Good morning. To all our NASA readers: sorry for jinxing yesterday’s launch.😕

In today’s edition:

• ♾ Immortal jellyfish
• 🔋🏘 Power plants are going virtual
• 📜 Humans, a history

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.65 minutes to read.

“There can be no greater gift than that of giving one's time and energy to help others without expecting anything in return.”

–Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

The FTC sued Idaho-based data broker Kochava yesterday, alleging the company sold geolocation data from hundreds of millions of US mobile devices that could be used to identify and track individual consumers.

📊 More deets… Like many other ad tech firms, Kochava purchases vast troves of location data, then packages it into customized feeds. These feeds are sold to customers, like advertisers or retailers looking at foot traffic in their stores.

And while the business model itself is perfectly legal, Kochava is accused of breaking the law by failing to properly anonymize its data – meaning it’s possible to deduce a person’s actual identity based on the company’s information.

• The FTC said it analyzed a Kochava data sample of 61+ million mobile devices – which featured each device’s unique ID number, matched with their time-stamped latitude and longitude locations (including reproductive health clinics, homeless/domestic violence shelters, and places of worship).

🔄 On the flip side: Kochava said the FTC “has a fundamental misunderstanding” of how the data marketplace business works, and that the company has complied with all rules and laws, especially those pertaining to privacy. It actually sued the FTC earlier this month, saying the agency was wrongfully alleging it of violating consumer protection laws, per WaPo.

📸 Big picture: There's growing concern over the sharing of identifiable health data by organizations covered by HIPAA, which places restrictions on uses and disclosures of identifiable protected health information, HIPAA Journal reports. At least two lawsuits have been filed recently against healthcare providers for privacy violations.

• And since SCOTUS’s scrapping of Roe v. Wade in June, privacy experts have warned that search histories, period tracking apps, and location data could be used by law enforcement to prosecute abortion seekers in jurisdictions where it’s no longer legal.

👀 Looking ahead… The FTC is currently considering new rules aimed at addressing data security and commercial surveillance, similar to the EU’s GDPR.

Ancient human ancestors were walking upright as early as 7 million years ago, per new peer-reviewed research published last week in Nature, which examined a set of leg and arm fossils from Sahelanthropus tchadensis, humanity’s earliest known non-ape ancestor.

🧍 A deeper dive… The discovery implies that bipedalism – aka walking on two feet – was one of the first traits separating early humans from chimpanzees, since scientists believe the two species’ lineages diverged around this time.

• Other distinguishing human characteristics are thought to have developed more recently, like the ability to make and use tools (Homo habilis | ~2.4 million years ago), a large and complex brain (Homo heidelbergensis | ~650,000 y.a.), and the capacity for modern-day language (Homo sapiens, aka us | ~200,000 y.a.).
• The question of why our ancestors started walking on two legs is much debated among scientists, but most of them agree that bipedalism helped early humans develop bigger brains so they could better control their now freed-up forelimbs.

🧠 In the know: Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of our early development likely occurred on the continent. To date, every single fossil of early humans living between 2 million and 7 million years ago has been discovered there.

+Fun fact: The idea that bipedalism is linked to the brain development of early humans was first proposed by none other than Charles Darwin, though he mistakenly thought our larger brains came before we started walking upright.

Tesla recently announced that it’s completed Japan’s largest commercial household virtual power plant. Or more specifically, the company has installed its Powerwall batteries in over 300 homes on the island Miyako-jima – and they can be used to help power the country’s grid.

🔋🏘 Virtual by name, real in function… Power usage isn’t the same hour-after-hour, day-after-day. So the grid’s more strained at some times than others. And when it’s strained, the solution is usually to draw extra power from gas-and-oil-fired “peaker power plants,” since they’re easier to crank up and down to meet demand.

But that’s where virtual power plants come in. People with solar panels and batteries in their homes can sign up and get paid to send extra power back to the grid, giving it a boost in potential blackout situations.

• Tesla already has virtual power plants operating in California and Australia, and is working on getting one off the ground in Texas.
• In California, people with Powerwalls installed in their homes can get $2 for every kilowatt-hour fed back into the grid when it’s under stress during emergencies or periods of high demand, The Verge reports. Statewide energy prices typically average ~$0.26/kWh.

☝️ One interesting thing: Tesla’s virtual power plant in California had its first emergency response event earlier this month, which was seemingly successful.

+In other Tesla news: The company filed a lawsuit in Louisiana yesterday, challenging a state law that it says restricts its ability to sell vehicles directly to consumers.

🤯 Did you know?... Fortune 500 companies with balanced women representation on their boards financially outperform companies with the lowest. And gender-diverse teams top male-dominant teams in sales and profits….

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Normally, the answer would be one – unless you’re cell therapy startup LyGenesis. Then your answer would be, “hold my beer.”

The startup has developed a novel treatment that can grow entirely new organs inside the human body. They plan to start with the liver, with trials that will see a dozen human volunteers grow up to six livers apiece in the coming months.

💉 Expecto pa-grow-num… LyGenesis’ approach is to inject liver cells from a donor into the lymph nodes of sick patients, a process that reportedly leads to the creation of entirely new mini-organs. Their method has previously proven successful in mice, pigs, and dogs.

• LyGensis estimates it can treat about 75 people from a single donated liver – even if the organ wouldn’t otherwise pass muster for transplantation (due to tissue damage, for example). Roughly 10% of all donated livers are ultimately discarded.
• The startup is also exploring the use of lymph nodes to grow new thymuses, kidneys, and pancreases, but their top priority is livers (which actually have a unique ability to regenerate).

🏥 Zoom out: Nearly 1 in 8 Americans on the liver transplant waiting list die before receiving an organ, while another 1 in 6 are removed from the list because they’re too sick, per data from the Mayo Clinic.

💬 Quoted…​​ “They truly value sauce and I do as well.”

New York Jets CB Sauce Gardner and Buffalo Wild Wings have partnered to create a BBQ sauce meat dressing called “Sauce Sauce,” which debuts nationwide today. As part of its promotion, the brand is hosting a “Signed with Sauce” event in New Jersey tomorrow… where Gardner will be signing autographs with – you guessed it – BBQ sauce.

😳 Stat of the Day: ~20 million US households are behind on their utility payments, per a new Bloomberg report. That’s about 1 in 6 homes in America.

🌎 Around the World: A team of Spanish scientists succeeded in mapping the genome of the immortal jellyfish. As the name suggests, this particular species of jellyfish can literally turn its biological clock backward and revert to a clump of early cells, making it, well… immortal.

• The scientists’ findings, published yesterday in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS, could lead to discoveries about human aging – or even identify potential ways to extend the human healthspan (aka the number of years healthy and free from disease; not to be confused with lifespan).

Dive deeper.

🤯 Did You Know?... The hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards.

📖 Worth a Read: 43 life lessons at age 43 → (RadRead)

• ☝️ Shown above are before-and-after sat photos of flooded fields and homes along the Indus River in Rojhan, Pakistan; more than 1,000 people have died in the country since mid-June due to floods. Dive deeper.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💵 The US Dollar touched a new 20-year high yesterday.
• 📱 Cox Communications has launched a pilot mobile phone service in Hampton Roads, Virginia, Omaha (NE), and Vegas; prices will start at $15/month in some markets.
• 📑 Elon Musk's lawyers have subpoenaed Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko in the Musk/Twitter merger trial.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎶 Taylor Swift announced Midnights, a new album set to be released this October.
• 🍿🎟 Movie tickets across the US will cost $3 this Saturday (September 3rd) in celebration of National Cinema Day; if you’ve never heard of this holiday before, that’s because it never existed until now.
• ⚾️ The MLB Players Association sent out authorization cards on Sunday that’ll allow minor league players to vote for an election that could make them MLBPA members; this would mean access to collective bargaining for better conditions and pay.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🙅‍♀️🚀 NASA canceled the Artemis 1 launch yesterday due to engine cooling issues and a fuel leak; the mission’s next possible launch date is this Friday. (Background)
• 🧊 The Greenland Ice Sheet is on course to lose hundreds of trillions metric tons of ice and contribute to 10 inches in average global sea level rise through 2100, regardless of the magnitude of greenhouse gas emissions cuts during the period, glaciologists found in a new study published Monday.
• 🤔 A startup called Sanas developed technology that can remove a person’s accent on the phone in real time.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🎃☕️ The Pumpkin Spice Latte (and Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew) returns to Starbucks’ menu today.
• 🕵️‍♀️ Atomic-energy inspectors from the UN are heading to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant amid fears that fighting in the area could lead to nuclear catastrophe. (Background)
• 📑 The Department of Justice has completed its review of materials seized from former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, including some information that may be protected by attorney-client privilege, the DOJ told a federal judge Monday; ​​the “limited set” of potentially privileged info was identified by a team kept separate from the investigative squad. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right | Background + the 360° view)

We had a jam-packed newsletter yesterday, so we’re including the results from Friday and Monday’s reader polls in a separate section:

💰 On Friday: We took a 360° look at Congress’ decision to increase IRS funding by $80 billion over the next decade, and asked whether y’all agreed with their decision.

• 43% of y’all said yes, 42% said no, and 15% were unsure or had a more nuanced opinion.

See the full 360° view here.

🏛️ On Monday: We took a 360° look at Gen Z in politics, and asked if you agreed with America’s minimum age requirements to hold office (House: 25 | Senate: 30 | President: 35).

• 75% of y’all said yes, 14% said no, and 11% were unsure or had a more nuanced opinion.

See the full 360° view here.

Spooky season is almost upon us, and 60-year-old Duane Hansen had a unique way of bringing in the season: paddling 38 miles down the Missouri river in a hollowed-out pumpkin.

🛶🎃 Row, row, row your boat pumpkin... Duane set out to break the Guinness World Record last weekend – and smashed it, paddling more than ten miles further than the previous record. 

Someone better let Cinderella know her carriage has officially been transformed into a makeshift canoe.

Guess the definitions of the following Greek/Latin root words.

1. Nutri-
2. Por-
3. Senti-
4. Spec-
5. Statu-

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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1. Nutri: Nourish (i.e., nutrition)
2. Por: Passage (porous)
3. Senti: Feel (sentient, consent)
4. Spec: Look (inspect)
5. Statu: Stand (statue, status)