Good morning and welcome to Monday. We have a big announcement coming this week – stay tuned.

In today’s edition:

• 💄 How lipstick sales and economic downturns are related
• 🌕 The Moon’s origin story, according to science
• 🦠 Polio has been detected in NYC’s wastewater

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.92 minutes to read.

“Motivation gets you going and habit gets you there.”

–Hilary "Zig" Ziglar (1926-2012)

The FBI seized 11 sets of classified documents in its search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home last Monday, including some ​​labeled "Top Secret," per court documents unsealed by a federal judge on Friday.

The judge also unsealed the FBI’s search warrant, which revealed the agency was looking for evidence of possible violations of the Espionage Act, as well as laws against removing government records and obstructing justice.

• More specifically, Trump is being investigated for potentially violating Section 793 of the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to remove or misuse information related to national defense.

📑📦 More deets… There are three basic levels of classification for US government documents.

1. Confidential – likely to cause “damage” to national security if leaked.
2. Secret – likely to cause “serious damage” to national security if leaked.
3. Top Secret – likely to cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security if leaked. A subset of Top Secret known as TS/SCI (sensitive compartmented information) is reserved for documents that can only be read in a secure government facility.

Per newly-unsealed property receipts, the FBI agents at Mar-a-Lago discovered three sets of confidential documents, three groups of secret documents, four sets of top-secret documents, and one group of files marked “TS/SCI.”

• The Washington Post reported late Thursday that the FBI was looking for “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons,” though neither the warrant nor inventory list specifically mentioned nuclear weapons or programs.

📝 Trump’s response: The former president published an official statement late Friday, saying the documents in question were declassified under a “standing order” allowing him to take sensitive materials to his residence at night to keep working.

📊 Flash poll: Do you agree with the FBI’s decision to raid former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home?

Yes

No

There’s still not enough info

Unsure/other

🤝 Freya, meet Harambe. Norway’s government put down a 1,300-pound walrus yesterday that had become popular in the country’s capital city of Oslo. In mid-July, the walrus, named Freya, was spotted trying to climb aboard several small boats, which later sank, thinking they were icebergs. The government released a statement on the matter, saying the “decision to euthanize the walrus was made based on an overall assessment of the continued threat to human safety.”

⛏️🏦 The Italian Job gone wrong. A man rescued from a collapsed tunnel in Rome last week has been accused of digging it as part of a heist to rob a bank. Police responded to reports of a man trapped under rubble on Thursday; three other people are suspected to have been involved, all of whom allegedly attempted to escape after authorities arrived.

🇹🇼 More US lawmakers arrive in Taiwan. A delegation of five US lawmakers, led by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), landed in the self-governing island nation on Sunday for a two-day trip, during which they’ll meet with President Tsai Ing-wen. The visit, made to show the US' support for Taiwan, comes 12 days after Speaker Pelosi’s trip to the island nation for the same reason... which China wasn't too happy about.

+This day in history: Today marks the one-year anniversary of the Taliban capturing Kabul during the US’ withdrawal from the country. What’s happened in Afghanistan since then.

If the economy’s been a beast so far this year (not in the good way), its bright spot seems to be beauty. According to recently released data from the NPD Group, an organization that tracks 14 categories of discretionary retail spending, “beauty” was the only one with rising unit sales in the first half of 2022.

💄📈 A deeper dive… Consumer sentiment has fallen this year, overall. But as it’s done so, lipstick sales volume has climbed – a phenomenon known as the “lipstick index.” The term was first coined by Leonard Lauder, chairman of Estée Lauder, to explain rising sales of cosmetics during the recession in the early 2000s… which happened during the ‘08 recession, too.

And like past downturns, this year’s increase in beauty spending goes beyond just lipstick.

• Overall makeup sales, which include lipstick, are up 20%
• Fragrance is up 15%
• Skincare is up 12%, while hair care is up 28%

… plus, all of these categories are growing in units, as well as dollars.

🤑 Driving the data: When NPD overlayed lipstick sales volume and consumer sentiment trends, they discovered an opposite correlation, which the group says indicates indulgent spending. Or in plain English, people seem to be increasingly buying beauty products while cutting back in other areas.

+Dive deeper… Much of this growth is being driven by households earning $100,000+ per year, a demographic representing 47% of the beauty shopper base. It’s also the only income group currently growing, having increased by 3 share points over 2020 and five share points over 2019 – which means big box retailers, like Target and Walmart, are trying to cash-in.

😓📉 It’s been a rough go lately in crypto town. And while things might not necessarily be rigged, it sure can feel that way if your timing is unfortunate.

But luckily, if you look hard enough, there’s always a silver lining…

🌧️ The silver lining… In this case, for the last few months, GPUs are starting to come down in price!🎉🥳

So if you’re looking to finally get into the mining game, Luxor's ASIC broker has facilitated 20,000+ ASIC purchases since launching three years ago, and its best-in-class mining pool infrastructure is trusted by the biggest names in mining, like Argo and NYDIG.

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Get in the mining game today with Luxor.

Throughout recorded history, there have been four prominent theories describing the Moon’s creation. And thanks to a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances last week, we now have the first chemical proof supporting one above all others.

🌕 Background… The three Swiss-cheese theories, aka they’re full of holes, of the Moon’s creation are as follows: capture, accretion, and fission. For brevity’s sake we won’t cover them in-depth, but you can find the ideas – and why they’re probably wrong – here.

The winner winner, chicken dinner goes to #4, the Giant Impact, aka Theia Impact, theory. This one says the Earth collided with another planet about the size of Mars, called Theia, ~4.5 billion years ago. Computer simulations, plus the composition of the Moon being similar to the Earth’s mantle, supported this theory prior to last week – and now we have some more proof.

• Using a noble gas mass spectrometer nicknamed “Tom Dooley” after a Grateful Dead song, the researchers’ studied six lunar samples discovered in Antarctica. In them, they discovered helium and neon, both noble gases found in the Earth’s mantle. The presence of the two is significant, since the samples were unexposed to the Moon’s surface, supporting the idea of a colossal celestial impact.

👀 Looking ahead… The question now seems to be: Where on Earth is Carmen San Diego did the Moon come from?

But all jokes aside, the researchers are hoping their discovery could lead to further study of more than just the Moon. NASA has a collection of ~70,000 approved meteorites sitting in the trophy case, which may be getting dusted off soon (literally😉) in search of further noble gases.

+Dive deeper: What exactly are noble gases?

💬 Quoted…​​ “This is a puzzling move on Apple’s behalf.”

According to Telegram CEO and founder, Pavel Durov, Apple held up the messaging app’s most recent software update due to its inclusion of Telemoji, high-quality animated versions of Apple’s current emojis. Apparently after the feature was removed, the update was allowed to go live.

👟 Stat of the Day: In 1984, Nike aimed to generate $3 million in Jordan brand sales over four years. The Jordan brand now generates ~$3 million in sales every five hours.

🤯 Did You Know?... Urine comes directly from your blood, not your digestive system.

📖 Worth a Read: The Economic Principle That Helps Me Order at Restaurants → (The Atlantic)

📊 Poll results: On Friday, we asked how you thought Big Tech companies should handle legal requests for data related to abortion.

• 49% of y’all said they should comply as normal, 40% said they should refuse to hand over data, and 11% were unsure or had a more nuanced opinion.

See the full 360° view here.

• ☝️ This picture shows the Sturgeon supermoon, the fourth and final supermoon of the year, set against Istanbul, Turkey; it was visible from Thursday evening through Saturday morning. See some more pics.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📈 Consumer sentiment may have been dropping the first half of the year, but it’s trending upward now; the University of Michigan's latest Index of Consumer Sentiment was published on Friday; it rose 3.6 index points to 55.1 from a July reading of 51.5; it’s increased since dropping to 50 in June.
• 🇸🇦 Saudi Aramco posted a net income of $48.4 billion for the second quarter of this year, the biggest quarterly adjusted profit of any listed company globally and a 90% increase over the same period last year.
• 🚗 Tesla has made over three million cars, CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Sunday; Tesla’s Shanghai factory has reportedly made ~⅓ of that total.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 💔 Actress Anne Heche was taken off life support yesterday, following a car accident earlier this month that left her brain-dead; the 53-year-old actress was best-known for roles in Donnie Brasco, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Wag the Dog, Six Days Seven Nights, and more.
• 📚 Salman Rushdie, a famous book author who had received numerous death threats, was stabbed in the neck before he was about to give a lecture in western New York state on Friday; a suspect was arrested following the attack; the author is reportedly off a ventilator and “on the road to recovery.”
• ⚾️ San Diego Padres' star Fernando Tatis Jr., last year's National League home run leader, was hit with an 80-game suspension by the MLB on Friday after testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🌡️ The average minimum nighttime temp of the contiguous US was 63.6°F in July, good for the hottest nightly average for any month in 128 years of record-keeping, per the NOAA.
• ⚡️📝 Three peer-reviewed papers detailing a successful nuclear fusion experiment have been published exactly one year after the fact, per a press release by LLNL.
• 🌊 The virus that causes polio has been identified in a sample extracted from sewage water in New York City; this comes weeks after researchers found the polio virus in samples extracted from wastewater in New York’s Rockland County and adjacent Orange County.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🗣🦠 The WHO announced on Saturday that it renamed two monkeypox variants, substituting Roman numerals for geographic areas to avoid stigmatization; ​​the Congo Basin and West African variants are now classified as Clade I and Clade II.
• 🇰🇷 South Korea’s president pardoned the heir and de facto leader of Samsung for bribing the country's previous president, which led to widespread protests in 2017.
• 🏛️ The House voted 220-207 in favor of the climate, tax, and healthcare-related budget reconciliation bill dubbed the “Inflation Reduction Act”; President Biden has said he plans to sign it into law this week. (Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

Monday: National Relaxation Day; the 75th anniversary of India's independence

Tuesday: National Rollercoaster Day; Walmart earnings

Wednesday: WNBA playoffs start; Little League World Series begins in Williamsport, PA

Thursday: Weekly unemployment claims; Week 2 of the NFL preseason kicks off

Friday: Day 2 of the PGA Tour’s BMW Championship

Tensions were high as 12-year-old Isaiah Jarvis stepped up to the plate during his team’s Little League World Series qualifying game.

• As the pitch zoomed in, Isaiah couldn’t move out of the way quick enough. The ball hit him on the head, knocking off his helmet as he fell to the ground.

Luckily, Isaiah was okay – he quickly brushed himself off, and proceeded to take first base. However, the opposing pitcher, Kaiden Shelton, was shaken up.

⚾️ Time out… Kaiden’s head hung low as he tried to regain focus and continue pitching. That’s when Isaiah walked right off the base and straight to the pitchers mound, giving Kaiden a hug and reassuring him that everything was alright.

• “It felt like he cared,” Kaiden said when asked about Isaiah’s hug. “I also cared about him, and that just showed that baseball is sportsmanship – there’s a lot of sportsmanship in baseball.”

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Guess the definitions of the Greek and Latin root words listed below.

1. Acu
2. Germ
3. Deb
4. Fid
5. Axio

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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

1. Acu: Sharp, pointed (Acupuncture)
2. Germ: Sprout (Germinate)
3. Deb: Owe (Debt, Debit)
4. Fid: Faith, trust (Confidence, fidelity)
5. Axio: Merit, worth (Axiom)