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Dating by spreadsheet is where we are now / Most college students can't finish a book anymore / Man spent 33 days alone in the Pacific
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The Wall Street Journal profiles a growing trend of "love hackers" — singles who use Excel or Google Sheets to rate their dates on up to 70 data fields after returning home, and a Cornell researcher who interviewed 42 of them and analyzed 24 spreadsheets. Also: Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence at Amherst College, published a piece in Fortune documenting two decades of watching students lose the ability to read — high school English teachers now assign an average of 2.81 books a year, down from 4 in 2008, and 32% of 12th graders now score below basic reading levels. And Kai Sato, 39, of California, set out on June 7 for a solo sail to Hawaii, had his mast snap two weeks in, ran out of gas, lost his phone signal, spent days suicidal, fashioned repairs from PVC pipes and kayak paddles, ate oatmeal and fish that landed in his boat, licked condensation from plastic bags to survive, and was rescued 33 days later by a cargo ship. He's already planning his next voyage. Plus the Chicago scream club, flight attendants falling mysteriously ill, Gunther von Hagens requesting to be plastinated, and the vending machine burrito recall.
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Online scams cost $148 billion and almost nobody reported it / Your brain has a readiness mode for memories — and it's not always on / Marijuana just became America's most popular daily substance
10:09|The Consumer Federation of America just released a report estimating the true cost of online scams at $148.2 billion — seven times the $21.1 billion officially reported to the FBI, because only about 14% of fraud victims report to any law enforcement body at all. Also: a new Nature Communications study from the University of Tübingen found that the hippocampus — the brain's memory-forming region — fluctuates between high and low states of readiness, and whether a memory gets encoded may have as much to do with your brain's internal state at that moment as with the experience itself. And the federal government's 2025 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, released Monday, found 21.4 million Americans now use marijuana daily or near-daily — more than the 19.9 million daily cigarette smokers or 17.2 million daily drinkers. Plus Katy Perry trapped in a bottle, the teen who died saving his brother from lightning, the woman who spent years biting her husband's toes, and the 116-year overdue library books.
Hot weather is stealing your sleep / Giving your kid a phone tanks their reading / Sperm whales have vowels and they might be using them on us
10:13|A new Climate Central analysis of 1,338 global cities finds the average person loses nearly 56 hours of sleep a year to high overnight temperatures — and the share attributable to climate change has at least doubled since the early 1970s. Also: a UCLA study of third- and sixth-graders in Los Angeles County finds that kids who own cell phones score significantly lower on reading comprehension — and the twist is that it doesn't matter whether the phone is present during the test. Ownership alone is the variable. And a landmark study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B by UC Berkeley and Project CETI finds sperm whale communication includes vowels, diphthongs, and phonetic structures that parallel human speech so closely researchers are now asking what it means for animal legal rights. Plus the eBay cockroach settlement, evangelical plane preachers, the bride who set the church on fire, and Colonel Sanders' bow tie.
What are you doing about high grocery prices? / The millennial split is real and it runs right through the middle / Not having a career plan might work better
11:44|The AP spent weeks with grocery shoppers across Massachusetts, Texas, and Hawaii documenting how Americans are adapting to the biggest jump in home food prices in 50 years — up 33% since 2019 — with couponing, comparison shopping, multi-store trips, and quietly dropping favorite foods. Also: Fortune and new Federal Reserve data confirm the millennial generation has formally split in two — older millennials aged 36-45 now post the highest median household income of any generational group at $132,700 and are functioning like Baby Boomers, while younger millennials aged 27-35 are moving into multigenerational homes at rates last seen in the early 1900s. And a University of Macau study of nearly 1,000 workers tracked over six months finds that "career wisdom" — comfort with uncertainty, intuition, and tolerating not having a plan — predicts more meaningful work, higher job satisfaction, and stronger engagement than rigid career planning. Plus an emotional support peacock, a cobra in the bed, Spider-Man, and measles.
Murder is at a 100-year low / Your boss wants you in the office for their ego, not your productivity / Japan invented a word for heat that didn't exist before
12:29|The Council on Criminal Justice released a comprehensive mid-year crime report Thursday showing homicides are down 18% across 30 cities compared to 2025, on track for the lowest annual rate in over a century — and the drop is happening in cities with different political leadership, different policing strategies, and different economic conditions. Also: Wharton researchers led by Adam Grant just published a three-study investigation into why some leaders resist remote work — and the answer across all three studies was the same: narcissism. Not productivity concerns. Not collaboration. Power and status. And Japan's meteorological agency has formally adopted the word "kokushobi" — pronounced koh-koo-shoh-bee, meaning "cruelly hot day" — for temperatures above 40°C, after 200,000 people voted on it and Tuesday saw 260 people hospitalized with heat stroke symptoms around Tokyo alone. Plus a Pennsylvania fortune teller's witch trial, a McDonald's hot fries lawsuit, a bear on a utility pole, and 30% of Americans who've shoplifted.
A date now costs $189 and here's how to fix that / Living longer but 14 of those years feel terrible / 23 million people are job-locked by health insurance
11:52|The BMO Real Financial Progress Index finds the all-in average cost of a date in the US hit $189 in 2026 — up 12.5% in a year, with Millennials averaging $252 — and 47% of singles say dating is no longer financially worth it. Also: a new Global Burden of Disease study published in The Lancet finds the US has the largest "morbidity gap" in the world — 14 years of life spent in poor health — and the bad news is it's not just happening at the end of life. And a new West Health-Gallup survey finds 24% of US employees — roughly 23 million people — are staying in unwanted jobs specifically to keep their health insurance, up from 16% in 2021. Plus the easyJet mid-air brawl, Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, the Pan Am plane found after 74 years, and a Florida man with a flamethrower at a Walmart.
A delivery driver just won China's highest literary prize / The case for and against cutting off your parents / Yosemite is what happens when everything else costs too much
11:50|Wang Jibing is 56 years old, left school at 14, spent decades doing odd jobs, became a food delivery rider in 2019, wrote poems on scraps of paper between orders, and just won the Lu Xun Literary Prize — China's top literary honor — for his collection Low Flight, based on interviews with 200 fellow couriers. Also: the Wall Street Journal published a piece asking whether therapists are to blame for the rise of family estrangement — with researchers on both sides of a genuinely complicated question. And Yosemite dropped its reservation system in 2026 at federal direction, hit 90-minute entrance waits and full parking lots before noon, and became the most concentrated expression of what happens to affordable leisure when everything else gets too expensive. Plus a robot decapitated in combat, Australian identical quadruplets, the Baseball Spy, and deeply discounted Taylor Farms lettuce.
Five cups of coffee is actually fine / He bought a house and found three bodies / The robots are getting armed
13:21|The American Heart Association just published its most comprehensive position statement on coffee in years, and the verdict is: up to five cups a day is safe for most healthy adults, with cardiovascular benefits at moderate consumption. Also: a man in Ohio bought a house sight unseen in a competitive market, arrived with a moving truck, and found three decomposed human remains inside — and the story underneath it is really about what the housing market has pushed buyers to do. And Silicon Valley is actively pitching the Pentagon on armed autonomous robots, and the Washington Post got inside several of the pitches. Plus three bodies in a house, the David Rush toilet paper record, a dog rescued from a Scottish mountain after finding someone's stash, and pizza traded for pythons in Florida.
Your parents' money is the new American Dream / Cut your daily choices or your brain will do it for you / China just deleted millions of AI relationships
12:02|A new CNN/Federal Reserve investigation finds that nearly half of adults aged 18-29 received assistance from someone outside their household to cover recurring expenses last year — and the people who got early inheritance aren't feeling good about it, they're feeling guilty and relieved simultaneously. Also: the average adult makes approximately 35,000 decisions per day, decision fatigue is real and measurable, and the research on how to fight it is more specific and actionable than "simplify your life." And on July 15, China's new AI companion regulations took effect — ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent all shut down their AI persona features, and the grief on Chinese social media was immediate and genuine. Plus two babies switched at birth 38 years ago, a man suing his bank for lending him money, an Alabama husband committed to a remarkable relationship, and the firefighting donkeys of Spain.