Good morning. Pope Francis hasn’t watched TV since June 15, 1990, according to an interview he gave to an Argentinian newspaper eight years ago.

Imagine missing out on Seinfeld, Game of Thrones, The Magic School Bus, Stranger Things and – most importantly – The Bachelor/Bachelorette.

Though if he’d had the TV on, he’d probably never get anything done, so on second thought, good call, Pope. Good call.

ANYways, let’s do the news!

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.90 minutes to read.

“Words are the clothing of our thoughts.”

–Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Shhhhh, did you hear that? The winds of search engine change are blowing. According to multiple reports published yesterday, Microsoft is preparing to launch a version of Bing within the next three months that incorporates OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology.

🤖🔍 How it’ll probably work… Microsoft hasn’t officially commented on the situation, though The Information reports that the company sees ChatGPT as a way for Bing to stand out from Google by offering conversational answers to searches.

Analysts say Bing will most likely use ChatGPT to analyze the language in web pages and search queries to understand the context and intent behind them – which, in theory, would allow the search engine to deliver more accurate and relevant results, leading to a better user experience. Something Bing could probably use, considering it’s been a distant second to Google in the search-engine industry for, well, ever (currently 3% market share vs. 92%).

👩‍💻 Zoom out: Like Anne Hathaway at the start of The Princess Diaries, the ~$1.3 trillion online search market could look a lot different soon. TikTok, which is increasingly being used by younger generations instead of Google, recently expanded the max-length of its video captions to improve its in-house search engine. And more online product searches now start on Amazon than conventional search engines (53% vs. 23%).

But don’t count Google out just yet. The tech giant recently added new features allowing TikTok and Instagram videos to appear in search results, and is also working on integrating AI technology called LaMDA into its search engine (remember the sentient AI debate?).

🇬🇧 UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to make math mandatory for all students up to 18 years old. Traditionally, 16- to 18-year-old students in the UK are allowed to choose which academic subjects they learn – and less than half are currently studying math, per the BBC. PM Sunak said his plan is intended to better prepare UK students for the modern job market, and to ensure they feel confident when it comes to personal finances.

🇩🇰 Denmark just recorded its first year without any bank robberies in history. In 2000, Denmark saw 221 bank robberies, a number that slowly dwindled to less than 10 per year since 2017. Government officials attributed the recent milestone to an increasingly cashless society – the use of cash in the country has nearly halved over the past five years, from 23% of all payments to 12% currently.

🇷🇺 Russia’s military blamed last week’s airstrike that killed dozens of its troops on the unauthorized use of cell phones. On New Year’s Eve, Ukraine launched an airstrike on a Russian military unit in occupied Donetsk that officials in Kyiv said killed 400 soldiers. At the time, Russian officials claimed 63 troops were killed – but yesterday, Moscow updated the official tally to 89, and asserted that unsanctioned cell phones used by those troops allowed Ukraine to locate them.

⌛ As time passes it gets harder to find new experiences, so we often ponder this time of year for something we’ve yet to try. Maybe it’s a new travel destination or hobby, but sometimes it’s something more profound, like style.

If you’re craving a new experience and something different style-wise, unspun jeans lets you have both…

• FULL customization of your jeans… waist, wash, fabric, stitching, stretchiness, hardware, literally every detail is under your full control.
• A 3D body scan with your iPhone guarantees these jeans will fit perfectly via uploaded measurements – or your money back.

Then just kick back while unspun crafts and delivers one-of-a-kind jeans to a one-of-a-kind person.👍😎

Freshen up this new year with unspun jeans.

If deceptive movie trailers are your sworn enemy, you’ll probably like this story. According to a recent ruling by a federal judge in California, movie studios can be sued under existing false advertising laws for releasing misleading trailers.

🍿 The story: In January 2022, two fans of actress Ana de Armas filed a class-action lawsuit against Universal, accusing the studio of false advertising. The pair said they each paid $3.99 to rent Yesterday on Amazon Prime after seeing de Armas in the trailer – only to find out she never actually appeared in the final film.

• Universal sought to have the lawsuit thrown out like a Christmas tree at the end of January, arguing that movie trailers should be considered “artistic, expressive work” entitled to broad First Amendment protections.
• But the judge rejected this argument, ruling that studios are liable for false advertising in movie trailers when a “significant portion [of] reasonable consumers” could be misled into believing a person or scene is in the film.

⚖️ Zoom out: This suit isn’t the first one brought against studios for using “deceptive advertising” in a trailer – but like almost everything else in Hollywood, the subject appears to be getting a reboot.

• In 2011, a Michigan woman filed a suit against the Ryan Gosling-led film Drive, arguing that the trailer made it appear the film would be a “high speed action driving film,” and she was unprepared for its slow-paced interpersonal drama. An appeals court ended up dismissing that case on several grounds, including that the trailer wasn’t deceptive.

More than 1 in 5 Americans have taken a mail-in DNA test from sites like 23andMe or Ancestry.com. And millions have used online tools that compare these test results to potentially find unknown relatives around the world. Though they're not the only ones – police are starting to use these genealogy databases, too.

🧬👮 Case in point: According to multiple sources, the 28-year-old suspect arrested last Friday and charged with murdering four University of Idaho students in November was identified after authorities ran DNA found at the crime scene through a public genealogy database called GEDmatch.

And that’s just one example. In recent years, authorities across America have used public DNA databases to solve the 60-year-old murder of a Girl Scout in Colorado, to clear a 1975 stabbing in Pennsylvania, and – perhaps most famously – to identify and capture the serial killer/rapist known as the “Golden State Killer.”

✋ Yes, but… The practice has drawn criticism from privacy advocates and some lawmakers, who argue police shouldn’t have open access to sensitive personal genetic data (which can be used to identify relatives who never submitted their own DNA).

📊 Big picture: Like a banana on Curious George’s favorite ice cream treat, public sentiment about whether or not DNA test results should be shared with law enforcement is split. Roughly half of America say it’s acceptable (48%), about one-third say it’s unacceptable, and 18% are unsure, according to a Pew Research survey.

💬 Quoted…​​ “No one joined Shopify to sit in meetings.”

The calendars of employees at Shopify just got a whole lot clearer. The e-commerce company has removed all meetings with three or more people - over 10,000 events in total - in an effort to create more time for productive work, it announced Tuesday. After a two week scheduling freeze, employees will be asked to “be really critical” about adding any meetings back to the calendar.

• The company has also reinstated ‘meeting-free Wednesday,’ and mandated that all 50+ person meetings take place on Thursdays.

🦠 Stat of the Day: Nearly 250 million Chinese residents were infected with Covid between Dec. 1 and Dec. 20, according to notes of a National Health Commission meeting viewed by the WSJ.

🤯 Did You Know?... Pot-au-feu – aka perpetual stew, forever soup, or bottomless broth – is a culinary tradition practiced around the world, where cooks continually simmer a pot full of ingredients for literally years on end. In some areas, restaurants featuring decades-old soup have become famous tourist attractions.

📖 Worth a Read: This Family Gave the World the Snow Globe → (Atlas Obscura)

• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners from the 2022 World Design Rankings from designboom.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💼 Salesforce will cut 10% of its workforce, or nearly 8,000 employees, the company announced yesterday. | Amazon will now be laying off more than 18,000 employees, the WSJ reported yesterday, up from the 10,000-person figure reported in November 2022. | Vimeo will lay off 11% of its staff, or almost 150 people according to Pitchbook.
• 📱🗣 Meta was fined $414 million by EU regulators for violating privacy laws. | Twitter reversed its decision to ban political ads.
• 🚗 GM reclaimed the crown for most vehicles sold in the US last year, with 2.27 million; GM was the leader since 1931 before being dethroned by Toyota in 2021. (Background)

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏈 Damar Hamlin has shown “signs of improvement”, the Buffalo Bills tweeted yesterday, though he remains in critical condition in the ICU.
• ⚾ Rafael Devers signed an 11-year, $331 million extension with the Boston Red Sox; the deal is the largest in Red Sox history.
• 🎭 📽 Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, the then 15- and 16-year old stars of the 1968 film Romeo and Juliet, have sued Paramount Pictures for $500 million, alleging they were sexually exploited during a nude scene in the film.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🦠😋 The first life form known to eat viruses has been discovered by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, per a new peer-reviewed study published in PNAS, though the scientists said many others likely exist.
• 🌕 South Korea's first-ever lunar orbiter, named Danuri, sent back its initial photos of the Moon's surface and Earth on Tuesday.
• 🎟🤖 The 2023 Consumer Electronics Show kicks off in Las Vegas today. 

EVERYTHING ELSE

• ⚖️🎓 The mastermind behind the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, William "Rick" Singer, was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison yesterday.
• ⛈️ The National Weather Service is warning California residents to prepare for what could be “one of the most challenging and impactful series of storms to touch down in California in the last five years"; the storm system started to hit the state last night.
• 🏛️ The House adjourned yesterday after holding its fourth, fifth, and sixth unsuccessful vote to determine who will serve as speaker; the chamber will meet again at noon today to keep voting on a leader. (Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)**

**Correction: Yesterday, we mistakenly said GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy was from New York instead of California. This is the 34th correction out of the 251 newsletters we’ve published since January 2022.

CLICKBAIT

• 💼 ‘Quiet hiring’ will dominate the US in 2023 – and you need to prepare for it.
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Yesterday we covered how Tesla shares reached their lowest price since August 2020 on Tuesday, after the company reported Q4 sales that missed analysts’ expectations. Over the past year, Tesla stock has fallen nearly 73% – losing more in market cap than the next 10 largest automakers are currently worth combined.

❓ Our question to you: Are you bullish (confident) or bearish (pessimistic) about Tesla’s future over the next ten years?

• 📈 Bullish: 32%
• 📉 Bearish: 49%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 19%

Click here to read some of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 6,391 votes, and 615 longform responses.

We bring you the most unusual, off-the-wall and occasionally laugh-out-loud headlines from this week.

• Fed-up residents fill pothole with a Christmas tree after waiting months for repairs → (Yahoo! News)
• Burglars called 911 for help moving stolen items, deputies say → (WFLA)
• Melted butter clogs historic canal and storm drains after dairy plant fire in Wisconsin → (CBS News)
• Couple hates Last Christmas by Wham! so much they're trying to buy the song rights so they can take it off the air forever → (MyLondon)

CROWDSOURCED

Have you ever encountered a glitch in the matrix, quirky animal behavior, or even just a hilarious first grader? Tell us about it here for a chance to be featured in next Thursday’s newsletter.

👨 Who: Maureen L. from Royal Oak, MI

💬 The experience: While bathing my 4-year-old grandson, he looks up at my Noxema container and asks me why I use Noxema. I said, "It's suppose to make me look younger." He took a look at the container and then looked up at me and said, "Well, it's not working."

P.S. Don’t forget to share your odd or hilarious experience with us here.

Artist Arsh Pal began painting at the age of eight, when his family gifted him a set of watercolors for his birthday. 

• Now twelve years old, the self-taught artist has raised more than $15,000 for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital by selling his original pieces. 

🎨 Go, little rockstar... "Originally, my first goal was raising $1,000 for St. Jude Research Hospital,” Arsh said. “Everybody kind of doubted me because I was so young, but when I did raise $1,000 everybody was surprised.” 

• Arsh was one of 180 people to receive the Diana Award from Kensington Palace, which recognizes young people working towards positive social change. 

The Mariana Trench is the deepest oceanic trench on Earth. Which ocean is it located in?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

👆 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 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.)

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The Pacific Ocean