Good morning. Calling all teachers!! We just uncovered this Shel Silverstein poem, written specifically for you all about a cool new Facebook group created just for teachers (so if you're not a teacher, keep scrolling):

Dear teachers, dear teachers, you work hard all day,

To help your students learn in every new way

You teach with a passion and a heart of gold

And make sure your students are brave and so bold

But all this hard work, it can make you so worn

You deserve a sweet treat, so join in, feel reborn

For all your hard work, and all your great deeds

The DONUT Degree is the prize you most need

But don’t worry, it’s not just a paper to hold

It’s a private Facebook group, if you be so bold

A lounge to hang out with teachers, discuss all the news

Share your perspective and hear different views

Regale one another with stories so grand

Of using The DONUT in your lesson plan

A place to give feedback to DONUT writers too

Help us help you make the news good and true.

For you, our dear teachers, a brief final plea

Join us on Facebook, have fun, be set free.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.98 minutes to read.

"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working."

–Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

If pre-bankruptcy FTX was acne, its new post-bankruptcy management team would be Proactiv. Which is to say: the defunct crypto exchange’s financial situation is starting to get more clear.

At a court hearing in Delaware yesterday, bankrupt crypto exchange FTX revealed that it’s now recovered more than $5 billion in cash and other liquid assets, up from $1 billion recovered as of last month.

And on top of that, FTX’s lawyers said the exchange is hoping to sell hundreds of investment holdings that had a book value of $4.6+ billion as of November 11 (though many were into crypto-focused companies that have declined in value since then).

🤷‍♀️ But that’s about where the clarity ends… If this was 1996, FTX’s management could’ve been the star of Jerry Maguire – because they’re currently shouting “SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!”

After FTX filed for bankruptcy in November and its execs were replaced, the company’s new management committed to “building financial statements from the ground up.” Which was made necessary since the exchange previously lacked normal corporate controls and didn’t keep reliable records.

Over the past two months, FTX’s new management has identified:

• An estimated 1 million creditors, who typically take first priority over account holders when it comes to getting their money back.
• More than 9 million customer accounts, though it’s still attempting to figure out exactly how much each customer is owed. Some estimates peg the overall figure as high as $10 billion.

👀 Looking ahead… Customers, nonprofits, and political orgs previously involved with FTX are like the little green aliens in Toy Story – and the clawwwwwwwback is coming. As the bankruptcy process continues, FTX's legal team will continue trying to recoup funds – including past investment returns, some customer withdrawals, and political/charitable donations – for eventual disbursement to creditors and customers.

🇷🇺 Russia’s military continues to bombard a strategic Ukrainian town called Soledar. This comes after weeks of heavy fighting led by the Russia-aligned Wagner mercenary group, who previously claimed to have captured the whole town, though both Ukrainian officials and Russia's defense ministry say the battle is still going on. The town of Soledar is seen as a crucial part of Russia’s plan to seize the nearby city of Bakhmut, which Wagner's troops have been trying to capture since last summer. Separately, Russia named its top military officer, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, as the new overall leader of the Ukraine invasion yesterday.

🌾 UK scientists announced the creation of a new “climate-proof wheat” this week. In field trials in Mexico’s Sonoran Desert, the new species produced yields up to 50% higher than other wheat strands in hotter temperatures. Previous studies have shown that without more resilient plants, global annual wheat yields will fall by 6% for each 1°C increase in average temps. Fun fact: Wheat accounts for ~20% of all calories consumed by humans worldwide.

🇪🇸 And in other plant-based news: Spanish scientists have produced the first large cocoa crop in European history. A team of scientists at the Institute of Subtropical and Mediterranean Horticulture said they recently harvested around 100 kg of cocoa beans from some 80 trees, which were planted back in 2019. It marks the continent’s first successful large cocoa crop, following centuries of attempts dating back to the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Europe is the world’s largest chocolate manufacturer, consumer, and exporter.

🔮 Imagine… It’s the end of Q4 2023, you’ve successfully executed an insane year of events, and everything went off without a hitch. Your bosses can’t stop singing your praises, and the anxiety you used to feel before events is completely gone. The best part? You didn’t even try that hard.🤯

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• Build guest lists and tag/group contacts
• Manage RSVPs and segment lists
• Message/invite personalization
• Run check-in and post-event reporting

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📈 And they can back up their results too… Planners that use Gatsby observe on average 40% higher RSVP rates and 15% higher attendance. That’s why they have 100% retention for customers who’ve planned one event or more.

Gatsby is the future of event planning, and wow is it bright.🌞😎

Schedule a demo today with Gatsby!

Yesterday, the entire airline industry ground to a brief halt. The Federal Aviation Administration prohibited every single domestic flight in the US – and this isn’t an exaggeration – from lifting off between 7:20 am ET and 8:50 am ET, with many officials comparing the situation to what occurred after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, per Reuters.

And similar to Southwest’s recent debacle, once again it’s all thanks to those pesky computers. Though in this instance, an overnight outage in the FAA system that provides pilots with flight-safety notices was to blame.

🤔 So, what happened?... Officials said they have yet to determine how the outage occurred, but no evidence has emerged pointing to a cyberattack or other foul play.

The affected system, called Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM), sends real-time alerts to pilots to let them know of conditions that could affect the safety of their flights, like flocks of birds or icy runways, before that information can be publicized by other means. So similar to a Bloomberg terminal, but for pilots instead of traders.

• Quick aside: NOTAM is separate from the air traffic control system that keeps planes a safe distance from each other, but it's also considered essential for air safety.

📸 Big picture: FlightAware, which tracks delays and cancelations, showed nearly half of all flights traveling to, from, or within the United States – about 10,800 in total – were delayed or canceled yesterday. And ripple effects from NOTAM’s outage could lead to further travel delays or cancelations through Friday, according to several airlines.

It’s true that you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. But you do need to be able to afford them first.

The average price for a dozen eggs in California last week was $7.37, per the USDA, up more than $5 from the $2.35 average cost in January 2022. That’s a price increase of nearly 214%.

And the rest of the country isn’t too far behind – egg prices saw the highest jump of all grocery store items last year (49%). The average US carton of a dozen eggs cost $3.59 in November 2022, per the latest data from the St. Louis Fed, up from $1.93 in January.

🥚📈 Driving the increase: The worst avian influenza – or bird flu – epidemic in history, which killed more than 43 million egg-laying hens last year (out of ~420 million). This high death total was partly due to the fact that if one bird in the flock gets infected, farmers are mandated to euthanize any remaining chickens to prevent further spread of the disease.

• Something also worth mentioning: eggconomy-wide* inflation has raised the costs of labor and chicken feed, meaning prices at the grocery store would’ve gotten more egg-spensive* anyways – but they most likely wouldn't have gone this high without the outbreak.

👀 Looking ahead… Egg deliveries were up over 10% last week, and wholesale prices have begun to drop. Good news for consumer wallets, yes, though grocery store prices lag behind wholesale. So it may be a little while longer until this story’s ending is – another pun incoming – sunny-side up.*

*We're genuinely sorry, we can't help it if the puns are too eggs-quisite.

💬 Quoted…​​ “Productivity theater.”

From custom mouse jigglers to fake PowerPoint presentations to MacGyver-inspired innovations, workers nationwide are sharing different ways to outsmart companies that track their employees’ productivity.

• Since early 2020, about a third of all medium-to-large US companies have adopted some kind of worker-surveillance system, bringing the overall share of employers using such systems to every two out of three.

🛢️📈 Stat of the Day: Natural gas prices in California are currently over 5x higher than the national average.

🤯 Did You Know?... No human has beaten a computer in a chess tournament in 17 years.

📖 Worth a Read: The entrepreneur dreaming of a factory of unlimited organs → (MIT Technology Review)

• ☝️ The Acura Integra, Ford F-150 Lightning, and Kia EV6 were named this year's North American Car, Truck, and Utility Vehicle of the Year; two of the three winners – the Ford and Kia – are EVs.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🗣 OpenAI announced plans to introduce ChatGPT Professional, a paid version of its AI-powered chatbot.
• 📺 DirecTV is laying off hundreds of employees, including 10% of the roughly 500 managers at the company, per CNBC. | Flexport will lay off 20% of its workforce, or about 640 employees, the supply chain company announced yesterday.
• 💻☝️ Apple is working on adding touch screens to its laptops, Bloomberg reported yesterday; the Macbook Pros could be released as soon as 2025.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏈 Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin was released from the hospital yesterday, nine days after collapsing on the field during a game.
• 📚👑 Prince Harry’s memoir Spare sold over 1.4 million copies in the US, UK, and Canada on the day of its release, per Penguin Random House, the most of any non-fiction book ever published.
• 🎾 Naomi Osaka is expecting a baby with rapper Cordae, the tennis champion announced yesterday; she'll sit out the 2023 season and return in 2024.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🛕 A 650-square-mile complex of Maya pyramids hidden beneath a rainforest in northern Guatemala was recently discovered by geologists using a laser-based technique called lidar.
• 🚀 Russia will launch a rescue vessel to the ISS next month to bring home three astronauts, one of them American, who were effectively stranded in orbit when their original capsule was hit by a meteoroid last month.
• 🪐 NASA announced the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet 100 light-years away that may contain liquid water; it’s the second-such planet discovered orbiting in the habitable zone of a nearby star.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🍔 In-N-Out Burger is expanding east of Texas for the first time, with plans for restaurants in and around Nashville, TN, by 2026.
• 🚪Glassdoor recently unveiled its list of Top 100 Places To Work.
• 🗽 NY Republicans called for Rep. George Santos (R-NY) to resign yesterday for lying about his resume during the campaign; in a tweet response, Santos said he would not. (Background)
• 📑 President Biden’s aides found additional classified documents in a second location beyond those discovered in November at a Washington office Biden used after his vice presidency, multiple sources reported yesterday. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 🍪 Girl Scout cookies 2023: New flavors, prices, and when and where to buy
• 🌎 A fashion company focused on fixing the industry’s problems. unspun is making it easier for people to consciously and intentionally consume clothing. Read what they’re doing differently than the rest here.*

*Sponsored post

Yesterday we covered how police departments across the US have increased their use of biometric surveillance measures like facial recognition in recent years, while some lawmakers and rights groups have warned of potential issues with accuracy and privacy.

❓ Our question to you: In your opinion, widespread use of facial recognition technology by police would be a _____ for society.

• 👍 ​​Good idea: 12%
• 📈 Mostly good idea: 27%
• 📉 Mostly bad idea: 23%
• 👎 ​​Bad idea: 22%
• 🙅‍♀️ Change that has no effect: 4%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 12%

Click here to read some of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 9,346 votes, and 771 longform responses.

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

• Fugitive cows in Quebec captured after months on the run → (CBC)
• Italian man uses 'mirror writing' to type copies of 81 books backward → (UPI)
• $15 Million Lottery Ticket Sold in Wisconsin Town Called Luck → (People)
• Masters invitation goes to the wrong Scott Stallings → (APNews)

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: Carla P. from Scottsdale, AZ

💬 The experience: One time a friend was visiting me and I fed my cat, then put her outside and locked the door. As we walked upstairs to my room, my cat stood there staring at us. After that, all my friends call her the teleporting cat.

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

Nineteen-year-old Avery Seuter embarked in September on an ambitious ride, heading down the entire Eastern Seaboard on a unicycle. 

🚲 Pedal away... The unicyclist has already rode over 1,800 miles and counting. He's hoping to make it to Key West, FL, by next month. 

• Why do all of this? He's raising money for the East Coast Greenway, a cycling route that organizers hope will eventually connect 15 states.

This sea sits 429 meters below sea level in southwestern Asia. Can you name it?

(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.)

Start referring.👇

The Dead Sea