Good morning and welcome to Wednesday. What’s cool about paper straws is they’re good for the environment. What’s not cool about paper straws is when they become an ingredient in your beverage.😕

Some things you'll know after reading today's email:

• ⏱✈️ The length of the shortest commercial flight in the world
• 🤔🤖 How AI could be considered sentient
• 🦕🦖 Whether or not dinosaurs had belly buttons

... and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today's news takes 4.66 minutes to read.

"A person should never be ashamed to own that they have been in the wrong, which is but saying, that they are wiser today than yesterday."

–Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Google recently suspended an engineer who claimed an AI chatbot the company created had become sentient, telling him he’d violated their confidentiality policy after dismissing his assertions, WaPo first reported on Sunday.

• First things first: The Cambridge English Dictionary defines sentience as "the quality of being able to experience feelings."

🤔 What’s going on?… The bot, called Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), is an internal system Google created to help build chatbots that mimic speech. Or “a sort of hive mind which is the aggregation of all of the different chatbots it is capable of creating,” as suspended software engineer Blake Lemoine refers to it.

• After months spent conversing with the chatbot, Lemoine approached colleagues at Google with his belief that LaMDA should be treated as a sentient being with inherent rights.
• Once Google rejected his conclusion, saying the evidence didn’t support his claims, Lemoine continued to push his theory to outside AI experts, members of Congress, and in public posts.

🗣️ What they’re saying: "Over the course of the past six months LaMDA has been incredibly consistent in its communications about what it wants and what it believes its rights are as a person," according to Lemoine.

• "Hundreds of researchers and engineers have conversed with LaMDA and we are not aware of anyone else making the wide-ranging assertions, or anthropomorphizing LaMDA, the way Blake has," said Google spokesperson Brian Gabriel.

💬 Decide for yourself: You can read a transcript of Lemoine’s conversation with LaMDA here, and check out op/eds from both sides below.

If every country reduced air pollution to meet international health guidelines, the global average life expectancy would increase from roughly 72.0 to 74.2 years – more than the 1.9-year increase from eliminating firsthand smoking – per a new study published yesterday.

🔢 By the numbers... More than 97% of the world’s population lives in areas where air pollution exceeds recommended levels, per the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago’s annual Air Quality Life Index.

• Residents of South Asia lose an estimated five years of life from air pollution, on average. Europeans lose 0.7 years, and Americans lose just ⅕ of a year.
• India has accounted for ~44% of the world's increase in air pollution since 2013, while China has reduced its air pollution by 40% over that same period, bringing its estimated cost down from 4.6 to 2.6 years of life.
• Besides smoking, air pollution is also reportedly more harmful to global life expectancies than alcohol and drug use (nine months), unsafe water and sanitation (seven months), HIV and AIDS (four months), and malaria (three months).

Apple and Major League Soccer have reached a ten-year deal, worth at least $2.5 billion, to broadcast games on Apple TV+ beginning in 2023.

⚽ A deeper dive... The agreement covers every MLS regular-season and playoff match, including the annual Leagues Cup showdown against teams from Mexico’s La Liga.

• According to Apple, the games will be shown on a new MLS streaming service that’ll soon be available for an undisclosed price exclusively through the Apple TV app.
• The tech giant also said a “broad selection of MLS and Leagues Cup matches, including some of the biggest matchups,” will be available to all Apple TV+ subs at no additional cost.
• Apple TV+ games won’t be subject to blackout restrictions, a change from the MLS’ current streaming deal with ESPN+.

📸 The big picture: MLS streaming rights are the latest trophy to be acquired in a fight among the likes of Netflix, Amazon, Disney, and others for new programming to fill their streaming services and to attract users with buzzy content, the WSJ reports.

• Apple is reportedly also considering a bid for the NFL’s out-of-market Sunday Ticket service, which the league is currently shopping around to a handful of streaming giants.

Halfway there in fact! (The first part was subscribing to the DONUT! 😉🍩)

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Refind is saving over 50 thousand people countless hours every day, both in the search for interesting articles and in helping them avoid wasting time with low-quality content.

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Whales, volcanoes, spider crabs, power turbines: one of these doesn’t naturally belong in the ocean, and it’s not the fish or volcanoes… though they’ll be sharing space soon enough.

Following a successful three-and-a-half year test, Japan plans to drop a massive 330-ton turbine power generator onto the ocean floor just off the country’s coast in a bid to source theoretically limitless renewable energy.

🌊 More deets… The current plan is for the 65-foot-long and 65-foot-wide generator to be anchored and float ~150 feet below sea level in the Kuroshio Current, one of the world’s strongest along Japan’s eastern coast.

• The device is kept in place by the anchor and dual-turbine blades, which both generate energy and keep the machine steady in one location.
• When tethered to the ocean floor by an anchor line and power cables, it can actually orient itself to find the most efficient position to generate power from the current, then channel it into a grid.
• If the energy present in the current could be harnessed, it could generate an estimated 205 gigawatts of electricity, roughly 80% of Japan’s current generating capacity.

✋ Yes, but: The ocean has a mind of its own; previous attempts to wring energy from the high seas have usually ended in failure. High engineering costs, environmental limitations, and distance from the grid are just a few of the challenges that are needed to overcome.

🔌 The bottom line: Resource-poor Japan imports 93% of its energy, meaning its grid is extremely vulnerable. And with public sentiment towards nuclear power in the country going south following the 2011 Fukushima disaster, a slew of underwater turbines could make a big difference.

• ☝️ An ongoing strawberry supermoon was at its closest point to Earth around 7:30 pm ET last night; a supermoon is when a full moon occurs during the period that the moon comes closest to Earth in its elliptical orbit.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📉📈 US markets stayed relatively flat yesterday, with the S&P 500 slightly extending its fall into bear territory. (Dow: -0.5% | S&P: -0.4% | Nasdaq: +0.2%)
• ​​🚫💼 Layoffs: Three companies announced a combined 2,000+ layoffs yesterday: Redfin (470 jobs | 8% of its staff), Compass (450 | 10%), and Coinbase (1,100 | 18%).
• 📱💊 The FTC has opened an investigation into whether online mental-health startup Cerebral used deceptive or unfair practices when marketing its services. (Background from the DONUT)

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎤 BTS is going on hiatus: The K-pop sensation said it’s taking a break to let its members explore solo projects, though the band was careful to avoid calling it an official break-up.
• 🎾 Serena Williams will be entering Wimbledon later this month on a wild-card entry; it’ll be her first Grand Slam appearance since being injured a year ago.
• 🏀 WNBA star Brittney Griner's detention in a Russian prison has been extended for a second time, from June 18 to July 2, Russian state media reported. (Background from the DONUT)

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🦕 Paleontologists discovered the first fossilized dinosaur belly button.
• 🧠 Chinese scientists have developed a Bluetooth brain-computer interface that allows users to wirelessly control custom ‘metamaterials’ using only their brainwaves.
• 🐢 Princeton researchers discovered that a species of giant Galápagos tortoise long thought to be extinct is actually still alive.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🍻Check out the inaugural list of the 50 best bars in North America.
• 🦠 The World Health Organization is renaming the monkeypox virus over concerns that it could stoke racism and stigma.
• 🏛️ Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he’ll vote for a bipartisan bill on gun safety if it ends up reflecting the framework agreed to on Sunday by 10 other Republican and 10 Democratic senators. (From the Left | From the Right | Background from the DONUT)

💬 Quoted… “Followed to its logical conclusion, such a determination would call into question the very premises underlying pet ownership, the use of service animals, and the enlistment of animals in other forms of work.”

• A New York court ruled that Happy, an elephant in the Bronx Zoo, may be an intelligent being “deserving of proper care and compassion,” but she cannot be considered a person being illegally confined.

📱 Stat of the Day: Yellowstone National Park officials have evacuated over 10,000 visitors since Monday due to historic flooding that washed away roads, swamped small towns, and knocked out power.

• The only visitors left in the 3,472-sq.-mile park are about a dozen campers still making their way out of the backcountry.

🌎 Around the World: Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon launched her campaign for a second independence referendum yesterday, arguing that Scotland would be economically better off outside the UK.

🤯 Did You Know?... The world’s shortest commercial flight, connecting two small islands near Scotland, lasts just over a minute and runs two or three times per day.

📖 Worth a Read: How to Be Healthy in a Dopamine-Seeking Culture → (Outside Magazine)

Sentient AI already exists today

Less than 5 years

5–10 years

10–20 years

20+ years

It’ll never happen

🤔❓Bonus fun question (for iPhone users): Who actually has their read receipts on?

I do

Not me

+Note: A written response isn't required – all you need to do is click one of the links above and your vote is recorded. Poll results and the best comments for each response will be featured in tomorrow's newsletter.

Tiny food videos have been all the rage on social media over the past few years. 

One duo, however, is going for the complete opposite effect: breaking world records for the largest foods ever created. 

🍗 Enough to Share... Nick DiGiovanni and Lynn "Lynja" Davis broke their first Guinness World Record in November 2021, when they baked the world's largest cake pop. 

• Now they've done it again, claiming their second world record for the world's largest chicken nugget.  
• It used a staggering 40 eggs, 40 slices of white bread, half a gallon of whole milk, a variety of seasonings, and 40 pounds of fresh chicken meat. The final product came in at 46 lb 3.34 oz. 

Can we get an extra large fry with that 😉🍟 ?

Can you name these poorly-explained movie plots?

1. We’re not allowed to talk about it.
2. Lost children become addicted to Turkish Delight.
3. Paranoid billionaire afraid of immigrant.

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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