Good morning. It's a packed newsletter today, so let's get right to it.

In today's edition:

• 🗳️🏛️ A deeper dive into midterm results
• 💃 How inaudible sound waves can impact your movements
• 🖼 The largest art auction in history

… and more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.73 minutes to read.

“There is no absolute success in the world, only constant progress.”

–Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

As the dust continues to settle on midterm elections, here are some of the emerging themes.

😬 Projections of a ‘red wave’ were overblown… As of late last night, control of both chambers was still undetermined – but the available results show the GOP on track to have the weakest performance for an out-of-power party against a first-term president since the post-9/11 midterms of 2002.

• The NY Times needle, which stopped updating yesterday morning, projects Dems have a 66% chance of winning the Senate and Republicans have an 83% chance of taking back the House.

🏛️ Control of the Senate comes down to three races… Senate elections in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada are currently too close to call. Whichever party wins at least two of those three contests will have a majority in the chamber.

• Arizona and Nevada both have hundreds of thousands of votes still left to count.
• In Georgia, incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker will have a runoff election on Dec. 6 after neither one won 50+% of the vote (the Libertarian candidate earned 2%).

🧹 Expanded state abortion rights are headed for a clean sweep… In California, Michigan, and Vermont, voters approved state constitutional amendments explicitly protecting the right to an abortion. 

• In Kentucky, voters rejected a proposed amendment that would have explicitly declared there’s no right to an abortion. 
• In Montana, a ballot proposal that would mandate healthcare professionals provide life-saving care to any infant “born during an attempted abortion” is too close to call, with current results leaning towards rejection.

☝️ Some election firsts... Floridian Maxwell Frost became the first member of Gen Z to be elected to Congress; Wes Moore will be Maryland's first Black governor and the third Black governor in US history; Massachusetts’ Maura Healy became the first openly lesbian governor elected in the US.

+What voters were thinking: Here are the most important factors US voters said motivated them in the midterm election, per APNews. (Spoiler alert: inflation was #1, followed by the future of democracy.)

🔠 ​​The oldest known sentence was recently discovered on the side of an ivory comb in Israel ☝️. The inscription, written in a pre-Phoenician Canaanite language with no name, reads: “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.” The comb was discovered at an excavation site dating back 2,700 years, but experts said this particular artifact is roughly a thousand years older than that (circa ~1,700 B.C.E) – making it the oldest sentence ever discovered by about 400 years.

🇬🇧 London Underground workers plan to hold a 24-hour strike today, a move that'll halt virtually all metro train services. Labor leaders called for the strike after the workers’ union and railway companies failed to resolve an ongoing dispute over pension cuts, layoffs, and working conditions. The London Underground, aka the ‘tube’, carries an estimated 5 million people each day. Today’s strike is also expected to completely shut down 5 of the 16 metro railways in Paris.

🇩🇪 Germany blocked a Chinese-owned firm from acquiring a domestic chip company over national security concerns. Germany’s economic minister said China is pursuing a deliberate strategy of trying to acquire knowledge of the semiconductor industry in order to wield influence over the sector. The decision came days after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz became the first Western leader to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping since the start of the pandemic.

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In the biggest reversal since the second half of Super Bowl LI, Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, is backing out of a recently agreed-upon deal to acquire FTX, the world’s fourth-largest exchange, after a review of its structure and books. Binance signed a non-binding letter of intent on Tuesday to purchase FTX amidst an ongoing “liquidity crisis.”

🪙 Background: A CoinDesk report, published last Wednesday, found the balance sheet of Alameda Research – a trading firm run by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried – is full of billions of dollars worth of FTT tokens, a coin minted and issued by FTX.

This raised governance issues, since ties between an exchange and a firm providing coins to trade on said exchange creates a conflict of interest. Which in turn led Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, an early investor in FTX and major holder of FTT tokens, to announce his company would sell its entire FTT stake.

• The announcement triggered a freefall in the token’s price. Just prior to Binance’s announcement on Sunday, one FTT token was worth nearly $25; as of last night, it was under $2.50.

👀 Looking ahead… Bankman-Fried reportedly told investors yesterday that FTX needs $8 billion in emergency funding or else it goes bankrupt. And things don’t get better from there – the SEC has expanded its ongoing investigation into the exchange following the circumstances of the past week.

+In the know: On Tuesday, SBF’s net worth plunged from $15.6 billion to less than $1 billion. That 94% freefall is the worst one-day drop for a billionaire ever tracked by Bloomberg.

According to a new study published in Current Biology, speakers pumping out very low frequency (VLF) sounds make people dance harder – without them realizing it. These inaudible deep bass notes also elicited reports of pleasurable body sensations and euphoria, like if the Imperius Curse and laughing gas had a sound baby.

The kicker? We don’t exactly know why either happens.

🎶💃 A deeper dive… While previous studies suggest that dance-inducing music has more low frequency sounds, it’s still unclear how VLF impacts humans in the real world, or when the frequencies aren’t consciously detectable, The Guardian reports.

Enter: McMaster University (Canada) researchers, led by neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Cameron. To study the real-world effects of VLF waves, they organized an electronic music concert and invited a bunch of people. Some of the attendees – 43 to be exact – were fitted with motion-capture headbands, and the concert venue, literally located inside a research lab, came equipped with a customized sound system capable of playing inaudible very low frequencies.

During the nearly hour-long performance, VLF waves were played on-and-off every 2.5 minutes through the speakers.

• When on, dancing and other body movements by concertgoers increased by 11.8%.
• Post-show, a statistically significant group reported “[feeling] bodily sensations associated with bass frequencies… that [sic] were pleasurable and contributed to the urge to move.”

💬 Quoted…​​ “[Just] office art.”

• Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey created a VR headset called NerveGear that literally kills you if you die in a video game – though he has no plans of releasing it to the public. The concept is modeled after the Sword Art Online manga series.

🎶 Stat of the Day: ​​Live Nation Entertainment reported its biggest Q3 in history this year, with a total of 44 million people attending 11,000 events over the period.

🤯 Did You Know?... US homeowners have lost a collective $1.5 trillion in equity since home prices peaked in May, per mortgage software and analytics company Black Knight.

📖 Worth a Read: What I’ve Learned From Four Years of Open DMs → (The Atlantic)

• ☝️ You’re looking at the results of the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections, broken down by age group.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🏦 Goldman Sachs promoted 80 new partners in its Class of 2022, the largest since CEO David Solomon took over in 2018.
• 🏭 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is planning to build a second $12 billion semiconductor plant near Phoenix, Arizona, per the WSJ.
• 💼 More tech layoffs: Meta cut over 11,000 jobs yesterday, equivalent to 13% of its workforce; Redfin laid off 862 people – also 13% of its workforce – and shuttered its home-flipping business.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚽ The US Men’s National Team announced its final roster for this year’s World Cup in Qatar, which kicks off on November 20; in other WC news, former FIFA President Sepp Blatter earlier this week said the org’s decision to play the tournament in Qatar “is a mistake,” referring to criticism the country’s facing over its treatment of migrant workers, discriminative LGBT+ laws, and extremely hot weather.
• 🐦 Does anyone know what’s happening at Twitter?
• 🏀 WNBA star Brittney Griner was transferred to a Russian penal colony yesterday, where she’s due to serve the remainder of a nine-year sentence for cannabis possession. (Background)

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🚁 Alphabet's Wing and DoorDash are partnering to provide drone-delivered meals in Australia.
• 🧠 Intensive mindfulness meditation can be as effective at treating anxiety as Lexapro, per a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Psychiatry.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🌀 Hurricane Nicole made landfall on Florida’s eastern coast as a Category 1 storm late last night/early this morning; the storm brought max wind speeds of 75 MPH and a storm surge of up to five feet.
• 🇷🇺🇺🇦 Russia’s defense minister ordered all troops to withdraw from the Ukrainian port city of Kherson yesterday, though Ukrainian officials said they’re wary that Moscow may be bluffing.
• 🖼 Paul Allen’s art collection was auctioned off for $1.5 billion, the largest art auction in history, per Christie's; the proceeds will go to charity as the late Microsoft co-founder directed.

CLICKBAIT

• 🚢 Would you pay $1 million to live aboard this 753-foot ‘sustainable’ megaship? Take a look inside.

Yesterday, we covered the 2022 midterm elections held on Tuesday.

❓ Our question to you: Did you vote this election?

• 75% of y’all said yes, 10% said no, and 15% were too young to vote.
• Among the readers who responded “Yes”, 45% voted in-person on election day, 35% voted early by mail, and 19% voted early in-person.

See the full 360° view.

+Note on sample size: We received 10,182 responses.👏🥳

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

• Florida traveler stuffed gun into a raw chicken and tried to bring it on the plane, TSA says → (CBS News)
• Doctor assembles leg bones in record time at Texas convention → (UPI)
• Hundreds cheer the red carpet eating of 40th rotisserie chicken, ‘a part of Philly history’ → (Billy Penn)
• Paintballs to be shot at Dutch wolves in bid to make them less tame → (BBC News)
• Danish archer shoots 7 arrows through keyhole for world record → (ArcaMax)

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: Joe R. from San Francisco, CA

💬 The experience: A few years ago, my girlfriend and I were sitting at our tiny table, in our tiny San Francisco apartment, consuming a home cooked meal. All of a sudden, our conversation is abruptly interrupted by a shattering bang and flying shards of glass. Apparently, a decorative glass plate spontaneously exploded into hundreds of uniform-sized bits. The plate was just sitting on the kitchen counter. It hadn't dropped. Nothing had touched it. It was almost as if the invisible man had shattered it with his invisible hammer.

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

Lyn Thomas works as an assistant manager at Nails convenience store in Birmingham, Alabama. She's also the founder of Sowing on Purpose, a project she created to give a portion of her earnings away every month to complete strangers. 

❤️ Random act of kindness... Lyn makes giving a game, asking people online to pick a random number, a certain color, etc. to determine who receives the funds each month. 

• "Unconditional love, unconditional kindnesses, unconditional compassion," she shared. "I feel freedom and grateful because I have given to them even in their time of need."

☝️ This iconic Windows desktop photo was taken in which Western US state?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

👆 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.👇

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