Good morning. Fat Bear Week 2022 officially has a winner: 747, a massive specimen described as a "lard-layered Leviathan with powerful presence and scars." Or in other words, exactly what you'd want to run into defenseless in the wild.

But the competition did have a minor hiccup, aka Adam Levine's PR team was back at it again. Cheating was uncovered in the semis, the latest in a string of cheating scandals since the Maroon 5 singer’s broke🤔, though it was ultimately uncovered and resolved without major issue.

In today’s edition:

• 🏛️ The scoop on gov’t employees and financial conflicts of interest
• 📦 TikTok is taking on Amazon (since Google and Meta weren’t enough)
• 🪙 How ethereum’s Merge impacted bitcoin

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.90 minutes to read.

“Happiness is only real when shared.”

–Christopher McCandless (1968-1992)

Since 2016, thousands of senior government officials in the executive branch have reported owning or trading stocks in companies that were directly affected by the decisions their agencies made, per a WSJ investigation published yesterday.

The executive branch covers the President’s Cabinet and most federal agencies, including the military – some 4 million employees in total. Though for the purpose of this story, only ~26,000 senior officials are required to file annual financial disclosures.

📂 A deeper dive… The Journal obtained and analyzed financial-disclosure forms from 12,000+ employees across 50 federal agencies. Overall, the publication found 2,600+ executive branch employees or their immediate family members (more than 1 in 5) disclosed stock investments in companies that were lobbying their agencies for favorable policies.

Some notable examples:

• More than 60 officials at five agencies, including the FTC and DOJ, reported trading stock in companies shortly before their departments announced new enforcement actions, like charges or settlements, against those firms – which often affects share prices.
• Over 200 senior EPA officials (nearly 1 in 3) reported investments in companies that were currently lobbying the agency.
• A DoD official bought shares in a defense company five times before it won a new contract from the Pentagon.

The Journal said in most identified instances, government ethics officials certified that the employees had complied with existing regulations, which have several exemptions allowing stock trades to bypass potential conflicts of interest.

🔄 On the flip side: Many of the agencies and officials involved were contacted by the WSJ over the course of its investigation. Some declined to comment, while others said those accused of financial conflicts of interest had either been punished or cleared upon review.

📊 Flash poll (long-form): How do you think the US gov't should deal with potential financial conflicts of interest among its employees?

Click here to leave a response.

We reported last week on the ByteDance-owned video platform’s plan to challenge Google Search. Now, its eye is on a different prize – Amazon.

According to a series of LinkedIn job postings first reported on by Axios, TikTok is planning to build out a global network of fulfillment centers to handle warehousing, delivery, and customer service returns on behalf of e-commerce sellers.

🤑 The idea… is pretty obvious, once you know a) TikTok isn’t called TikTok in China and b) Douyin, aka the Chinese version of TikTok, is more than just a video platform – it’s a commerce-focused video platform. Per the Financial Times, Douyin hosts nine million live shopping broadcasts a month and sold over 10 billion products in a single year, from May 2021 to May 2022.

And while TikTok’s global fulfillment plan, outlined in the job postings, stops short of building its own transportation arm to handle delivery, overseeing that many parts of the online transaction could still mean significant revenue.

• Amazon’s cut ranges anywhere from 6% to 45% of each sale, plus additional fees on top.

📸 Big picture: TikTok launched a live shopping feature in the UK, its first market outside of Asia, in 2021… and things aren’t going so well. Poor sales, low consumer adoption, and internal company issues have all contributed to missed targets and influencers dropping out.

The amount of computing power dedicated to bitcoin mining rose 14% over the two-week period ending Monday, reaching its highest level on record. Part of the reason? Former ethereum miners switching to bitcoin following the Merge, analysts told Bloomberg.

🪙⚡ Background… As you may remember, ethereum’s Merge was an event early last month that eliminated mining, aka using large amounts of computing power and energy to validate crypto transactions (and earn new coins), from its blockchain altogether.

Ethereum consumed about half of the energy used by bitcoin before the Merge. But since then, its overall power usage has dropped-off faster than crypto companies’ marketing spend after the Super Bowl, reportedly plummeting 99.9%.

• As a byproduct, global energy usage has decreased 0.2%.

📸 Big picture: Many former ethereum miners paid upfront for specially-designed computer chips, so they have an economic incentive to keep them plugged in. Ethan Vera, COO at crypto-mining firm Luxor Technologies, estimates 4% of all bitcoin mining done over the past two weeks came from former ethereum miners.

Another factor contributing to an all-time high in bitcoin mining is the relative abundance of cheap energy in late September and early October, as the weather becomes more mild in the Northern Hemisphere (aka less of a need for cooling buildings).

+Dive deeper: What happens to bitcoin after all 21 million coins are mined?

Disclosure: Luxor Tech was a past sponsor of the DONUT.

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Humans have officially proven we can alter the cosmos, according to a NASA press release from yesterday documenting the success of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.

🛰☄️ Background: Like the Incredible Hulk, the DART mission had one mandate, and one mandate only: smash. The driving idea was to see whether a guided crash could divert a potential asteroid impact on Earth, as a way to guard against future destructive – and potentially even civilization-ending – events.

📊 The results… On September 26, a 1,300-pound spacecraft crashed into Dimorphos, a roughly 600-foot-wide asteroid, at ~14,000 MPH, generating the estimated energy equivalent of three-plus tons of TNT.

NASA had defined the minimum threshold of success as altering the asteroid’s orbit by 73 seconds, but said ten minutes was likely. Before the impact, Dimorphos took 11 hours and 55 minutes to circle its parent asteroid.

• The collision ultimately shortened Dimorphos’ orbit by 32 minutes. Which, for the non-mathematically inclined, surpasses the minimum benchmark by over 25x.

📝 Bottom line: While further analysis is needed to determine more of the nitty-gritty deets, like the efficiency of momentum transfer, the mission’s success is a pretty bfd. According to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, “This is a watershed moment for planetary defense and all of humanity.”

💬 Quoted…​​ “It's nice to sit back in the car and listen to you rant."

Steve Jobs, apparently, is a Joe Rogan fan – or at least his virtual avatar is. A 20-minute fictional podcast interview published last week by Dubai-based Podcast.AI features a replication of Rogan's voice conversing with Jobs, who died in 2011 and was never featured on The Joe Rogan Experience. The two “conversed” over topics like Buddhism, LSD, and revolutionary Apple products.

• While it's unclear whether their stunt is legal, Podcast.AI is now asking its users to vote on upcoming AI-generated interviews.

🚗 Stat of the Day: 1 euro = the amount for which Nissan sold its Russian business to a state-owned entity yesterday, taking a $687 million loss. The move comes months after the Japanese automaker was forced to halt production in the country due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

🌎 Around the World: Israel and Lebanon, which have formally been at war with each other since Israel was established in 1948, agreed to a permanent maritime border following US-brokered peace talks.

🤯 Did You Know?... The metropolitan area of Tokyo, Japan, has a higher population (37.3 million people) than every US state except California (39.4 million).

📖 Worth a Read: Black Holes May Hide a Mind-Bending Secret About Our Universe → (NY Times)

• ☝️ You're looking at one of the finalists for the 2022 Best Nature Photo of the Year, a contest held by the Nature Conservancy; this pic shows Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park in East Java, Indonesia.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🏛️ The Labor Department released a new proposal yesterday that would make it easier for gig workers to be reclassified as employees, rather than contractors; shares of Lyft (-12%), Uber (-10%), and DoorDash (-6%) all closed the day lower.
• ⚡ General Motors is starting a new business unit to offer electricity storage and management for homes and businesses.
• 🚲 John Foley, the co-founder and former CEO of Peloton, faced repeated margin calls on money he borrowed against his Peloton holdings before leaving the fitness company’s board last month, sources told the WSJ.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎸 Blink-182 is reuniting for a new album and world tour, the band’s members announced yesterday.
• 👓👻 Meta unveiled the Quest Pro VR headset yesterday, which starts at $1,500 – a bit pricier than its previous $400 Quest 2 model. | Snapchat announced a new AR experience that lets you try on and purchase Halloween costumes directly within its app.
• ⚾ MLB playoff results: The Astros, Phillies, Dodgers, and Yankees all won their respective Game 1's in the divisional round yesterday.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🤖🚕 Uber unveiled a 10-year partnership with robotaxi maker Motional to offer driverless rides starting later this year.
• 🧬 Ancient DNA from 1 million years ago was recently discovered in Antarctica, marking the oldest confirmed marine DNA ever found.
• 🚁 Delta announced an exclusive five-year partnership with electric air taxi service Joby, joining the growing list of airlines seeking to make short trips to and from airports faster and easier with eVTOLs. (Background)

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🇺🇦 Russia carried out a second straight day of airstrikes on Ukrainian cities yesterday, including in civilian areas; at least 19 people have died and 100+ more have been injured from the attacks.
• ⚖️ The murder charges against Adnan Syed were officially dropped by Baltimore prosecutors yesterday less than a month after his conviction was overturned; Syed’s story was featured in the first season of hit podcast Serial. (Background)

CLICKBAIT

• 🌊 Scientists can no longer ignore ancient flooding tales.

Nightclub SWG3 in Glasgow, Scotland, is using cutting-edge technology to power their venue via fire burning on the dance floor – or more technically, the body heat from dancers.

🌍 Dance for the planet... The overall system cost the club $600,000+ to install, but the owners are confident they'll save enough over five years to make their investment back – and then some. 

• "If we can make it work here in this environment, there's no reason why we can't take it to other venues," said managing director Andrew Fleming-Brown. "Not just here in Scotland and the UK, across Europe and further afield."

❓ Trivia: A limerick has how many lines?

🪞 True or False?... The term for having an unhealthy fear of mirrors is ‘reflectophobia.’

🤔 Riddle Me This… You see me once in June, twice in November, and not at all in May. What am I?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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Start referring.👇

❓ Trivia: Five

🪞 T/F: False, it’s 'eisoptrophobia'

🤔 Riddle: The letter ‘e’