Good morning. In today’s edition:

• ☄️ The European Space Agency is doing asteroid CSI
• 🍕 Domino’s “Emergency Pizza” promo is back
• 🌱🔌 Device-charging plants

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.66-minute read (1,240 words).

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"The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook."

–William James (1842-1910)

The 2024-2025 term of the Supreme Court officially began yesterday. And, much like last term, it won’t be a boring one.

A (non-exhaustive) list of hot-button issues SCOTUS will be tackling:

• Gun control: Later today, the Court will hear arguments over whether the ATF can regulate the sale of “ghost guns” – mostly untraceable firearms made from at-home kits – in the same manner as commercial gun sales, which require serial numbers and federal background checks.
• Transgender care: SCOTUS will consider arguments over the legality of Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors, which includes puberty blockers and hormone therapy. 24 other states have adopted similar laws – a number which could further increase if SCOTUS upholds Tennessee's ban.
• The death penalty: Richard Glossip, who was sentenced to die over a 1997 murder-for-hire scheme, has joined with Oklahoma’s attorney general in seeking to overturn his murder conviction and death sentence. SCOTUS will decide whether to uphold a lower court decision that approved the death penalty despite prosecutors’ objections.
• Age restrictions for porn: SCOTUS is scheduled to hear a challenge to a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to verify the ages of their visitors, with an adult entertainment trade association claiming Texas’ law violates the First Amendment.
• Mexico suing US gunmakers: The Court will decide whether to block a $10 billion lawsuit filed by the Mexican government over allegations US gunmakers knew their weapons were being sold to traffickers who smuggled them into Mexico, but failed to take any preventative action.

📸 Big picture: Public opinion of SCOTUS is at a near-record low, driven mainly by disapproval from Democrats. In 2020, ~50% of both Republicans and Democrats approved of the court’s performance. But Gallup recently found 72% of Republicans approve of the court, compared with 45% of Independents and 15% of Democrats.

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🗺️🔍 The world’s longest modern-day treasure hunt is over. In 1993, communications expert Régis Hauser published a French armchair treasure hunt book with clues leading to a prize – the “Golden Owl,” a ~$240,000 item Hauser buried a replica of in a secret location. The treasure hunt appears to have ended last Thursday, after an unnamed treasure hunter found the replica.

🚀☄️ A European spacecraft set off on an asteroid “crime scene investigation.” The European Space Agency’s Hera mission aims to survey the aftermath from NASA’s 2022 DART mission, in which a spacecraft was intentionally slammed into an asteroid to alter its trajectory. The Hera spacecraft and two shoebox-size satellites lifted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket yesterday, and will arrive at their destination in late 2026.

🇳🇿🚢 New Zealand lost its first naval ship since WWII, creating a potential environmental disaster. The HMNZS Manawanui sank off the coast of Samoa on Sunday morning, hours after it lost power and ran aground while conducting a reef survey. All 75 passengers and crew made it off the ship safely. Officials say the wreck will likely generate an oil spill that harms the local environment.

Break glass in case of smoke pouring out of the oven. Domino’s limited-time Emergency Pizza deal, which rewards members of the company’s loyalty program with a one-time free pizza to claim within 30 days after making a purchase (basically an alternatively marketed BOGO), kicks off today and runs through an unspecified end date.

Round #2 has a high bar to meet

The promotion’s first go-round launched in October 2023, and ran until February 2024. It ended up being one of the most successful giveaways in Domino’s 63-year history:

• Two million people joined the chain’s loyalty program after the deal launched, representing about two-thirds of all new enrollees last year.
• US same-store sales rose 2.8% in the three months ended December 31, reversing the chain’s sales slump and outpacing many pizza rivals over the same period.

One big surprise to Domino’s execs, who had spent the previous two years analyzing the promotion’s estimated profitability and bulletproofing it from potential fraud and misuse: many eligible customers never ended up actually claiming their free pizza.

🍽️ Zoom out: Restaurant menu prices are ~27% higher now than before the pandemic. And while chains haven’t lowered prices, many are leaning into short-term deals and putting advertising firepower behind them to attract an increasingly price-sensitive customer base. At least a dozen chains, from McDonald’s to Sonic to Shake Shack, have released their own promos like discounted meals or BOGO offers.

Would you rather your phone only charge up to 10%, or always have sand in your bed? These are the unfathomable decisions you’re forced to make in Pick Your Poison…

• 🤦‍♀️ Three or more people compete to create the hardest possible scenario by combining two Poison cards
• 💀 Set includes 300 cards for thousands of wild combinations that spark hilarious discussions
• 🎃 Perfect for Halloween-themed gatherings – 3-10 players, 30-60 min game time

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“With some fine-tuning, these artificial plants could be a part of every household. The benefits of this idea are easy to see.”

In the future, your succulents could double as an iPhone charger. Binghamton University researchers recently invented an artificial plant that uses photosynthesis to clean the surrounding air – and also generates a small amount of electricity in the process, which the researchers say could be used for charging devices.

How it works: Each artificial leaf mimics the natural processes of plants during photosynthesis, taking in CO2, water, and nutrients while expelling oxygen – but the leaves also generate a small amount of power while doing so.

• In testing, a proof-of-concept plant with five artificial leaves was able to generate both oxygen and electricity, while removing CO2 at a far more efficient rate than natural plants.
• The researchers say their artificial plants could help bring down indoor CO2 levels, which are often significantly higher than the outdoors and can pose a health concern.

👀 Looking ahead… Currently, the artificial plants can only generate a small amount of power (0.00014 watts from five leaves). The researchers say their next goal is to improve the technology so their plants can charge cell phones and other devices.

• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the best science images from September, as selected by the journal Nature’s photo team.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Surfshark

• 💰 US markets fell across the board (S&P: -1.0%; Dow: -0.9%; Nasdaq: -1.2%).
• 💊 Starboard Value, an activist investor firm, has taken a $1 billion stake in Pfizer and is pushing for changes at the pharma giant.
• 🍔 McDonald's filed a price-fixing lawsuit against JBS, Tyson Foods, and other leading meat processing and packing companies. | 🪙 FTX's reorganization plan has been approved by a Delaware bankruptcy judge; as part of the plan, 98% of FTX’s creditors will get 119% of the amount of their allowed claim ($1.19 for every $1).

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚾ MLB Playoffs: All four ALDS and NLDS series are tied 1-1 after two games; NLDS action continues tonight. | 🏀 The New York Liberty beat the Las Vegas Aces 3-1 to advance to the WNBA Finals, ending the Aces’ hopes of a three-peat; the Connecticut Sun and Minnesota Lynx play a deciding Game 5 tonight.
• 🎮 Game developer 343 Industries is changing its name to Halo Studios; the company also said all future Halo games will be moved from its proprietary Slipspace Engine to Unreal Engine 5.
• 🎥 Charli XCX secretly filmed a movie in Poland with playwright/actor Jeremy O. Harris and filmmaker Pete Ohs called ERUPCJA.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Asutra

• 🍎🤖 Apple is planning to release the first Apple Intelligence AI features on October 28 alongside iOS 18.1, per Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
• 🍽️☄️ Future astronauts on deep-space journeys could transform compounds from asteroids into food, per a new study.
• 🏆🧬 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to American scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA (molecules that help control how genes are expressed).

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🌀 Hurricane Milton intensified into a Category 5 storm yesterday in the Gulf of Mexico; Milton is projected to make landfall near Tampa late Wednesday or early Thursday, bringing a dangerous storm surge of 8-12 feet to the area.
• 🛍️ Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and Kohl’s are all currently hosting major holiday shopping sales. See some of the top deals.
• 🇷🇺 Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death” who was released from US prison in a 2022 swap for WNBA star Brittney Griner, is back in business and selling weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen, per the Wall Street Journal.

CLICKBAIT

• 🤔💼 This job interview question “stumped” an HR expert – now it’s her favorite to ask.

🪙 Stat of the Day: Costco members love gold as much as the niffler in Fantastic Beasts (and that’s saying something). A Bloomberg survey covering 101 Costco locations across 46 states found ~77% were sold out of bullion bars in the first week of October, with all the stores surveyed having received fresh stock of the gold products in recent weeks.

🤔 Did You Know? There are an estimated 5,000–7,000 privately owned tigers in the US – a figure higher than the ~4,500 tigers currently living in the wild.

📰 Worth a Read: Can You Copyright a Rhythm? → (Pitchfork)

Here are five stats from this past week that made our team go “whoa.” Hopefully you will, too.

• 🌀 Hurricane Milton is 1 of the 3 most intense hurricanes on record in the Gulf of Mexico based on surface air pressure readings, per Philip Klotzbach of Colorado St. University.
• 😡 Just over 1 in 5 US adults have become estranged from a family member due to disagreements on controversial topics (21%).
• 🏎️ McLaren unveiled a new $2.1 million supercar, the W1, to honor the 50th anniversary of its first Formula One constructor’s championship.
• 📉 40.3% of Americans are obese, down from 41.9% in 2020, per new CDC data – marking the first time in over a decade the US obesity rate has decreased.
• 🏢 In the US, immigrants are ~80% more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans.

Yesterday, we covered the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 surprise attack against Israel, which kicked off a war that threatens to ensnare the Middle East in an even wider conflict.

❓ Our question to you: What best describes your personal opinion regarding the current Israel-Hamas war?

• Israel’s military operation is going too far: 46%
• Israel’s military operation is taking about the right approach: 24%
• Israel’s military operation isn’t going far enough: 20%
• Unsure/other: 10%

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

+Note on sample size: We received 2,793 votes and 286 longform responses.

Seventeen years ago, Christopher Bradbury started studying all things aerial. Fighting cancer at the time, the British man said it started as somewhat of a bucket list item – but he soon realized it helped both his physical and mental health as he went through treatment. Today, drone flying has become his entire career.

🛸 The emojis are coming... The passionate flyer recently set a Guinness World Record by forming 30 emoji faces in the sky in three minutes with his 109 drones, smashing the previous record of 24.  

• "It takes a lot of three-dimensional spatial planning to make sure that all goes through safely," Christopher said. 

🎤 Revisit: Frankie Valli’s 20 greatest hits. Sheeeerrrrryyyyyyy.

👻 Spooky: Explore America’s top ghost and vampire tours.

🤔 Explore: The answer to the question on everyone’s mind – is the mathematical constant of Pi good at video games?

🏈 Got me feeling nicey: Where football coaches go when they get fired.

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🏀 Trivia: What year did college basketball first introduce the three-point shot?

🦉 True or False?... A group of owls is called a legislature.

🤔 Riddle Me This… What is seen in water, but never gets wet?

🏀 Trivia: 1986

🦉 T/F: False, it’s called a parliament

🤔 Riddle: A reflection