Good morning and welcome to Thursday. While reading through yesterday’s poll responses, we were struck by the sheer number of intelligent, thoughtful, understanding, and non-vitriolistic replies to a question that’s generated so much… erm… passion over the past couple of years.

Our first thought: It’s pretty cool that so many people like this exist in the world.

Our second thought: In today’s divisive age, how frickin’ amazing is it that all these awesome people with different opinions trust us for their news?!

Tl;dr: Y’all rock & we love you. Have an amazing day. ❤️

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.99 minutes to read. Then get ready to test your knowledge of the emoji language.

"The merit of all things lies in their difficulty."

–Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)

⚡️ European scientists working in the UK announced a new record for generating and sustaining the holy grail of renewable energy: nuclear fusion.

• Their experiment at the Joint European Torus (👆) in Oxford produced a record ~11 megawatts of energy for five seconds, breaking the previous record of 4 MW set in 1997.
• While that isn’t a huge amount of energy – about enough to boil 60 kettles’ worth of water – the scientists said their experiments are proof that a far bigger and more powerful fusion machine being built in the south of France, called ITER, should achieve its goal of net-positive energy after it goes live in 2025.
• ITER’s aim is to eventually produce a tenfold return on energy (i.e, put 50 MW in, get 500 MW back). For context, 500 MW is enough to power ~325,000 homes.

👀 Looking ahead… If all goes well with ITER, the next step is to build a European fusion power plant that hooks up to the electricity grid.

+Zoom out: In recent years, investors have poured money into several different projects attempting to build the first commercially relevant fusion reactor that produces net-positive energy, including a Chinese ‘artificial sun’ reactor, and a custom design from MIT-spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

+Fun fact: Besides being a safe, emission-free source of power, nuclear fusion is also extremely attractive due to the fact that one pound of fuel contains roughly 4 million times as much energy as a pound of coal, oil, or gas.

🦞 Northeast: New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts yesterday joined Delaware, Connecticut, and New Jersey in announcing an end to mask mandates for schools and other indoor locations in the coming weeks.

🏜️ West: Health officials in California this week said they’re lifting the statewide indoor mask mandate starting February 15, Oregon committed to doing so “no later than March 31,” and Nevada is expected to announce the end of its mandate later today.

🏭 Midwest: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he plans to lift the state’s indoor mask mandate by the end of this month.

🏛️ Federal gov’t: NIAID head Dr. Anthony Fauci said yesterday that the US is “certainly heading out of” the full-blown pandemic phase and signaled federal Covid restrictions could end as early as this year.

🌍 International: UK PM Boris Johnson is planning to end the country’s remaining virus restrictions this month, a growing number of Canadian provinces have moved to lift some of their Covid precautions, and Italy this week began loosening restrictions on people who are vaccinated.

+Dig deeper: From the Left | From the Right | The 360º View: Endemic or Pandemic?

🛰💥 SpaceX is in the process of losing 40 of the 49 brand-new Starlink internet satellites it launched last week, according to an update released yesterday. The cause? A geomagnetic storm.

• Geomagnetic storms occur when intense solar wind near Earth spawns shifting currents and plasmas in Earth's magnetosphere, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center.
• In simpler terms, the sun sneezed (erupted) on January 30. When its particles reached Earth they warmed the upper atmosphere, which in turn led to up to 50% more drag being exerted upon the satellites. Think: running uphill into a heavy wind.
• SpaceX intentionally releases Starlink batches in a low orbit to launch more at a time, and so that any malfunctions after launch will result in the satellite quickly deorbiting and burning up in the atmosphere – not colliding with something else in space or falling all the way to the Earth.

+The big picture: Starlink’s goal is to provide high-speed internet to people anywhere on the planet via a network of satellites. Around 2,000 Starlink satellites have already been launched and, depending on how regulatory approval goes, there could eventually be about 40,000 more.

The company is currently taking preorders; Musk recently said more than 100,000 satellite internet terminals have been shipped to customers in 14 countries.

But Starlink has been criticized by astronomers, who say the high number of satellites crossing the night sky can leave streaks in telescope views. SpaceX is currently working to limit the satellites’ impact on the astronomy community.

+Dig deeper: Everything you need to know about Starlink.

There aren’t many mannequins that look like Kim. And let’s face it, most of us don’t exactly look like mannequins either.

🤔 So how do celebs with less common body types get such perfect-fitting jeans?

Easy! They get tailor-made jeans. Unfortunately for most of us, this isn’t practical for two reasons:

1. They’re expensive.
2. It can be hard to find a quality tailor!

🙌 Luckily, our friends at unspun are changing the game. Their 3D modeling tech designs a bespoke pair of jeans guaranteed to fit you perfectly.

So how does it work? Honestly, it couldn’t be simpler:

• Take a body scan with your iPhone
• Customize the details however you like
• Sit back and wait for the best pair of jeans you’ve ever worn to arrive😎

👖 unspun is so confident in their product, they’ll give you a full refund if these aren’t your favorite jeans. They also cover tweaks and adjustments at no cost.

Every person’s body is beautiful in its own way. Give yours the fit it deserves with unspun jeans.

Click here to jump to the front of the waitlist and get 20% off!

🇩🇪 Germany has jumped out to an early gold medal lead in the ongoing Beijing Winter Games. Here’s what else you may have missed:

• Snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis, 36, won Team USA's first gold medal of the Games yesterday in the women’s snowboard cross event. 
• Chloe Kim won Team USA's second gold, securing the halfpipe's top podium spot for a second consecutive Games. She's the first woman to win two Olympic gold medals in the event.
• Figure skating: American Nathan Chen set a world record in the short program on his way to a gold medal in the individual competition. Separately, 15-year-old Kamila Valiyeva of Russia became the first woman to successfully land not only one, but two quadruple jumps at the Olympics. (Video)
• Shaun White qualified for the halfpipe final that kicks off tonight at 8:30 pm ET; it’ll be the legendary snowboarder’s final competition of his career.

+Mystery abounds: The team figure skating awards ceremony was postponed on short notice Tuesday due to “an emerging issue”; reports have surfaced that a member of the gold-medal-winning Russian Olympic Committee received a positive drug test; the US clinched silver in the event while Japan won bronze and Canada placed fourth.

+Fun fact: Since Russia is technically banned from the Olympics this year, whenever an athlete from the Russian Olympic Committee wins gold, the opening to Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 is played instead of the Russian national anthem.

💬 Quoted… "We've tasked the House Administration Committee to review the options that members are putting forth… We'll go forward with what the consensus is."

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the chamber is looking into proposals to ban lawmakers and their spouses from trading stocks; she also insisted any such law needs “to be government-wide,” specifically mentioning Supreme Court justices. 

From the Left | From the Right | The 360º View on Congress Trading Stocks

🔢 Stats of the day: Pfizer/BioNTech's Covid vaccine brought in $36.8 billion last year, an all-time record for a single pharmaceutical product.

• Pfizer projects its vaccine will earn another $32 billion this year and its new Covid pill, Paxlovid, will earn at least $22 billion.

🤯 Did you know?… Admission to the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, TX, is free if your first, middle, or last name is ‘Lyndon.’

📖 Worth a read… There Are Too Many Video Games → (The Bottom Feeder)

• 👆 The winner of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award for 2021.
• 🏦 Susan Collins, a University of Michigan economist, was selected to lead the Boston Fed; she'll be the first Black woman to head a regional reserve bank.
• 💪 MIT scientists created a new type of plastic that's twice as strong as steel.
• 🎬 🎮 The movie and gaming rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are coming up for auction; they’re projected to fetch at least $2 billion.
• 🌉 The Ambassador Bridge remained partially blocked yesterday due to Canadian trucker protests, with traffic only open in the US-bound lane. (From the Left | From the Right)

+Clickbait: The best mountain holiday destinations in the world.

The pandemic is already ‘over’ – “It’s over because people are done with it. Yes, there will still be lingering infections and deaths, but it’s been two years of lockdowns, rules, masking, and social distancing. At some point, which we have crossed, the means are more damaging than the ends.”

Sometime this year – “I am personally vaxxed and boosted and the information and resources are out there for people to protect themselves and carry on with their lives. In my opinion, it’s now each individual’s responsibility to do that.”

Sometime in 2023 – “Looking at past pandemics, after omicron, there should only be one or two more variants. It’ll take us through to the end of this year and beginning of next year and then I believe this should be over as the virus reaches equilibrium.”

In 2024 or later – “Many poorer under-developed countries do not have access to the vaccine. It’s going to require a coordinated global response to get this virus under control and prevent future variants from cropping up.”

+Bonus: Here are the results from when we last asked this question in November 2021. 👇

Note on sample size: We received 4,739 responses. 👏🥳 Some may have been lightly edited for grammar or clarity.

Imagine: You're going for a nice drive through a quaint Ontario neighborhood when all of a sudden you see THIS⬆️ .

That's not a blow-up decoration – the 10-foot bear is made entirely out of snow. ❄️

🐻 Meet the mastermind... Rob Lanteigne built the "Love Bear" as an early Valentine's Day present for his wife, Tina.

• It's visible from the nearest highway and quickly became the neighborhood's most popular attraction.
• "Next year, I'm sure there will be something bigger," Tina told Global News. "He always goes above and beyond!"

Translate the emoji strings below into their corresponding well-known phrases.

1. 🐠🦈2️⃣🍳
2. ❌😴4️⃣😈
3. 🎬✌️💃💃
4. 🙅‍♀️🍵

(answers at the bottom of the email)

What’s the rarest human blood type?

A) O negative

B) B positive

C) O positive

D) AB negative

(keep scrolling for the answer)

Check out our referral prizes you can get just for introducing people you know to this newsletter. 👇

Here’s your unique link to copy & send to anyone you think would like the DONUT:

Dose of Knowledge:

D) AB negative

• Roughly 0.6% of the US population has type AB negative.
• Thankfully, demand for this type of blood is low, so hospitals don’t struggle to find enough donors like they do with other blood types such as the ‘universal donor,’ O negative.

Emoji Quiz:

1. Bigger fish to fry
2. No rest for the wicked
3. Takes two to tango
4. Not my cup of tea