Good morning. An imprisoned Georgia man allegedly stole $11 million from billionaire Sidney Kimmel by impersonating him on the phone – all without leaving his cell. Per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, it marks one of the biggest heists ever pulled off from inside an American prison.

Maybe those Internet gurus saying all you need to make money is a phone and a desk have a point.

In today’s edition:

• 🍅 America is running short on tomatoes
• 📱 The rise of BeReal
• 🐀🧠 Let’s make “rat-brained” an actual phrase

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.96 minutes to read.

"Someone who has never failed somewhere, that person cannot be great. Failure is the true test of greatness."

–Herman Melville (1819-1891)

Tomato, to-mah-to – whatever you want to call it, there may not be a lot mo'. According to the Department of Agriculture, production has dropped significantly compared to the beginning of this year.

🍅📉 Driving the trend… The largest factor? Farmers are struggling to get enough water. Roughly 95% of the nation's processed tomato production – and about 35% of global production – comes from California… and per a study published in Nature earlier this year, 2000-2021 was southwestern North America’s driest 22-year period since the year 800.

More than 40% of the state is currently classified as being under an extreme drought, with one farmer telling Fox Business he’s lost nearly 15% of his processing tomato crop land over the past few years due to lack of rainfall.

But the issues go deeper than just a water shortage.

• From 2015 to 2019, countries were cutting imports of American tomato products because of their relatively higher prices. This created an oversupply, causing US farmers to cut down on the number of tomatoes they planted.
• Inflation has also driven up input costs, which aren’t being outpaced by prices – leading many farmers to switch to more profitable crops. Last year, the California Tomato Growers Association negotiated a 5.6% higher price than the previous season on behalf of tomato growers, but processing tomatoes was 7% more expensive, according to the Washington Post.

👀 Looking ahead… Kraft Heinz said this week that it’s sourcing tomatoes from other areas outside of California and could guarantee all its products will be in grocery stores, but didn’t rule out price increases. Which are an almost certainty, considering – say it with us now – when in short supply, prices go high, high, high.

And it’s not just tomatoes, either. 2023 negotiated prices for onions and garlic reportedly include another 25% year-over-year increase.

+Elsewhere: Inside the looming butter shortage.

The average ACT score for high school seniors fell for the fifth straight year to its lowest level in over three decades, per new data published yesterday by ACT Inc., which administers the test.

🎓 A deeper dive… More than 1.3 million students from the Class of 2022 took the ACT, equal to ~36% of all US graduates. The average score came in at 19.8 (out of a possible 36) – down from 20.3 the previous year, and the first sub-20 average since 1991.

• 42% of students who took the test failed to meet any of the ACT’s four subject benchmarks, aka the minimum scores required for “​​a reasonable chance of success” in typical first-year college courses (up from 38% last year).
• 22% of students met all four benchmarks, down from 25% last year.

📸 Big picture: In a press release, ACT CEO Janet Godwin said the decline in test scores aren’t simply a byproduct of the pandemic. She attributed the trend to unspecified “longtime systemic failures” that became exacerbated when Covid shut down in-person schooling.

The overall number of students taking the ACT has declined 30% since 2018, which the AP reports is due to fewer high school graduates attending college, and fewer universities requiring the test for admission.

Move over "hare-brained," there's a new brain-related idiom in town: “rat-brained.” But according to a new study published yesterday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, it's less of an insult – and more of a compliment.

​​​​🐀 The discovery: After neuroscientists at Stanford University transplanted specialized human brain cells into newborn rats, the human cells integrated with the rat tissue and continued to mature, forming new connections and eventually growing to cover nearly 20% of the animals’ entire brains.

🧠 Background… In biology, it’s notoriously difficult to study the early development of the human brain due to it being “virtually impossible” to acquire samples, per Stat News. (Which makes sense, if you think about it.🤔)

Thus, for decades, scientists had to rely on indirect clues from experiments carried out on other animals – until 2013, when neurobiologist Madeline Lancaster discovered human stem cells can grow into organoids, aka small spheres of brain tissue, when placed in the right nutrient solution.

• But in the years since, researchers learned brain organoids grown in the lab don’t reach the same size or make the same connections as normal human brains. So they began searching for friendlier surroundings – hence, the newborn rats.

​​​​👀 Looking ahead… The rat-brained Stanford researchers said their novel method can be used in future experiments to investigate the root causes of human brain disorders like autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, and more.

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It's been a big couple of weeks for BeReal. The buzzy French social media app saw itself as the main focus of a Miles Teller-led SNL sketch on the season's opening episode, and recently passed 50 million total downloads, according to new data from Sensor Tower.

🤔 How did we get here?... BeReal was founded in late 2019. The idea is simple: users can only post once a day, prompted by a daily notification delivered at random times.

After receiving the notification, users have two minutes to submit an unedited pic from their front and rear cameras. Friends’ posts are hidden until users submit their own, though a pic can still be submitted after the time period is up.

• December 2019: Launch month.
• June 2021: The company raises $30 million in funding.
• January 2022 to September 2022: BeReal goes from ~2.3 million total downloads → more than 50 million total downloads.😳

📸 The big picture: An explosion of downloads is one thing. But as anyone who works in user-acquisition will tell you, getting folks to actually use an app is a whole ‘nother beast. And even though BeReal’s daily active users have increased 2,254% since January, there are some cracks showing.

Around 9% of the app’s Android users are opening it daily – far below competitors like Instagram (39%), TikTok (29%), Facebook (27%), Snapchat (26%), YouTube (20%), and Twitter (18%).

💬 Quoted…​​ “Burnt Hair.”

What 10,000+ people may be smelling like soon, after Elon Musk’s latest Twitter stunt. The world’s richest person announced late Tuesday that he’s selling the “finest fragrance on Earth” – literally called ‘Burnt Hair’ – for $100/bottle on the Boring Co.’s website.

• Several hours later, Musk said he’d sold at least $1 million in pre-orders of his musk, which isn’t expected to ship ‘til early next year.

⚖️ Stat of the Day: $965 million = the amount of money Alex Jones has to pay the families of eight victims from the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre for falsely claiming it was a hoax, per a Connecticut jury’s ruling yesterday.

• Jones was previously ordered to pay $49.3 million to another victim’s family by a separate Texas jury in August.

🤯 Did You Know?... Magician David Copperfield was robbed at gunpoint in 2006, but used sleight of hand to convince the would-be robbers that his pockets were empty; they actually contained cell phones, a wallet, and a passport.

📖 Worth a Read: One of the Most Famous Ideas in Economics Is Wrong → (Politico Magazine)

📊 Poll Results: Yesterday, we asked for long-form responses to the question: “How do you think the US gov't should deal with potential financial conflicts of interest among its employees?”

• Click here to read a dozen-plus of the best responses.

• ☝️ 18-year-old ​​Minecraft YouTuber Christopher Slayton spent two months recreating the entire observable universe in the game brick-by-brick in painstaking detail, making sure his angles and proportions were mathematically correct. You can watch a video overview from Chris himself here.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🏛️ Over 90% of all PPP loans have been fully or partially forgiven, per an NPR report published yesterday.
• 🖼 Microsoft launched Designer, its Canva competitor.
• 📉🏦 US stocks closed down slightly across the board yesterday. (Dow: -0.1% | S&P: -0.3% | Nasdaq: -0.1%) | The Fed released minutes from its September meeting, which showed central bank officials are prepared to keep raising rates until inflation is tamed. (Read a recap)

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎣⚖️ The two men caught cheating at an Ohio fishing tournament late last month were indicted yesterday on felony charges of cheating, attempted grand theft, and possessing criminal tools.
• 🏈 Las Vegas Raiders WR Davante Adams was charged with misdemeanor assault yesterday for shoving a freelance cameraman while leaving the field after Monday Night Football. | NFL quarterback Tom Brady and tennis Hall of Famer Kim Clijsters become the latest athletes to own a Major League Pickleball franchise.
• 📱 TikTok-parent ByteDance is reportedly negotiating with music labels as it plans an expansion into the global streaming industry to compete alongside Spotify and Apple Music, sources told the WSJ. (Background)

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🧠🏆 ​​The MacArthur Foundation announced 25 "genius" grant winners yesterday.
• 🦕 Dinosaur “mummies” may be more common than scientists previously thought, per a new peer-reviewed study published yesterday that examined one such specimen.
• 🚀🌕 SpaceX announced the third launch of its Starship rocket will take two space tourists on a trip around the Moon alongside ten other yet-to-be-named crew members; the mission isn’t expected to fly for several years. | NASA set a new launch date for its uncrewed Artemis I moon mission; it’s now scheduled for just after midnight on November 14. (Background)

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 💉 The FDA officially approved omicron-specific Covid boosters from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna for kids as young as 5.
• 🏛️ LA City Councilmember Nury Martinez resigned from the council altogether yesterday, two days after she stepped down from her post as president for making racist remarks in a private conversation that was leaked.
• 🐶 Jerky style pieces made with 90% high-quality meet = 1 happy pup. Sundays For Dogs trumped traditional kibble 39-0 in taste tests, and is human-graded with no fridge, prep, or cleanup. Get 50% off your first order with code DONUT.*

CLICKBAIT

• 🍿 Better Call Brad: Hollywood’s secret problem solver speaks.

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

• College football at 49? North Dakota lineman has right stuff → (APNews)
• Idaho man balances guitar on his chin for 1 hour, 35 minutes → (UPI)
• Texas Pete hot sauce facing lawsuit because it’s made in North Carolina, not Texas → (WGHP)
• Asking the Public to Name Probe to Uranus May Have Been a Mistake → (Futurism)

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: Sarah A. from Boston, MA

💬 The experience: I lost an entire day when I was about 13 or 14. Woke up on Monday, went to school, everything normal. Went to bed, woke up, then talked to my brother and sister over breakfast before school. Heard my brother say it was Wednesday and I was so confused. To this day it kinda freaks me out. What happened to Tuesday??

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

Eight skydivers set a new world record together last week, assembling the largest-ever formation of jumpers over the age of 80.

👴🏻✈️ It's never too late... The jump was a part of an exciting three-day event hosted by Skydiving Hall of Fame.

• “Achieving our goal... is a testament to the teamwork, experience and skill of the team members and support staff, said skydiver Cliff Davis, a proud member of the Jumpers Over Eighty Society.

If you measure from the ocean floor, this mountain is the tallest in the world – more than 3,000+ feet higher than Mt. Everest. Can you name it?

(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 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.)

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Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii.