Threads is here + The planet just had its warmest week on record

Is Threads pulling out the rug from under Twitter’s feet? Within a few hours of launching, Meta’s newest app, Threads, saw mns of new users joining, including celebrities including Kim Karadashian and Jenifer Lopez, fueling expectations that Threads is well on its way to unseating Twitter, according to Reuters. The mother company’s shares were up 3% at market close yesterday before the launch, Reuters notes, as analysts see the app’s income potential with its “built-in user base and advertisement apparatus.” Instagram users can set up a Threads account with the same followers.

What puts Threads ahead of Twitter? “Our vision is to take the best parts of Instagram and create a new experience for text, ideas, and discussing what’s on your mind,” Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a video posted to his Instagram account yesterday. Besides the recent string of questionable decisions imposed on Twitter users — including capping the number of tweets users can read per day — Threads allows its users to write posts up to 500 characters long (compared to 280 characters on Twitter). Posts can also include photos, videos up to five minutes long, and links, and can be shared directly to Instagram stories, according to a Meta blog post.

The planet saw its warmest days ever this week on Monday and Tuesday with average global temperatures reaching 17.18°C, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Analyzer, the Associated Press reports. Scientists have been raising the alarm about human activities — including the burning of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and oil — that have a direct impact on world temperatures and oceans. While the figures remain unofficial, they are potent indicators to the consequences of what could happen in the near future if carbon emissions are not curbed.

The highest temperatures since 1979: While the dataset used for the unofficial record only goes back a few decades, it is nonetheless indicative of longer-lasting trends. Already, 38 mn US citizens were placed on heat alert, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s chief scientist is quoted as saying. Many locations like Peru and Quebec experienced temperatures close to 37.8°C or 1.8°C higher than the past two centuries’ average.