Good morning and welcome to Thursday. It’s hard for the story behind the making of The Room – the infamous so-bad-it’s-good movie portrayed in The Disaster Artist – to get any better… but listen to THIS.

The character Mark (oh, hi Mark) was named after actor Matt Damon, whose name writer/director/lead actor Tommy Wiseau misheard in conversation.

Mark Damon. It’s got a nice ring to it.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.94 minutes to read.

"Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You'll find they haven't half the strength you think they have."

–Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993)

🇺🇦 After the seventh day of fighting, Ukrainian defenses were still holding in all major urban areas under attack, with the exception of a Russian advance north of Crimea that took control of Kherson (pop. ~320,000) yesterday afternoon.

• Ukrainian and Russian officials signaled that they’d be open to a second round of peace talks yesterday as Russian airstrikes continued to bombard Ukraine’s two largest cities; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said bombings must stop for talks to continue.
• For the first time, Russia’s Defense Ministry acknowledged that it took losses, saying 498 Russian troops were killed compared to 2,870 Ukrainian soldiers. 
• Ukraine hasn’t released military casualties, but says its forces have killed 5,480 Russian troops. Officials placed the civilian death toll at more than 2,000. None of these claims have been independently verified.
• Ukrainian authorities on Tuesday said an assassination plot targeting President Volodymyr Zelensky was foiled after they were tipped off by Russian officials who don’t support the war.
• The UN General Assembly voted 141 to 5 to condemn Russia’s invasion in a largely symbolic rebuke of President Vladimir Putin.
• Major tech firms including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta and Roku have removed Russia’s state-backed RT network from their platforms in recent days.
• Europe’s Central Bank ordered the European arm of Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia, to close after its shares on the London Exchange fell 94+% to trade at $0.01.

✈️ Move over, Elon… The college student who gained notoriety for tracking the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s private jet is now tracking the private jets of Russian oligarchs.

+The latest news: From the Left | From the Right

🗳️ The first elections of the 2022 midterm season were held in Texas on Tuesday. Voters headed to the polls to decide matchups for statewide offices like governor and attorney general, along with Texas’ 38 congressional districts.

• To win a primary outright, candidates must receive at least 50% of the vote; if that condition isn’t met, the top two finishers go head-to-head in a runoff election in May.
• Primaries are important in Texas, where new maps drawn last year by the state legislature reduced the overall number of competitive districts. According to FiveThirtyEight, 36 out of Texas’ 38 congressional races were effectively decided on Tuesday, or will be in the May runoffs.
• Current GOP Gov. Greg Abbot (☝️ left) and Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke (right) cruised to victory in their respective primaries and will face each other in the November general election.
• Republican AG Ken Paxton was forced into a runoff election by state Land Commissioner George P. Bush, the nephew of George W. and grandson of George H.W., despite an endorsement from former President Trump.
• On the Democratic side, nine-term Rep. Henry Cuellar was forced into a runoff by progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros, who garnered endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

🇺🇸 Zoom out: Presidential approval ratings are usually a good indicator of what will happen in the midterms.

There's plenty of time for things to change between now and November – but if elections were held today, 47% of registered voters would support a generic Republican congressional candidate in their district versus 43% for Democrats, per RCP.

+Dig deeper: From the Left | From the Right

+Be in the know: Learn about the strategy for winning primaries here (aka “The Primary Problem”).

Amazon is shutting down a large amount of its retail experiments, the company announced yesterday, including all 68 of its brick-and-mortar bookstores, pop ups, and shops carrying toys and home goods in both the US and UK. (Question: When the shops die, will they go to the Amazon cloud?)

🏬 Background… After opening its first bookstore in 2015, Amazon has tried out an array of retail concepts: convenience stores without cashiers, supermarkets and "4-star," an attempt to meld in-store and offline operations by featuring its top-selling online products in-store, but their growth has lagged the company’s overall retail business.

📸 The big picture: The e-commerce/cloud/advertising/fill-in-the-blank giant is coming off its slowest growth rate for any quarter since 2001. Shares are down more than 8% so far this year, and the company was the worst performing FAANG stock last year.

• According to a spokesperson, Amazon “remains committed” to building long-term retail concepts and tech, so its experiments will continue. It recently announced plans to open a fashion store in greater LA where algorithms suggest what to try on.

... but now, she listens!”

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Should the T. rex actually be three separate species?? The answer is yes, according to a study published this week in the peer-reviewed Journal of Evolutionary Biology... but not everyone's on the same page.

🦖 Background: Tyrannosaurus rex (“tyrant lizard king”) roamed North America around 76 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. It could be as long as 46 feet, as tall as 12 feet and weigh up to 19,500 pounds – and thanks to Jurassic Park, we can all picture one chasing us.

• Scientists have recognized differences in T. rex skeletons for some time, most notably the femur in similarly-sized individuals and specimens with either one or two incisor teeth at the front sides of their jaw.
• These differences were mostly chalked up to sexual dimorphism (when a male and female of the same species have different appearances) or the fossils being individuals at different stages of development.

🎤 Mic drop... But this week, a group of three researchers led by Baltimore-based paleontologist Gregory Paul said the widely-known variations are enough to warrant two brand new species: T. imperator, meaning "tyrant lizard emperor," and T. regina, meaning "tyrant lizard queen” (king, emperor, queen – got it).

✋ Yes, but: Other paleontologists not involved in the study pushed back on its conclusions, and the study’s authors themselves acknowledged their work would be controversial.

• "Ultimately, to me, this variation is very minor and not indicative of meaningful biological separation of distinct species," said University of Edinburgh paleontologist Steve Brusatte.
• “It’s just shades of gray and shapes in clouds—there’s no validity here at all,” said tyrannosaur expert Thomas Carr, a paleontologist at Carthage College in Wisconsin.

• ☝️ Former Nascar driver Tony Stewart put his 415-acre Indiana home on the market for $30 million, making it the most expensive listing in the state.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📈🛢️ US stocks had a great day across the board (Dow: +1.8% | S&P: +1.9% | Nasdaq: +1.6%); oil surged 7% to eclipse $110 per barrel for the first time since 2014.
• 🚗 Ford will divide into two separate businesses: Ford Blue, which will handle internal combustion engine vehicles, and Ford Model E, which will focus on EVs.
• 📉❄️ Shares of Snowflake dropped as much as 30% in after-hours trading yesterday after the cloud computing company reported earnings.
• 💰 Fanatics raised $1.5 billion at a $27 billion valuation, per the WSJ, up from $18 billion last August.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚽ HBO Max will have live sports starting in 2023; the network signed an eight-year, $200 million deal with US Soccer to broadcast the men’s and women’s national team matches.
• 🎭 TikTok announced “Stapleview,” the first sketch comedy show produced for the platform.
• 📚 Dr. Seuss Enterprises is creating a new line of children's books inspired by original and never-before-published sketches from Seuss himself.
• 🇬🇧 Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is selling the Chelsea Football Club following threats from the UK to sanction him over his connections with Putin.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• ☄️ Geologists confirmed the discovery of a mile-wide asteroid crater in northeast China; its impact ~50,000 years ago was possibly witnessed by early humans.
• 🛰️ Russian space agency Roscosmos is refusing to launch the next batch of 36 OneWeb internet satellites unless the UK government sells its stake in the company (which Britain said is not happening).

BEST OF THE REST

• 📱🏛️ A bipartisan coalition of state AGs launched an investigation into TikTok over whether and how the video-sharing platform harms children; it's similar to an ongoing Instagram probe.
• 🍎 Apple's first event of 2022, called "Peek Performance," will be held virtually on March 8 (next Tuesday); it’s expected to feature a new iPhone SE and an updated iPad Air.
• 🎡💰 Check out this Wheel of Fortune round for the ages.
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💬 Quoted… “We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets. We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.”

At Tuesday night’s SOTU, President Biden announced “KleptoCapture,” a Department of Justice task force dedicated to seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs with the help of US allies and partners.

• To escape Western sanctions, several megayachts owned by Russian billionaires are headed toward Montenegro and the Maldives, where they could be harder to seize.
• German authorities have reportedly taken possession (Forbes; paywalled) of the 512-foot megayacht belonging to Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov.

🔢 Stat of the Day... The average hourly rate for a babysitter in the US rose 11% last year to $20.57, outpacing inflation.

🤯 Did You Know?… McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle was sung by Justin Timberlake and co-written by Pharrell.

📖 Worth a Read… Say Goodbye and Move On: The Art of the Farewell Email → (WSJ)

Deploy troops to Ukraine and defend it from further invasion – “I don't see Putin stopping with Ukraine. Eventually he will try to take a country with whom we have closer ties. While we may not have an obligation to do so, it’s ultimately in our best interest to stop Putin now.”

Stay out of any military conflict, but keep imposing sanctions on Russia – “We should continue to fully support our NATO allies. If we set foot in Ukraine, we will NOT have NATO support in a war with Russia. While I support Ukraine's sovereignty, a world war can cost untold numbers of lives. We would ALL lose.”

Nothing, it’s not our problem – We received zero written responses for this option.

Unsure/Other – “Sanctions do nothing, and military involvement only catastrophically raises the number of civilian casualties. The only response here is easing passage for Ukrainian refugees and loudly calling for peace from both sides.”

+Note on sample size: We received 5,671 responses. Some may have been lightly edited for grammar or clarity.

📊 BONUS: Results from when we asked this same question last week, before Russia launched its full-scale invasion. 👇

A two-year-old dog named Sarah Jane has been credited with saving her human's life after the 81-year-old wheelchair user fell into a lake. 

🌊 An unexpected swim... Harry Smith was going for a walk along a local pond when his wheelchair lost traction in the mulch, flipping him straight into the lake.

• He was struggling to stay afloat when Sarah Jane began to bark, attracting the attention of two bystanders who quickly ran over to help. 
• With aid from a nearby police officer, they were able to pull Harry out of the water. Luckily, he escaped the ordeal without any injuries.  

👍👍👍❌ Three Facts and a Lie… The following facts were taken from this month’s Harper Index, but there’s a catch: we completely made up one of them. Can you guess which one?

1. Half of all US adults say their physical health is “excellent”
2. 37% of people alive today have never used the internet
3. Since 2019, there’s been a 50% increase in the number of Americans aged 18 to 34 who have a will
4. 11% of US adults know someone who quit a job last year because of crypto investments

🤔 Daily Trivia: What’s the only number in English whose letters are in alphabetical order? (Hint: It’s less than 50)

keep scrolling for the answers

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:

Three Facts and a Lie:

1. One out of every 4 of US adults say their physical health is “excellent,” not half

Trivia: “Forty”