Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 🗳 Voter turnout is outpacing record-highs
• 🤔 What digital ads can tell us about the economy
• 🕵️🏰 Tokyo Disneyland’s most covert visitors

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.82 minutes to read.

"Never say never. Because limits, like fears are often just an illusion."

–Michael Jordan (b. 1963)

The 2022 general election is less than two weeks away. And so far, it’s on track to set a modern-era record for midterm voter turnout, per new data from the University of Florida's US Elections Project.

🗳️ Background: Over the past few decades, some 40% of eligible Americans have voted during midterm election years, while ~60% voted during presidential elections, per nonprofit Fair Vote.

• But those numbers have been trending upwards in recent years. Both 2018 and 2020 saw the highest voter turnout in over a century, at 53% and 67%, respectively – and 2022 shows no signs of slowing down.

🔢 By the numbers… As of Tuesday (two weeks ‘til Election Day), 9+ million Americans had already voted in the upcoming midterms (up from 2 million last week). For context, that number was ~5 million at the same point in 2018.

• This year, nearly 70% of early ballots have been sent via mail, with the other 30% cast in person.
• Of the states that record party registration, more Democrats (48.7%) have voted early than Republicans (31.0%) due to a large gap in mail-in ballots, a trend also seen in 2020.

📊 What do the polls say?... In generic polling, Republicans appear to have pulled ahead of Democrats, gaining a ~2% lead this month per RealClearPolitics.

• FiveThirtyEight projects there’s a 45% chance Republicans take control of the Senate, and a 81% chance the GOP wins back the House (compared to 33% and 69% when we last covered the midterms three weeks ago).

🇮🇷 Iranian police reportedly fired on crowds of protesters who gathered at Mahsa Amini’s grave yesterday. It marked 40 days since the 22-year-old Amini’s death at the hands of Iran’s morality police, which represents the end of the traditional mourning period in Iran. Nearly 12,500 anti-government protesters have been arrested since mid-September. 500+ have been indicted, including several who face a possible death sentence.

🇺🇦 Russia sabotaged the water supply of Ukrainian city Mykolaiv in April, leaving no clean drinking water for 6+ months. That’s per a BBC investigative report that interviewed military and UN experts, who said satellite imagery and data suggest the city’s water pipeline was deliberately destroyed while under Russian control. The discovery comes as Moscow continues to target civilian infrastructure across Ukraine with missile strikes widely seen as violating international humanitarian law.

🇩🇪 Germany is legalizing cannabis for recreational use as early as next year, the second EU country after Malta to do so. The country’s health minister yesterday announced a new initiative that would make it legal for German adults to purchase and own up to 30 grams of weed, and to privately grow three cannabis plants. Officials said the move is intended to better protect young adults, who data show are consuming cannabis in increasing numbers from illegal sources. Germany is also expected to impose an upper THC limit for 18-to-23-year-olds.

You don’t need to rhyme off every stat line, but aren’t you tired of just nodding along when the conversation inevitably steers toward sports?

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State and local governments in nearly every US state have purchased foreign-made tech from Chinese firms currently banned by the federal gov't for posing a threat to national security, per a new report published yesterday by Georgetown University. Overall, at least 1,681 state and local entities across 49 states acquired information and communications technology or services from the firms, which aren’t banned on a state-wide level.

🏛️ Background: Since 2018, federal agencies have been prohibited from buying products from five Chinese companies – Huawei, ZTE, Hikvision, Dahua and Hytera. US agencies are also banned from working with any contractors that use equipment produced by those companies.

But on the state level? Different story.

• Five states have enacted similar measures to the feds, though four of them have loopholes in their regulations, per the Georgetown report.

⏩❌ Driving the bans: US officials fear tech from those firms could serve as conduits for Chinese espionage. All companies based in China are legally required to render assistance to the government whenever asked, which includes providing information on individuals, customers, and companies.

• Companies like Huawei are also able to covertly access and monitor any networks that use their tech, thanks to backdoors designed for use by law enforcement, per the WSJ.

👀 Looking ahead… The FCC is expected to ban all sales of new Huawei and ZTE products in the US later this month on national security grounds. The order would also apply to state and local entities.

Meta reported earnings yesterday, posting its second quarterly revenue decline in a row. Shares dropped more than 17% in after-hours trading, bringing the tech giant’s market cap below $300 billion – a level not seen since February 2016.

And they weren't alone on yesterday’s stock struggle bus. Shares of Alphabet dropped 10% after the company reported its fifth consecutive quarter of slowing growth – and first decline in YouTube ad revenue since 2019 – on Tuesday.

🤔 Why this is a big deal… As Shakespeare once said, “All the world’s an ad.” Earnings reports from big tech companies, who overwhelmingly make money off ads, lend insight into the digital ads market, an industry closely tied to consumer spending and behavior – and thus, the overall economy. (Tl;dr, it doesn’t look so hot out there rn.)

• Microsoft on Tuesday reported slowing growth rates for its search and news advertising business, as well as its LinkedIn unit.
• Last week, Snap shares cratered 30% a day after reporting weaker-than-expected digital ad revenues.

💰 Zoom out: Cracks are starting to show on the consumer side, too. Data released Tuesday showed US consumer confidence fell in October to a three-month low. Consumer spending in August only rose 0.1% after adjusting for inflation, and actually declined in July instead of rising as previously reported, the government said.

💬 Quoted…​​ “Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in!”

Elon Musk paid a visit to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters yesterday, hours after changing his bio on the social media site to “Chief Twit.” Musk has a deadline of 5 pm ET tomorrow to close his $44 billion acquisition, or Twitter’s board will move forward with a pending lawsuit trying to force him to purchase the company at the previously agreed-upon terms.

• Banks started to send the $13 billion in cash they’d agreed to provide as part of Musk’s Twitter takeover last night, per the WSJ, indicating the deal is on track to close by tomorrow.​​

🎶 Stats of the Day: Taylor Swift’s Midnights currently occupies 13 of the top 15 places on Spotify’s daily streaming chart, with “Anti-Hero” yet to drop below 10 million daily listens since it debuted last Friday.

🤯 Did You Know?... Former North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his family used Brazilian documents to visit Tokyo Disneyland in the 1990s, per the BBC.

📖 Worth a Read: The Family That Built a Ballpark Nachos Monopoly → (The Hustle)

• ☝️ The latest image from NASA's James Webb Telescope captures a rare view of two galaxies merging ~11.5 billion light-years away.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 The SEC approved new rules yesterday that’ll make public companies claw back executives’ incentive pay if they find significant errors in financial statements.
• 📱🔌 Apple will change the primary cable port for its iPhones to USB-C in order to comply with a new EU rule to that effect, a company exec said on Tuesday; it's likely the change will apply to all iPhones, though that wasn't explicitly stated.
• 🔋🚘 Hyundai broke ground outside Savannah, GA, yesterday on its first US factory dedicated to making EVs; the $5.5 billion plant is the largest economic-development project in Georgia history, per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 👟 Kanye West (Ye) was escorted out of Skechers’ Los Angeles office yesterday after showing up unannounced, the company said.
• ⚖️🏌️ The Augusta National Golf Club and US Golf Association are both included in the DOJ’s ongoing antitrust investigation into the PGA Tour, the WSJ reported yesterday. (Background)
• 🎶 Rihanna’s first single in six years, the lead track on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, drops tomorrow.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🎓 Purdue University plans to graduate 1,000 semiconductor engineers annually ASAP – up from ~150 today.
• 🐝🌩️ Swarms of honeybees can generate as much electric charge as a thunderstorm, per a new study published this week in the peer-reviewed journal iScience.
• 🧠 Scientists at UT Austin developed an algorithm that can ‘read’ people’s thoughts without even touching their heads, per a new preprint report published in ​​bioRxiv.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🏛️ Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is the subject of an ongoing federal criminal investigation in New York for yet-to-be-determined reasons, his advisor confirmed yesterday. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right) || Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker (R) is accused of pressuring a second woman to have an abortion. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• ⚖️ A Michigan jury on Wednesday convicted three men of supporting a plot to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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Yesterday, we covered the Kanye West situation, and asked what y’all think about what’s been going on. Here are a few of the best responses:

• “There are 2 sides to this: Kanye's mental health, and his downright abhorrent false rhetoric. Everyone has tried to help him, but until he sees the real consequences of his actions, he won’t change. Maybe this will help, or maybe he's just going to fall deeper. Good luck Kanye, you need to check into a hospital.“

“The Holocaust didn’t start with outright genocide, it started with antisemitism. Simple words. Then it turned into discriminatory laws and scattered attacks. Eventually it turned into something no one saw coming.“

• “I am not Jewish, but I do participate in organized religion. The fact that a famous person feels empowered to post antisemitic hate comments publicly is terrifying. Any attack on people purely because of religious beliefs is an attack on freedom of religion. I stand with the Jewish people.”

+Note on sample size: We received 673 responses, most with the sentiment of the excerpts above. Some may have been lightly edited for grammar or clarity.

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

• A Man Pretending to Be Dead On TikTok Gets His First Paid Role Playing Dead on CSI: Vegas → (Tech The Lead)
• Feline Sworn In As Mayor Of Italian Town → (Ananova News)
• Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Involved ‘Absolutely No Research on Al’s Actual Life,’ Director Says → (MovieMaker)
• Message in a bottle hunter uncorks a mystery → (UPI)
• Search underway in Indiana for missing pet kangaroo → (CBS Indianapolis)

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: Paige S. from Waco, Texas

💬 The experience: I do not believe in manifesting something, BUT I think I may have the other day... I am an avid reader and I am a middle school English teacher, so I like to go to Goodwill and look for books. As I was entering the store to go to the book section (which is at the back of my store), I randomly remembered a book that my aunt recommended me months ago. I decide that I'll look for it, but it's not very popular, so I am not hopeful. Right as I arrive at the bookshelf, what is the VERY first book I see? The EXACT book I thought of before. I audibly gasped and scared two very sweet old ladies. I am still pretty much convinced that I manifested it into existence. Thanks me!

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

Zion Clark holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest 20-meter walk on two hands. Always a go-getter, the athlete recently claimed two more records at his gym in Los Angeles.

• Zion was born without legs due to caudal regression syndrome, a rare condition characterized by abnormal development of the lower end of the spine.

💪 Don't give up... Zion claimed the record for highest box jump via handstand with no problem, jumping 33 inches on his first try.🤯 

• The second record proved more challenging, though Zion only needed two attempts to set the world record for most diamond push ups in three minutes (248).
• "Find what makes you happy and keep being yourself, and one day you could be beating my records," he said.

This river is one of the longest in Europe, flowing through six countries: Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Can you name it?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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The Rhine River