to Nakamoto containing all of the bitcoins they mined during the early days of their invention – a cool 1.1 million coins worth more than $70 billion today. What’s more, the coins have been left untouched for roughly a decade.

⏩ Fast forward to today… This wallet brimming with bitcoins is now at the heart of a legal dispute in Florida:

• The family of a deceased man named David Kleiman is suing his former business partner, a 51-year-old Aussie programmer named Craig Wright, claiming that together they were Satoshi Nakamoto – meaning the family is entitled to more than half a million bitcoins.
• Both sides claim to have evidence that will show Wright is the creator of bitcoin, which they’ve promised to present in court this week. The dispute centers around whether or not Wright partnered with Kleiman on the project.

✋ Yes, but… This all might sound familiar to those of you who’ve been following crypto for a while. In May 2016, Wright publicly claimed to be Satoshi Nakomoto but walked it back after three days in the face of withering criticism.

📝 Bottom line: There’s only one piece of evidence that could conclusively prove the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto – the private key controlling their account with more than 1 million bitcoins.

🎁 Usually we’d toss a story like this in “This Weekend in Sports & Entertainment” and call it a day, but, as Jake Gyllenhaal knows all too well, Taylor Swift is too powerful to be relegated to a bullet point.

“One of Best Inventions of 2021”

What do you get when you combine ingenuity, an intense passion for the environment, and frustration with poor-fitting jeans ?

• Answer: unspun, which just made TIME’s list of the 100 Best Inventions of 2021.

👖 Putting the “S” in sustainability (and jeans): The fashion industry is notoriously wasteful. Mass-producing clothing leads to large quantities of unsold items and unused fabric, most of which is usually destroyed.

Unspun took a different approach, building a machine that 3D weaves yarn into a made-to-order, 100% custom pair of jeans that perfectly fits each customer. No waste or unsold items – just satisfied buyers.

• Getting started is as easy as 1, 2, 3… literally. Just 1) Design & Order; 2) Scan & Fit; and then 3) Wear & Love (this is the best part – unspun will tweak your fit until you love them or give you a full refund if they’re not your new favorite pants).

DONUT readers who are game to give some feedback on the process and sign up through this link will get jumped to the front of the unspun waitlist and get a $40 gift card towards your first pair of jeans. Plus, you can say your fit was made by “one of the best inventions this year.”

Get the perfect-fitting, sustainable pair of jeans today.

Image: Yves Herman/Reuters

📝 Details, details: The new deal asks governments to further reduce their emissions targets by the end of next year to keep them in line with the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, which aimed to keep global warming well under 2º C (preferably 1.5º C) by the end of the century compared with pre-industrial temperatures.

• It also calls for a “phase down” of coal and “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies – marking the first time coal or fossil fuels have been mentioned – and sets new rules for trading carbon credits between countries (allowing governments to pay for their pollution by funding GHG-reducing projects in other nations).

✋ Yes, but… Much like previous agreements, the new climate deal has no enforcement mechanism, relying instead on the good faith of the world’s governments.

• In key areas, it merely urges or requests nations to act rather than requiring them to do so, which leaders said reflects the difficulty of getting every country in the world to agree.
• A UN report last month found many nations, including the U.S., aren’t on track to achieve previous emissions targets agreed to in the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.

👁️ Looking ahead… A handful of countries, including the U.S. and China, have already said they won’t update their climate plans for next year. “[We’re] stretching the limits right now,” said U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, referring to the current target of 50% reduced emissions by 2030.

🔬 Chronic Pain Explained

Image: Shutterstock

Chronic pain is not only one of America’s most costly medical problems – affecting one in every five U.S. adults – but also one of the most mysterious.

• For years, researchers have been unable to find its root cause, but a new (or rather, really old) discovery may provide an answer based on hard science.

📅 A brief timeline: When first discovered in the mid-1800s, scientists thought glia – from the Greek word for glue – were simply connective tissue holding neurons together.

• They were later rebranded as the nervous system’s janitorial staff after researchers discovered that glia feed neurons, clean up their waste, and remove their dead.
• In the 1990s, glia were likened to secretarial staff when it was found they also help neurons communicate.
• Following an additional 20 years of research, scientists now believe glia don’t just support and respond to neural activity such as pain signals – they often direct it.

👁️ Looking ahead… There are still a few steps left before scientists can use that knowledge to treat chronic pain – for one, they still need to identify easily detectable biomarkers that show glia are causing pain.

Image: Paws, Hoofs, Claws Facebook group

Australian officials were baffled last week when they showed up to an unusual rescue mission: a kangaroo stranded on the roof of a home.

• As soon as they climbed up on the roof to rescue the animal, it hopped down by itself and quickly scurried off into the surrounding wilderness.

🤔 So many questions: How did the kangaroo get on the roof to begin with ? Why did it wait so long to hop back down ? Did it somehow learn the trick from this goofy pup ?

• “We still don’t know,” said one official. “It’s a mystery… it’s not something you see every day.”

Below you’ll find four different quotes from four iconic movies. Your task ? Match each quote with the famous movie it’s from (bonus points if you can name the actor/actress delivering the line).

A) “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH"
B) “No, I am your father”
C) "A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool ? A billion dollars."
D) "You had me at hello."

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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A) A Few Good Men (1992), delivered by Jack Nicholson.

B) The Empire Strikes Back (Star Wars Episode V; 1980), delivered by James Earl Jones.

C) The Social Network (2010). This was one a little trickier, the line was delivered by a combo of Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield.

D) Jerry Maguire (1996), delivered by Renée Zellweger.