Good morning and welcome to Groundhog Day. Every year on this day, all eyes turn to Punxsutawney Phil in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Quick reminder:

• If he sees his shadow: six more weeks of winter ☃️
• If he doesn’t see his shadow: it’s about to be an early spring 🌻

But while he may be far-and-away the most popular, Punxsutawney Phil isn’t the only weather-predicting groundhog in town. So we’d like to give a shoutout to some of the unsung heroes on this holiday: Staten Island Chuck of Staten Island, NY, Thistle the Whistlepig of Cleveland, and Jimmy the Groundhog of Sun Prairie, WI, to name a few.

👏👀🕳 Let’s show ‘em some love.

⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today's news takes 4.16 minutes to read. Then it’s the fun stuff.

Life reflects your own thoughts back to you."

–Napoleon Hill (1883-1970)

🍽🐋 For the first time in history, orcas were recorded killing and eating the world’s largest mammal, the blue whale. There were prior reports of killer whales chasing blue whales; however, no attacks – or details of how the animals operate – have been officially documented until now.

(WARNING: Some of the following details are fairly graphic. Nature can be gnarly.)

• One big detail revealed by the recently published paper: killer whales will hunt healthy adult blue whales, not just calves. Blue whale adults are usually between 70-80 feet long and can weigh up to 300,000 pounds.
• Another find to come from the paper: orcas are strong independent females that don’t need no man. It was previously thought that in order to take down a blue whale, male orcas had to actively participate – but at least two of the three documented attacks were female-led.
• The researchers were also the first to officially document orcas’ finishing moves. In the first attack, three female killer whales lined up side-by-side to ram the blue whale underwater while two others attacked its head. Another one swam inside its mouth and started eating its tongue, which is nutritionally dense (this happened in at least one other attack, too).

😬 The bottom line: While the paper is fascinating and expands our knowledge of orcas, three attacks is still a small sample size. And as Dr. Peter Richardson, head of ocean recovery at the Marine Conservation Society UK, told The Guardian: “...This behaviour has perhaps been going on for centuries out in the open ocean where it’s difficult to study.”

+Go deeper:

• Some scientists say killer whales feed on mammals as the opportunity presents itself, and we could be witnessing a return to centuries-past behavior as blue whale populations recover from whaling. There’s actually a sailor’s legend about “Old Tom”, an orca ​​who spent almost four decades in the early 1900s helping fishermen catch baleen whales off the coast of Australia.
• There were estimated to have been 300,000 blue whales before whaling. Now there may be 15,000 to 20,000, with numbers believed to be increasing.

+Captured on video: Watch the orcas hunt.

+Go even deeper: Learn more about killer whales, the apex marine predator.

🏈🐐 Tom Brady is officially calling it quits. The undisputed greatest QB of all time confirmed the news in an Instagram post yesterday, three days after reports of his retirement first surfaced.

• Since being drafted 199th overall in 2000, Brady won a record seven Super Bowls – three more than any other QB in history – and also broke most of the prominent league passing records (including yards, TDs, and wins).
• He’s also going out at arguably the top of his game. Brady led the entire league in passing yards and TDs last season, and his 485 completions set an all-time NFL record. He’s a strong candidate for league MVP, which will be announced February 12.
• Brady’s 35 playoff wins are by far the most since 2000. Excluding his Patriots and Bucs, the next best team is the Ravens with just 16 total playoff victories since then.

+Better with age: Brady recorded five consecutive 4,000-yard seasons after turning 40. Hall of Fame QBs Troy Aikman, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Montana, Joe Namath, Ken Stabler, Roger Staubach, and Steve Young combined for three such seasons in their entire careers.

+What’s next?... Brady has a host of new ventures to occupy his newfound free time, including a new apparel company, a new NFT business, a new content company, and his existing TB12 lifestyle brand – plus a wife and three kids.

+Go deeper: Brady’s three distinct Hall of Fame careers.

🏢 Virtual property sales, aka sales of real estate in the metaverse, topped $500 million last year, according to MetaMetric Solutions. At its current pace, that number could reach nearly $1 billion in 2022.

• So far, sales have been mainly concentrated around the “Big Four” metaverses: Sandbox, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, and Somnium.
• Each of these virtual 3D worlds contains a finite number of plots, all of varying sizes. There are a grand total of 268,645 unique parcels across the four platforms.
• Users in charge of these plots can create virtual cities with custom animations, transactions, advertisements, and zoning laws.

+Get ready for virtual vacations: In late November, Republic Realm paid a record $4.3 million for land in Sandbox, the largest metaverse of the Big Four. The ​​company is developing 100 "Fantasy Islands", complete with their own villas and a related market of boats and jet skis. 90 of the islands sold on the first day for $15,000... and some are now going for $100,000+.

+Looking ahead… A recent report from crypto asset manager Grayscale projects the digital world will grow into a $1 trillion business in the near future.

😎 Hey listen, it’s ok. A lot of us miss the mark on resolutions. The important thing is not to beat ourselves up over it. We need to have our own backs!

🌳But, as the saying goes: “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second-best time is now.”

And if you’re ready to get serious, a great way to increase productivity AND happiness is to start journaling.

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The best part is you can feel good about your purchase – and not just because you’re investing in yourself. With every journal sold, one journal gets donated to a person in need.

• The Scribes have donated over ten thousand journals so far, thousands of which went to students in Honduras and impoverished areas of New York City.👍

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💬 Quoted… “I was an Elon Musk fan and knew he had a jet… so I was interested in where he was going — it seems others are too.”

• Context: A UCF freshman created a Twitter bot that tracks Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s private jet using public data, leading Musk to offer him $5,000 to delete the account, citing safety concerns.
• The student said yesterday that Musk eventually blocked him on Twitter after he countered the billionaire’s offer by asking for $50,000 or an internship at Tesla.

🔢 Stat of the day… Leading NFT marketplace OpenSea is limiting how many times a user can create (or "mint") an NFT for free. Why? More than 80% of the items created for free were fraud or spam.

📋 Survey of the day… More than half of US teachers (55%) are planning to leave the profession sooner than they had originally planned, according to a recent poll by the nation's largest teachers union.

• 80% of educators report that unfilled job openings have led to more work obligations for those left, and 90% say that feeling burned out is a serious problem.

📖 Worth a read… ​​Is Old Music Killing New Music? → (The Atlantic)

• 👆 America’s gross national debt topped $30 trillion for the first time on Tuesday.
• 🎵📈 “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Encanto became the first Disney song to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 since “A Whole New World” from Aladdin in 1993.
• ➗ Google-parent Alphabet announced a 20-for-1 stock split to make its shares more accessible to smaller traders; the company also posted strong earnings yesterday; shares were up as much as 8% in after-hours trading.
• 🏫 At least a dozen historically Black colleges and universities closed campus or canceled classes yesterday due to bomb threats on the first day of Black History Month.
• 🌊➡🎢 SeaWorld made an unsolicited $3.4 billion acquisition offer to amusement park operator Cedar Fair (which owns Cedar Point); Cedar Fair previously rejected a $4 billion offer from Six Flags in 2019 for being too low.

+Lonely hearts: 💔 Americans lost over $343 million to romance scams in the first three quarters of 2021, per an analysis by Atlas VPN. (Read more | What are romance scams?)

As millions of Americans prepare for another major winter storm projected to hit the central US starting today, we’re taking a look at the recent uptick in extreme weather events across America and whether they can be attributed to climate change.

❄️ In the Northeast: The hurricane-level blizzard this past weekend that dumped up to 30 inches of snow is consistent with research showing how winter storms are changing along with the climate.

• The Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest-warming ocean regions on Earth. As water temperatures continue to rise, more moisture is added to the atmosphere. This in turn causes an increase in heavy precipitation events.
• A majority of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast's biggest snowstorms on record have occurred over the past few decades. 
• Including Saturday's storm, six of Boston's top 10 snowstorms have occurred since 2003, with similar trends observed in NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC.

✋ Yes, but… ‘On record’ isn't very long when talking about the Earth’s history. The NOAA only has detailed climate data for the US dating back to 1895 – a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions of years that Earth has been habitable.

• Those skeptical of a connection between climate change and increased precipitation argue there may be other factors at play that can’t be accurately captured over such a relatively short period of time.

🌀 Moving South… A recent study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications found major hurricanes in the North Atlantic (aka the Southeast US) have become more frequent over the past 150 years.

• The study’s author said one possible explanation could be changes in ocean currents due to global warming, but also said factors other than climate change could be influencing the hurricane count.

🏜️ Out West: Extended droughts have long been a feature of the western US. But many climate experts warn that rising temperatures are making things worse, with more frequent heatwaves also leading to a record number of wildfires in recent years.

• During 1984–2000, records show 1.69 million acres burned across 11 western states.
• That number doubled to ~3.35 million acres during 2001–2018.
• In 2020 alone, the total burned area jumped to 8.8 million acres.

✋ Yes, but… Land use and forest management also play a significant role in wildfire risk. Some policymakers argue that poor practices in these areas are largely to blame for the recent uptick, citing statistics showing more than 80% of US wildfires are caused by humans.

How would you characterize the link between recent extreme weather events and climate change?

Undeniable

Strong

Weak

Nonexistent

Unsure/Other

+Note: A written response isn't required – all you need to do is click one of the links above and your vote is recorded. Poll results and the best comments for each response will be featured in tomorrow's newsletter.

Maddie Barber was only thirteen when she was diagnosed with brain cancer. After fighting the disease for eight months, the teen is thankfully in remission; she credits St. Jude's Children's Hospital for saving her life. 

Now 17, the animal lover has since developed a passion for raising livestock for shows.  

🐷 Paying it forward... At her most recent show, Maddie decided to donate all the money her livestock raised to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. 

Before long, the donations started pouring in – and boy, did they pour in. Maddie typically counts on earning between $1,000-$2,500 per show, but by the end of the day she had raised over $30,000.

•  “St. Jude, they saved my life," she told KSAT. "So I owe them my life."

Which word has the most official definitions in the English language?

A) Run

B) Stand

C) Take

D) Go

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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A) Run

There’s some debate surrounding the first place position of "run."

• Since the Oxford English Dictionary hasn’t been updated since 1989 – and won’t be again until 2037 – the record holder for most meanings in English is technically “set”, with 430 different definitions.
• But that doesn’t take into account the development of language in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, when “run” exploded onto the scene. A recent New York Times article places its total number of definitions at 645.