Good morning. To all you bored stat-heads out there with some free time, here’s a rec – the monthly Harper’s Index. You can thank us later.

But first, NEWS.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.92 minutes to read.

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"Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them."

–Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)

Wesleyan University, an elite liberal arts college based in Connecticut, formally ended its legacy admissions process this week and will no longer grant preference to applicants with family or donor ties.

With the move, the university joins a number of other schools that have already dropped legacy admissions, including Johns Hopkins, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon. And like baby ducks following mom across the street, more could soon follow.

👍🏫 Background: Legacy admissions at colleges have been around for about a century, first appearing in the 1920s. And while it’s unclear how many students benefit from these policies, studies suggest the numbers are significant – and that those benefiting tend to be overwhelmingly white.

• An Associated Press review of some of the top universities in the US showed legacy cases comprising between 4% and 23% of first-year students.
• A recently filed legal complaint against Harvard's legacy admissions process cites studies indicating ~70% of its legacy and donor-based applicants are white. And at some prominent universities – including Notre Dame, USC, and Cornell – there tend to be more legacy students than Black students.

Legacy applicants also tend to receive preferential treatment. For example: Harvard’s acceptance rate for legacy applicants stood at 34% between 2014–2019, compared to 6% among those without legacy status.

🤔 Yes, but: The argument in favor of legacy admissions goes like this – nearly 75% of legacy students offered admission are accepted, compared with 47% of non-legacy offers. Colleges say this allows for better planning when it comes to school finances and admission cycles.

👀 Looking ahead… Though more and more schools are voluntarily dropping legacy admissions programs, this decision may soon be out of their hands entirely. Following the recent Supreme Court ruling that bans affirmative action and any consideration of race in college admissions, a civil rights group filed an ongoing lawsuit targeting the use of legacy admissions at Harvard University on the grounds that it discriminates against students of color.

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🌍 Large portions of the Northern Hemisphere are experiencing record-high temperatures this week. Ongoing heat waves are simultaneously occurring in Europe, Asia, the US, and the Middle East, with record temps observed across all four areas in each of the past several days (including a heat index of 152°F at an Iranian airport on Tuesday). Experts say the widespread heat is being exacerbated by the ongoing El Niño warm climate pattern.

💶📉 Inflation in the eurozone (aka countries using the euro) fell to its lowest level since early 2022. The June inflation reading of 5.5% is down from a recent peak of 10.6% in October – but still significantly higher than the European Central Bank’s long-term inflation target of 2%, indicating that future interest-rate hikes are likely. Separately, a new report based on IMF data found the eurozone economy has grown ~6% over the past 15 years compared to 82% for the US, leaving the average EU country poorer per capita than every state except Idaho and Mississippi.

🇰🇪 The death toll from a Kenyan doomsday cult rose above 400 this week. Ever since the cult was first discovered by local authorities in late April, detectives have been exhuming bodies believed to be followers of a pastor who ordered his followers to fast to death. The pastor and 36 other suspects have been detained for the past three months, but have yet to be formally charged.

Netflix has yanked its basic plan with no ads in the US and UK, leaving three packages for consumers to choose from instead of four: a $6.99/month tier with ads, a $15.49/month standard plan with no ads, and a $19.99/month “Premium” plan that’s also ad-free.

The reason behind the move is simple – it positions the company to make more money.

• According to Netflix’s Q1 earnings report, users on its $6.99/month tier with ads generate more revenue for the company than any user paying $15.49/month for its standard ad-free plan – meaning the company makes at least $8.50/month in ad revenue per user.
• This figure probably has a lot to do with user engagement on the ads plan being similar to non-ads plans, since more time spent watching content in the app = more ads being shown.

And not only is Netflix’s plan with ads good for the company, users don’t appear to be turned off by seeing commercials in between binging episodes of The Crown. Around 5 million people globally are paying $6.99/month for Netflix with ads, and, according to co-CEO Greg Peters, more than a quarter of the streaming giant’s signups choose the ad-supported plan in countries where it’s available.

📸 Big picture: Netflix released Q2 earnings after the bell yesterday, reporting stronger than expected subscriber growth numbers – but a miss on revenue.

If you’re reading this, it’s too late… to watch the opening match of the FIFA Women’s World Cup on live broadcast, that is.

Tournament play officially kicked off at 3 am ET this morning, with Norway facing off against New Zealand.

⚽🔢 Some tournament tidbits:

• The 2023 Women’s World Cup is the first to be hosted by two different countries (Australia and New Zealand). It’s also the first to occur in the Southern Hemisphere.
• This year’s tournament features $110 million in total prize money, a nearly three-fold increase from 2019.
• An estimated 2 billion people will tune in for some or all of the 2023 World Cup, up from 1.12 billion total viewers four years ago.

🇺🇸 U-S-A, U-S-A: Team USA – ranked No. 1 in the world for six years running – is favored to win their third straight title, but the pool is large and victory is far from guaranteed. According to the latest odds from BetMGM, the American women have a 44% chance of making the finals and a 30% chance of winning it all.

📺👀 How to watch: Team USA’s first match is tomorrow against Vietnam, with kickoff at 9 pm ET on FOX.

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💬 Quoted… “When someone takes out a cigarette at a restaurant, everyone on the premises can stare at that person."

The health minister of Hong Kong recently unveiled a plan to eliminate residents from lighting up in areas where it’s illegal – stare at them. "When the members of the public see people smoking in non-smoking areas, even if no law enforcement officers can show up immediately, we can stare at the smokers… I do not believe [they] would dare to hit back at everyone.”

• The plan’s ultimate goal? To create a "non-smoking culture" that leads to a tobacco-free city.

🎀🍿 Stat of the Day: Regardless of whether you’re a Barbie girl, it’s Barbie’s world – and we’re all just living in it. According to data reported by Deadline yesterday, presales for the upcoming pink-themed comedy are the highest since James Cameron’s blockbuster sequel Avatar: The Way of Water – which debuted to the tune of $134 million.

🤔 Did You Know?... A sperm whale’s clicks are powerful enough to communicate with other sperm whales thousands of miles away; they’re also strong enough to theoretically vibrate a nearby human diver to death.

📰 Worth a Read: The Lounge Battle Royale Coming Soon to Your Airport → (WSJ)

• ☝️ A newly-opened office building in the Indian city of Surat has surpassed the Pentagon to become the largest in the world; the 35-acre Surat Diamond Bourse features 7.1 million square feet of floor space for 65,000+ professionals in the diamond industry.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board yesterday (S&P: +0.2%; Dow: +0.3%; Nasdaq: +0.03%).
• 🏦 Goldman Sachs reported a 58% drop in Q2 profit yesterday; it was the only bank among the biggest six to miss analysts’ expectations for per-share earnings. | 🚗🔌 Tesla reported higher-than-expected revenue last quarter, but margins came in below expectations.
• 📈 Skims, the apparel company co-founded by Kim Kardashian, closed $270 million in funding at a $4 billion valuation. | 🤝 Microsoft and Activision agreed to extend the deadline to close their $69 billion deal by three months (to October 18).

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

in partnership with Upway

• 🏌️ The 151st British Open officially teed off just after 1:30 am ET this morning.
• ⚾ A dozen MLB teams scored 10 or more runs on the same night this past Tuesday for the first time since 1894.
• 📽️ Bron Studios, the finance and production company that backed movies including Joker, Licorice Pizza, Bombshell, and Judas and the Black Messiah, filed for bankruptcy.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with CariFree

• 🍎🤖 Apple is reportedly testing an AI chatbot to compete with ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and others, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
• 🪐 Spanish astronomers discovered the first known evidence of two planets sharing the same orbit. | ☀️ Astronomers in California recently found a first-of-its-kind “two-faced” star that appears to have one side composed almost entirely of hydrogen, with the other side made up of helium.
• ⛓️ Scientists for the first time witnessed pieces of metal crack, then fuse back together without any human intervention; researchers expressed optimism this “self-healing” property can be engineered into metals used in modern-day life.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🎓 Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned yesterday following a school-led investigation that discovered manipulated data in some published scientific papers on which he was a main contributor; the investigation found no evidence that Tessier-Lavigne personally engaged in research misconduct, or that he knew of misconduct by others.
• 🌀 Hawaii Gov. Josh Green declared a state of emergency after Tropical Storm Calvin hit the state overnight, causing property damage but no reported deaths.
• 🚇 The price of a NYC subway ride is increasing for the first time in eight years starting August 20, from $2.75 to $2.90.

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Yesterday, we covered former President Trump’s announcement that he’s the target of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which means Trump will likely be indicted and arrested on federal charges in the near future.

❓ Our question to you: In your opinion, should Trump be indicted on federal charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election?

• 👍 Yes: 71%
• 👎 No: 20%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 9%

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

+Note on sample size: We received 14,902 votes and 1,371 longform responses.

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

• Beenie Von Weenie crowned fastest wiener dog in the West → (WISH-TV)
• An overdue library book makes a return trip to the shelves 119 years later → (NPR)
• Underwater music festival held in Florida Keys → (Local10)
• Man balances umbrella on finger for 3+ hours, sets world record → (Bol News)
• Mysterious postcard from 1969 delivered to Maine home → (UPI)

Winning the Oban Sea Kayak race in Scotland at the young age of nineteen, now twenty-three-year-old Dougal Glaisher has always felt at home on the ocean.

It was during the aforementioned race, however, that he suffered from blurred vision and feelings of faintness that led him to a Type-1 Diabetes diagnosis. 

💪 I can, I will... Fast-forward to today and Dougal is breaking records, circumnavigating Britain in a kayak in only 40 days (a ~2,000 mile journey) – nearly a month faster than anyone else in history.

• Dougal made the expedition to raise funds for UK based charity Action4Diabetes. “I do what I want to do and my diabetes has to adapt to that," shared the athlete.
• He hopes to inspire other people with chronic diagnoses to stay active and go after their dreams. 

Which Scandinavian capital city, pictured above, hosts the annual Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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Oslo, Norway (Stockholm, Sweden, hosts all other Nobel Prize ceremonies)