Good morning. So there’s an 84-year old dude in Korea who has only eaten instant noodles for the last 41 years. Assuming he eats three times per day, that’s a total of 44,895 cups of instant noodles.

Not to go all Sherlock Holmes, but we’ve got questions. How can we be sure he’s never snuck a lil plate of nachos when no one was looking?

And what about dating? Sure, the first meal is fine. The second and third might be funny, but it’s gonna be mighty tough finding a partner who’s gonna be down for all those noodles!

What about y'all? If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be? (The right answer is nachos. If you disagree with the right answer [nachos] please reply and explain yourself.)

Ya know what, we gotta go make some nachos, but don’t worry, here’s a tasty treat for ya: THE NEWS.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.66 minutes to read.

“Anyone who wants to achieve a dream must stay strong, focused and steady.”

–Estée Lauder (1908-2004)

Over the past few years, police departments across the US have increased their use of biometric surveillance measures like facial recognition. But some lawmakers and rights groups are cautioning against widespread use of the technology, warning of potential issues with accuracy and privacy.

📰 A recent accuracy example… Last week, NOLA.com reported that police in Louisiana and Georgia recently arrested a Black man based on a false facial recognition match, holding him in prison for nearly a week before admitting he was the wrong person.

And that’s not the only instance. Since 2019, at least three other men – each of them also Black – have been falsely arrested in the US due to facial recognition tech, which tends to misidentify people of color more often than white folks.

Now, onto the privacy concerns. Advocates usually focus on how intimate personal data (aka your face) is, for the most part, collected by facial-recognition companies without consent – and unlike passwords, phone numbers, or email addresses, this type of data can’t be easily altered after a potential hack.

🇺🇸 The scope: From 2019 through 2021, about two dozen US state or local governments passed laws restricting the use of facial recognition technology. But last year, some areas walked back these restrictions – and for different reasons.

• Homicide reports in New Orleans rose 67% in the two years after the city banned police from using facial recognition, Reuters reports, leading local officials to overturn the ban last year.
• Virginia and California previously had statewide bans on the use of facial recognition tech by police, but both states reversed course in 2022 and currently allow the practice (according to many lawmakers, the initial blanket ban was to buy the gov’t time to implement common sense usage guidelines).

📊 Flash poll: In your opinion, widespread use of facial recognition technology by police would be a _____ for society.

Good idea

Mostly good idea

Mostly bad idea

Bad idea

Change that has no effect

Unsure/other

🇭🇹 The country of Haiti is now without one single democratically-elected government official. The last 10 remaining senators in parliament officially left office at midnight on Monday, bringing an end to the last semblance of democratic order in a country that hasn’t held elections since 2016. Every democratic institution, from Haiti’s justice system to local governments, is no longer functioning. The country is technically led by former PM Ariel Henry, who claimed the title of leader after then-President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021 – though Henry’s rule is reportedly seen as illegitimate by most Haitians.

🇷🇴 A Romanian court upheld the 30-day arrest of online influencer Andrew Tate and his brother. Tate, 36, a British-US citizen with 4.5 million followers on Twitter, was arrested late last month on charges of organized crime, human trafficking, and rape. His original arrest period was just 24 hours, until a judge extended it to 30 days out of suspicion he would flee the country, prompting an unsuccessful appeal from Tate. After yesterday’s decision, Romanian prosecutors can now request to detain Tate and his brother for up to 180 days while they investigate the case.

🏦 The World Bank cut its global growth projection for 2023 due to inflation. The bank now expects global growth to slow to 1.7% this year, down from an estimate of 3% in June, which would mark the third-weakest pace of global growth in nearly three decades behind only the 2009 and 2020 downturns. A separate World Bank report – also published yesterday – found that global inflation, while starting to cool, remains historically high, per the WSJ.

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The Colosseum, Pantheon, Arles Amphitheatre, many aqueducts – all of these are structures from the Ancient Roman Empire, built two thousand-plus years ago, that are still standing today. And while the modern world has known about the ultra-durable material used in their construction for ages (Roman concrete), researchers had no idea how it was actually created…until now.

According to a new peer-reviewed study published in Science Advances, the strength of Roman concrete can be attributed to a special mixing process called “hot mixing,” which allows buildings made with the material to literally repair themselves.

🧑‍🔬 How the discovery went down: Scientists from MIT and Harvard were first alerted to the concept of hot mixing after noticing millimeter-wide bright white calcium deposits in the ancient Roman concrete samples they were studying – and seriously doubting the previous explanation for it.

Researchers had long believed the existence of those deposits meant the concrete-makers were using poor mixing practices… which didn’t sit right with the study’s authors. “It was really difficult to believe that ancient Roman [engineers] would not do a good job, because they really made careful effort when choosing and processing materials,” MIT chemist Admir Masic told CNN.

• After performing an analysis, the scientists discovered these calcium deposits were the result of an advanced technique they dubbed “hot mixing.”
• And what’s more, this technique appears to have held the hidden key to Roman structures’ self-healing properties all along.

🤔 How, you ask?... When water enters cracks in the concrete, the chunks of calcium are dissolved and later recrystallize, filling the cracks and strengthening the structure. That’s right – Roman concrete is water-activated, just like your favorite cocoa butter oatmeal bath bomb.

💬 Quoted…​​ “Worthy of an Oscar.”

You may have encountered some… unusually candid C-SPAN clips on TikTok/Reels last week, showing angry lawmakers, close-up shots of text convos, and even what looked like the beginnings of a brawl. But did you know the reason behind the change from C-SPAN’s – forgive us – typically bland coverage?

• It was the first time the nonprofit news org, which is usually relegated to showing feeds from gov’t-controlled cameras in the chamber, was able to place and control its own cameras. But it might not be the last: Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), who the above quote is taken from, and a group of other lawmakers plan to introduce a bill allowing C-SPAN’s cameras to capture the whole chamber, not just what the Speaker wants.

💰📉 Stat of the Day: Elon Musk has been officially awarded the Guinness World Record for largest loss of personal fortune, with estimated losses of $182 billion since November 2021.

🤯 Did You Know?... About 40% of humanity lives within 60 miles of a coastline.

📖 Worth a Read: These Engineered Cells Are Super Soldiers That Hunt Down Cancers → (Singularity Hub)

• ☝️ Tens of thousands of Californians were under evacuation orders yesterday, due to flooding from an ongoing storm system that has killed at least 17 people and knocked out power to 160,000 state residents.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🪙 Coinbase is laying off ~20% of its workforce, or ~950 people.
• 🚀📉 Shares of Virgin Orbit fell 14% yesterday; the company suffered a satellite launch failure on Monday while attempting its first mission from the UK.
• 💰🤖 Microsoft and other investors are in talks to invest $10 billion into OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, sources told Semafor; the deal would reportedly value OpenAI at $29 billion.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📚👑 Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, was officially released yesterday; it sold 400,000 copies to become the UK's fastest-selling nonfiction book ever.
• ⚾ Carlos Correa agreed to a 6-year, $200 million deal with the Twins pending a physical examination, the NY Times reported yesterday; deals on the table for Correa with both the Giants (13-year, $350 million) and Mets (12-year, $315 million) have fallen apart over the past month.
• 🏆 The Golden Globes were held last night. Peruse the list of the winners here, take a look at the biggest snubs and surprises here, and watch the best acceptance speech of the night here.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🛰️ NASA recently unveiled plans for its successor to the JWST: a new multibillion-dollar space telescope called the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which will be used to search for signs of extraterrestrial life on Earth-like planets, perhaps by the early 2040s.
• ☄️ A rare green comet is expected to pass by Earth this week, per astronomers; it’ll be visible in the night sky for nearly a month for the first time in 50,000 years.
• 🤖 Microsoft recently announced a new AI, called VALL-E, that can simulate voices from just three seconds of input audio.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• ⚖️ Former Trump Org. CFO Allen Weisselberg was sentenced to five months in prison yesterday; he pleaded guilty to tax crimes last year.
• 🎓 The Biden admin proposed new regulations yesterday that would make it easier for some federal student-loan holders to reduce their monthly payments and overall debt load with income-driven repayment plans.
• 🌎 President Biden met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Mexico City yesterday; the three leaders announced joint commitments to build North America’s semiconductor industry, achieve certain climate goals, and tackle a recent surge in migration.
• 📑 The ~10 Obama-era classified documents found late last year at President Biden’s think tank in Washington, D.C., covered topics including Ukraine, Iran, and the UK, a source told CNN yesterday. (The report | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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Who doesn't love the taste of fresh pine tree in the morning? 

😋 Delicious and nutritious... A group of alpacas and llamas at a farm in Cornwall, UK, are filling their bellies with no-longer-needed Christmas trees, after the owner posted on social media asking for donations.

• One tree will last the farm about a week of feeding. They received enough donations to last them over three months😮.

🎄Get your vitamins... The trees are a great source of vitamin C and antioxidants, and apparently are 'like candy' for the happy animals. 

Can you decode these early '90s movie titles, written solely with emojis?

1. 🤐🐑🐑🐑
2. 🐒🏜️🧞
3. 🐢🐢🐢🐢🐀

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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1. Silence of the Lambs (1991)
2. Aladdin (1992)
3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)