People are jumping for joy that gas prices are down 7.7% from June to July. Meanwhile, July prices are still up 44% compared to a year ago. 😬

Moreover, categories like housing and food continue to get more expensive. Food was up 1.1% in July, following a 1% gain in June.

There is, however, one item that's never gone up in price. You guessed it: an IQBAR. 👀

As always, please forward IQNEWS to a friend if you're a fan!

Tripping is apparently fantastic for your mental health. And when I say "tripping" I don't mean catching the 6am Spirit Airlines flight to Vegas. I mean eating magic mushrooms.

Numerous studies have now found psilocybin - a Schedule 1 drug and the psychoactive compound in shrooms - to be a highly effective treatment for depression, anxiety, PTSD, nicotine addiction, and alcoholism.

As news of psilocybin’s promise spreads, its legal status is shifting across the U.S.

In 2020, Oregon passed statewide legislation decriminalizing magic mushrooms. The Pacific Northwest state is also building a framework for regulating legal therapeutic use of psilocybin, becoming the first jurisdiction in the world to do so.

More recently, cities in California, Washington, Colorado, Michigan, and Massachusetts have followed suit by decriminalizing shrooms. To be clear, decriminalization doesn’t mean legalization. It simply means you won't be prosecuted for possession.

An international push for a reclassification of psilocybin is also gaining steam. Could psychedelic therapy be the next big trend in mental health treatment? If regulations further ease up, I think it absolutely could.

Fun fact: your arm is ~10X longer than the distance between your eyes. Even more fun fact: you can use this anatomical dynamic to estimate the distance between yourself and any distant object (e.g., the top of a hill, or your car parked down the street).

Here's how to apply this hack:

1. Hold your arm straight out with your thumb up.
2. Close one eye and align your thumb with the distant object.
3. Switch eyes (but don’t move your thumb). Your thumb will seem to change position.
4. Estimate how far your thumb moved sideways - for example, the length of a car (about 15 feet long). Google will tell you the length of any given object!
5. Multiply that length by 10 to estimate how far away the object is.

With a little practice, you can impress your friends at this weekend's BBQ by seamlessly rattling off thumb-jump estimates.

1. You laugh that cats love boxes, but if a huge box was in your room, you’d go in it.
2. Nighttime is the natural state of the universe. Daytime is only caused by a nearby, radiating star.
3. An underrated perk of being an adult is that you no longer outgrow your clothes.
4. The only part of your reflection you can lick is your tongue.
5. Crust is bread armor.

Mary Anne Radmacher: “Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’”

Today I learned that cucumbers used to be called “cowcumbers” because they were seen as little better than trash and only fit for animal fodder. (more here)

operose [ op-er-ose] - adjective
involving great labor; tedious
The operose climb up the mountain required months of training.

Q: How long do elephant pregnancies last?
A: (see below next section)