Good morning, it's Monday, Aug. 3. Minnesota has barred tech companies from allowing users to create deepfake nudes. First time reading? Join over 4.7 million insatiably curious readers. Sign up here.
Also in today's Digest: an at-home test to detect Lyme-infected ticks (Need To Know), the largest known galaxy (Sci. & Tech.), a shooting in Idaho (Pol. & World Affairs), surfing dogs (Etc.), and much more.
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The nation’s first ban on tools allowing users to generate nonconsensual “nudified” content from images or video of fully clothed people went into effect in Minnesota Saturday, after a judge denied a last-minute suspension request from Elon Musk. A hearing is set for Aug. 19 to decide whether to pause the ban while legal challenges proceed.
Since becoming widely available in 2022, the use of generative AI to produce content involving real people (or “deepfakes”) has skyrocketed—an estimated 96% to 98% of which is explicit, and nearly all of it involves women. Largely done without the person’s knowledge, such tools have been used by high schoolers to make explicit images of female students, leading to a viral undressing trend on the Musk-owned Grok chatbot earlier this year. The first successful prosecution for sharing explicit deepfakes (including some of children) occurred in April under the federal Take It Down Act.
See some tips to spot deepfakes here. |
The first batch of at-home test kits for Lyme disease ships this month. LymeAlert, launched by an MIT researcher, will release 5,000 test kits that claim to identify Lyme-infested ticks within 15 minutes, much like a COVID-19 or pregnancy test.
The test device includes a grinder that opens a tick’s exterior, and an assay that can detect Borrelia burgdorferi—the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. An estimated 31 million Americans get tick bites each year. Of those, about 476,000 people are treated for Lyme disease annually, many concentrated in the Northeast, Midwest, and Mid-Atlantic, where black-legged ticks are prevalent. For Lyme to be transmitted, an infected tick must be attached for at least 24 hours. Early treatment with antibiotics can help reduce the likelihood of chronic Lyme disease, which may involve fatigue, pain, and cognitive impairment.
Learn about Lyme disease here; see prevalence in your county here (scroll to search). |
🫶 Humankind: Crowd gathers to wish Pancake, one of the world's rarest sea turtles, bon voyage as he is released back into the ocean after almost freezing to death. |
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President Donald Trump announced a pause in US strikes against Iran Saturday, citing “rapid” progress toward a deal to end the monthslong war.
The parameters of a deal would reportedly include Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz and halting attacks on neighboring countries, including via Iranian proxy militias, in exchange for the US ending its naval blockade. During the ceasefire, the two countries would work toward an agreement on long-term issues, including nuclear concerns. Unlike the previous ceasefire deal, Israel has reportedly agreed to participate in this latest iteration.
The announcement came after Trump spoke with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. MBS reportedly pressed Trump to reconsider large-scale military strikes over concerns Iran would retaliate against oil facilities in the Gulf. A New York Times report Saturday found Iran had coordinated with proxy groups during the last ceasefire on plans to expand the war if US strikes resumed. |
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Sports, Entertainment, & Culture |
> Actor Vincent Pastore, who played Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero in “The Sopranos,” dies at age 80 (More) | "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" earns $355M at the domestic box office, second-best opening in history (More) |
> Arizona law enforcement releases ransom notes from Nancy Guthrie kidnapping; the mother of “Today” cohost Savannah Guthrie has been missing since Feb. 1 (More) | Trace the investigation from a Tucson suburb to a desert in Mexico (More) |
> FIFA reverses plans to sell a stake in its commercial and event operations to private investors after widespread opposition, which included 55 European nations agreeing to boycott the World Cup (More) |
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> OpenAI's Astra model advances 10 outstanding math problems that haven't seen progress in at least a decade (More) | Demystifying LLMs with top computer scientist Stephen Wolfram (Listen) |
> Scientists identify the first ancient smallpox genome discovered in the Americas, confirm virus arrived via Europeans; strains recovered from Chilean remains dating to the 15th to 17th centuries (More) | What is the variola virus? (More, w/video) |
> Astronomers make first measurement of the full size of the largest known galaxy; IC 1101 is roughly 1.7 million light-years across, contains mass equal to roughly 3.4 trillion suns (More) |
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> US stock markets rise Friday (S&P 500 +0.7%, Dow +0.5%, Nasdaq +1.0%); Amazon shares rise almost 16% as cloud service sales jump by more than 37% year-over-year (More) |
> US Treasury buys Japanese Yen to help reverse the currency's devaluation; photo taken over Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's notepad shows "to-do list" with $5B-$10B purchase (More, w/photo) |
> Chinese AI firm DeepSeek releases new coding model that costs a fraction of leading frontier systems; 1 million output tokens cost 28 cents, 99% cheaper than Claude's Opus 4.8 (More) |
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> Female bomber detonates a homemade explosive device at a Moscow restaurant, killing three people and wounding at least 21 others; a motive was not publicly identified as of this writing (More) |
> Most migrants leave Spanish territory of Ceuta after an estimated 60,000 reportedly entered from Morocco last week (More) | Italy closes air and sea borders with Spain over the incident (More) |
> Gunman attacks In-N-Out Burger location in Twin Falls, Idaho, killing at least three people and wounding seven others (More) |
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Historybook: Christopher Columbus sets sail on his first trans-Atlantic voyage from Spain (1492); Former US Vice President Aaron Burr goes on trial for treason (1807); US businesswoman Martha Stewart born (1941); NBA was formed as a merger of two leagues (1949); Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dies (2008)
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"The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie." |
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