Good morning, and a very Happy 8 Billion Day to you. More to come on that later.

In today’s edition:

• 🍏 A lesson in privacy
• 🐀 Science’s dancing rats
• 🌎👥 Humanity’s current median age

… and more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.84 minutes to read.

“The best way to understanding is a few good examples.”

–Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

Sit down, folks, class (action) is in session. The subject of today’s lesson? Apple, which is facing a proposed class action lawsuit alleging it records users' mobile activity without their consent and despite privacy assurances, in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act.

That’s per a Thursday court filing, where plaintiff and iPhone user Elliot Libman alleges the tech giant’s privacy guarantees – and its billboards advertising user privacy – are nothing more than an illusion.

📝 Is there a smoking gun?... Yes, according to the court filing – a recent Gizmodo report. Which documents the work of two security researchers from software company Mysk, who studied Apple’s data collection practices.

After analyzing almost every first-party iPhone app (Stocks, the App Store, Apple Music, etc.), they concluded analytics control and other privacy settings didn’t appear to change the data Apple collected at all. This directly contradicts the tech giant’s claim that when the setting is turned off, it “disable[s] the sharing of Device Analytics altogether.”

Though just like siblings, not every app is acting the same.

• For example, the Health and Wallet apps don’t transmit any analytics data, period. But the App Store reportedly harvests info about every single action – down to the last tap.
• Most of the apps sending analytics data also share consistent user ID numbers, which allows Apple to track activity across its various services, the researchers found.

🤔 Funnily enough: Apple recently set its sights on becoming Ad-ple, aiming to increase its annual advertising revenue from $4 billion to $10 billion. And the tech giant’s app transparency tracking feature, which blocks third-parties from collecting iPhone user data when turned on, works just fine.

💰⚖️ Zoom out: Apple isn’t the only tech giant under class-action fire. News broke yesterday that Google will pay ~$400 million to settle allegations it illegally tracked users’ locations.

🌏 More than a dozen world leaders are in Bali, Indonesia, for the G20 Summit, held today and tomorrow. The G20, made up of 20 of the world’s largest economies, meets regularly to coordinate global policy across a wide range of issues. This year’s summit centers around three main priorities: global health architecture, digital transformations, and sustainable energy transitions. One day prior to the summit (aka yesterday), President Biden held a three-hour meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, their first in-person conversation as leaders.

🇮🇷 Iran yesterday issued its first death sentence in response to recent anti-government protests. A court convicted an unnamed person for allegedly setting fire to a government building, state media reported. At least 20 others are currently facing charges punishable by death, per the Norway-based Iran Human Rights. Since demonstrations first broke out two months ago in response to the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of local morality police, Iranian authorities have killed at least 326 people and arrested over 1,000 more.

🎓 International students are coming back to the US. Roughly 950,000 international students from over 200 countries studied at an American college or university last school year, a 4% jump in enrollment from 2020-21, per a new federal report. International students enrolling for the first time increased 80% year-over-year, signaling a return to pre-pandemic levels, the report said. Fun fact: China (~33%) and India (~20%) together account for a majority of all US international students.

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For those who missed it in yesterday’s email, the global population is expected to cross 8 billion sometime today. Though, like a subway car approaching its next stop, overall growth keeps slowing down.

🚶‍♂️⬅️🦍 Humans, a history: It took over two million years for the human population to reach one billion, and only 207 years more to grow to 7 billion. This population explosion was driven by a reduction in child mortality, as well as improvements in food production, sanitation, and medicine.

• It then took 12 years to tack another bil onto the overall total – but it'll take another fifteen years to reach 9 billion, per the UN. Next stop: Slower Growth Station.

🤔 So, where do we go from here?... The global population is expected to virtually stop growing by the end of this century for the first time in modern history, due in large part to falling fertility rates. Birth rates are dropping in many European countries, as well as in the US and China, according to a Pew Research analysis of UN data.

• More than half of the global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa.
• By 2100, the continent is projected to host five of the world’s 10 largest countries.

+For us visual learners… 👇

If you live in a major city and have good music taste, you’ve more than likely DJ’d for an audience of appreciative rodents. At least according to a new peer-reviewed study published in Science Advances, which found rats instinctively bob their heads in time to music, an ability previously thought to be unique among humans.

🐀 Anyone can cook dance… In the experiment, the rodents’ head movements were monitored while they were listening to several pieces of music across different genres, including Mozart, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, Maroon 5, and Queen.

• Twenty human subjects went through the same process – and per the researchers, both rodents and humans jerked their heads to the beat of songs in a similar rhythm.

✋ Yes, but: At least one outside expert criticized the study’s methodology, suggesting the rats’ head movements may have simply been their startled response to certain loud passages of music. The expert said a convincing follow-up would be if researchers studied whether the rats’ movements came a few milliseconds before the beats, similar to humans, or a few milliseconds after.

💬 Quoted…​​ "If I was on cannabis, I wouldn’t have bit his ear.”

• Boxing legends and former rivals Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield are teaming up to launch a new line of weed-infused edibles called Holy Ears. Tyson’s existing company already sells cannabis-infused products called Mike Bites – shaped like ears with a bite mark – while Holyfield plans to release his own cannabis line in 2023.

🌎👥 Stat of the Day: The median age on Earth is currently 30.2 years old – up from 20.6 years old in 1974, per Our World in Data.

🤯 Did You Know?... The last surviving Civil War widow died in 2020; Helen Viola Jackson, at age 17, married 93-year-old widower and Civil War vet James Bolin in 1936 (reportedly a marriage of convenience).

📖 Worth a Read: Pancakes, shakes and KFC: when Charles Barkley tried to eat his way out of the 76ers → (The Guardian)

• ☝️ Republicans still appear poised to win a narrow House majority this midterm election; the NY Times currently projects the GOP will end up with 222 seats compared to 213 for Democrats.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📉 US stocks closed down across the board yesterday after finishing last week with big gains. (Dow: -0.6% | S&P: -0.9% | Nasdaq: -1.1%)
• 🎁🛍️ US consumers plan to spend an average of $833 on gifts and non-gift holiday items this year, a 5% drop from last year, per the National Retail Federation.
• 💼 Amazon will lay off 10,000 employees starting as early as this week, the company’s biggest job cuts ever, per multiple reports.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚾ Seattle Mariners outfielder Julio Rodriguez won the AL Rookie of the Year award; Atlanta Braves outfielder Michael Harris II was the NL Rookie of the Year.
• 📖 Author Michael Lewis (Moneyball, The Big Short, The Blind Side, etc.) has been traveling with and interviewing FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried for the past six months, and is making the now-defunct crypto exchange the centerpiece of his next book, per an email obtained by The Ankler.
• 🙏 Three University of Virginia football players were killed and two other students were injured in an on-campus shooting late Sunday night; the suspect, a former UVA football player, was later arrested and charged with three counts of 2nd-degree murder.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🌱 A series of mass extinctions in the Earth’s oceans ~300 million years ago may have been triggered by the evolution of tree roots, a new peer-reviewed study suggests.
• 🏥 1.8% of healthy infants are hospitalized with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) before their first birthday, per a new peer-reviewed study published in Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 💰 Amazon founder Jeff Bezos committed to giving away a majority of his ~$124 billion fortune in a CNN interview published yesterday.
• 🗳️ Democrat Katie Hobbs won Arizona’s governor race over Republican Kari Lake, the AP called last night. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• ⚖️ The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the Trump-era federal ban on bump stocks, aka attachments that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire more rapidly. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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NUMBER 1:

On Friday, we reported on the 2022 midterm results so far, when it appeared that control of the Senate was still up in the air and Republicans were favored to win a slight House majority.

❓ Our question to you: How would you categorize the midterm results so far? (Quick note: We received 8,784 responses.)

• 😱 Very surprising: 29%
• 😐 Some surprises, but about what I expected: 46%
• 🥱 Not surprising at all: 25%

See the full 360° view.

NUMBER 2: 

On Monday, we covered how Democrats will hold onto control of the Senate after the 2022 midterm elections, while Republicans remain poised to win a narrow majority in the House.

❓ Our question to you: How do you feel about the midterm election results so far?

• 😆 Very pleased: 26%
• 😌 Somewhat pleased: 28%
• 🤷‍♀️ I don’t really care: 9%
• 😔 Somewhat disappointed: 16%
• 😞 Very disappointed: 21%

See the full 360° view.

+Note on sample size: We received 11,316 responses.

Meet Magic, the newest addition to the Ocala Police Department in Florida. The two-foot-tall miniature horse became an official honorary police officer last month, when she was sworn into the ranks of the City of Ocala.

🐴 The mane attraction... Magic has been specially trained to help people in crisis by Gentle Carousel – one of the largest equine therapy programs in the world.

• She'll help the department by participating in outreach and literary programs, as well as providing comfort to those who need it. 

Can you decode these famous song titles written with emojis?

1. 🍫🐝👧
2. 💰💵💪
3. 🚫🗣️🚫

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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1. Barbie Girl by Aqua
2. Rich Flex by Drake & 21 Savage
3. Don’t Speak by No Doubt