Good morning and welcome to Friday the 13th. Today’s pro tip: Probably don’t walk under a ladder.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.12 minutes to read.

"If you don't find the time, if you don't do the work, you don't get the results."

–Arnold Schwarzenegger (b. 1947)

Finland’s leaders said yesterday that they’re in favor of swiftly applying for membership to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance between the US, Canada, and 28 other European nations.

• A few steps still remain before the formal application process can begin, but the joint announcement by Finland’s president and prime minister means the country’s NATO membership is all-but-guaranteed.
• Its Nordic neighbor, Sweden, is also expected to apply shortly; both countries hope to join the military alliance as soon as this summer.

🌍 Background… Unlike Switzerland, which historically has remained “neutral” and refused to join any military conflict, Finland and Sweden have traditionally thought of themselves as militarily “nonaligned” – i.e., willing to engage in a war, but not bound to defend any other nation. Both countries committed troops to recent military missions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.

• Support for NATO membership in Finland has hovered around 20-30% for years. It currently stands at over 75% following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with similar numbers also seen in Sweden.

📸 Big picture: Finland has the longest border with Russia in the entire EU (830 miles). Its admittance into NATO would more than double the alliance's borders with Russia – a longtime fear of President Vladimir Putin, who has said one of his reasons for invading Ukraine was to prevent a neighboring country from joining NATO.

• Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement yesterday sharply criticizing Finland’s decision, warning that Moscow “will be forced to take retaliatory steps, both of a military-technical and other nature.”

Plants have been shown to grow in lunar soil for the first time, according to a peer-reviewed study published in Communications Biology yesterday.

🤿 A deeper dive… Researchers at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences were able to secure moon rocks that NASA brought back from past Apollo missions.

• They planted thale cress, a member of the mustard family, in that lunar soil, added a little bit of nutrients, water and light, then sat back to watch what happened.
• The result: 100% of the seeds planted in moon dirt sprouted.

✋ Yes, but: After the first week, the plants in lunar soil were so stressed by the environment that they grew much more slowly than their control group counterparts. Which isn’t exactly a surprise.

Moon dirt is full of microscopic glass fragments from meteorite impacts that got everywhere in the Apollo lunar landers; it even wore down the spacesuits of the moonwalkers. And though there’s potentially things that can be done to reduce its harshness (adding nutrients to the ground, utilizing newer lunar soil, etc.), the researchers threw the test group to the wolves and planted the seeds with mostly no treatment at all.

🌕🌱 The bottom line: According to Robert Ferl, co-author of the study: “A major takeaway is that lunar plant growth is very possible... there is work to be done, but success is seeable and reachable.”

+Our thought bubble: After 10,000+ years of civilization, we’re witnessing firsthand the evolution of humans becoming a multiplanetary species (provided we don’t blow ourselves up first). How wild is that??

The blockchain behind TerraUSD, the world’s third-largest stablecoin, was halted for almost two hours yesterday “to prevent governance attacks” amid widespread turmoil in the overall crypto market.

🪙 A deeper dive... As we've previously covered, a stablecoin is a type of crypto that’s meant to keep its value stable at $1 in order to facilitate transactions between other forms of crypto.

• The TerraUSD token, which first dipped below $1 on Sunday, fell below 28 cents yesterday before partially recovering to hover between 40 and 50 cents.
• TerraUSD’s sister coin, Luna – which is supposed to act as a financial counterweight anchoring the stablecoin to the dollar – dropped from $83 one week ago to just over 1 cent yesterday afternoon, erasing $28+ billion in market cap.

📉 Zoom out: The price of bitcoin dropped below $26,000 yesterday to hit its lowest level in 16 months, as the overall crypto market lost ~$200 billion over a 24-hour period.

• Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin, fell below $1 for nearly 12 hours during intraday trading yesterday, according to data from Google. Some hedge funds have reportedly intensified bets that Tether could break from its $1 level, per the WSJ.
• The stock price of Coinbase, the largest US crypto exchange, has fallen more than 75% on the year.

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🇺🇸 President Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-staff yesterday in honor of the Americans who have died from Covid, as the overall US death toll nears 1 million.

• Flags will remain at half-staff at the White House and all federal buildings through sunset on Monday evening.
• CDC data officially showed the total number of Covid deaths at 996,376 as of yesterday evening, though some independent trackers had the US surpassing 1 million deaths earlier this month.
• Across the country, deaths are trending slightly upwards after falling consistently since early February; about 365 Americans died each day in the week ending Tuesday, up 7% from two weeks before but still a fraction of the recent peak seen a few months ago (~2,700/day).

🌏 The big picture: Covid is currently considered a global pandemic by the WHO, though most countries besides North Korea and China have started to ease restrictions. The US technically considers it to be a pandemic as well, but officials have signaled they're starting to treat the virus as an endemic disease.

• ☝️ The first lunar eclipse in nearly a year will take place Saturday/Sunday night; it’ll be visible to millions in the Americas, Europe and Africa; a blood moon (pictured above) also occurs during a total lunar eclipse, when the Earth is positioned directly between the moon and the sun, hiding the moon from sunlight.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 SoftBank reported its biggest-ever annual loss of $13 billion, largely due to a $27.4 billion hit from its Vision Fund unit.
• 🐦 Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said the company is pausing hiring and looking to cut costs as he announced the departure of two senior executives, per an internal memo shared with the WSJ; Twitter’s market cap closed ~$10 billion lower than Elon Musk’s purchase price.
• 📈 Robinhood shares jumped as high as 36% in after-hours trading on news that Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of crypto exchange FTX, took a 7.6% stake in the free-to-trade platform.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏉 The US will host the 2031 Men's Rugby World Cup and the Women's Rugby World Cup in 2033, World Rugby announced yesterday.
• 📝 Here are all the song lyrics cited in the YSL RICO indictment of Young Thug, Gunna, and 26 others.
• 😂🎤 Comedian Norm Macdonald recorded a new hour of material before his recent death from cancer at 61, his sister-in-law revealed in a tribute to Macdonald for CTV News; it’ll reportedly be released as a Netflix comedy special soon.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🌌🌋 The effects of the Tonga volcano eruption this past January reached space, according to newly published data from NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer.
• 🔭💥 Astronomers witnessed a nova explosion on a white dwarf star for the first time.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🏦 Black researchers make up 1.5% of the Federal Reserve’s 945-person staff of economists, according to Fed data published publicly for the first time on Thursday.
• 🏛️ Jerome Powell was confirmed by the Senate for a second term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve in an 80-19 vote. (From the Left | From the Right)
• ⚖️ The House Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed five GOP House members, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who had previously rejected requests to voluntarily cooperate. (From the Left | From the Right)

💬 Quoted… "It seems that black holes [look] like donuts."

For the first time ever, scientists have captured an image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole weighing 4 million times more than the sun that sits at the center of our galaxy (a mere 26,000 light-years away).

• It's only the second picture ever taken of a black hole.

🇺🇦 Stat of the Day: More than 6 million Ukrainian refugees have fled the country since Russia’s invasion began in late February, totaling nearly 14% of the country’s entire population.

🤯 Did You Know?... The Empire State Building was designed with the ability for an airship/zeppelin to dock at the tippy-top, though it only ended up happening a single time.

📖 Worth a Read: The Strange Business of Hole-in-One Insurance → (The Hustle)

We bring you the week’s weirdest stories…

• India: Elderly couple sue son over lack of grandchildren → (DW)
• 5th grader brings weed gummies to same Livonia school that kindergartner brought margaritas → (FOX2 Detroit)
• Northeast Philly Catholic school accidentally sold Mother's Day flowers stuffed with thongs → (Philly Voice)
• Migrating turtles don't really know where they're going, study shows → (The Guardian)
• Kickball player banned from Tinder for using app to recruit teammates → (UPI)

Move over Tony Hawk – here comes Chowder, an English Bulldog from Oregon with an incredible knack for skateboarding. 

• The talented pooch is able to turn, manage hills, jump down curbs, and stop all on his own.

🐾🛹 Mother knows best... “He’s never ever been injured, and his pads have developed thick calluses over years of skating so his paws are not sensitive at all,” his owner Jani Delperdang told PetsRadar. "[It's] awesome to see him so happy and doing what he loves." 

Below we've put three separate lists of ingredients. All you have to do is give us the completed dish they make. Easy peasy! (The rules, at least.)

☝️ Recipe #1:

• Chicken thighs
• Cooking oil
• Soy sauce
• Brown sugar
• Cooking Sake
• Mirin
• Sesame oil
• Garlic
• Green onion stem
• Broccoli florets
• Cornstarch

✌️ Recipe #2:

• Milk
• Egg
• Vegetable oil
• Flour
• Baking powder
• Sugar
• Blueberries

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Pasta
• Flour
• Milk
• Half and half
• Cheddar cheese
• Gruyere cheese
• Salt & pepper
• Paprika

(keep scrolling for the answers)

👆 Check out the referral prizes you can get just for introducing people you know to little old us. 

What to do: Copy your unique link below, then send it to anyone you think would like the DONUT.

☝️ Recipe 1: Chicken Teriyaki

✌️ Recipe 2: Blueberry muffins

3️⃣ Recipe 3: Mac & Cheese