Good morning. There’s been a new update in the chess cheating saga: 19-year-old grandmaster Hans Niemann filed a $100 million defamation lawsuit against world champ Magnus Carlsen and Chess.com yesterday, alleging they colluded to "blacklist" Niemann from the chess world after he upset Carlsen at a tournament last month.

In today’s edition:

• 🎓📉 Fewer US students are going to college
• 🇬🇧 The UK needs a new prime minister
• 🤔 Considering a second job?

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.63 minutes to read.

“Words are the clothes thoughts wear.”

–Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)

College and university enrollment in America declined for the third straight year in fall 2022, ​​according to a report published yesterday by the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC).

🎓🔢 By the numbers… The NSC collected data on 10.3 million undergraduate and graduate students, comprising roughly half of the group’s total US population.

Overall, the NSC found enrollment fell 1.1% from 2021, smaller than last year’s annual decrease of 3.3%. There are currently ~1.5 million fewer US college students compared to before the pandemic, representing a ~7% dip.

• Annual declines in enrollment for fall 2022 were seen across all types of schools, but especially at four-year undergraduate institutions (-1.6% at public schools | -2.5% at private for-profits).
• Community colleges were the least affected (-0.4%), thanks to a large jump among dual-enrolled high school students (+11.5%).
• Freshmen undergrad enrollment fell 1.5% across the board, led by a 5.6% drop at “highly selective” institutions – which saw a 10.7% annual gain in freshman last fall.

🇺🇸📉 Big picture: University enrollment had been gradually sinking for a decade prior to the pandemic, with its pace accelerating during the first two years of Covid.

📊 Flash poll (long-form): In your opinion, why is US college and university enrollment on the decline?

Click here to leave a response.

Welp. The lettuce won. UK Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned yesterday after 45 days in office, becoming the shortest-serving PM in British history – and triggering the second UK leadership election in less than four months.

🇬🇧📅 Background… Truss' resignation came less than a month after she, along with former finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng, proposed an economic plan including deficit-funded tax cuts for the wealthiest UK bracket as means of stimulating growth. Her program was quickly condemned by the British public, media, parliamentary opposition, and some members within her own Conservative Party. Kwarteng was fired, and most of the tax cuts were walked back by Truss and Kwarteng's successor, Jeremy Hunt.

• Days after Truss’ plan was announced, the British pound fell to an all-time low against the dollar, and yields on sovereign bonds jumped due to a sell-off.
• This critically endangered many of the UK’s pension funds – which were exposed to the bond market – prompting the Bank of England to buy billions of pounds worth of bonds to stabilize the market.

👀 Looking ahead… Conservative lawmakers and voters will choose a new party leader as early as Friday of next week. That person will also become the next UK prime minister by default, with new nationwide elections not expected until 2024.

Now Snap, back to reality. The Evan Spiegel-led camera company and social app got a reality check of its own yesterday after reporting weaker-than-expected earnings. Here are some highlights:

• Snap generated $1.13 billion in revenue this past quarter, a 6% increase from a year earlier. And while growth is usually good (in the market sense), it missed analysts’ expectations – and this is the first time it’s dipped into single digits since the company went public in 2017.
• Its net loss jumped 400% to $360 million, partly due to a $155 million restructuring charge.
• And according to an investor letter yesterday, Snap is assuming no revenue growth this quarter from the year-ago period​, even though it’s seen about 9% growth thus far​. Analysts are expecting a ~7% increase, the WSJ reports.

But on the bright side – its new $3.99/month subscription service, Snapchat+, has reached more than 1.5 million paying subscribers just three months after launching.

📸 Big picture: Shares of Snap crackled and dropped more than 27% in after-hours trading. The company’s stock has lost 87% of its value over the past 13 months, granting it the honor of being the only US company worth more than $100 billion a year ago that’s now worth less than $20 billion, according to Bloomberg.

+In the know: Snap is the first major player in the digital ads space to report earnings. Shares of other companies that sell online ads also fell yesterday, with Meta down ~4%, Alphabet down 2%, and Pinterest dropping ~8%. But we’ll get more intel on the ads market when Alphabet and Meta report earnings next week.

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News headlines became progressively more negative from 2000 to 2019, while the amount of neutral headlines decreased over that same period, per a new study published this week in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS.

📰😡 A deeper dive… Scientists used machine learning algorithms to analyze 23 million headlines from 47 of the most popular US news orgs. The headlines were broken-down in two ways: based on sentiment (positive or negative) and six basic emotional categories: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and neutral.

You ready?

• The proportion of news headlines based around fear (+150%), anger (+104%), sadness (+54%), disgust (+29%) and joy (+14%) all increased over the past two decades.
• There was a pattern of increasing negative sentiment over time, with the average news headline going from slightly positive in 2000 (+0.08) to slightly negative by 2019 (-0.15).
• Headlines from right-leaning news media – as classified by AllSides’ Media Bias Chart – were “consistently more negative [on average] than headlines from left-leaning outlets over the entire studied time period,” the study found.

📱💬 Zoom out: All of this may not come as a surprise in today’s social media-driven age: a separate study measuring the reach of tweets found that each moral or emotional word used in a tweet increased its virality by 20%, on average.

💬 Quoted…​​ “I only know that my son went there fully fit, and he returned in a box.”

The World Cup kicks off next month in Qatar, where human rights groups say thousands of migrant workers have died while building a series of new stadiums to host the games.

• An investigation by The Indian Express found many families of deceased workers received no compensation, and in some cases were asked to pay thousands of dollars to ensure the bodies were shipped home.

💼 Stat of the Day: More than half of American workers (52%) are considering taking a second job to pay for their living expenses, per a new study from Qualtrics.

🤯 Did You Know?... Vietnam has a more favorable view of the US than any other country in the world, with a favorability rate of 84% per World Population Review. Israel ranks second, followed by the Philippines, South Korea, and Poland.

📖 Worth a Read: The Return of the Lipstick King → (Rest of World)

• ☝️ The first known map of the night sky, created by Greek astronomer Hipparchus, was recently discovered hidden in medieval parchment from an Egyptian monastery.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🏘️📈\ The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage rose to 6.94% this week, a new 20-year high, per Freddie Mac.
• 🚗 Uber announced a new advertising division that’ll help marketers target consumers based on where they’ve been and where they’re going.
• ⚕️ The US Surgeon General said toxic workplaces could be hazardous to employees’ health, the first-ever such warning from “America’s doctor.”

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚾🏒🏀🏈 The 27th Sports Equinox in US history took place yesterday, aka when the MLB, NHL, NBA, and NFL all play on the same day; the MLS and PGA Tour also joined in on yesterday’s fun.
• 🎶 Midnights, Taylor Swift's 10th studio album, has been released; the 32-year-old singer also unveiled an add'l seven songs that didn't make the album.
• ⚖️ Kevin Spacey was found not liable by a New York jury yesterday in a $40 million sex abuse suit brought by Anthony Rapp, who accused Spacey of groping him at a party in 1986 (when Rapp was 14).

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🦠 Black Death survivors had plague-resistant genes that caused their descendants to become more susceptible to autoimmune diseases, per a new peer-reviewed study.
• 🤖🚕 Waymo, the Google-owned autonomous taxi company, is bringing its ride-hailing service to LA.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• ⚖️ A federal judge on Wednesday said former President Trump signed a document swearing under oath that information in a lawsuit he filed challenging the results of the 2020 election was true – even though his own lawyers had told him it was false. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• 🎓💰 Student loan forgiveness: The Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging the Biden admin’s forgiveness program. | ​​A federal judge in Missouri denied a request by a group of six Republican AGs to block President Biden’s forgiveness plan. (Background)
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You know the feeling when you’ve binged eight straight episodes of the latest dating reality show with a twist? 💘👩‍🦯

• Entertained? Somewhat… but there’s always the nagging feeling you could be using this time for something productive – and even getting ahead. But it’s just not as delightfully amusing.👎

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🎥 Setting the scene... When Heidi Stamper's home lost power earlier this month, she plugged an emergency generator into her garage. But Heidi didn't realize she needed to keep a window or door open for airflow, so carbon monoxide slowly started to fill her family's home. 

• At 1:45 am, her kitten, Thor, started crying, waking Heidi up. She brought him outside for some fresh air, cracked a window, and promptly went back to sleep. 

🐱 Brave kitty... Another half-hour passed, then Thor started crying again. This time, Heidi was soaked in sweat and couldn't move. Luckily her two kids heard Thor's meows and called 911 before they also started to feel sick.

• All four family members were brought to the hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning, but soon made full recoveries. 
• "If it wasn't for Thor, we wouldn't be here," shared a grateful Heidi. "He saved our lives!"

Below are three lists of ingredients. All you have to do is give us the completed dish they make.

☝️ Recipe #1:

• Ground beef
• Sweet bell pepper
• Enchilada spice blend
• Mayonnaise
• Cilantro
• Garlic
• Red onion
• Red potato
• Lime
• Cheddar cheese
• Zucchini
• Salt & pepper

✌ Recipe #2:

• Vanilla ice cream
• Nesquick powder
• Milk

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Coconut
• Rolled oats
• Butter
• Cocoa
• Vanilla
• Sugar
• Milk
• Salt

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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☝️ Recipe #1: Zesty beef bowl

✌️ Recipe # 2: Wendy’s Frosty copycat

3️⃣ Recipe #3: Spider cookies