Good morning and welcome to Friday. On today’s docket:

• The race is on to salvage a cutting-edge fighter jet
• Get ready for some upcoming weekday weddings
• And can Mark Cuban's new venture move the needle on prescription drug prices?

⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today's news takes 4.08 minutes to read. Then it’s the fun stuff.

"The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us."

–Voltaire (1694-1778)

🛩️🌊 A race against time is underway in the South China Sea, where the US Navy is scrambling to reclaim a downed fighter jet lying at the bottom of the ocean before Chinese salvagers arrive.

• The $100 million plane is a Navy prototype of the F-35 stealth fighter jet specially modified to operate off an aircraft carrier.
• In a statement, the Navy said the pilot "safely ejected from the aircraft" after a “landing mishap” during routine flight operations on Monday, which resulted in seven injured sailors. The cause of the crash is currently under investigation.
• Since the plane sank in international waters, it’s finders keepers, meaning whichever country gets to the plane – and its highly-classified equipment – first wins.
• The Navy has refused to confirm the exact location of the aircraft’s disappearance or the length of its ongoing retrieval process, but experts say it’ll likely take at least ten days.

+From the annals: China has a history of recovering other countries’ military tech – in 1972, the Chinese military secretly salvaged a UK submarine off its eastern coast, and it's widely believed that Beijing ended up with the wreckage of an American stealth helicopter that crash-landed in the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.

⚖️ Catalonia has formally pardoned more than 700 women executed for witchcraft between the 15th and 18th centuries. The Catalonian parliament used research by the local scientific journal Sapiens and Pau Castell, a professor of modern history at the University of Barcelona, to call for the resolution.

• The move follows similar gestures in Scotland, Switzerland and Norway after more than 100 European historians signed a manifesto titled: “They weren’t witches, they were women”.
• Between 1580 and 1630, an estimated 50,000 people were condemned to death for witchcraft across Europe. About 80% were women.
• Witches were often blamed for the sudden death of children or for poor harvests, the BBC reports.
• According to Castell, witch-hunts were more common in Catalonia because rural areas came under the absolute power of feudal lords, and confession alone was sufficient proof of guilt.

+Where it all started: What’s thought to be the first European law against witchcraft was passed in Lleida in 1424. 👇

💳➡️📱 Apple is planning a new service that will let small businesses accept payments directly on their iPhones without any extra hardware, Bloomberg reports. Think: Square but without the terminal – just tap the iPhone and off-you-go.

• Apple has reportedly been working on the new feature since around 2020, when it paid ~$100 million for Canadian startup Mobeewave.
• Mobeewave developed technology for smartphones to accept payments with the tap of a credit card. The startup was backed by Samsung before being acquired by Apple, and had previously implemented payment acceptance with a tap on Samsung devices in 2019.
• Important to note: It’s still not known when – or even if – the feature will be rolling out, though Bloomberg’s sources say it could become available via software update in the next few months.

+Zoom out: Square, helmed by CEO Jack Dorsey, is currently the dominant player in the point-of-sale systems industry with a ~35% market share. But its existing solution requires an accessory connected to the iPhone that handles the contactless connection, and that could be a problem if the feature already comes pre-installed on the device. The company’s shares closed down 3% on the news.

+Also: Apple is reportedly working on a service for Apple Pay that would let people buy things and pay them off later in installments.

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🏈 The AFC and NFC Championship Games take place this Sunday – and they’ve got some hype to live up to, coming on the heels of arguably the greatest football playoff weekend in NFL history.

Here’s what you need to know:

• The Bengals will face the Chiefs in Kansas City in the first game starting at 3 ET on Sunday, while the Rams play host to the 49ers at 6:30 ET.
• All four of last week’s games saw double-digit increases in viewership compared to the previous year, with the Chiefs-Bills OT thriller drawing 43 million average viewers (and a peak of 52 million). It was the most-watched US TV event since last year’s Super Bowl.
• The Rams have struggled with home attendance all year, and this Sunday looks to be no different. Only LA-area residents were allowed to purchase tickets through the team’s website or Ticketmaster in an effort to block SF fans from scooping them up.
• But no such restrictions have been enacted on secondary markets like StubHub or TickPick. Current projections show the stands will be 65% filled with 49ers fans, per the LA Times, despite a campaign from Rams players urging ticket holders not to re-sell.

+Long shot: Before the season started, the Bengals had the third-worst Super Bowl odds in the entire league (+15000; bet $100 to win $15K).

+Comeback kid: With Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs are 3-1 in the playoffs when their in-game win probability dips below 5%. The rest of the NFL is 1-38 over the same timeframe.

+Other NFL news: QB Ben Roethlisberger is retiring after 18 seasons and two Super Bowl wins with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

💬 Quoted… “This, I think, has the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business over time. If you think about the economy, the foundation of the economy is labor. Capital equipment is distilled labor. So, what happens if you don’t actually have a labor shortage? I’m not sure what an economy even means at that point. That’s what Optimus is about. So, very important.”

• Context: CEO Elon Musk said the Tesla Bot – a humanoid robot currently in development – represents the company’s “most important product” in an earnings call Wednesday.

📊 Stat(s) of the day… According to The Knot, 10% of this year’s weddings will be held on Monday–Thursday due to increased demand for weekends.

• Zoom out: There are ~2.2 million weddings in the US over a typical year. This year, that number is expected to hit 2.6 million.

🤯 Did you know?… The movie Fight Club (*SPOILER ALERT*) has a different ending in China, one where the authorities win.

• According to the author of the book the movie’s based on, Beijing’s version aligns “almost exactly with the ending of the book” instead of the other way around.

+Go deeper: China has a history of influencing key decision-makers in Hollywood.

📖 Worth a read… ​​The Most Hated Device in Your Home Gets an Upgrade → (WSJ)

• 👆 Yesterday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Check out some photos from memorial ceremonies around the world.
• 📈 The US economy grew at its fastest rate in 37 years in 2021, according to newly-released Commerce Department data.
• 📉 Robinhood stock fell 12% after hours following an earnings report that revealed a wider loss and lower projected Q1 revenue than expected.
• ⚡ Nuclear scientists published two new papers revealing the secrets behind last year’s groundbreaking fusion experiment that produced net energy for the first time ever. (Read more | Background: The Race for Nuclear Fusion)

+See-food: Cheezam, built by data scientists at Prevision.io, is a photo-based app that can identify different types of cheese.

DONUT HQ is located in the city of Austin, which has a motto: “Keep Austin Weird.” And in celebration of that sentiment, we’ve put together a little game. Here’s how it works:

The satirical IG Nobel Prizes are awarded every year to ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. The idea is to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think."

One of the following experiments did not win a 2021 IG Nobel Prize… can you guess which one it is?

1. Researchers discovered a new method for exterminating rodents on submarines
2. Scientists used genetic analysis to identify different bacteria residing in wads of discarded chewing gum stuck on pavements in various countries
3. Researchers explored why pedestrians don’t constantly collide with other pedestrians
4. Researchers explored why pedestrians do sometimes collide with other pedestrians

(keep scrolling for the answer)

Billionaire Mark Cuban this past week launched an online pharmacy for generic drugs, promising steep discounts over traditional methods.

For nearly 30 years, presidents have tried and failed to curb the price of medicines despite strong public support for the idea. Could Cuban’s venture succeed where others have failed?

💊 The deets: The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company’s strategy is to "bypass middlemen and outrageous markups" and negotiate directly with drug makers and pharmacies, according to a press release.

• In doing so, the company says its prices will reflect the actual manufacturing cost plus a flat 15% margin and pharmacist fee.
• Its website currently offers over 100 generic drugs to treat a wide range of illnesses, including diabetes, asthma, and heart conditions.
• Important to note: The MCCPDC doesn’t take insurance, so any drugs you buy through them won’t count towards your deductible.

🔢 By the numbers… The most recent stats show US prescription drug prices are more than 250% higher than the 32 other nations in the ​​Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on average.

• Many blame this discrepancy on the role of pharmacy benefit managers, aka US companies that use their wholesale power to negotiate rebates with drug manufacturers. They then pass those savings onto health insurers after keeping a portion for themselves.
• Per The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation dedicated to healthcare research and policy, there’s not much transparency into how much of the savings actually end up in your wallet.
• What’s more, current rebate incentives lead many benefit managers to favor expensive drugs rather than cheaper, more generic ones, passing the high costs on to consumers.

🏛️ On Capitol Hill: In November 2020, former President Trump implemented a plan that would peg the cost of US prescription drugs to the lowest price paid by certain OECD-member countries.

• It was set to take effect on January 1, 2021, but was blocked by several district courts and later rescinded by the Biden administration, which made reducing the cost of prescription drugs a key component of its stalled Build Back Better agenda.

Ricardo Rodriguez was devastated when his three-year-old pitbull Russ ran away in August after getting spooked while camping. 

After spending multiple days searching and calling local shelters, Ricardo was even more heartbroken when he was forced to evacuate his California home shortly after due to the wildfires. 

• Four months went by without any word, and Ricardo could only hope that someone else had found Russ and adopted him as their own. 

⏩ Fast forward... Then, on December 16, Ricardo received a call saying that his boy had been found in good health. Local rescuers had spotted Russ shivering under a tree covered in snow. With temperatures dropping below zero, they swooped in and saved the dog in the nick of time.  

• Ricardo was finally reunited with Russ shortly after Christmas. ❤️

The answer is #1. The winner discovered a new method for cockroach extermination on submarines, not rodents.

+Go deeper: Explore last year’s IG Nobel Prizes.

How many European countries have populations larger than California? (Bonus points for naming them)

A) Five

B) Six

C) Seven

D) Eight

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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C) Seven

With nearly 40 million residents, California is only eclipsed by:

• Russia (~110 million in Europe)
• Germany (84 million)
• The UK (68 million)
• France (65 million)
• Italy (60 million)
• Spain (47 million)
• Ukraine (44 million)