Good morning. According to a survey from a UK mattress company, the average single man washes his sheets a whopping… four times per year.

So, once in the fall, winter, spring, and summer.

Couples change theirs much more frequently – once every 2.3 weeks, though 81% of the women in the couples say they're responsible for swapping the sheets.

What about y’all? Respond to this quick poll and we’ll share the results on Wednesday.

Oh and also, NEWS.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.91 minutes to read.

"No person is happy unless they believe they are."

–Publilius Syrus (85 BC – 43 BC)

We forgot a word in yesterday’s Stat of the Day section – instead of the sun shining on 99% of the world at one point on Saturday morning, it actually shone on 99% of the world’s population.

This is the 41st correction out of the 383 newsletters we’ve published since January 2022.

Women undergoing in-vitro fertilization (IVF) are significantly more likely to have a successful birth when their eggs are harvested during the summer or on an especially sunny day, according to a peer-reviewed study published last week in Human Reproduction.

🔢 By the numbers… Australian researchers analyzed data from 3,657 frozen embryo transfers performed by a clinic in Perth over an eight-year period.

What they discovered:

• Embryos collected during the summer months had a 31% chance of resulting in a successful birth – 30% higher than eggs retrieved in the fall.
• Embryos collected on days with 10.5+ hours of sunshine in Perth were 28% more likely to succeed than eggs collected on days with fewer than 7.5 hours of sunshine (regardless of the season).

The researchers say the stark contrast could potentially be explained by differences in activity, diet, and lifestyle across the seasons, or by environmental factors like pollutant density.

And it’s not just in Australia – a 2022 IVF study from the Northern Hemisphere (Boston) found embryos collected in the summer were 42% more likely to result in a successful birth than eggs collected during winter.

☀️❄️🫄 Zoom out: Seasonal changes affect more than just IVF-induced pregnancies. According to previous research, the season in which humans are born has a measurable effect on their future chances of developing certain medical conditions and behaviors. For example:

• Winter babies are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, while summer babies are less likely.
• Spring babies are more prone to developing depression, while the opposite is true for fall babies.
• Males born in the fall are more likely to become heavy smokers, as are females born in the winter.

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🇹🇷🇸🇪 Turkey has agreed to back Sweden’s NATO membership, removing the final hurdle for their admission. The news was announced yesterday by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to forward the issue to his country’s parliament “as soon as possible,” and will work to ensure its ratification. Erdogan had previously delayed the move for more than a year, demanding Sweden first crack down on domestic dissidents deemed as terrorists by Turkey. Sweden, along with Finland (which became the 31st member of NATO in April), applied to join the military alliance last spring in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

🇷🇺🇺🇦 Nearly 50,000 Russian soldiers have died in the war against Ukraine. That’s per a new analysis by two independent Russian media outlets, Mediazona and Meduza, with help from a data scientist at Germany’s Tübingen University. Their report, based on excess death totals obtained from government sources within Moscow, represents the first independent statistical analysis of Russia’s death total since it first invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

🇳🇱 Dutch PM Mark Rutte is retiring from politics after his government collapsed on Friday due to “irreconcilable” differences over immigration. The previous four-party ruling coalition had tried unsuccessfully for months to reach a deal that reduces the flow of new migrants to the Netherlands, which is experiencing an ongoing housing shortage. Rutte, whose 13-year tenure as PM is the longest in the Netherlands’ history, will remain in office in a caretaker capacity until a new ruling coalition is chosen.

Like Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour,” Amazon Prime Day is in full swing. The two-day shopping event kicked off at 3 am ET this morning and ends tomorrow at 9 pm ET.

📦 Prime Day fun facts: The event – which Amazon started in 2015 to simultaneously celebrate its birthday and push Prime memberships – has grown to become one of the biggest online shopping events of the year.

• There are 175 million Amazon Prime members – and 96% of them have participated in a Prime Day shopping event.
• Last year’s Prime Day generated ~$11 billion in sales, a 12% YOY increase and a new event record. To provide an idea of scale: the e-comm giant sold 300 million items – or 100,000/minute – during the event.
• Sales this year are projected to rise 10%, per Insider Intelligence. The most popular categories are expected to be electronics, clothing/apparel, home decor, and beauty.

😬 Yes, but… According to a recent survey from RetailMeNot, shoppers plan to spend $250 during Prime Day and other summer sales, down from $388 and $594 in the most recent years.

But, but, but – the survey also notes that in the past, shoppers have tended to spend more than their survey projections.

🏷️ For the best Prime Day deals: Check out this guide from CNET. And don’t forget to shop around. Target’s Circle Week, Walmart Plus Week, and Best Buy’s “Black Friday in July” sale are also live.

Why did the AI cross the road? To avoid the copyright infringement lawsuits being filed against it.

One of the latest was filed on Friday by comedian Sarah Silverman, alongside authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey, against OpenAI and Meta. The suit claims ChatGPT and LLaMA, the large language models (LLMs) of the two tech giants, respectively, infringed on the authors’ copyright.

📔 A deeper dive… In Silverman’s case, the work in question is her 2010 memoir, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee, which ChatGPT was able to provide a very detailed summary of when asked to do so. And the plaintiffs argue such a summary wouldn’t be possible without the model having access to the book’s entire text.

• Both OpenAI and Meta have stated their AI is not trained on copyrighted content. However, the specific materials used in training the models is kept private, so there’s no way to corroborate that claim.
• But the sizes of the online book collections used by OpenAI are available, and, according to the plaintiffs, the only library of content matching the size used by OpenAI is that of a “shadow library” containing illegally copyrighted content.

🤖 Big picture: The AI may need to cross a few more roads, ‘cause the lawsuits keep on coming. Last month, OpenAI was accused in a class action lawsuit of training ChatGPT and DALL-E, the company’s image generation tool, on “stolen private information” from hundreds of millions of internet users, including children, without permission.

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💬 Quoted… "Invasive Asian jumping worms got their name because of the way they thrash around…They can flip themselves a foot off the ground."

Also known as Alabama jumpers, Jersey wriggles, wood eels, crazy worms, snake worms, and crazy snake worms, Asian jumping worms, aka “earthworms on steroids,” have now been spotted in more than 30 US states.

• The jumping worms make the surrounding soil less fertile for plants, and also contain toxic metals that can negatively impact the birds who eat them.

⚡🚗 Stat of the Day: 41% of American adults say they’ll never buy an electric vehicle, according to the latest Harper’s Index.

🤯 Did You Know?.... When Ronald Reagan was taken to the hospital after being shot in 1981, the hospital staff found a laminated card in his suit pocket. They put the card into his shoe, where it was left unattended. That card contained *checks notes* America’s nuclear codes😳.

📖 Worth a Read: Meet the psychedelic boom’s first responders → (Wired)

• ☝️ A microscopic handbag created by art collective MSCHF was sold at auction last month for a whopping $63,750; it’s tinier than a single grain of salt.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with The Wine Connection

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board yesterday (S&P: 0.2%; Dow: 0.6%; Nasdaq: 0.2%).
• 🇮🇳📈 India will overtake Japan, Germany, and the US to become the world’s second-largest economy by 2075, per a new report by Goldman Sachs; India is currently the world’s fifth-largest economy.
• 🚗 Car buyers rejoice: Used car prices are projected to keep going down. | 🏠 Home buyers beware: Home prices hit a record high in May, rising 0.7% nationally compared with April at a seasonally adjusted rate, per the Black Knight Home Price Index.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📰 The New York Times announced plans to disband its sports department and rely solely on sports coverage from The Athletic, both online and in print; the NY Times purchased The Athletic for $550 million last year.
• 🏈 Northwestern University fired head football coach Pat Fitzgerald yesterday amid allegations of widespread hazing within the program; the school had initially suspended Fitzgerald for two weeks on Friday following a university-commissioned investigation.
• 🏥 Larry Nassar, the doctor serving a 60-year prison sentence for sexually abusing young female gymnasts, is in stable condition after being stabbed six times by another inmate, per multiple reports.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Upway

• 👓🏍️ BMW unveiled a new pair of ~$750 smart glasses for motorcycling, which add dashboard metrics like navigation and speed into riders’ field of view.
• 🚀 SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched into space and landed back on Earth for a record-setting 16th time early yesterday morning.
• 💊🫀 Taking Vitamin D supplements may reduce the risk of heart attacks, per a new peer-reviewed study published in The British Medical Journal.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🏛️ Texas’ House and Senate agreed to use $18 billion in surplus funds to enact the largest property tax cut in state history.
• 🔩 Major US telecom companies including AT&T and Verizon are responsible for a nationwide network of unused cables covered in toxic lead, which is slowly degrading and showing up in areas where Americans live and work, per a new WSJ investigation.
• 🌧️ At least 9 million people in the Northeast were under flood warnings yesterday.

CLICKBAIT

• 🧠💤 How to silence your thoughts and drift off to sleep: an expert explains.

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Yesterday we covered the official start date of the 2024 presidential election (January 15), and explored how each candidate is performing in the latest public polls.

❓ Our question to you: If the 2024 presidential election were held today, who would you vote for?

• 🔵 The Democratic candidate: 39%
• 🔴 The Republican candidate: 27%
• 3️⃣ A third-party candidate: 12%
• 🔞 I’m too young/I don’t vote: 9%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 12%

Click here to read the best responses from yesterday’s poll.

+Note on sample size: We received 15,108 votes and 1,477 longform responses.

Earlier this year, Georgian woman Jackie Flournoy was leaving her home when she noticed a peculiar stalk growing out of a succulent in her yard.

🌵🤭 Pardon her French... “What the hell is that?” 80-year-old Jackie remembered saying that day in March. "I didn't know what it was.”

• The large succulent had been gifted to Jackie by her daughter over 35 years ago, and had never sprouted before. But over the last three months, the stalk has grown to a staggering 25 feet tall – and it's the only one in the area.

😲 The more you know: It turns out Jackie's plant is an Agave Americana, a type of succulent that grows – you guessed it – a very tall stalk towards the end of its life.

“It’s a miracle,” said Jackie of her proud plant. “Nobody else here has them... I’m just thrilled that I have it and everyone is enjoying it."

It’s called Positive DONUT, and we think you should check it out.

This 100% free newsletter hits inboxes each Tuesday with nothing but non-cheesy good news that’ll make you cheese.👇

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❓ Trivia: Who designed the first gas-powered car?

🌕 True or False?... A second full moon in a month is called a new moon.

🤔 Riddle Me This: What do you buy to eat, but never consume?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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❓ Trivia: Karl Benz

🌕 T/F: False, it’s called a blue moon

🤔 Riddle: Silverware