Good morning and welcome to Thursday. You know that announcement we teased earlier this week? It's coming tomorrow – so when you see us in your inbox, make sure to check-in and say hi. 

In today’s edition:

• 🌎 A look at inflation around the world
• 🌱🌧️ China is planting clouds
• 📝 The CDC is getting an overhaul

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.69 minutes to read.

“You can start late, look different, be uncertain, and still succeed.”

–Misty Copeland (b.1982)

By now, you’re probably sick of hearing about (and experiencing) rising consumer prices in the US – but it may comfort you to know we’re not alone. According to new government figures published yesterday, the UK saw its highest annual inflation in more than four decades last month (+10.1%).

And it’s not just the US and UK, either – nations around the world are battling rising prices.

🌍 A deeper dive… Inflation across the eurozone (countries that use the euro) reached 8.9% last month, an all-time high dating back to when the currency first launched in 1999. Among OECD countries, 38 of the most highly-developed nations in the world, annual inflation in June reached its highest level since 1988.

• In Lebanon, the price of a loaf of bread has more than doubled since March, while food and fuel prices have roughly tripled in Sudan over that same period.
• Venezuela is currently experiencing the highest inflation rate in the world, at +222% year-over-year as of April, per data from CNBC. That may seem high – but it comes on the heels of 686% annual inflation the previous year, and 2,960% annual inflation in 2020.

🙅‍♀️📈 On the flip side: Only a handful of developed countries have remained relatively unaffected by inflation so far this year, including Japan (+2.4% annual rate last month), China (+2.7%), and Saudi Arabia (+2.7%).

📝 Bottom line: Inflation was the number one concern among all global citizens for the fourth straight month in July, per Ipsos’ What Worries the World index.

Pack your bags, fellow remote workers, we’re headed… anywhere, really. According to a recent Migration Policy Institute report, more than 25 countries and territories have now launched digital nomad visas over the past few years.

🌍 A deeper dive… The trend began with small, tourism-dependent European and Caribbean nations, the WSJ reports. And now, larger economies like the UAE, Brazil, and Italy are all launching their own initiatives.

Most are aimed as a way to boost economies and sustain local service jobs – and while specifics vary from country to country, it’s typical for a visa to require proof of remote employment, travel insurance, and some level of minimum monthly earnings (which can range anywhere from ~$1,500/month in Brazil to ~$5,000/month in the UAE).

• Tax breaks and other perks also aren’t uncommon, and stays can range anywhere from six months to two years.

📈 Big picture: The number of Americans identifying as digital nomads, aka they combine remote work with travel, more than doubled to 15 million in 2021 from seven million in 2019.

🥊 The bottom line: “Countries are now competing for talent, just like companies used to compete for talent,” said Prithwiraj Choudhury, an associate professor at Harvard Business School.

A new Toto remake is about to hit the airwaves, and it’s called “I Bless the Rains Down in China.” According to reports published yesterday, Chinese authorities have begun attempting to induce rainfall via cloud seeding in some regions of the country to combat a severe drought and record-breaking heatwave.

So yes – it would be accurate to say China is making it rain.

☝️ First things first… Cloud seeding is a weather modification technique first invented in the 1940s. It aims to improve a cloud’s ability to produce rain or snow by introducing specific tiny particles, like silver iodide, that provide a base for snowflakes to form.

• China is no stranger to the practice, having used it during the Beijing Olympics in 2008 to ensure dry weather around its stadiums by flushing out rain from any approaching clouds.
• This go-round, officials are cloud seeding in response to an ongoing 64-day heatwave that’s the longest and strongest since China first began keeping records in 1961, and is expected to last through the end of the month. Asia’s longest waterway, the Yangtze River, is also sitting at record-low levels.

🌧️🌎 Zoom out: More than 50 countries employ cloud seeding or other weather modification tech at the moment, most to deal with rainfall or water scarcity-related issues in their various dry regions.

✋ ​Yes, but… Despite decades of the technique being mainstream, scientists are still unclear how much – if any – extra precipitation it generates, as the chaotic nature of weather makes controlled, natural experiments virtually impossible.

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The year was 1610, and Galileo Galilei was locked away, peering at the night sky through a new telescope. It was then he noticed something strange – a few objects glimmering near Jupiter seemed to change positions nightly, rotating around the immense planet.

He quickly jotted down the observation… and with every stroke of his pen, poked a bigger and bigger hole in the almost unanimously-held notion that everything in the universe revolved around Earth.

It was this groundbreaking document, the first written evidence of a theory that would wind up changing the world and getting the scientist imprisoned by the Catholic Church, that the University of Michigan thought they had in their possession for decades – up until recently.

📜🙅‍♀️ From Galileo → Galile – no... Nick Wilding, a historian at Georgia State University currently writing a biography on the famed Italian astronomer, first became suspicious of the manuscript’s authenticity in May, alerting officials after examining it on the university’s website. The word choices seemed strange, the letter forms were… off, and the ink at the top and bottom of the document looked the same – even though it was supposedly written months apart.

• And according to a university press release published yesterday, his instincts were right. The manuscript, thought to be from the early 1600s, is actually a 20th-century fake, most likely executed by the well-known forger Tobia Nicotra.

🖼 Zoom out: These types of forgeries aren’t all that uncommon. More than half of all art is either fake or mistakenly attributed, per a 2014 report from the Fine Art Expert Institute.

💬 Quoted…​​ “In our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations.”

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced a broad plan yesterday to overhaul the organization's structure and operations, due to what she said was its failure to respond efficiently to the Covid pandemic.

• The new steps include restructuring the CDC's communications office and revamping its websites to make public health guidance clearer and easier to find, as well as altering its promotion system to place less emphasis on scientific papers and more on efforts to positively impact public health, per the AP.

⚖️💰 Numbers of the Day: Two former Pennsylvania judges who sent children to for-profit jails in return for $2.8 million in kickbacks were ordered to pay $206 million in damages by a US district judge yesterday. The "kids-for-cash" scandal, as it's known, is considered one of the worst judicial scandals in history, and has resulted in ~4,000 juvenile convictions being thrown out.

🤯 Did You Know?... Maggot therapy is an FDA-approved treatment for ulcers and wounds to promote healing. We’ll spare you the gross details, but you can learn more here.

📖 Worth a Read: The Crypto Geniuses Who Vaporized a Trillion Dollars → (NY Magazine)

📊 Poll results: Yesterday, we asked what y’all thought was the reason why America’s political landscape has become so polarized in recent decades.

• 19% of y’all said social media, 6% said money in politics, 9% said cable news, 5% said lack of community in everyday life, 57% said all of the above, and 4% selected “other.”

See the full 360° view here.

• ☝️ You’re looking at a lightning flash that occurred over Blackrock Diving Tower in Galway, Ireland, this week amid torrential rain after a heatwave.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🚘🔌 Dodge unveiled a new electric muscle car concept called the Charger Daytona SRT.
• 🙅‍♀️💸 July was the first month in five years that no new SPACs raised any money.
• ⚖️💊​​ The companies owning CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart pharmacies were ordered to pay a combined $651 million over 15 years to two Ohio counties after a jury found them liable for contributing to the opioid epidemic.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📱 Apple is planning to hold a launch event on September 7 to unveil the iPhone 14 and new line of Apple Watches, per Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
• ✍️ LeBron James signed a two-year contract extension with the LA Lakers worth $97.1 million, the maximum amount under NBA rules.
• 🏀⚾ The WNBA playoffs tipped off last night; so did the Little League World Series.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 💉 US biotech company Verve Therapeutics recently injected a gene-editing serum into a live patient's liver with the goal of lowering their cholesterol; if their treatment proves successful at scale, it could put an end to the biggest killer on Earth: heart disease.
• 🦂 A pair of Bay Area high school students recently discovered two brand-new scorpion species.
• 🤖🚘 Las Vegans can now hail a free ride in an autonomous electric taxi courtesy of Lyft and Motional; drivers will still sit behind the wheels.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🐦 A Saudi PhD student and women’s rights activist was sentenced to 34 years in prison for following and retweeting political dissidents.
• 🏫 US teachers’ weekly wages increased by a total of $29 from 1996 to 2021 after adjusting for inflation, per a new report from the Economic Policy Institute. (Background: Teachers are in short supply)
• ⚖️ South Carolina’s state Supreme Court temporarily blocked the state's six-week abortion ban yesterday; the measure had taken effect shortly after Roe v. Wade was overturned. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• 🤩 The Weekly Filet is a treasure trove full of serendipity — which makes it truly one of the best places on the internet. Every Friday, get a careful selection of great things to read, watch and listen to. Sign up for free.*

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

• Monkey swipes cell phone at California zoo, calls 911 → (NBC News)
• Romanian central bank hires fortune teller → (EU Times )
• Wave of badly-written Kindle titles on Pelosi, Taiwan hits Amazon's platform → (Radio Free Asia)
• Florida woman with world's longest locks grows hair to 110 feet → (UPI)

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: Sushree J. from India

💬 The experience: Watched Stranger things and now I feel like I'm seeing The Mind flayer in the shadows. Gosh! I had a dream of a close relative telling me something about the results of an art competition that I would be in the second position and the next day, boom! The Results were out and I was THE SECOND. And literally for the next seven days I tried really hard to focus and get a glimpse of something may be future but I think El was there for one night.

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

Some people believe kids these days spend too much time glued to their screens. 

• For seven-year-old David Diaz Jr., however, watching TV helped him save a life. 

🦸🏻‍♂️ Little hero... It was lunchtime at Woodrow Wilson Elementary in Binghamton, NY, when David noticed one of his classmates choking on his food. 

• With no teachers close by in the cafeteria, David sprang up and began performing the Heimlich maneuver on his friend, a skill David later said he learned while watching the ABC medical drama The Good Doctor with his dad.

"If anybody is choking or is in danger, you always have to save them," said David. "If you don't, then that could be really sad."

For his efforts, the second grader was honored with the New York State Senate Commendation Award.

☝️ This mountain range features the world’s most dangerous peak, with a 29.5% fatality rate for climbers… can you name it? (Hint: The mountain range and its most dangerous peak share the same name)

(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.

Annapurna in Nepal. An estimated 244 expeditions attempting to reach its peak have resulted in 72 fatalities since 1900.