Good morning and welcome to Wednesday. What do you get when you cross the Tasmanian Devil with Tony the Tiger? An extinct species… but maybe not for much longer.

US and Australian scientists are launching a multimillion-dollar project to revive an animal that’s been extinct since the 1930s: the Tasmanian Tiger (or thylacine). They plan to ‘de-extinct’ the species in a lab by taking genes from a similar animal, then editing them to match the DNA of the thylacine.

Bringing back extinct species... there’s no possible way that could end badly, right??😅🦖

In today's edition:

• ✈️ American Airlines goes supersonic
• 🔵🔴 A data-driven look at political division
• 🍿 The new secret to winning at the box office

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.85 minutes to read.

“Whoever is happy will make others happy too.”

–Anne Frank (1929-1945)

The proportion of Americans in each political party with a very unfavorable view of the other party has tripled over the past three decades, per a new Pew Research survey of 6,100+ US adults published last week.

🔵🔴 A deeper dive… Pew also found the proportion of Americans who view both parties in a negative light has grown steadily over the past 28 years, from 6% in 1994 to 27% today.

• Independents who lean toward one party or the other appear especially motivated by negativity. Both GOP- and Democrat-leaning independents are more likely to say they lean that way due to dislike of the other party’s policies, rather than support for their own lawmakers’ policies (by a factor of nearly 2-to-1).

✋ Yes, but… Pew’s survey found that most Americans are reluctant to judge others by their political affiliation; just 15% of those surveyed, including 14% of Republicans and 24% of Democrats, say the party someone supports says a lot about whether they are a good or a bad person.

🤷‍♀️ But, but, but: Half of Democrats and two-thirds of Republicans who said that political party means nothing about whether someone is a good or bad person, also answered that members of the opposing party were especially immoral.

🇺🇸 Big picture: Overall, Pew found 71% of Americans either strongly or somewhat agree with the statement: “I often wish there were more political parties to choose from in this country.” (Could one be the newly-created ‘Forward Party’?)

📊 Flash poll: Why do you think America’s political landscape has become so polarized in recent decades?

Social media

Money in politics

Cable news

Lack of community in everyday life

All of the above

Other

Text-to-image has reached the masses, y’all. Over the weekend, TikTok unveiled “AI Greenscreen,” an in-app, text-to-image generator allowing users to type out a prompt the software then turns into an image that can be used as a video background.

✍️🖼 For example… if you typed “POV reading this newsletter” into the filter, it’d probably pull up a picture of a person scrolling on the toilet – or someone sneaking in a quick news update in between firing off work emails.

But these images won’t be as photorealistic as the ones you may have seen from OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 or Google’s Imagen. Rather, they’ll look more like abstract blobs – and this is probably for a couple of reasons.

• The advanced models require a whole ton of computing power, which would end up being expensive and difficult to implement and maintain at scale.
• And speaking of scale, TikTok has over a billion users. Even if the company has unlimited resources, allowing everyone with the app to have unfettered access to create anything they wa… well… you get the picture. This is almost certainly why attempts to generate sexual or violent images in the filter currently fizzle out.

📈 Bottom line: In January 2021, OpenAI unveiled DALL-E, the world’s first-ever AI-powered text-to-image generator. Less than two years later, one-plus billion people have access to a watered-down version of the tech – and more innovation is sure to come.

The federal government announced new water cuts for Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico yesterday in response to an ongoing drought depleting the Colorado River and its two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell.

⚖️💧 A deeper shallower dive… The Colorado River's water was divided among seven Western states a century ago, in a pact giving half of the river's water to the Upper Basin states (CO, NM, UT, & WY) and half to the Lower Basin (AZ, CA, & NV).

The seven states had a deadline of Monday to reach an agreement on how to conserve water usage amidst an ongoing megadrought, which represents the driest 22-year period in southwestern North America in 1,200 years, causing the Colorado River and its reservoirs to reach historic lows.

• After the Monday deadline came and went, the federal government stepped in and ordered Arizona to stop using 592,000 acre-feet of water (21% of its annual allotment), Nevada 25,000 acre-feet (8%), and Mexico 104,000 acre-feet (7%) during the course of next year, based on a plan agreed to in 2019 in case of shortages.
• For reference, an acre foot is enough water to last a typical family of four about one year.

📸 Big picture: The Colorado River is the current water source ​for ~40 million people between Denver and Los Angeles, fueling $1.4 trillion in annual economic activity across the basin states, according to a 2015 study by Arizona State University.

🤯 Did you know… that between 30 and 40% of the population is thought to be neurodiverse? This includes ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder, which can make staying engaged and learning more challenging.

🦔 Hedgehog Health and its founders understand firsthand the challenges that kids with ADHD and ASD face, so they developed The Hoglet!

• It's what you get when you combine a computer mouse, a hedgehog, and a fidget! 🐭+🦔+⚙️ = ⁉️

🖥️ Computer labs are often boring and lifeless, and most don’t allow fidget toys, which are proven to help people with ADHD concentrate… The Hoglet solves this by serving as a functional fidget, and a comforting bridge between the physical and the virtual world! 👍

Hedgehog designed a device specifically to help learning-challenged kids…. But as it turns out, adults can’t keep their hands off the Hoglet either!🤷‍♀️

Learn more about The Hoglet.

The need… for speed!!!! The airline has paid a nonrefundable deposit to purchase 20 supersonic jets from Boom Hypersonic, the two companies announced yesterday, with the option for American to purchase up to 40 more.

✈️⏭ More deets: Supersonic refers to anything that goes faster than the speed of sound. Which Boom’s Overture jet – the model bought by American – certainly does, reaching speeds of Mach 1.7 (~1,300 mph, aka 1.7x the speed of sound), about twice the speed of conventional aircraft.

• That’d be fast enough to get from Miami to London in just under five hours, or from LA to Honolulu in three hours according to the announcement, which floated those two examples as just a couple “among many possibilities.”

👀 Looking ahead… This most recent supersonic deal brings Boom’s orderbook to 130 airplanes, including options, valued at $26 billion, CEO Blake Scholl said in an interview. The startup plans to unveil the Overture jet in 2025, have its first flight in 2026, then carry its first passengers by 2029.

But just one problem, as The Points Guy reports: the Overture doesn’t yet have an engine. Boom has partnered with Rolls-Royce on engine concepts, but the engine maker’s CEO, Warren East, recently told The Air Current that his company doesn’t have anyone currently working on the project.

💬 Quoted… “Much Wow.”

• 👆 The name of a $150 million superyacht currently sitting abandoned at a dock in Italy. Its owners, the cofounders of collapsed crypto firm Three Arrows Capital, have reportedly fled to Dubai to avoid extradition to Singapore or the US.

🏀 Stat of the Day: Lakers’ forward LeBron James has 129 million Instagram followers, earning him up to ~$428,000 per sponsored post, according to estimates from betting website JeffBet shared with The Hustle. But – as it may surprise you to know – Bron’s real money comes from basketball (and investments, obvi; more on that another time).

• The NBA star’s current contract pays out $542,000/game… so maybe he made the right career choice, after all.

🤔🍿 Did You Know?... Every movie that grossed over $100 million in 2021 was rated PG-13. And so far this year, the percentage of box office revenue that has gone toward R-rated films is the lowest it's been in over 25 years.

📖 Worth a Read: A Secret to Lululemon’s Success? Men Who Are Obsessed With Its Pants → (WSJ)

• ☝️ Scientists may finally have an explanation for why bright-green meteors streaked across the skies over New Zealand last month; it’s due to the specific chemistry of the meteors themselves, which likely contain metals like nickel, iron and magnesium.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🦻 The FDA said it would allow some hearing aids to be sold over the counter yesterday, a move that could reduce costs and improve access; roughly 30 million US adults have hearing problems, but only ~20% use hearing aids.
• 📈 Shares of Walmart rose ~5% after the company reported earnings yesterday morning, and stayed around that price the entire day.
• 🏘️ Here are the 12 least affordable housing markets in the US.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏀 The NBA said it won’t schedule any games on election day this November to encourage voting.
• 🍿 Robert DeNiro has signed on to star opposite himself in a new Warner Bros. gangster drama called Wise Guys.
• ⚖️ Rapper A$AP Rocky (aka Rihanna’s boyfriend) was charged with assault with a semi-automatic firearm yesterday in relation to a shooting incident in Hollywood, CA, last November.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🍇 Eating two cups of grapes per day can reduce your chances of developing dementia later in life, per a series of new studies published in the peer-reviewed journal Foods.
• 🛰️ Russia’s Roscosmos space agency revealed a model of their proposed new space station that could be completed as soon as 2030.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🎓 The Education Department will cancel all remaining student debt for 208,000 borrowers who attended – aka were defrauded by – ITT Technical Institute since 2005, amounting to $3.9 billion in total relief.
• 🗳 Rep. Liz Cheney was defeated by Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman in Wyoming's Republican primary; Cheney was one of ten GOP members to vote to impeach former President Trump. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• ✍️ President Biden signed into law Democrats' ~$740 billion budget reconciliation bill related to climate, healthcare, and taxes – aka the “Inflation Reduction Act.” (Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• 🤔 But what about the business of culture? Check out TheFutureParty daily newsletter. Filled with interesting takes on industry trends, it’s a free, quick, and fun way to stay up-to-date on the latest happenings in business, entertainment and pop culture. Subscribe for free.*

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Quick recap: In this section, we’re aiming to crowdsource details about epic trips – then provide the whole playbook for the experience to y’all.

• Have you ever gone on an epic, once-in-a-lifetime trip? Tell us about it here.

🚶‍♂️ Who: Gillian G. from Columbus, OH

☀️ Length of trip: 85 days

💬 Quick recap: I rode my bicycle coast-coast across 10 states on the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail solo and unsupported last summer. Prior to this, I did not consider myself to be an avid cyclist and had bought my first pair of bike shorts for the trip. My logging varied from camping in city parks, to national parks like Yellowstone, to many generous people who opened the doors to their homes, churches, cabins, and community centers for me. Having never been past Chicago, I was most excited to see the western United States and the Rockies (gorgeous!). Of course, I had the large advantages of being young, white, able-bodied, having family support, and the ability to save money to take time off work, but I hope that more people will get to experience the country in this way, and I am so grateful that I could take this journey.

🚲 Want to learn more? Dive deeper into Gillian's must-dos, must-don'ts, and trip expenses here.

P.S. Have your own epic trip you’d like to share? Tell us about it here for a chance to be featured in next Wednesday’s newsletter.

🚙 Five days, three guys, two planes, one car, and all fifty states... Peter McConville, Pavel Krechetov, and Abdullahi Salah recently broke the world record for the fastest visit to all 50 US states, completing the journey in five days, 13 hours, and 10 minutes.

• The longtime friends began their journey in Vermont, making their way through all 48 continental states before hopping on a plane to Alaska and ending their journey in Hawaii. 

🗺 Are we there yet?... The whirlwind of a trip was a bucket list moment for all three men, and had been in the works for months. 

• “It was a bunch of relief,” said Peter at the end of the journey. “But at the same time, it was like, we’ve been planning this for so long. We actually pulled this off. And like, everybody’s really excited.”

❓ Trivia: What does LL Cool J’s name stand for?

🇩🇪 True or False?... German chocolate cake was invented in Germany.

🤔 Riddle Me This: Ten people try to stand under a regular-sized umbrella, but no one gets wet… how?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

👆 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.

❓ Trivia: Ladies Love Cool James😎

🇩🇪 T/F: False, it was invented in Texas

🤔 Riddle: It isn’t raining