Good morning and welcome to Thursday. On today's docket:

• How does written language evolve?
• The battle for streaming supremacy 
• And Boris Johnson is in hot water

⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today's newsletter takes 5.34 thoroughly enjoyable minutes to read.

"I've always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up."

–Beverly Sills (1929-2007)

🔢 By the numbers… So far, the streaming wars have two big winners: Netflix (214M subs) and Disney (118M) – though to be fair, Amazon’s success is hard to gauge. The company said 175 million Prime members streamed shows in 2020, but their main subscription option offers more than just streaming.

Regardless, it’s still anyone’s game.

• 92% of Apple TV+ subscribers also get Netflix, as do 90% of HBO Max subscribers, 87% of Disney+’s, 85% of Hulu’s, and 84% of Amazon Prime Video’s.
• 79% of Hulu subscribers also pay for Amazon, 68% for Disney+, 38% for Apple TV+, and 32% for HBO Max.
• All in all, the average American household pays for four streaming services. (#TeamDisneyNetflixPrimeHBO, amirite?!)

🎟 Worth mentioning: The line studios are trying to walk between taking their top-end content directly to streaming services to attract more paying subscribers, and preserving the exclusive theatrical window that’s traditionally driven a bulk of their revenue.

• NBCUniversal recently announced a hybrid-distribution strategy for this upcoming year that narrows the theatrical window from 60 to 45 days on most movies and bolsters its Peacock streaming service.

📈 Zoom out: Indirect winners of this new streaming world are the locations where shows and movies are being filmed. Take the UK, for instance – the investment in making films and high-end TV shows costing at least £1 million ($1.37 million) per episode in the country last year was two-thirds more than the previous record set in pre-pandemic 2019.

+Content overload?... Half of streaming subscribers say they have a hard time deciding what to watch, according to data from Morning Consult.

🐐 Bucs QB Tom Brady ​​unveiled BRADY, his namesake apparel brand, yesterday. The shop's launch collection includes 145 items across athleisure and office casual styles, with plans to use a monthly drop schedule for new releases.

• BRADY was launched in collaboration with Jens Grede, who co-founded Kim Kardashian's shapewear line, Skims.
• This isn't Brady's first side hustle – in 2013, the star QB and his trainer Alex Guerrero launched TB12, which started as a sports therapy center but has expanded into supplements and apparel.
• Like many other sports apparel brands, BRADY boasts a roster of athlete ambassadors across several sports, including basketball, football, baseball, hockey, and tennis.
• But one difference (for now) is that the brand also features college athletes like QB Cade McNamara and tennis player Andrew Fenty, both of whom hail (✊) from Brady's alma mater, Michigan.

+It runs in the family: Brady's wife, fashion mogul Gisele Bündchen, is on-board with the idea, saying he "likes clothes more than I do" and “has great taste." (You can be the judge of that – browse the collection here.)

✍️ In a recent study, a team of researchers at Germany's Max Planck Institute showed how written language very quickly evolves to become 'compressed' for efficient reading and writing. Their work, published last week in Current Anthropology, was based on a manuscript depicting a rare African writing system called Vai.

• The Vai script of Liberia (☝️) was created from scratch in 1834 by eight completely illiterate men who were inspired by a dream and wrote in ink made from crushed berries.
• "Because of [Vai’s] isolation, and the way it has continued to develop up until the present day, we thought it might tell us something important about how writing evolves over short spaces of time," said study member and linguistic anthropologist Piers Kelly.
• Kelly and his colleagues analyzed the 200-letter alphabet of the Vai people from 1834 onwards and found it became increasingly compressed and simplified as time passed.
• These changes were far from random, the researchers explained; over generations of users, letters with the highest complexity were simplified the most. It's almost like a natural selection process where harder-to-remember features die off.

+Zoom out: Scholars generally agree the invention of writing occurred ~5,500 years ago in the Middle East, with the process being reinvented over and over again ever since. 

+Fun fact: The oldest known cave painting is a life-sized picture of a wild pig that was made at least 45,500 years ago in Indonesia.

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📈 US consumer prices increased by 7% for the twelve months ending in December, the largest yearly increase since 1982, according to the Labor Department's Consumer Price Index published yesterday.

• The core index, which excludes food and energy, jumped 5.5% last year, its highest rate of growth since 1991.
• Notable yearly increases include gasoline (+50%), used cars and trucks (+37%), and food and beverages (+6%).
• On a monthly basis, the CPI increased 0.5% in December from the preceding month, decelerating from October and November.

+Looking ahead: The Fed plans to increase interest rates to combat inflation starting in March when pandemic-era stimulus measures wind down entirely. Goldman Sachs released a report this week projecting four interest rate hikes in the coming year, one more than previously thought.

💬 Quoted… "I want to apologize… I know the rage they feel with me and the government I lead, when they think that in Downing Street itself, the rules are not being properly followed by the people who make the rules."

• Context: UK PM Boris Johnson apologized after it was revealed he attended a 'BYOB' party on the grounds of his official residence in May 2020 while the rest of the country was on lockdown. 
• Until now, Johnson had repeatedly denied the event ever took place; a pair of recent polls show as many as two-thirds of Brits think he should resign.

🏍️ Did you know?… In 1993, French electrician Emile Leray’s car broke down in the Moroccan desert miles away from the nearest town. So he did what any normal person would do in that situation – he stripped the car down and turned it into a motorcycle to escape (obviously).

📖 Worth a read… Why the Catholic Church Is Losing Latin America

• 👆 Since the 1970s, scientists have known the solar system exists inside a giant, mysterious void. Now, we finally know why – it’s the result of at least 15 powerful supernova explosions, with stars being created along the bubble’s edge as it expands.
• 🔫 Smart guns, which can only be fired by authenticated users, are likely coming to US stores this year.
• 📱 Apple removed several popular ‘Wordle’ clones from the App Store. (The official game doesn’t have an app, just a website.)
• ⚖️ Britain’s Prince Andrew will face a civil trial in New York over allegations he sexually assaulted a woman when she was 17 with the help of Jeffrey Epstein.
• 💉 The Canadian province of Quebec will implement a health tax on un-vaxxed residents; the exact amount is unclear. (From the Left | From the Right)

+Celebrity clickbait: Snoop Dogg is launching a hot dog brand named “Snoop Doggs,” and Kanye West is allegedly planning a trip to Russia.

📚 The story… Vulture reports the scam was first undercovered in early 2017, when two editors of a Swedish book publisher received an unusual email. Upon further inspection, they discovered the message – while a pretty convincing attempt to obtain an unpublished manuscript – was 100% fake.

Over the next five-ish years, the scammer used a formula of slightly tweaked email addresses and up-to-date industry lingo to successfully trick authors, agents, editors, scouts, and even judges for the Booker prize into handing over confidential info and unpublished works. (For example: the scammer used "@marsilioeditori.com" to impersonate the domain "@marsilioeditori.it")

• The scammer managed to obtain intel about upcoming projects or film rights, as well as manuscripts of highly anticipated novels by Margaret Atwood, Sally Rooney, and actor Ethan Hawke, among others.
• But no ransom or blackmail demands ever materialized. None of the books ever turned up online, and everything from celebrity releases to debut novels by unknown writers were targeted.
• Weird, huh? Some suspected the individual was a literary scout, attempting to secure information to give themself a leg up on film and television deals.

🕵️‍♀️ Mystery solved?... This past Wednesday, the FBI arrested Filippo Bernardini, an Italian citizen who worked at UK publisher Simon & Schuster. He was charged with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in a New York district court, with the indictment saying Bernardini had registered more than 160 fake internet domains to impersonate others since 2016.

• Simon & Schuster has suspended Bernardini pending further information. There is no suggestion that the publishing house is at fault and they're not named in the legal papers.

No – “In 2014, when I first learned about crypto, I did some research and read one article which essentially advised, ‘If you don’t understand it, stay out of it.’ That idea resonated with me and I decided to stick with investments I had a better understanding of.”

• “The instability of crypto really gets to me - a stash worth tens of thousands could be pennies in a matter of days. The environmental damage that crypto mining causes is also a problem.”

Yes – “I’ve been investing in crypto using traditional conservative investment principles for 5 years and have made a much higher return than investing in index funds and stocks.”

• “I’m a firm believer in Elon Musk, and he has made no doubt that crypto is going to be a spending option in the future, plus I feel like it’s an easier chance to get rich than winning the lottery!”

+Sample Size: We received 4,630 responses. 👏🥳 Some may have been lightly edited for grammar or clarity.

Four-year-old Nico Lavallée loves his stuffed deer named Rudolf. 

In fact, he rarely lets it out of his sight – so Nico was understandably distraught when, on a family walk along the Rideau Canal, his younger brother impulsively grabbed the deer and tossed the stuffie into the frozen water below. 

• Unable to reach the surface below them, the boys' mom, Brenda, heartbrokenly told Nico that Rudolf may be stuck for good. 

🦌 Holding out hope... Nico's older brother ended up saving the day when he suggested that Brenda post about the lost deer on their town's Facebook page. 

• "I didn't want to bother anyone. I don't think anyone would care," she said at first. But suggestions quickly came pouring in, and Rudolf was rescued, defrosted, and returned to Nico a few days later. 

Which of the US' Founding Fathers was the first to suggest Daylight Savings Time?

A) Thomas Jefferson

B) George Washington

C) Benjamin Franklin

D) John Adams

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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C) Benjamin Franklin (s/o National Treasure)