Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 🗳️ Betting on the election
• 🔬 The weird wide world of science
• 🤔 OpenAI corporate shakeup?

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.95-minute read (1,317 words).

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“The deeper the truth in a creative work, the longer it will live.”

–Sir Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

For decades, wagers on elections have been banned in the US. But last week, a regulated gambling market was permitted to offer such bets to Americans for a period of several hours – before the practice was once again outlawed for the time being.

Background: On Thursday morning, startup Kalshi received approval from a judge to begin offering consumers and financial institutions the chance to wager on whether Democrats or Republicans will control Congress next year.

• However, roughly eight hours after it first opened, Kalshi’s election wagering was halted by a new federal appeals court ruling issued Thursday night, which temporarily froze the matter until the court could fully consider the appeal.

How it works: Kalshi is seeking to offer 10-leg parlays prediction contracts – essentially yes-or-no bets – allowing Americans to wager on whether a certain party will win control of the Senate or the House following the November election, with bet sizes ranging from $0.01 to as much as $100 million for some financial firms.

• In the brief period it was active, Kalshi’s election gambling market was buzzing like Barry B. Benson after his first interaction with Vanessa Bloome. While the company hasn’t posted official numbers, its website showed 50,000+ contracts (wagers) had been traded roughly three hours after its election offerings went live.

The arguments: US regulators, along with some lawmakers, nonprofit orgs, and election watchdogs, say allowing such bets would create another incentive for malicious actors to influence the outcome of America’s elections, and would also undermine public confidence in the voting process.

• On the flip side, Kalshi and its supporters say regulated election betting provides important forecasting data and a valuable way for businesses to hedge election risk.
• They also argue a legal and regulated US election gambling industry is better than the current situation, in which foreign companies are taking election bets from Americans without approval or oversight from Washington.

Looking ahead… The federal appeals court has yet to specify when it will fully consider Kalshi’s election gambling case and deliver a ruling.

📊 Flash poll: In your opinion, should Americans be allowed to legally gamble on elections?

• Yes
• No
• Unsure/other

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🇳🇱 Hardt Hyperloop successfully tested its levitating train concept in the Netherlands. “Hyperloop” is a new form of mass transit where capsules full of passengers levitate and travel through depressurized tubes via magnetic fields. Last week, Hardt announced its first successful Hyperloop test, in which a capsule was levitated and zipped through a 1,400-foot-long tube. Hardt says the test vehicle hit a max speed of 18 mph – though future plans involve capsules traveling up to 435 mph.

🇻🇪🇺🇸 Venezuela claims it foiled a CIA-backed plot to overthrow its government, which the US denies. On Saturday, Venezuela’s Interior Minister said law enforcement arrested six foreigners – including three US citizens – on suspicion of plotting to assassinate President Nicolás Maduro and other top officials. Venezuela’s government accused the CIA of backing the operation, which it said was led by an active US Navy member. On Sunday, the State Department confirmed the detention of a US military member in Venezuela, but denied any US involvement in a plot to overthrow Maduro.

🇨🇳🇺🇸 Shein hauls could soon get more expensive. On Friday, US officials proposed a new law that would remove the “de minimis” exemption – a law allowing packages with a value under $800 to enter the US without import duties – on all overseas shipments of products subject to US-China tariffs. If the new proposal is enacted, Shein and Temu shoppers in the US could see prices rise by at least 20%, per a GOP House spokesperson.

If you ever find yourself at a worm race (the actual thing, not a euphemism for a tequila-chugging contest), make sure to bet on the sober ones, as they tend to be faster than the drunker ones, according to this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes, which were held at MIT last week.

Umm, what? The Ig Nobel prizes are an annual spectacle, created as an ode to strange scientific discoveries “that first make people laugh, then make them think," with real Nobel laureates in attendance to announce spoof prizes.

Some of this year’s honorees:

• Peace: US researcher B.F. Skinner posthumously took home the prize for performing experiments to see the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide their flight paths.
• Botany: German and Brazilian researchers uncovered evidence that some real plants imitate the shapes of neighboring artificial plants.
• Anatomy: French and Chilean researchers studied whether the hair on the heads of most people in the northern hemisphere swirls in the same direction as hair on the heads of most people in the southern hemisphere (the result: counterclockwise swirls were more common in the southern hemisphere).

See the full list of winners – each received a transparent box containing historic items related to Murphy’s Law (the theme of the night) as well as a nearly worthless Zimbabwean $10 trillion bill.

👀 Looking ahead… The actual Nobel Prizes, which are unaffiliated with the Ig Nobel Prizes, will be awarded next month.

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“We remain focused on building AI that benefits everyone and we’re working with our board to ensure that we’re best positioned to succeed in our mission.”

The winds of change aren’t just blowing at Monsters Inc. OpenAI is also in the process of undergoing a change, according to multiple reports, which indicate the ChatGPT-maker plans to shake up its nonprofit structure sometime next year.

Money talks

OpenAI is reportedly speaking with potential investors, including Apple and Nvidia, about raising $6.5 billion at a $150 billion pre-money valuation. But, according to Reuters, that money comes with a catch: the valuation depends on whether the ChatGPT-maker can upend its corporate structure and remove a profit cap for investors.

OpenAI is currently structured in a way where its non-profit arm controls its for-profit one:

• The organization was founded in 2015 as a tax-exempt nonprofit “to build artificial general intelligence (AGI) that is safe and benefits all of humanity.”
• But, in order to raise more capital than it could through charitable donations, the startup later established a for-profit arm that enabled it to take money from investors.

👀 Looking ahead… A change to this structure👆could orient OpenAI as a more traditional for-profit company.

• ☝️ A group of marine fossils dating back as early as 8.7 million years ago – including those of a megalodon and a saber-toothed salmon – were recently discovered underneath a south Los Angeles high school.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Arro

• 💰 US markets rose across the board on Friday (S&P: +0.5%; Dow: +0.7%; Nasdaq: +0.7%).
• 🚂 Norfolk Southern fired CEO Alan Shaw; the move comes amid an investigation that found Shaw violated company policies by engaging in a consensual relationship with the company's chief legal officer.
• 📺🤝 DirecTV and Disney reached an agreement in principle; Disney's channels have been restored for DirecTV's 11+ million customers.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• SCOREBOARD: 🏈 CFB: See a full week 3 recap; Texas rose to #1 in Sunday’s AP Top 25 poll for the first time in 16 years, while Georgia fell to #2. | 🏈 NFL: See a full Week 2 recap. | 🏀 Las Vegas Aces center A'ja Wilson broke the all-time WNBA single-season scoring record, topping the mark set last year by the Seattle Storm's Jewell Loyd. | 🥊 UFC: Merab Dvalishvili defeated Sean O'Malley by unanimous decision at the Las Vegas Sphere to become the UFC’s new bantamweight champion.
• 🏆 The 2024 Emmy Awards took place last night. See all the winners.
• 🎸 A Jane’s Addiction concert in Boston ended abruptly on Friday after singer Perry Farrell threw a punch at guitarist Dave Navarro seemingly out of nowhere; the band, which is on a reunion tour, also canceled its Sunday show.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with JadeYoga

• 💊 Pfizer said its experimental drug to treat a common, life-threatening condition that causes cancer patients to lose their appetite/weight showed positive results in a Phase 2 trial.
• 🚀 The crew of SpaceX’s historic Polaris Dawn mission, which recently completed the first all-civilian spacewalk, safely returned to Earth early yesterday morning.
• 🌳 Louisville residents who live in areas where thousands of trees and shrubs were recently planted had 13%-20% lower levels of a blood marker of general inflammation versus a control group, per a first-of-its-kind study.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🚨 Former President Trump was the target of what the FBI says “appears to be an attempted assassination” at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida; Secret Service agents reportedly shot at a man hiding in shrubbery and pointing an AK-style rifle with a scope as Trump was 300-500 yards away on the course; Trump said he’s safe and well after the incident, which is under investigation; authorities have apprehended the suspect, whom reports identified as a 58-year-old male. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• 🔥 Firefighting crews made progress in containing all three major ongoing wildfires in Southern California over the weekend; the fires have collectively burned 115,000+ acres and counting.
• 🥩 Boar's Head is indefinitely shuttering its southern Virginia facility that’s been tied to a deadly multi-state listeria outbreak.

CLICKBAIT

• 🦠 Some cells can enter a 'third state’ beyond the traditional boundaries of life and death.' Here's how.

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🌊 Stat of the Day: Last September, scientists across the globe detected a mysterious seismic vibration that shook the planet for nine straight days (too long to be an earthquake). Researchers immediately began investigating the phenomenon – and now, following a year-long international collaboration, they’ve identified the culprit: a naturally created wave pool of mind-boggling proportions. In a report published Thursday, scientists detailed how a melting glacier caused a massive landslide at a fjord in Greenland on that September day, resulting in a 650-foot tsunami wave – one of the largest on record – that sloshed back and forth for the next nine days.

🤔 Did You Know? The stamp-collecting ranks are growing. Nearly half of all Americans (48%) had a passport last year, up from ~5% in 1990, according to the US State Department.

📰 Worth a Read: Hollywood’s secret weapon is an independent animation studio called Titmouse → (CNBC)

Monday: Mexican Independence Day

Tuesday: American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez debuts on Hulu

Wednesday: Federal Reserve widely expected to cut interest rates

Thursday: The Penguin starring Colin Ferrel debuts on HBO; International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Friday: Early in-person voting gets underway in Virginia and Minnesota; Transformers One hits theaters

On Friday, we covered how US men and women both saw their respective paychecks get fatter last year, on average – but the wage gap between genders also widened for the first time in over two decades.

❓ Our question to you (long-form): What steps, if any, do you think the US government should take to address America’s gender wage gap?

• “There are steps the government can take but it's about the root of the issue, not the result of the issue (the wage gap). The root problems are a lack of affordable childcare, lack of paid maternity leave, affordable insurance, and all the other pieces of society that demonstrate a lack of value placed on the family and overall healthy work environments.”
• “Since most households require two earners these days, we NEED to look at better support for childcare. The need to juggle child care with a job is a major reason for lower pay.”
• “I don't think the US government should do anything directly to try to 'fix' the wage gap. More generally, childcare costs are so high that I think something needs to change there and one benefit of that would be freeing up more women to work longer hours (if they so wish). However, I would be skeptical of the government subsidizing childcare more.”

Click here to read more of the most thoughtful longform responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 229 longform responses.

Meet Moo Deng, a two-month-old pygmy hippopotamus living at Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand.

Since birth, Moo Deng was destined to be a star. Over the past few weeks, her zookeepers have shared photos and videos of Moo Deng on social media, rocketing her to international fame.

• The public can't seem to get enough of Moo Deng, who's "almost always eating, sleeping, or being dramatic," per Time. 

🌟 *Iconic*: The hippo has been hailed as a "lifestyle icon," becoming the subject of endless fan art and new merch from the zoo. The Thai Embassy in Tokyo also acknowledged and admired Moo Deng, while Sephora Thailand shared official recommendations for blushes to mimic the baby hippo’s adorably rosy cheeks.

Guess the definitions of the following Greek/Latin root words:

1. Anth
2. Cis
3. Cord
4. Dur
5. Fallac

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1. Anth = Flower (e.g., anther)
2. Cis = Cut (incisor, excise)
3. Cord = Heart (cordial)
4. Dur = Hard (durable)
5. Fallac = False (fallacy)