Good morning. Raise your hand if you have a cute pet.✋

If you’re sitting at your desk rn – or on a porcelain throne – with five fingers up, you should probably enter your pet into our second-annual Pet Playoffs contest. More deets at the bottom.

In today’s edition:

• ♟️ A new development in the chess cheating scandal
• 🐦📱 Musk is buying Twitter, after all
• 💧 Did water create life?

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.79 minutes to read.

“There is little success where there is little laughter.”

–Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)

Elon Musk is moving ahead with his original deal to buy Twitter for ~$44 billion, per a letter he sent to the company’s board overnight Monday. The move was confirmed in an SEC filing yesterday, and comes two weeks before the parties were set to clash in court.

🐦📱 Background: Musk previously agreed to acquire the social media company for $54.20/share in late April. He tried to back out from the deal three months later, alleging Twitter misled him ​​about the size of its user base and the prevalence of bots.

Twitter promptly sued Musk, arguing that he has to stick to the agreed-upon deal.

• In the run-up to the October 17 court date, lawyers for both sides issued subpoenas asking for evidence that could be relevant to the trial – including a trove of Musk’s personal text messages with some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, which were made public last week.

📈 That brings us to yesterday… when Twitter’s shares were briefly halted after Bloomberg first reported Musk had changed his mind about the deal. The company’s stock rose as high as 23% once it resumed trading, eventually closing at $52.00/share.

👀 Looking ahead… Musk was scheduled to be deposed later this week as part of the preparations for the Delaware trial – though his letter to Twitter could be the “undo” button. It’s unclear if his deposition will still occur, or whether the five-day trial will move forward as planned later this month.

📊 Flash poll: All things considered, Elon Musk acquiring Twitter will have _____ on society as a whole.

A positive impact

A negative impact

No impact

Unsure/other

Application numbers at America’s top business schools are doing the cha-cha slide – and not in a “let’s get grandma out on the dance floor'' good kinda way.

For the upcoming class of 2024, the University of Chicago, Yale, and NYU have all seen a 10+% drop in applications. And it doesn’t end there.

• The Wharton School at UPenn experienced a more than 13% drop.
• At Hah-vahd, the nation’s top business school, applications fell over 15%.
• MIT’s Sloan School of Management saw a 25% drop. (How you like them apples?)

✋ Yes, but… At some schools – like Wharton – numbers are just coming back down to normal. UPenn’s biz school recorded 6,319 applicants this fall, down from 7,338 last year but still higher than the 5,905 who applied in 2019.

📸 Big picture: MBA applications are often countercyclical, meaning when the job market is good, people stay at work.

• Young folks are seeing the biggest wage gains in today’s labor market – and highly-ranked business schools can reach $200,000 or more for a two-year, full-time program, once living costs are added, the WSJ reports.

+One interesting thing: If not for international students, the downward MBA trend would be even more pronounced. Domestic student interest has fallen among full-time, two-year business schools in the US, per the Graduate Management Admission Council. But at many places – like UNC Chapel Hill – that decline is being offset by an increase in international applications. The Tar Heels were one of few top-20 MBA programs to actually see an increase in applicants this past year.

Hans Moke Niemann, the 19-year-old chess grandmaster accused of cheating last month by world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, had a previously unknown pattern of cheating in more than 100 online games as recently as 2020, per an investigation conducted by Chess.com and reported on yesterday by the WSJ.

♟️ The plot thickens… Per Chess.com, the only reason they came forward was because of discrepancies in Niemann’s public story.

When he was first accused of cheating by Carlsen last month, the teenager strongly denied the allegations. Though he did ‘fess up to cheating on Chess.com twice in the past, describing the incidents as youthful mistakes made when he was 12 and 16 years old.

But that story isn’t exactly accurate, the company argues. Its 72-page report found Niemann “likely cheated” in a combined 100+ matches from 2015, 2017, and 2020 – including some with prize money on the line (*Vince Vaughn voice*).

• It also states Niemann privately confessed to the most-recent allegations in 2020, and was banned from Chess.com for an unspecified period of time.

😬 To be fair: The report noted Niemann historically hasn’t been associated with cheating at in-person chess, as Magnus Carlsen alleged, but said several of Niemann’s stronger placements “merit further investigation based on the data.”

👀 Looking ahead… Chess’ world governing body, FIDE, is conducting a separate ongoing investigation into the Niemann-Carlsen affair.

+Worth mentioning: Chess.com is in the process of buying Carlsen’s chess app, Play Magnus, in a deal valuing it at $82.5 million.

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Water droplets hold the secret ingredient to creating life from non-living chemicals, per new research published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS.

🧬 A deeper dive… Scientists at Purdue University put more than a decade of work into producing the study. What were they focused on that whole time? Peptides, aka strings of amino acids that are the building blocks for proteins – which in turn, are the building blocks for life.

• For the first time in history, the Purdue researchers showed peptides can spontaneously form in droplets of water as a result of rapid reactions that occur when those droplets meet Earth’s atmosphere.
• Theoretically, this peptide formation could also have occurred on Earth ~4 billion years ago, when life first arose.

🌊 The bottom line: “Places where sea spray flies into the air and waves pound the land, or where fresh water burbles down a slope, were fertile landscapes for life’s potential evolution,” said Graham Cooks, one of the study’s three authors. “This is essentially the chemistry behind the origin of life.”

+Dive deeper: How did life evolve to how we know it today?

💬 Quoted…​​ “Of course it’s a New York City airport.”

Starting next April, Newark’s airport will lose its NYC code for technical reasons – and New Jersey-ites aren’t too happy about it.

• And maybe they do have a point: considering the New York Giants and New York Jets both share a home stadium… in New Jersey.

👥🏠 Stat of the Day: 15% of prospective home buyers plan to split their mortgage with a roommate that’s not their spouse or partner, per a recent survey from Redfin.

🌎 Around the World: Over 200,000 Russian citizens have been drafted into military service since President Vladimir Putin ordered a troop mobilization on September 21, the country’s defense minister said yesterday. 

• Nearly 400,000 Russians have fled to neighboring states since Putin’s order, per data from the countries’ respective border officials aggregated by Bloomberg.

🤯 Did You Know?... Breast cancer used to be called “Nun’s disease,” after doctors noticed nuns were diagnosed at a significantly higher rate than other women in the early 1700s. It wasn’t until 200+ years later that scientists discovered having children and breastfeeding actually decreases the chances of breast cancer (nuns traditionally take a vow of celibacy).

📖 Worth a Read: Why does time go forwards, not backwards? → (BBC Future)

• ☝️ NASA’s DART asteroid impact test left a debris trail ~6,000 miles long, per a new image captured by astronomers using one of the world’s most powerful telescopes in Chile. (Background)

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📈📉 US stocks rose across the board again yesterday, with the S&P turning in its best two-day performance since 2020. (Dow: +2.8% | S&P: +3.1% | Nasdaq: +3.3%) | The number of job openings in the US fell by 1.1 million in August, the biggest monthly drop since the start of the pandemic and 1+ million more than experts had projected.
• 🏢 Billionaire investor Ray Dalio is giving up control of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund with $150 billion in assets-under-management.
• 🏭 Micron announced plans to spend up to $100 billion building America’s largest semiconductor plant in Clay, New York.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚾ NY Yankees OF Aaron Judge hit his 62nd home run of the season last night, breaking the all-time American League record previously held by Roger Maris.
• 🎮 Polish game-maker CD Projekt RED announced a leadership change and a slate of new games yesterday, including a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel and a new trilogy in The Witcher series; ​​most titles are several years from being released.
• 💔 Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen have each hired divorce lawyers, per multiple reports.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🏆 The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists – Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John Clauser, and Austrian Anton Zellinger – whose work has advanced the field of quantum mechanics.
• ☄️ The dino-killing asteroid that struck Earth ~66 million years ago also triggered a tsunami in the Gulf of Mexico – with waves more than a mile high – that traveled halfway around the world, per a new study from the University of Michigan.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• ⚖️ A former Northeastern University employee who claimed he was injured when a package exploded in his office last month was arrested yesterday for allegedly staging the incident.
• 🏛️ Herschel Walker, the GOP candidate for one of Georgia’s Senate seats and a pro-life advocate, denied “in the strongest terms possible” a Daily Beast report published late Monday that said he paid for a then-girlfriend to have an abortion in 2009; Walker’s son Christian, a 23-year-old conservative influencer, appeared to confirm the report in a video that went viral on social media. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• 🧩 Made For Math fills gaps left by traditional teaching with a multisensory approach, and is getting students with learning challenges back on track. Take this quiz to see if Multisensory Math is right for you.*

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• 💼 The most powerful women in business, according to Fortune.

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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: Laura W. from Enterprise, AL

☀️ Length of trip: 8 days

💬 Quick recap: We experienced all sorts of adventures! We kayaked, zip-lined, hiked, surfed (well, tried to!), and rappelled down waterfalls. Our guides cooked each meal for us, ensured our safety, and made sure everyone had fun. We also visited a coffee farm. In addition to all the physical and mental activities, we saw many amazing animals and plant life. We stayed in different locations, one of them being a treehouse!

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

P.S. Have your own epic trip you’d like to share? Just reply to this email or fill out this form for a chance to be featured in next Wednesday’s newsletter.

Las Vegas resident Ashleigh Ahrens was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer three years ago. 

A dedicated Vegas Aces fan, Ashleigh recently attended a WNBA game with a homemade sign in the hope of meeting her favorite athlete: Kelsey Plum.

🏀 Meeting a hero... When Kelsey saw Ashleigh's sign after the game, she took to social media to search for the fan. 

Soon enough, Ashleigh and Kelsey connected and ticked another goal off the bucket list; the two were introduced on the court before the next game for an emotional meeting. 

• “It means… it means a lot…" Ashleigh shared. “I just became so much more appreciative every day. The little things didn’t bother me anymore and you hug your loved ones tighter." 

Which state, pictured above, can be considered both the most eastern and the most western in the entire US?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

That’s right, the second-annual DONUT Pet Playoffs are coming up fast. And it’s going to be – dare we say – madness!🦹‍♀️

🐶🐈‍⬛ Think your pet has what it takes to bring home the golden food bowl ticket? Enter them into the competition by filling out this form (the deadline for submissions is Monday).

The further your BFF makes it in our March Madness-style bracket, the more prizes YOU win… well, technically your pet will be the one winning, but you benefit, too!👍

And for goodness’ sake, please give us fair warning if you submit a pic of your pet spider…😓🕷️

Sign your pet up here.

Alaska, which is also the state that's furthest to the north.