Good morning. Great news from lizard land, aka the Galapagos Islands: iguanas are once again reproducing in the region after disappearing more than a century ago.

The remote island chain, made famous by Charles Darwin’s observations on evolution, was teeming with iguanas in the 1830s. But by the early 1900s, one of the three iguana species on the islands had completely disappeared.

In 2019, the Galapagos National Park authority reintroduced more than 3,000 iguanas from a nearby island to restore the natural ecosystem. And now, for the first time in 187 years, the island chain has a healthy iguana population.

The master plan isn’t over yet, though. The next step is to give the iguanas steroids, then sell tickets so people can see these massive reptiles in their natural habitat.

Wait… wasn’t that the plot of a movie?🤔🦖

In today’s edition:

• ⏱ Earth’s days are getting shorter
• 🤯 Death could be kinda reversible
• ⛳️ Pro golf is in the midst of a battle royale

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.89 minutes to read.

“The best of us sometimes eat our words.”

–Albus Dumbledore (1881-1997)

If you know of anyone messing with the time-space continuum, now might be the time to tell ‘em to knock it off. The 30 shortest days on record have all occurred since 2020 (go figure), ​​with each shaving milliseconds off the typical 24 hours it takes the Earth to complete one spin.

This all culminated less than two months ago, on June 29, 2022, when the planet saw its shortest day since atomic clocks were invented in the 1960s.

⏪⏱ What’s going on?... Short answer: nobody really knows. ​​Earth isn’t a perfect sphere, and its spin is influenced by many factors, including the structure of its interior, the tidal influence of the Moon, and various climatic changes.

While the recent trend of shorter days isn’t particularly alarming, it’s *quite* inconvenient for a couple of groups:

1. International timekeepers, who are in charge of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) by which every country sets their clocks.
2. Engineers, who… engineer things. In a recent blog post, engineers at Meta called leap seconds “a major source of pain for people who manage hardware infrastructures." (More on leap seconds in a *wait for it* second.🤦‍♀️)

🤔 Looking ahead… When the Earth’s rotation deviates from UTC by more than 0.4 seconds, time is literally warped adjusted, called a “leap second.” The last one occurred in 2016. But these adjustments usually only go one way: forward, due to the macro trend of the Earth’s rotation slowing over time… until now.

• With the recent acceleration in Earth's spin, scientists are talking about a negative leap second for the first time ever, though it could also lead to them deciding to end the process for good.

Eleven players on the LIV Golf circuit, including Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau, filed an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour yesterday.

⛳️🥊 Background: Earlier this year, LIV Golf launched a new professional league. Its goal? Rival the PGA Tour by attracting players with lofty contracts and big purses, all backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from the Saudi Arabian government. But this strategy is saddling golfers with a choice.

• The PGA tour suspends anyone competing in outside tournaments held in North America, meaning they can either a) stay on the Tour and forgo North American LIV events, or b) take the money and eat the grapes of PGA wrath.

📝 Which brings us to yesterday… In the lawsuit, the 11 golfers allege the Tour’s restrictive policies are an attempt to illegally limit the supply of pro players and hamper LIV Golf’s ability to compete. They’re asking for their Tour suspensions to be lifted, and for unspecified monetary damages.

⚖️ Zoom out: The DOJ launched an antitrust investigation last month into whether the Tour engaged in anticompetitive behavior. The PGA Tour ​​has said it believes their rules are appropriate and legal, similar to other contract agreements ​​across the economy.

Stay tuned.

Researchers from Yale University successfully revived the organs and cells of pigs who had been clinically dead, according to a new paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

💉🐷 A deeper dive… The researchers’ work began a few years ago, when they first started experimenting with brains from dead pigs. Four hours after the pigs died, the group pumped a solution containing multiple medications, called BrainEx, into their bodies, and saw brain cells that should’ve been dead were able to be revived.

In their next procedure, the scientists injected dead pigs with another type of restorative fluid, called OrganEx, geared toward promoting cellular health and suppressing inflammation. And here’s where the debate starts…

• The pigs had been lying dead in the lab for an hour — no blood was circulating in their bodies, their hearts were still, their brain waves flat.
• Upon injecting the previously mentioned restorative fluid, their hearts resumed beating, plus limited function was restored to their brains, lungs, livers, kidneys, and pancreases, though the animals weren’t considered conscious in any way.

📸 Big picture: According to transplant experts, organs need to be harvested quickly and preserved due to rapid postmortem decay. But during this process, organs sometimes undergo damage, becoming unusable – and OrganEx, if it ever becomes clinically applicable, could mean they wouldn’t have to be tossed out.

• More than 100,000 people in the US are on the national waiting list for kidneys, livers, hearts, and other organs, and more than 6,000 die every year.

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Warner Bros. Discovery announced earlier this week that Batgirl won’t be released on any platform, despite the movie being nearly completed with a $90 million budget… an “almost unheard of” move, per the WSJ. The film, starring Leslie Grace, Michael Keaton, J.K. Simmons, and Brendan Fraser, was previously scheduled to be sent directly to HBOMax next year without a theatrical release.

💰 Driving the move… According to the WSJ, the cancellation reflects the company’s desire to find cost savings, pay down the newly-merged company’s hefty debt load, and undo some parts of the previous regime’s programming strategy, especially plans to produce original films for HBOMax without releasing them in theaters.

• WBD is in the midst of implementing a broad cost-cutting plan, and has pledged to find more than $3 billion in savings in 2023.

🤔 One interesting thing: By shelving the movie entirely instead of releasing it on HBOMax, the company is able to take a tax write-down that’s reportedly seen as the most financially sound way to recoup some of the costs. However, doing so means they can’t monetize the film at all.

🚫 Zoom out: Batgirl wasn’t the only WBD movie to get the axe on Tuesday. Scoob!: Holiday Haunt, a sequel to the 2020 film Scoob!, was also given its final Scooby Snack.

💬 Quoted… “I’d be your friend.”

Jack Sweeney, the teen mastermind behind the automated Twitter accounts that collectively track the flights of hundreds of celebrities, politicians, and billionaires, has only responded to one “stop tracking me” request from the focus of any of his accounts… Mark Cuban, who offered friendship and business advice in return for making the account inactive.

• The bot hasn’t tweeted since April.

🌋 Stat of the Day: When an undersea volcano erupted near Tonga on January 15 (☝️), it blasted enough water into the Earth’s atmosphere to fill 58,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, per new data from NASA.

🌎 Around the World: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi departed Taiwan yesterday afternoon. Her delegation met with President Tsai Ing-wen and other Taiwanese officials, and visited Taiwan's National Human Rights Museum.

+Dive deeper: From the Left | From the Center | From the Right

🤯 Did You Know?... Dogs have glands in their toes that release profile-specific scents when they dig into the ground. That’s why they often scratch or dig at the ground after going to the bathroom – to further strengthen their “mark” on the territory.

📖 Worth a Read: How To Look Your Best on a Video Call → (The Verge)

📊 Poll results: Yesterday, we asked how you’d want to see your state handle abortion.

• 22% of y’all wanted to ban most or all abortions, 49% wanted to establish or expand abortion rights, 18% wanted something in the middle, and 11% were unsure or had a more nuanced opinion.

See the full 360° view here.

• ☝️ Shares of AMTD Digital, a Hong Kong-based fintech company, increased 126% on Tuesday alone after experiencing a series of trading halts; the stock is up 21,400% since its mid-July IPO; the company’s $310 billion market cap as of Tuesday makes it more valuable than Coca-Cola and Bank of America.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• ⛽️📉 The average US gas price decreased to $4.16/gallon yesterday, the 50th straight day prices have dropped.
• ☝️💰 The 2022 Fortune Global 500, which ranks the world's largest corporations by total revenue, was released yesterday; Walmart ranked No. 1 for the ninth straight year.
• 🚫 Speaking of Walmart… the retail giant is cutting 200 corporate roles in a restructuring effort, per a WSJ exclusive report (which you can read for free by clicking here).

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📺 Days of Our Lives, the longest-running show on NBC, is officially moving to Peacock starting next month after nearly six decades on the cable network.
• 🍿 Todd Phillips’ Joker 2, aka Joker: Folie à Deux starring Joaquin Phoenix, received an October 4, 2024, release date.
• 🏈 The NFL appealed a six-game suspension handed to Browns QB Deshaun Watson this week by an independent arbitrator; the league is seeking a tougher penalty for violating its personal conduct policy over allegations of sexual assault during massage sessions. (Background)

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🚀 At least 100,000 visitors are expected to gather at Florida’s Space Coast for the first launch of NASA's Artemis I mission, slated for August 29.
• ❄️ Here’s the science behind why some people are able to survive being “frozen solid.”
• 🌌 NASA unveiled new rules for private astronauts venturing into space. | The agency also published a picture from the James Webb Space Telescope showing the scenic Cartwheel Galaxy 500 million lightyears away.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🏛 US House Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), 58, was killed in an SUV accident yesterday along with two of her aides and one other person; the South Bend native was an Air Force veteran and had served as a missionary in Romania.
• ✍️ President Biden signed an executive order yesterday aimed in part at helping cover costs for women traveling to receive abortions.

We bring you the most unusual, off-the-wall and occasionally laugh-out-loud headlines from this week…

• Florida man charged with DUI after driving scooter into Walmart shelves → (NY Post)
• Man who threw away £150m in bitcoin hopes AI and robot dogs will get it back → (The Guardian)
• Shark Bay dolphins forming the equivalent of boy bands to attract a mate, scientists say → (ABC News Australia)
• 'Guard cat' credited with preventing would-be robbery → (AP News)

CROWDSOURCED

Have you ever encountered a glitch in the matrix, quirky animal behavior, or even just a hilarious first grader? Tell us about it here for a chance to be featured in next Thursday’s newsletter.

👦🏫 Who: Philip H. from Gastonia, NC

💬 The experience: In eighth grade, a friend and I had gotten into a little game with the science teacher. There were three watches without wristbands we would hide in his classroom, and he would find them and hide them in our homeroom. The alarms would be turned on so that they would basically be taunting you for not being able to find them. 

Well, on one occasion, we had been looking but couldn't find the watches. But one night, I had a dream where I looked under my desk and found a watch. The next morning, I remembered my dream and thought to look under my desk – lo and behold, there was a watch, taped to the underside of my desk. I've been a little wary of dreams ever since...

P.S. Don’t forget to share your odd or hilarious experience with us here.

Eighteen-year-old Natalie Lucas was on her usual lifeguarding shift at the local YMCA when one of the swimmers began yelling for help. 

The woman wasn't struggling to swim, however – she had just gone into labor. 

🌊👶 The newest Y member... Springing into action, Natalie assisted the couple as they waited for EMS to arrive. The baby boy, Tobin Thomas Rider, arrived on the pool deck just a few minutes later. 

• While Natalie doesn't officially have any nursing training, she's just thankful she was there to help in the first place. 

"I stayed calm, and I didn’t freak out, because that’s what you need to do in this job," shared the high-schooler. "You can’t really hesitate or wait for someone else to come. You’re the lifeguard; you’re the lifesaver." 

This metropolis contains the most skyscrapers over 150 meters (~500 feet). Can you guess it?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

👆 Check out the referral prizes you can get just for introducing people you know to little old us. 

What to do: Copy your unique link below, then send it to anyone you think would like the DONUT.

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