The annual Burning Man bacchanal in the Nevada desert returns Sunday after a two-year COVID-19 hiatus, Jennifer A. Kingson reports — this time with a team of MIT researchers conducting an experiment with implications for online social networks.

Why it matters: The arrival of about 80,000 revelers at a makeshift encampment called Black Rock City marks some sort of reassuring-yet-ironic return to normalcy.

• And the addition of a hard science project with real-world relevance highlights the event's role as a meaningful cultural phenomenon.

Driving the news: As the "Burners" arrive in Black Rock City (near Reno), MIT Media Lab researchers will hand out 600 small vessels that look like Altoids tins.

• Their goal is for people to pass them around and use the pen and paper inside to note where and when they received the item.
• "The idea is to map the networks of cooperation and serendipity at Burning Man," said Ziv Epstein, a Ph.D. student leading the experiment.
• "As these gifts are moving around Black Rock City, we're collecting this data about how they've moved," he added. "The end goal here is a map of the flow of information and gifts across Burning Man."

Epstein's Media Lab research group — called Human Dynamics — is "all about understanding human behavior through the lens of Big Data," he tells Axios.

• Findings from the experiment — called the Black Rock Atlas Project — "might actually inform the design of social networks and other kinds of stuff," he said.

The big picture: The 36-year-old festival — where people create fantastical artworks and ride bicycles festooned with LED lights — is a sociologist's delight.

• Burning Man's organizers have long supported academia, and maintain a list of scholarly papers drawn from the event.
• The most prominent was a study published in Nature Communications in May that sought to gauge the "transcendence" of the experience.
• They found that "63.2% of participants reported being at least 'somewhat' transformed, and 19.5% said they were 'absolutely' transformed."

Between the lines: The MIT team isn't alone in trying to blend art and science — and escape quotidian realities — at Burning Man.

• Ryan Sobel, a financial adviser from Denver who's attending for the first time, is part of a 27-person group that got approval for a new camp called "Consensual Abduction."
• They'll build a fire pit, a "wormhole" for guests to slide through, and a dance floor for all-night raves.
• For the event, Sobel, the group's bartender, learned to make fluorescent cocktails using Vitamin B2. "We're going to have drinks that glow, and flashlights," he said. "This will be fun."

The bottom line: Pent-up demand for fraternity, sorority and debauchery are likely to make this year's Burning Man particularly creative and memorable.

• "It'll be a very interesting time," Epstein said. "Just like with everything in the pandemic, cultural traditions kind of dry out and then get rebooted."

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Women are more likely than men to believe going public with their salary info can lead to equal pay, per new LinkedIn data, Alex Fitzpatrick reports.

Why it matters: Salary transparency advocates argue pay-sharing shines a light on inequities along gender, racial and other socioeconomic lines.

• However, cultural taboos around money make some people uncomfortable showing one another their stubs.

By the numbers: 53% of women say salary-sharing will lead to better paycheck parity, compared to 42% of men.

• Only 47% of women consider themselves well-compensated, compared to 52% of men.

Methodology: LinkedIn surveyed 23,609 professionals between June 4 and Aug. 12.

Sony’s PlayStation 5 is getting more expensive in most of the world, Axios' Stephen Totilo reports.

Driving the news: PS5 prices will increase 3%-20% in Europe, the U.K., Japan, Canada and other regions — but not in the U.S., at least for now.

What they're saying: "We're seeing high global inflation rates, as well as adverse currency trends, impacting consumers and creating pressure on many industries," PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan wrote in a blog post.

A thought bubble from Axios Markets’ Felix Salmon: The PS5 has been underpriced from launch, given the low supply and huge demand.

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Wildfires, heat waves, droughts, hurricanes — cities nationwide are bracing for peak "danger season," Bloomberg reports.

Why it matters: Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of all sorts of natural disasters that feed into one another, imperiling lives and property.

According to one expert analysis, "116 U.S. counties were under multiple types of alerts from the National Weather Service during the same week" since May, per Bloomberg.

• "Nearly three-quarters had concurrent fire weather and heat alerts, particularly along the West Coast and the Great Plains. Eighteen counties were under flood and heat alerts within the same week, and 15 had fire weather and flood alerts."

Yes, but: This year's hurricane season has been mercifully and unexpectedly calm so far — though there's still plenty of time left.

NASA's massive new Moon rocket is set for its first launch Monday, Axios Space author Miriam Kramer reports.

Why it matters: The mission, dubbed Artemis 1, could prove NASA is still on the cutting edge of human space exploration.

Catch up quick: For this mission, a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket will send an uncrewed Orion capsule on a journey around the Moon and back to Earth.

Yes, but: The rocket is billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.

• If this launch goes sideways, it could imperil NASA's lunar ambitions.

What's next: NASA hopes to use the SLS rocket and Orion capsule to deliver people to the Moon in 2025.

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