Good morning for the last time in 2022. Sad face but also happy grateful face. For our final edition of the year, we’d like to invite you aboard the STS DONUT 2022 – a first-of-its-kind (but like super safe) bespoke spacetime ship, handcrafted to make your trip down memory lane as pleasant as possible.

A word of warning: 2022 was a LOT. We’d forgotten about like 30% of it. Passengers aboard the STSD2022 have been known to say “wait, that happened this year?” with surprise, sadness – or both. But don’t worry. We’ve created a Walkway of Wonders at the end to aid with your re-entry back to the present which is, itself, a present, etc. etc.

ANYway. We hope you enjoy and have an amazing holiday with people that make you feel lucky to be alive (yea we’re getting a little cheesy at the end so what!). We’ll be off starting tomorrow through the New Year, then back in your inboxes come the morning of Tuesday, January 3.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: This year’s recap takes 3.19 minutes to read.

“Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.”

–J.M. Barrie (1860-1937)

❄️ JANUARY: Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion, the Fed doesn’t raise interest rates, and fintech unicorn Bolt kicks off a 4-day workweek craze. It was also a month full of triumphs – Don’t Look Up becomes Netflix’s second-most successful movie ever, Georgia wins the CFB National Championship, the NFT craze is in full swing, and scientists transplant a pig's heart into a human.

💕 FEBRUARY: Russia arrests WNBA star Brittney Griner, then declares war against Ukraine and invades the country. Elsewhere, the NYT purchases Wordle for an amount “in the low seven-figures,” the LA Rams win Super Bowl LVI, workers come back to the office (kinda), and Norway takes home the most overall medals and most golds at the Beijing Winter Olympics.

☘️ MARCH: 10-minute TikToks become a thing. And oh, dear – the worst inflation report in 40 years. The Fed starts raising interest rates. Gas prices also start to steadily climb. The Great Resignation is still in full effect, Kansas rocks chalk Jayhawk to win the Final Four, and moviegoers finally get to see “PatBat” in action against The Riddler.

🌧️ APRIL: Was the month of Musk (and Coachella). He becomes Twitter’s largest shareholder, then makes an offer to buy the social platform (#fundingsecured). The company’s board teases that it won’t accept but ultimately does. Oh, great – another historic inflation report gets released. Bill Hwang and his CFO get arrested in relation to the multi-billion dollar collapse of Archegos Capital Management.

🌷 MAY: The Great Resignation still isn’t over but the NFT craze basically is. We find out stablecoins maybe aren’t all that stable, and the Fed raises rates 0.5%, its biggest increase since 2000 (though inflation drops slightly). Dr. Strange opens strong at the box office, FB celebrates its public-markets Tin-versary, US soccer reaches a deal on equal pay, and Musk + Twitter may not be happening after all. Also, gas prices = high.

⚖️ JUNE: All eyes turn to the courts – Roe v. Wade gets overturned, Supreme Court Justice Breyer retires and is replaced by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, and the Depp/Heard trial comes to an end (what a week on TikTok that was). In sportsland, the Golden State Warriors take home the NBA Finals trophy (also court-related🏀), and the Avalanche win the Stanley Cup. Markets start to get bearish, hybrid work becomes the norm, and the Fed raises rates 0.75%, its largest single bump since 1994.

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🏖️🎆 JULY: Rihanna becomes RichGirl RiRi, Boris Johnson says goodbye, and Musk says “ehhh, maybe not.” We see yet another historic inflation report, the economy hits a technical recession, and the Fed raises rates 0.75% for a second straight time. TikTok is taking over the world, and the James Webb Space Telescope is viewing other worlds. Another otherworldly thing: the Large Hadron Collider turns green then starts smashing. Plus Amazon hosts the year’s first Prime Day, and Congress gets Chippy.

☀️ AUGUST: Inflation starts to go down, *takes a peek at the job market*: yep, still strong, beauty sales are also an economic brightspot – but wait, there’s an Adderall shortage. Also the green bubble vs. blue bubble debate is back. Ppl with student loans are happier (for now). The FBI searches Mar-a-Lago and the Inflation Reduction Act that really had nothing to do with inflation reduction passes Congress. Oh, and we learn more about ads on Netflix.

🍂 SEPTEMBER: Live events are back (sorta), but butter and craft beer are in short supply. Forget the Hadron Collider, NASA is now green and smashing. Around the world: Queen Elizabeth dies, the Iran protests start following the death of Mahsa Amini, and Ethereum undergoes “The Merge.” The Fed raises rates by 0.75% again, and we say goodbye to Serena, the 🐐 of women’s tennis.

🎃 OCTOBER: Elon Musk finally bought Twitter. TikTok came for Google AND Amazon, but who could ever top Prime Day? Amazon, that’s who; by launching Prime Day 2. In Facebook, err, we mean Meta land, the metaverse was...cool? Meanwhile in meatspace aka reality, Liz Truss resigned as UK Prime Minister after four grueling months, Xi Jinping cemented his role as the long-term leader of China, and T-Swift met us at Midnights. Also there were, like, no tomatoes.

🍁 NOVEMBER: Inflation kept cooling and layoffs hit tech. The Dems kept the Senate, the GOP flipped the House, an appeals judge halted student loan forgiveness, and the FCC said TikTok should be banned. Ticketmaster messed with the wrong crowd (Swifties) and the Astros won the World Series. NASA said “dear moon, I miss u” and successfully launched Artemis I. Oh, and FTX made some super tiny accounting errors that were definitely not a big deal, like, at all.

🎄 DECEMBER: Brittney Griner came home and Argentina won the World Cup. Congress prevented a rail strike, inflation fell for the 5th straight month, and the Fed said “let there be a 0.5% rate hike.” China eased ”zero-Covid,” and US scientists created net nuclear fusion energy which was, like, a big deal. Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested and extradited to the US. And we here at The DONUT wrote up this recap and now you have arrived back to the present day.

Welcome. Please make your way to the Walkway of Wonders below. 

Here are some of our top Positive stories from this year:

✉️ You’ve got mail – A woman was astonished after receiving a letter written by her deceased husband postmarked from 1945.

🎂 "Happy birthday, Harry” – When no one showed up to his birthday party, eleven-year-old Harry was devastated. The UK schoolboy has autism and often struggles to make friends. But then his mom asked the Internet to send birthday cards to make him feel better – and they delivered in a big way.

💪 Athletes becoming heroes – High school football players are hailed as saviors after rescuing a woman trapped in her wrecked car.

🎷 Patient performance – A brain surgery patient was kept awake during his nine-hour operation last month, playing the saxophone throughout the whole thing.

🐶🎮 Doggie data – UK startup JoiPaw is on a mission to help dogs stay mentally stimulated when their owners are out of the house. In plain English: the company makes video games for dogs – especially elderly ones.

✍️ Writing letters for life – Geoff Banks and Celesta Byrne only met one time, back in 2002. But the pair have been in each other's lives for over eight decades; they were first introduced as penpals for a school project in 1938.

🎓 Grandma graduates – Joyce DeFauw recently accepted her diploma from Northern Illinois University – 71 years after she initially enrolled.

📈🤝 59,994 = the total number of subscribers we added new friends we made. And y’all were engaged (yet another reason we love you). Cue our second number…

📊 1.33M = the total number of poll responses we received this year. Apparently whoever coined the phrase “the people have spoken” knew what they were talking about.

👥 4 = the number of new team members we added this year (we’re now up to 14 total people🤯). And hopefully more to come soon!

😬 33 = the amount of corrections we issued this year.

📰 248 = the total number of newsletters we published this year (fun fact: each edition has 20+ different news stories scattered throughout).

P.S. We were named the 4th-best newsletter to subscribe to in 2022 by SnackNation. Next year we’re coming for that #1 spot😉.

📅 Trivia: The DONUT was founded in which year?

💻 Fill in the Blank: The DONUT’s homepage is https://thedonut.____ 

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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What to do: Copy your unique link below, then send it to anyone who you think would like the DONUT. Once you hit each milestone, you'll get an email with a link to claim your prize. (Pro tip: there's no need to ration points, you're entitled to a prize at each tier.)

Start referring.👇

1. 2019
2. https://thedonut.co