Good morning. Let's do it to it, Lars.

In today's edition:

• 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 A look at Neanderthal family dynamics
• 🌮🔌 Taco Bell + EV charging stations
• 🌌 The Pillars of Creation

… and more.

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

“The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”

–Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

High-speed internet from the skies is coming to… the skies. On Tuesday, Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet arm with ~3,500 satellites in orbit (and counting), unveiled its wifi services for planes.

📶✈️ A deeper dive… The satellite internet service and equipment, available for pre-order with delivery sometime next year, promises in-flight speeds of up to 350 Mbps per plane, with a latency as low as 20 ms. Which is to say – streaming, video calls, online gaming, and other high-data activities should work smoothly for each passenger. But all that speed comes at a cost. A one-time hardware cost of $150,000, plus monthly service fees ranging from $12,500/month–$25,000/month, to be exact.

But, but, but – Starlink’s internet speeds are over 3x as fast as other existing in-flight wifi providers (and that’s being generous).

• Gogo, a satellite internet company and the dominant provider of inflight connectivity for business jets with >80% market share, offers peak speeds of 70 Mbps per plane.
• Other in-flight wifi companies offer air-to-ground systems, which top out around 10 Mbps per plane (barely even enough for passengers to check email).

🛰️ In the know: While existing services like GoGo use satellites in distant orbits, Starlink’s satellites orbit closer to Earth, boosting speeds passengers can see in-flight. Though, unless you’re taking a spur-of-the-moment trip next year to forget Sarah Marshall, us normies will have to wait to experience it.

Starlink Aviation pre-orders are only available to private jets – for now, at least. But Hawaiian Airlines announced a deal with Starlink in April that’ll see the satellite internet provider’s service installed in its planes sometime in 2023.

• More airlines could be coming soon. Delta confirmed earlier this year that it had conducted "exploratory tests" of Starlink for its planes.

🇷🇺 Russian President Vladimir Putin declared martial law in the four occupied Ukrainian territories. The enhanced powers granted to Moscow-backed officials include the ability to impose curfew, to detain anyone for up to 30 days for any reason (and imprison all Ukrainian nationals indefinitely), and to forcibly re-settle citizens away from their homes. Putin’s decree also tightened security across Russia, especially the areas closest to the Ukraine border.

🇮🇷 Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi, who competed without a hijab in S. Korea over the weekend, has returned home. The 33-year-old was met by cheering crowds when she arrived, as her act was widely seen as support for ongoing anti-government protests over Iran’s treatment of women, including hijab mandates. After landing, Rekabi gave a “careful, emotionless interview” to Iranian state TV in which she said not wearing a hijab was unintentional, per AP News.

🇮🇳 A Meta “scandal” reported on by Indian news outlet The Wire is probably a hoax. The Wire – which Slate calls “one of India’s few truly independent publications” – published a story last week alleging Meta allowed certain officials within the Indian government to unilaterally decide which Insta posts should be taken down. ​​After the story was initially challenged by Meta, the news org doubled down on its claims. But upon further inspection, Meta and several independent experts said it appeared The Wire was misled by a fake source who fabricated their evidence, including purported internal documents. The Wire on Tuesday finally acknowledged doubts in its reporting and pulled the stories pending an internal investigation.

Neanderthals likely formed small, tight-knit communities where women traveled between groups to live with their mates, while men stayed within the group they were born for life.

That’s per a new study published yesterday in Nature examining ancient DNA that belonged to the earliest known family of Neanderthals, who died together in a Siberian cave ~54,000 years ago.

👣 Background: Neanderthals are an extinct early human relative who lived in Europe and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years, eventually dying-out ~40,000 years ago – shortly after our species (Homo sapiens) migrated to Europe from Africa.

• Little is known about the familial dynamics of Neanderthals due to a lack of available hard evidence. For years, researchers only had clues like footprints – or the layout of caves – from which to draw conclusions about their social structures.

🧬 That brings us to yesterday… when a team of European scientists published the first-ever study of Neanderthal social dynamics using DNA analysis from the remains of 11 individuals.

• The researchers compared the diversity of Y chromosomes (inherited from the father) with that of mitochondrial DNA (inherited from the mother), and found an order of magnitude more mitochondrial diversity – signaling that Neanderthal men stayed in the same group where they were born, but women moved to other groups.

+Worth mentioning: One of the study’s authors, Swedish scientist Svante Pääbo, was awarded the Nobel Prize earlier this month for completing a task in 2010 previously thought to be impossible: sequencing the entire Neanderthal genome with the degraded and contaminated genetic material available to him.

🌎 Do you want to do something about the climate crisis, but are unsure if your contribution will have any real impact? You're not alone. Plus, there are organizations that'll just take your money with a promise to help the environment... but how do you know if they actually do?

• Our friends at Wren are different. They allow you to offset your carbon footprint – except they operate with 100% transparency, share all receipts/transactions, and enforce rigorous vetting practices ensuring the climate projects they partner with are legitimate and impactful.

♻️ With Wren, you calculate your carbon footprint, learn how to reduce it, then set up a subscription plan to contribute the remaining amount to climate projects. And their strict partner selection ensures the money you give is used in a meaningful, measurable, and long-lasting way.

Calculate your carbon footprint here and start taking action against climate change today.

Earlier this week, the first fast-charging EV station at a Taco Bell opened for business outside a restaurant in south San Francisco.

🌮🚘🔌 A deeper dive… The move is part of a partnership between Diversified Restaurant Group and startup ChargeNet Stations to ‘electrify’ 120 Taco Bell locations across the state over the next year.

• On average, ChargeNet’s DC fast-charging stations provide 46 miles of range after 10 minutes, or 100 miles after 20 minutes. The latter is priced at ~$20, the company said. (Quick math: $1 =~5 miles =~1 minute.)
• ChargeNet CEO Tosh Dutt said he's carving a niche for his startup by placing stations at fast-food restaurants, while larger and more established rivals – such as ChargePoint or EVgo – typically put their stations at popular retail sites, like malls or shopping centers.

🇺🇸 Zoom out: Of the 47,666 public EV stations in the US, only ~6,500 are DC fast chargers, with the rest being conventional AC chargers, per the Department of Energy.

💬 Quoted…​​ “This is what you’ve waited for.”

• Yesterday, NASA published a highly-anticipated James Webb photo of the ‘Pillars of Creation’ (right), a scene first made famous by the space agency’s Hubble Space Telescope (left).

🇺🇸 Stat of the Day: 9% of Americans believe US democracy is working "extremely" or "very well," per a new poll published yesterday by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

🤯 Did You Know?... A cat named Oscar, who was adopted in 2007 by a nursing home in Rhode Island, became so adept at predicting which residents were about to die – ignoring anyone not close to dying – that the staff developed a protocol where families were called in to say their last goodbyes whenever Oscar would curl up near someone.

• He had accurately predicted 50 deaths as of January 2010, per a peer-reviewed study.

📖 Worth a Read: The black market for blue checks → (The Verge)

📊 Poll Results: Yesterday, we asked why y’all think the American public has gradually drifted away from organized religion since the early 1990s.

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

• ☝️ The IRS this week published the numbers behind its inflation-adjusted tax brackets for 2023, each of which will be ~7% higher than the previous year.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🚗🔋 Tesla disclosed near-record quarterly profit in its Q3 earnings report yesterday. | BMW announced plans to invest $1.7 billion in a South Carolina plant that’ll build EVs.
• ☕🤝 Nestlé agreed to buy the Seattle’s Best Coffee brand from Starbucks in a deal with undisclosed terms.
• ✈️ Spirit shareholders voted to approve a takeover by JetBlue; it ends a six-month battle between JetBlue and Frontier Airlines to create the US’ fifth-largest airline, if the deal holds up to regulatory scrutiny. (Background)

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🔒 Netflix announced plans to crack down on password sharing for accounts around the globe starting early next year.
• ​​⚾ MLB playoffs: The Padres beat the Phillies to even the NLCS at one game apiece, while the Astros took Game 1 of the ALCS over the Yankees.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 💊 An FDA advisory panel on Wednesday recommended that a first-of-its-kind treatment to prevent women from having preterm births be removed from the US market after new research showed it doesn’t work – though the company behind the drug has disputed those results.
• 📱 Wist Labs is developing a VR app that converts smartphone clips into 3D videos.
• 🌌 The most precise measurements ever made of the universe's composition and how fast it’s expanding suggest "something is fishy" in our understanding of the cosmos, since they don’t match up with a second widely-used method, per a new peer-reviewed study.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• ⛽️🌿 Circle K will sell medical weed at some gas stations in Florida next year.
• 🍩 McDonald’s is partnering with Krispy Kreme to sell its donuts at select locations starting next Wednesday.
• ⚖️🎓 A Wisconsin group formally asked the Supreme Court to block Biden's student loan forgiveness plan. (Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 🏢 This 23-year-old pays $1,100 a month in rent to live in a 95 sq. ft. apartment in Manhattan.

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As of March 2022, only 75 women had ever made it to space. Nicole Aunapu Mann just increased that number, with another notable feat added on top – she's the first-ever Native American woman to fly into outer space. 

🚀 To infinity... Nicole is commanding the Crew Dragon capsule, a six-month mission composed of five astronauts completing over 200 experiments while in orbit.

💬 ... and beyond: “I think it's important that we communicate this to our community, so that other Native kids, if they thought maybe that this was not a possibility or to realize that some of those barriers that used to be there are really starting to get broken down.”

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

• Woman facing charges after allegedly attacking officers with bee hives during eviction → (WWLP)
• Servers dressed as Power Rangers at Oakland restaurant save woman being attacked → (KGO)
• A YouTuber is trying to claim an expensive video game weapon as a tax deduction → (Crikey)
• Man tasked to preserve Japan’s oldest washroom ends up crashing car into it → (Straits Times)
• Woman prepares 249 cups of tea in one hour for Guinness World Record → (UPI)

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: Kirsten A. from Orem, Utah

💬 The experience: When I was about 10, I lived in a house in the middle of an orchard. One day I went through the peach, apple and pear trees to visit my friend on the other side of the block. On the way, I noticed a tree house that I'd never seen before. It was really awesome. It had trap door that you pushed up with your head/shoulders accessed by a ladder. Inside was a plush room covered in carpeting even on the walls and the ceiling. I ran to my friends house to bring her back and show her but when we got back into the orchard, I couldn't find it. For years afterwards, until they finally cut down all the trees to make room for houses, I looked for the treehouse and could never find it again.

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

❓ Trivia: Which animal is also known as an "earth pig"?

⚖️ True or False?... Black-eyed peas are, in fact, peas.

🤔 Riddle Me This: The more you take, the more you leave behind. What are they?

(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.)

Start referring.👇

❓ Trivia: Aardvark

🫛 T/F: False, they’re a bean

🤔 Riddle: Footsteps