Good morning, and a warm welcome to all our new subscribers. In today’s edition:

• 🏫 Dissatisfaction with K-12 education
• 🤖 OpenAI solves $1M math problem
• 🍽️ America’s #1 food destination

…and much more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~3.61-minute read (960 words).

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“There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.”

–Plato (427 BC – 347 BC)

If roles were somewhat reversed and Americans were grading the country’s schools, there’d be some explaining to do at parent-teacher conferences.

Satisfaction with the quality of K-12 education in America has fallen to its lowest point in 27 years of polling on the topic, driven by a particularly sharp decline over the past two years.

By the numbers

Two-thirds of US adults are completely dissatisfied (31%) or somewhat dissatisfied (36%) with the quality of K-12 education, according to a new Gallup/Walton Family Foundation poll published Monday.

• Among the other one-third of Americans, 24% are somewhat satisfied while just 8% are completely satisfied.
• Overall, Americans’ satisfaction in education has fallen by 11 percentage points since 2024.

There are several particular issues: A lack of teaching basic skills is one of the most cited problems, along with inadequate school funding or resources, and poor educational quality.

College readiness is another pain point, with just 32% of Americans saying schools do a good or excellent job getting students ready for college, with average SAT scores falling across the board—even as high school GPAs are climbing.

The outlook gets even worse when work enters the picture. Only 21% of Americans say K-12 schools do a good or excellent job preparing students for the workforce, and just 20% give them high marks for teaching critical thinking and problem-solving.

Both political parties are souring

Democrats are behind much of the recent shift in satisfaction with K-12 education, with rates falling 19 percentage points since President Trump returned to office in early 2025. But Independents (-10 points) and Republicans (-6 points) have also seen significant dips in confidence over that period, as the Trump admin has moved to begin dismantling the Department of Education.

• The Covid pandemic and its associated school closures, learning setbacks, and mental-health challenges also hangs over the longer-term trend.
• National test scores have continued to drop in the years since, particularly in reading, while pandemic-inspired learning measures have launched a national debate over screentime usage in school.

Dissatisfaction isn’t limited to polling. Some prominent colleges are putting standardized tests back into the admissions equation after dropping requirements during the pandemic. They include MIT, Dartmouth, and MIT, while 1,100+ University of California math and science professors are pushing the system to bring entrance exams back amid a recent surge in unprepared students.

📊 Flash poll: Overall, how satisfied are you with the quality of education K-12 students receive in the US today?

• Completely satisfied
• Somewhat satisfied
• Somewhat dissatisfied
• Completely dissatisfied

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BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🇨🇦 Canadian tariffs on ~$20 billion worth of US goods officially took effect yesterday, as a response to recent Trump admin tariffs on Canada; in retaliation, President Trump says he’ll prohibit Canadian firms from receiving government contracts in the US.
• ⚡☢️ Energy Department to loan up to $1.9 billion to help restart a shuttered nuclear power plant in Iowa; Google has agreed to buy a portion of its electricity for AI data centers.
• 🏌️ LIV Golf voluntarily files for bankruptcy after losing Saudi funding, with several star players among its top creditors; league says it plans to return in 2027 with players holding majority ownership.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏈 NFL regular season kicks off tonight with a Super Bowl LX rematch featuring the Patriots @ Seahawks; it marks the second Wednesday opening in NFL history. | 💰 QB Baker Mayfield signs 3-yr, $165 million extension with Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
• 🎥 You Can See Everything, a first-of-its-kind documentary by Nathan Fielder that follows convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes in her days leading up to prison, gets surprise premiere at Telluride Film Festival; the film hits theatres October 16.
• 🙏 Burning Man Festival reports third death of a festivalgoer this year, triple the average during the annual psychedelic music event.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🤖🟰 OpenAI says an AI model “significantly more capable than GPT-6 Astra” solved the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, one of seven “holy grail” problems in mathematics featuring $1 million prizes; two mathematicians working on closely related research are questioning whether OpenAI learned about its new solution from their private material on Codex (the company’s AI coding tool).
• ☄️ Astronomers use combined power of NASA's Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes for the first time to study trans-Neptunian objects, some of the most far-flung bodies in our solar system.
• 👽 Particles from alien civilizations may be present on the Moon and represent a key avenue in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, new study suggests.

US, WORLD, & POLITICS

• 💥 US military launches new strikes on Iranian oil tankers Tuesday in response to a fresh attempt by Iran to strike US warships in the Middle East.
• 🧑‍⚖️ Trump admin files emergency appeal seeking Supreme Court approval to deploy a federal immigration database aimed at finding improperly registered voters. | Supreme Court declines to lift lower court’s block on Missouri’s new congressional map, which likely would have given Republicans an additional House seat if enacted for the midterms.
• 🖼️ Four valuable Renoir paintings stolen from small museum on the French Riviera by two thieves, who were forced to abandon two of the paintings as they fled.

☝️ Google, in partnership with Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus, has mapped every neural connection in the brain and central nervous system of an adult male fruit fly for the first time. The decade-long project mapped over 166,000 neurons and 125 million synaptic connections, providing a first-of-its-kind resource for scientists studying how the brain works.

🤔 Did you know? The Arizona Cardinals are the oldest continuously operating professional football franchise in the US, tracing their roots to a Chicago neighborhood team founded in 1898. Their name came a few years later, when the team bought used University of Chicago jerseys and declared their faded maroon color to be “Cardinal red.”

📰 Worth a read: I study successful people. They have one habit in common

🖱️ What we’re clicking:

• Has youth sports lost the plot?
• The 16 fall movies you need to know about
• America’s No. 1 food destination for 2026

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❓ Trivia: What was the originally intended function for bubble wrap?

🎓 True or false?... Classic Fruit Loops cereal has 6 different flavors of loops.

🤔 Riddle me this: I have pointed fangs, and I sit and wait. I have piercing force, and I crunch with weight. I grab my victims, but they do not fight. I join them each with a single, quick bite. What am I?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

🏎️ 23-year-old Callum Smith, who was born without arms, has topped 110 MPH on the racing track while steering with his left foot and working the pedals with his right.

He recently signed his first driver contract with Team BRIT and is working towards his racing license, with an ultimate goal of competing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

1. Wallpaper
2. False; all Froot Loops colors are the same flavor
3. A stapler

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