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Good morning and welcome to Friday.
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⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s newsletter takes 4.62 minutes to read. (With the 360° view: +3.47 minutes.)
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🍩 Daily Sprinkle
"Even when a friend does something you do not like, he continues to be your friend."
–Genghis Khan (1158-1227)
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👇📰 Quick Bits
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Who’s In?
 Image: USA Today
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🎁 With one week left in the regular season, three of the four college football playoff spots are still up for grabs. Here’s what to watch for tomorrow:
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🔢 By the numbers: According to ESPN’s FPI index, six teams have at least a 32% chance of making the playoffs.
🏈 Matchups: The SEC Championship Game features No. 1 Georgia against No. 3 Alabama, which likely needs a victory to avoid missing the playoffs for just the second time ever (dating back to 2014).
Other championship games include:
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Big Ten: No. 2 Michigan vs. No. 13 Iowa (8pm | Fox)
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AAC: No. 4 Cincinnati vs. No. 21 Houston (4pm | ABC)
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Big 12: No. 5 Oklahoma State vs. No. 9 Baylor (12pm | ABC)
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Pac-12: No. 10 Oregon vs. No. 17 Utah (Friday at 8pm | ABC)
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ACC: No. 15 Pitt vs. No. 16 Wake Forest (8 pm | ABC)
💔 Love ‘em & leave ‘em… If Notre Dame ends up in the playoffs, it’ll be without former Head Coach Brian Kelly, who shocked the program this week by accepting a ten-year contract from LSU worth at least $95 million.
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Kelly’s move came less than two days after former Oklahoma Head Coach Lincoln Riley suddenly left the program for USC (and a rumored $110+ million contract).
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For those in South Bend, it wasn’t all doom and gloom – Kelly reportedly asked his top assistant coaches to follow him to LSU, but they all turned him down.
+P.S. Go Blue! 😉 (We have some alumni on staff.)
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Meet Dave. He’s a Fun – Gi
 Image: Giphy
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🎁 The world’s multi-trillion-mile underground fungi network is about to be mapped for the first time by the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks… and tbh, it’s pretty reminiscent of Avatar.
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🤔 Why it’s a big deal: Fungi help ecosystems capture and store carbon dioxide (like, 8x as much), supply a vast majority of phosphorus to plants, and are vital to the biodiversity of soils and soil fertility – but little is known about them.
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“Fungal networks underpin life on Earth. If trees are the ‘lungs’ of the planet, fungal networks are the ‘circulatory systems’. These networks are largely unexplored,” Mark Tercek, former CEO of the Nature Conservancy, and a member of the governing body for SPUN, told The Guardian.
👁 Looking ahead… The first samples will be gathered in Patagonia beginning next year. SPUN plans to collect and analyze 10,000 samples from ten total hotspots that are being identified using AI.
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The Sun is Our Friend… But It Can Do Some Damage, Too
Did you know that unless something changes, melanoma will be the #1 cancer among men by 2040?
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Overdraft Fees Could Be Sent to Wherever Circuit City Is
 Image: TheMoneyPages
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🎁 Capital One will eliminate the dreaded overdraft fee, the company announced on Wednesday, becoming the largest bank so far to do so.
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📋 The details… Moving forward, the bank will place customers who’ve paid overdraft into a fee-draft protection service starting next year and decline insufficient funds transactions for customers without overdraft protection (some banks allow recurring charges to go through).
🤔 Happy coincidence?... Also on Wednesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said it’ll increase oversight of banks with a heavy reliance on overdraft fees.
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A 2017 analysis by the Bureau found frequent overdrafters accounted for just 9% of bank accounts, but paid 79% of all overdraft and non-sufficient fund fees.
📉 Zoom out: Ally, an online bank, eliminated the fee earlier this year. Other banks like PNC and Bank of America introduced features that make it less likely for a customer to trip into an overdraft, without eliminating the revenue source completely.
But if the $12+ billion overdraft fee industry is anything like the trading commission industry pre-Robinhood, we could be seeing the beginning of its end.
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In 2019, TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, and Interactive Brokers all eliminated trading commissions in quick succession to stay competitive.
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🗣👂 Dose of Discussion
Safe Injection Sites: Good or Bad Idea?
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 Booths inside a safe injection site in Montreal; Image: AP
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🎁 New York City will open the country’s first safe injection site, where people can use illicit drugs in a medically supervised environment, outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio announced earlier this week.
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🤿 A deeper dive… The concept of a safe injection site comes from a desire to decrease illegal drug usage in public spaces, prevent overdose deaths, and provide medical services to addicts (including clean needles & recovery programs).
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In theory, by providing drug users with a secure environment free from criminal prosecution and ready access to overdose and withdrawal treatments, more overdose deaths can be prevented, and more drug users can be treated for addiction.
Opponents say the sites promote drug abuse and make the surrounding areas less safe since drug dealers would end up positioning sellers nearby.
🤔 Aren’t illegal drugs… ya know… illegal? States and cities technically have the right to permit the use of illicit drugs in these facilities, but it goes against the federal Controlled Substances Act.
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Thus, the Department of Justice could opt to sue and likely force any safe injection site to close its doors (as the DOJ did during the Trump administration).
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If the new NYC sites remain unchallenged by the Biden administration, legal experts say it would open the door for similar facilities to be established across the country. The DOJ thus far has declined to comment on the matter.
🇺🇸 Zoom out: More than 100,000 Americans died from a drug overdose over the 12-month period ending this April – a new record driven by the increasing prevalence of fentanyl (involved in 64% of overdose deaths). In NYC alone, someone dies every four hours of a drug overdose.
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Rhode Island this summer became the first state to authorize safe injection facilities. Philadelphia and San Francisco previously announced plans to do the same, but both cities have faced legal setbacks.
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🔥 The Hot Corner
💬 Heard Through the Grapevine… “We have always resolutely opposed the politicization of sports.” – Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular press briefing Thursday, responding to a question about the WTA’s decision to suspend tournaments in the country over the safety of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai.
The International Olympic Committee also released a statement yesterday saying they held a second video call with Ms. Peng.
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But as we’ve previously covered, the WTA isn’t fully buying what the IOC’s been saying… for context, the official Peng accused of sexual assault played a key role in securing the 2022 Winter Olympics for China.
🔢 Stat(s) of the Day: YouTube dropped its official list of this year’s top trending videos and creators. By the numbers...
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The platform’s 10 most-viral videos were viewed more than 485 million times and for around 70 million hours.
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The top 10 creators – led by Mr. Beast – collectively have more than 227 million subscribers.
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The top viral video? “I Spent 50 Hours Buried Alive”, by (surprise!) Mr. Beast. It’s been viewed more than 148 million times.
📖 Worth a Read… The Most Ambitious Diary in History
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🍩 DONUT Holes
 Image: Luis Perez Lopez
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☝️ Scientists discovered a new dinosaur that was the size of a dog and used its spiked tail as a weapon.
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⚖️ The FTC is suing to block Nvidia's $40 billion acquisition of chip designer Arm on antitrust grounds.
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✈️ The Biden administration announced plans to require all international travelers to provide proof of a negative test within 24 hours of departure – down from 72 hours – and extended a mask mandate on planes and other public transportation through March 2022. (From the Left | From the Right)
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🇩🇪 Germany is banning unvaccinated people from entering restaurants, theaters, museums, and non-essential retail stores; exceptions will be made for those who have contracted the virus and recovered. (From the Left | From the Right)
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🇲🇽 The Biden administration will reinstate the "Remain in Mexico" policy for asylum seekers next week after coming to an agreement with the Mexican government. (From the Left | From the Right)
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🛸🌄📲 Calling from the Future…
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Funding Secured
 Commonwealth’s record-breaking magnet; Image: Robin Lubbock/WBUR
The backers in this Series B round include billionaires Bill Gates, George Soros, and John Doerr.
🧲 How it works: "You basically have to put a sun in a bottle," says Commonwealth CEO Bob Mumgaard. "It turns out, if you build a magnetic bottle that can actually hold the fuel at the same conditions stars get to, you can create and sustain [nuclear] fusion."
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SPARC’s key component is the world’s most powerful superconducting magnet, built by MIT and Commonwealth, which is roughly 400,000 times stronger than the earth's magnetic field.
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With magnets this powerful, it should be possible to build a working nuclear fusion reactor that produces net energy, according to seven peer-reviewed research papers published by MIT.
👁️ Looking ahead… Commonwealth predicts it'll have the world’s first net-energy fusion device by 2025 and is already building a factory in Devens, MA, to house the machine.
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By the early 2030s, it expects SPARC to generate enough clean energy to power a small town, with plans to sell the device around the world.
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🤗 Daily Dose of Positive
🌋 Fuzzy Friends Friday: The Bees That Saved Themselves
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 Image: Postmedia
Six man-made beehives carrying hundreds of thousands of bees on the Canary Islands were buried in volcanic ash following an eruption in September.
🐝 Can you bee-lieve it?... When beekeepers finally went to dig up the hives 50 days later, they were astonished to find them buzzing with life.
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The bees had survived the eruption by creating a material called propolis to seal any holes in the hives and keep the ash out. For food, they ate their winter honey supply for the month and a half until finally being brought out to safety.
#NatureIsMetal.
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💡 Dose of Knowledge
Head Count
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The European Union is comprised of how many countries?
A) 25
B) 26
C) 27
D) 28
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(keep scrolling for the answer) |
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🍩 Share The DONUT, Win An iPhone 13 Pro
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From now through January, every person that signs up using your unique link will count towards our iPhone 13 Pro giveaway AND these dope prizes. 👇
Simply:
1. Copy your unique referral link.👇
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3. Watch the rewards roll in.
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Ambassador Rewards and Progress → |
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💡 Dose of Knowledge Answer
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C) 27
Notably, the list of EU countries doesn't include the UK, which voted to leave the bloc in 2016.
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