💣*insert Oppenheimer GIF here*

Good morning. Offices are getting trippy 🍄 A study of 28,000 participants proved that 44% of adults 19-30 years old report using marijuana in the past year. A 25-year record. The use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD or MDMA is 8% among young adults in the past year. More than double the usage from 2012.

Further proving why Kendall Roy was the correct successor for Waystar Royco, Silicone Valley is also seeing an uptick of LSD, ketamine, and magic mushroom usage. These drugs are becoming a backbone of Silicone Valley and experts believe they can provide a wide range of medical benefits like anxiety reduction and creativity boosts when used in controlled settings. Experts also warn that there are substantial risks to these drugs that are still being studied.

Why the sudden buzz? Legislation has increased the accessibility of these drugs, in turn increasing their social acceptance. 38 states allow medical marijuana usage and 23 of those allow recreational use.

Somewhat related: Check out these songs fabricated from the strings of psychedelics that kicked off the usage of these drugs into the mainstream:

• The Beatles: Strawberry Fields Forever (1967)

• Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child (Slight Return) (1968)

• Love: You Set the Scene (1967)

• Tame Impala: The Less I Know The Better (2015)

• OutKast: Prototype (2003)

_{-Bailey Hepler, Mikael Hall}

REFERRAL PROGRAM

CONGRATULATIONS, Kyle Fiore, for winning this month’s sweatshirt giveaway. Kyle has proven to be a True Revere by sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. We are truly grateful for Kyle and everyone who is sharing the good word.

💡Reader Spotlight: Go listen to FIORE’s newest single “Come Down” streaming now on your favorite music streaming service.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Autonomous Lethal Weapons

The Pentagon, who has totaled over $14 trillion in war spending since the start of the war in Afghanistan, throws their hat in the A.I. ring. As if stories of Uber’s self-driving cars hitting pedestrians, Google assistants declaring they’re God, A.I. robots misunderstanding their creator’s question and vowing to destroy humanity, and Furbies talking in the middle of the night (ok, not artificial intelligence, but still creepy) weren’t enough.

The Air Force’s autonomous XQ-58A Valkyrie can fly the width of China and hit enemy targets far beyond its visual range. The Air Force intends to use the Valkyrie as a deployable wingman for human pilots to us as backup. The Valkyrie will only engage in combat once pilots give them a sign-off. But these advancements in technology raise questions about military culture, combat tactics, and whether software should be used in human-waged war.

• Mary Wareham, the advocacy director of the arms division of Human Rights Watch, believes there a moral line that’s crossed when we “outsource human killings to machines.”

• The Air Force Defends: stating commanders and operators would have to exercise human judgement over the use of autonomous drones. Col. Tucker Hamilton says this is an awesome responsibility, noting that “dystopian storytelling and pop culture has created a kind of frenzy” around A.I. “We just need to get there methodically, deliberately, ethically - in baby steps.”

The Pentagon Historically Fails at A.I.

The Pentagon has axed two different artificial intelligence programs with little to show as they shut down The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), and Defense Digital Service (DDC). It’s difficult to build programs when there’s a ton of turnover. As new personnel continues to transition through The Pentagon, any progress made on A.I. efforts continues to get put on hold.

Fortunately for The Pentagon, there are many other bidders ready to make a fortune. Kratos, the builder of the Valkyrie, is already preparing to bid on any future contract, as are other major companies such as General Atomics, which for years has built attack drones used in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Boeing, which has its own experimental autonomous fighter jet prototype, the MQ-28 Ghost Bat.

J. Robert Oppenheimer might feel something like this right about now…

WEATHER

Hurricane Idalia

Southern California got lucky last week as Hurricane Hillary downgraded to a tropical storm but Florida begins to brace for impact as Hurricane Idalia made landfall in the US on Tuesday and rapidly grew as strong storm. The center of the storm made landfall between Gainesville and Tallahassee.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned the state Monday, “This is going to be a major hurricane and. It’s likely to continue strengthening all the way until impact and could have catastrophic storm surge in your area.”

✏School & Office Effects: Schools and offices across Florida and South Carolina were already cancelling classes while offices closed in-office activity for Tuesday-Thursday as they monitored potential impacts from Hurricane Idalia. Many schools are operating on a e-Learning schedule, one of the positive impacts from the pandemic lockdown as student now have the remote-learning opportunity.

SPORTS

The Inevitable Conference Realignment

Labor Day Weekend is almost upon us, and for Americans, this means a handful of things. Kids are back in school, summer is unofficially over, and college football is back… albeit a little different.

This Summer, conference realignment was once again a popular topic as Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Arizona State have opted to leave the PAC-12 for greener pastures in the Big Ten and Big 12 in the latest attempt by Power 5 schools to maximize revenue generated by their football programs, and in turn their athletic programs. Schools switching conferences is certainly not new to college athletics but as SEC and Big Ten schools continue to outpace their counterparts in the ACC, Big 12, and PAC 12 in television rights, handfuls of schools have begun to rethink their current conference affiliation and pursue all the money a free market has to offer. Here are some key terms you need to know when thinking about conference realignment:

• 📜Grant of Rights: Back in 2013, members of the Atlantic Coast Conference signed an agreement that ensured the ACC will own the broadcast rights to all its member schools until 2036. This agreement is currently what is keeping any current ACC member from leaving for the SEC or Big Ten, but if a legal loophole is found, or a massive exit fee is paid, the ACC may have the same fate as the PAC 12.

• 📺Television Deals: In the United States, sports are televised on numerous broadcast networks, and the rights to which networks can broadcast live sports, and in this case college football is an extremely wealthy business worth billions of dollars to broadcasting partners and universities. The SEC inked a 10-year, 3 billion dollar deal with Disney, and last summer the Big Ten signed a 7 billion dollar deal with Fox, NBC, and CBS. As these numbers continue to increase, schools will find every way to generate more revenue for themselves by joining the SEC or Big Ten.

• 🏆College Football Playoff (CFP): This is the end goal for all football-focused schools. After this year the CFP will expand from 4 teams to 12, and this is not happening solely for the sake of competition. Within ESPN’s current agreement, the Worldwide Leader in Sports will be able to bid on the new format of the CFP starting in 2024 and 2025. Currently, the CFP television deal with ESPN deal is worth about $470 million per year, and CFP Executive Bill Hancock has indicated ESPN’s current agreement gives the network the ability to bid on the new format of the CFP Playoff starting in 2024 and 2025.

~Mikael Hall

ANOTHER SCHOOL SHOOTING

UNC School Shooter Hints on Social Media

Often times, the reasoning behind a school shooting can be ascribed to psychological trauma bottled up until an insecure man/woman turns gunman on innocent lives. Tailei Qi, the accused shooter of his professor, Zijie Yan, is no exception and hinted frustration on social media for the world to see.

Zijie Yan, an associate professor at UNC Chapel Hill, was killed Monday inside the school’s Caudill Laboratories, a place Qi and Yan worked closely together on multiple research projects. Tailei Qi, the accused gunman, expressed his frustration with his research team multiple times on X (formally Twitter):

• One post read: “Just have a talk with my PI and get his promise. He should have more experience to handle with these girls and tattletales. Then, we can just get ourselves out of these stupid topic.”

• Another post read: “These kind of people may be a good man actually, but might not be a sincere friend. For a Phd student, pay much attention to working time every day is really childish…I know many people want to me to show them working and working, but no…that’s not human at all.”

Police are still investigating the motive behind Qi’s shooting and have yet to find the firearm connected to the killing of Zijie Yan. Tailei Qi was formally charged with first-degree murder and possession of a weapon on education property, both felony charges.

LIFESTYLE

Father of 96 Plans Holiday with Children

There are many creative ways to earn extra cash in college. You can tutor, walk dogs, babysit, or start an online business if you’re really creative. But when arrested for under-aged drinking, Dylan Stone-Miller was desperate to pay lawyer fees and turned to donating sperm to cover the charges.

Xytex, a sperm bank in Atlanta, bought Stone-Miller’s swimmers for $100 a pop over 6 years of donations. After college and starting a family of his own, Dylan put the sperm donations behind him. Until he got a social message from Alicia Bowes, an adoptive mother of one of his children.

It read: "I really hope you don’t feel violated in any way, but it’s Canadian Thanksgiving and I wanted to tell you how grateful my family is to you."

This prompted Dylan to quit his job and find the children he fathered and found a Facebook group titled Xytex5186 filled with many of the mothers of his children. To this day, he’s met 26 of his children and hopes to be in the lives of the other 70 too.

🧮Quick Math: If Dylan Stone-Miller fathered 96 children at an average artificial insemination success rate of about 16%, then he donated at least 600 times. 600 * $100 per donation = $57,600 lifetime earnings of Stone-Miller’s donations.

Big Picture:

• The CDC reports that infertility rates are on the rise. In the United States, about 11% of women and 9% of men of childbearing age have infertility.

• Artificial insemination is also on the rise since 1995, where an estimated 234,000 women used a donor. In 2017, that number is now 773,000.

• Artificial insemination gives a better chance of pregnancy get the best quality sperm closer to the egg prior to ovulation.

THURSDAY SHORTS

• 👁Photo of the week: Former President Donald Trump poses for this infamous mug shot after being booked in Georgia. Since the booking, the former president has raised $7.1 million in a record-breaking fundraising haul.

• 🎥Check out the most anticipated films coming Fall 2023 by TIME.

• 🏘️Here are 3 states that will pay you to build a tiny home in your back-yard.

• 🥤On Monday, Pepsi kicked off their celebration of the 125 year anniversary of the name changing from “Brad’s Drink” to Pepsi-Cola. Pharmacist Caleb Bradham created the drink to help with dyspepsia, aka indigestion.

• 🍦PSA: Dairy Queen blizzards are only 85¢ for 2 weeks to celebrate the new Fall menu.