Good morning. UK researchers have developed a new way to test for Parkinson's disease that's 95% accurate and delivers results in under three minutes, all thanks to a Scottish woman with a wild ability to smell the disease on T-shirts worn by patients with Parkinson's. 

Now there's a lady who should be sticking her nose in everyone's business.🐸☕

In today’s edition:

• 🤔 Where does the North Pacific Garbage Patch come from?
• 📝 Everything Apple announced yesterday
• 😱 Remote-controlled cockroaches

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.94 minutes to read.

“What you resist, persists.”

–Carl Jung (1875-1961)

Apple held its ‘Far Out’ product event yesterday – and in case you didn’t have 90 minutes to watch it, here’s everything they announced.

• 📱 The iPhone 14 is here: The 14, 14 Plus, Pro, and Pro Max models were unveiled yesterday… and by now, we all know the drill. The new lineup features a better camera, as well as nominal design and UX improvements (though prices will stay the same as last year). Moving on.
• ⌚️ Watches: We’ve got a brand new lineup. Namely – the Apple Watch Series 8, a more affordable SE model, and the outdoors-focused Watch Ultra (designed to be a direct Garmin competitor).
• 🎧 AirPods Pro (2nd gen): Same look, new features. Like more battery life, better active noise cancellation (supposedly twice as good), sliding your finger on the stem now controls volume, etc.

☝️ One more thing… If we had to draw a direct analogy to a movie quote, the new features Apple released yesterday could be summed up by this Pineapple Express line: “Safety first, then teamwork.”

• Apple’s iPhone 14 lineup, through a partnership with Globalstar, is now able to connect to satellites to transmit emergency messages. And each new Watch comes equipped with a crash safety feature, which uses sensors and GPS to detect if you’ve been in a car accident and will initiate an emergency call.

+Dive deeper: Here’s everything Apple didn’t announce yesterday, aka what we’re still waiting on.

+Kinda related: Apple vs. Google: The battle behind the green bubble.

Where does Garbage Island, aka the North Pacific Garbage Patch, come from? Well according to a new peer-reviewed study, over 90% can be traced back to six countries, with China and Japan accounting for ⅔ of the overall total.

🗑️🌊 First things first… The NPGP isn’t a giant floating island of trash, ​​like a garbage dump or a landfill, but an ever-moving area of the Pacific Ocean where garbage has collected and broken down into tiny plastic pieces. These “microplastics” are suspended throughout the water, similar to flecks of pepper in one biiiiiiig bowl of soup.

• The NPGP is estimated to cover an area the size of Texas, Alaska, or twice the continental US, depending on who you ask.

📝 Now, back to the study: A team of Dutch researchers collected, sorted, and studied 6,000 pieces of trash from the NPGP, with a goal of finding each one’s source. After doing so, they discovered the items – at least, the ones they could identify – were 10x more likely to come from fishing activities than land-based activities.

• All six countries identified as the top polluters (Japan, China, S. Korea, the US, Taiwan, and Canada, in that order) have large domestic fishing industries.

📸 The big picture: The world generates 4+ trillion pounds of garbage every year – and only ~1% of it ends up in the ocean. Nearly half of the globe’s trash (44%) comes from the 38 nations in the OECD, while another ⅕ originates in East Asia and the Pacific region.

+Dive deeper: Cleaning up the garbage patches → (The Ocean Cleanup)

Cineworld, the world’s second-largest movie theater chain behind AMC, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday. Moving forward, the company’s membership programs and 751 theaters will continue to operate as usual while it’s being restructured, per the filing.

📉 Driving the move… Count with us: 1) a heavy debt load, 2) Covid, and 3) a string of blockbuster movies that buoyed theater attendance earlier this year trailed off into a soft slate for August and September, per Deadline.

• Cineworld acquired Regal Cinemas for $3.6 billion in 2018, which required it to take on significant debt… and while paid down over the first two years, that didn’t put the chain on great financial footing heading into Covid.
• Then when the pandemic hit, theaters closed, and production on movies slowed significantly. Leaving the logic chain looking a little something like this: a massive revenue hit + $5 billion in total debt + no big movies in the pipe = bankruptcy.

🍿 Zoom out: While up considerably from this point last year, this year’s box office is still down more than 30% compared to 2019. And that’s despite the best efforts of Top Gun: Maverick, the highest grossing movie of this year and fifth-highest in domestic box office history ($700+ million).

📝 Bottom line: Sometimes, not even Tom Cruise can save you – but retail investors sure can. Adam Aron, AMC’s CEO, tweeted yesterday: “Fortunately, AMC is in a very, very different situation — because retail investors embraced us and let us raise boatloads of cash. Thank you to retail! You really did save AMC.”

💪 Ready for the crazy holiday season/school semester ahead? When things are crazy like this time of year, organization skills are key… and practicing them is a lot less stressful than sorting out a mess/blown deadline.

📓 The Scribes 90-Day Planner keeps you organized, is made with premium leather/materials, and for every one sold they donate one to students from impoverished areas. Since launching ScribesForStudents, they’ve donated over 11,000 notebooks and journals to students.🙌

• They donate to children in impoverished areas of Honduras, New York, and also to the Boys and Girls Club of America. The Scribes believe they can have the greatest impact by helping kids from less fortunate areas.👏🦸

And they make journals that feature engaging writing prompts, and are made with the same level of craftsmanship as all their products, like their best-selling pens – or custom gear for you and your company!

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A team of Japanese scientists have engineered a system for creating remote-controlled cyborg cockroaches, per a new peer-reviewed study published this week.

🪳 More deets: This isn’t the first instance of remote-controlled cockroaches. But the scientists said their method – essentially a solar-powered, rechargeable ‘backpack’ wired to the insects’ nervous systems – allowed them to assume control of the insect for a much longer period of time than ever before.

• By stimulating the insects’ legs with electrical pulses from the backpack, the researchers were able to steer them left or right on command. (Don’t worry, they reportedly “do not experience pain.")

👀 Looking ahead… The scientists’ next step is to integrate more devices, such as sensors and cameras, into the backpack, then test their method on other flying insects like beetles and cicadas.

• They ultimately envision building an army of remote-controlled cyborg insects ​​with the ability to access hard-to-reach places, which could be used for search and rescue missions or environmental monitoring – and definitely not spying on your enemies.😉

💬 Quoted…​​ “A hardworking woman that has had her priorities in line.”

• A 29-year-old South Florida woman – who describes herself as “Mother Theresa in her community” – was charged by the SEC with running her business as a $200 million Ponzi scheme. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison.

📙 Stat of the Day: Merriam-Webster added 370 new words to the dictionary yesterday, including sus, janky, pumpkin spice, shrinkflation, virtue signaling, and dumbphone.

🤯 Did You Know?... Gunpowder was accidentally discovered around the year 850 by Chinese alchemists trying to develop a potion for immortality.

📖 Worth a Read: The 1,000 Chinese SpaceX engineers who never existed → (MIT Technology Review)

📊 Poll results: Yesterday, we covered how now is the best time for Americans to job hop compared to any point in at least two decades, and asked whether y’all had switched jobs at all over the past 12 months.

• 27% said yes, 55% said no, and 18% don’t currently hold a job.

+Bonus: Those who responded ‘yes’ reported an average salary increase of 32%.🤑

• ☝️ The Obamas returned to the White House yesterday for a ceremony to unveil their official portraits.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• ⚖️🐦 A Delaware judge ruled that Elon Musk can include new evidence from a Twitter whistleblower in his case to back out from the $44 billion acquisition, which officially begins October 17.
• 🎮 GameStop disclosed a new partnership with crypto exchange FTX while reporting Q2 earnings yesterday evening; the company’s shares rose ~10% in after-hours trading.
• 🪙 Binance said it’ll stop supporting USDC – the world’s second-largest stablecoin – and will automatically convert customers’ funds to its own stablecoin, BUSD (the third-largest in the world).

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🤑 Kim Kardashian is co-launching a new private-equity firm called SKKY Partners that’ll focus on consumer and media businesses, per the WSJ.
• 🎾🏈 Frances Tiafoe became the first American man to advance to the US Open semis since 2006, after defeating No. 9 seed Andrey Rublev in straight sets yesterday. | The NFL season kicks off tonight.
• 📺 Netflix is resurrecting Teletubbies with a new TV series from its original co-creator. | Six Gulf Arab nations asked Netflix to remove "offensive content" yesterday.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 💊 Amylyx Pharmaceuticals’ drug for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease) was approved by the FDA yesterday.
• 🪚 Archaeologists in Indonesia recently discovered the oldest known evidence of an amputation after examining a 31,000-year-old skeleton. (Background: Humans, a history)

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 👶👶 A Brazilian woman recently gave birth to a set of twins with different fathers, per local news outlet Globo.
• 🙅‍♀️😷 New York has lifted its statewide mask requirement for subways, buses, and other forms of mass transit.
• 🏛️ Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) avoided about $87,000 of losses when he sold off stock at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a 2020 search warrant affidavit unsealed this week. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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

• A Chimpanzee Escaped From a Ukrainian Zoo. She Returned on a Bicycle → (NY Times)
• Earthquakes shake Liechtenstein parliament during quake insurance debate → (Euronews)
• Dine and dash: Bear breaks into home and eats cake before running from police → (Cox Media Group)
• Wisconsin couple's 'Mewseum' gives 'rescued' cat figurines a home → (UPI)
• 2 people removed from U.S. Open quarterfinals after one gave the other a haircut in the stands → (CBS 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: Damon N. from San Marcos, TX

💬 The experience: When I was a young kid at the grocery store, I saw this Hot Wheel car that I really wanted. I didn't buy it, but the memory of it stuck in my head. A few nights later, I had a dream where I was playing with the car, but I realized it was a dream. Stupid young me thought that if I put it under my pillow, it would still be there when I woke up. After that, I woke up and eagerly checked under the pillow – and the toy was right where I had left it in the dream. As a kid, I wasn't surprised, as it all made perfect since to me then. Years later, I have no clue how it actually happened.

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

For anyone who takes public transportation, it's always frustrating to walk to the bus stop after a long day and not have anywhere to sit. 

James Warren witnessed this firsthand when he noticed a woman sitting in the dirt while she waited for her bus. "I thought, oh, that's simply undignified," he shared about the situation. 

• So the Denver man took matters into his own hands, and started to build the benches himself. 

❤️ Spreading kindness... James' benches have been popping up around Denver ever since. He builds them using scrap wood found throughout the city, carving "Be Kind" into every one. 

• "It's a good message. It's a message anyone can do," said James. "Spread a little bit more kindness in the world and be a little kinder to your neighbour and just try to be a little bit more thoughtful and cognizant of the needs of others."

Guess the numbered Central American countries.

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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

What to do: Copy your unique link below, then send it to anyone who you think would like the DONUT. Once you hit each milestone, you'll get an email with a link to claim your prize. (Pro tip: there's no need to ration points, you're entitled to a prize at each tier.)

Start referring.👇

1. Belize
2. Guatemala
3. Honduras
4. Nicaragua
5. Costa Rica