Good morning. What’s the first thing you think of when we say “Humpty Dumpty?”

An egg, of course. A clumsy ol’ egg whose fall was treated as the #1 priority for ALL the king’s horses and all the king’s men (a strange collab, btw).

But the thing is, he isn’t actually an egg. The original nursery rhyme, which is actually a riddle, never says anything about an egg at all😳.

So, who is Humpty Dumpty? Unclear – though there are theories varying from King Richard III (who was depicted as being humpbacked) to an old school military cannon, all the way to a drink of brandy.

Then Lewis Carroll came along and said, “Hey Humpty, you’re an egg.” And so it was.

Makes you wonder – is the itsy bitsy spider actually a spider, or a LADYBUG pretending to be a spider? Are the Three Blind Mice actually con artists? Is the bridge in “London Bridge Is Falling Down” actually a relationship that’s ending?

Nothing is certain anymore. Well, except one thing: THE NEWS!

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.71 minutes to read.

“Bloom where you are planted."

–Mary Engelbreit (b.1952)

Potentially dangerous lightning strikes can be diverted to a safer path by beaming a high-powered laser into the sky, per a new peer-reviewed study published yesterday in Nature Photonics. Or in other, more colloquial terms – humans can now channel the power of Thor using *Dr. Evil voice* frickin’ laser beams.

⏪ Let’s start at the beginning… The concept of using laser beams as lightning rods is nothing new – scientists have been salivating over the possibility since the laser was first invented in 1960. And lightning rods could certainly use an update: the tech currently in use is modeled after Ben Franklin’s original design from the mid-1700s.

The idea behind using a laser is that short, high-power pulses from said laser can superheat the air in its path, making the particles more electrically conductive and creating a safe route for the lightning to travel into the ground. But up until now, experiments in the field had proven unsuccessful.

⛰️ Which brings us to Monday’s study: Where a team of international researchers, using a new car-sized laser lightning rod prototype assembled atop the peak of a Swiss mountain, successfully diverted four lightning bolts.

And similar to Formula 1, the key to success was just to go faster than everyone else. Per the researchers, the key breakthrough in this experiment was significantly upping the laser’s firing speed from previous attempts (by ~100x).

But also like Formula 1, it’s easy to tell things to go fast – and harder to make it happen. The laser lightning rod prototype used in the experiment cost $2.2 billion to build, and was required to fire a record 1,000 pulses per second to pull off the successful attempt.

⚡ Zoom out: Roughly 100 lightning strikes occur around the world every single second. Collectively, these cause thousands of casualties and billions of dollars in damages each year (including $1.3 billion in the US in 2021).

🇮🇹 The most-wanted Mafia boss in Italy was arrested yesterday after 30 years on the run. Matteo Messina Denaro, an alleged boss of the Sicilian Mafia (aka Cosa Nostra), was in a private Sicilian hospital receiving treatment for cancer, when 100+ members of Italy’s armed forces stormed the building and took him to an undisclosed location. Despite evading arrest since 1993, the 60-year-old Messina Denaro was tried and sentenced in absentia to life in prison in 2002 for more than a dozen murders, including two Italian anti-Mafia prosecutors. He received another life sentence in 2012 for his role in the torture and murder of the 12-year-old son of a former mafia informant, and is believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than 50 people.

🇬🇧 The UK government vetoed a Scottish bill aimed at making it easier for people to legally change their gender. Under Scotland’s new draft law, people aged 16+ could apply to have the gender with which they identify legally recognized – and be issued a new name/birth certificate – without being diagnosed with gender dysphoria. This recognition would come with a legally binding declaration that they are already living in their “acquired gender,” and intend to do so permanently. UK officials said the new law would conflict with gender-equality protections across Great Britain due to the creation of “two separate gender recognition schemes.” It marks the first time the UK government has ever vetoed a Scottish law, per Bloomberg.

🇲🇽 Mexico’s former top security official will stand trial in the US today on charges of accepting cartel bribes. Genaro García Luna was arrested in Texas in 2019, and charged with accepting multi-million dollar bribes from the Sinaloa cartel for over a decade in exchange for allowing it to operate with impunity – all while he was supposedly leading Mexico’s anti-drug efforts. Luna faces up to life in prison if convicted, in a trial that could also implicate other officials on both sides of the US-Mexico border.

🏃‍♀️ The world, and especially technology, is moving faster than ever. Want to stay ahead of the curve? Check out TheFutureParty – a community-based media brand that dissects the business of culture.

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The World Economic Forum takes place this week in Davos, Switzerland, where government leaders, multinational CEOs, and global financiers are gathered to discuss potential solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.

☝️ First things first: The WEF is a not-for-profit foundation started in 1971, with a stated goal of bringing together the world’s most influential people to “shape global, regional, and industry agendas.”

• The organization’s activities center around a concept known as stakeholder capitalism, or the idea that companies should be structured to serve the long-term interests of all its stakeholders – including customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and local communities.

🤝 So, what’s this year’s meeting about?... In a report published before this week’s gathering in Davos, the WEF identified nearly two dozen issues its members think currently represent the biggest threats to the world:

✋ Yes, but… While many of the world’s top decision-makers attend the WEF each year, the organization itself lacks any official power to enact global change. Instead, the WEF’s mission is to sway public opinion in favor of policies its members believe will benefit humanity as a whole.

🌍 Zoom out: On Sunday night, the Edelman Trust Institute published its annual Trust Barometer, a survey of 36,000 respondents across 28 countries whose release typically coincides with the start of the WEF. Per the report:

• The world’s most trusted institutions in 2022 were businesses (61%), with governments (52%) and media (50%) placing last.
• Scientists (75%) and a person’s coworkers (74%) were the most trusted individuals in society last year, while journalists (46%) and government leaders (42%) were the least trusted.

💬 Quoted…​​ "Successful aborted takeoff procedure."

• How Delta described an almost-collision at JFK International Airport, which took place on Friday night between one of its planes and an American Airlines jet. The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board have opened separate investigations into the incident. Listen to audio of the air traffic control exchange. (Warning: swearing)

💰 Stat of the Day: The world’s richest 1% have accumulated nearly two-thirds of the $42T in new wealth that’s been created since 2020, per a new report from Oxfam.

🤯 Did You Know?... The US spends upwards of $4 billion on ice and snow removal each year, per a study from the Federal Highway Administration

📖 Worth a Read: Koko the Impostor: Ape sign language was a bunch of babbling nonsense → (Big Think)

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• ☝️ Cities across America held events yesterday in commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who would have turned 94 this past weekend.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🚗⚖️ Jury selection in Elon Musk’s trial vs. Tesla shareholders begins today; the case centers around Musk’s 2018 “funding secured” tweet about taking Tesla private.
• 💰 Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, founders of the bankrupt crypto exchange Three Arrows Capital, are raising money for a new exchange for buying and selling distressed debt, including their own, per two pitch decks acquired by The Block.
• 🏢 Ryan Cohen, the activist investor behind meme-stock rallies of Gamestop and others, has invested over $200 million in the Chinese e-commerce platform Alibaba, the WSJ reported yesterday.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🍿 Netflix’s US content now makes up less than half its total library, per a new report from Enders Analysis.
• 🏀 University of Alabama basketball player Darius Miles was charged with capital murder in connection with a Sunday morning shooting that killed a 23-year old woman.
• 🏈 The Jacksonville Jaguars came back from a 27-0 deficit to beat the LA Chargers 31-30 in this weekend’s NFL Wild Card round. See the full scores and updated playoff bracket here.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🤖🖼 Three artists are suing the creators of AI-powered text-to-image platforms Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and DreamUp, alleging the companies violated copyright laws by using their work without permission to train algorithms.
• 🦷 A 9-year-old Maryland girl recently discovered a 15-million-year-old megalodon tooth buried in Chesapeake Bay.
• 🚀 The first satellite launch spaceport in mainland Europe officially opened on Friday; it’s located in northern Sweden above the Arctic Circle.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🏆 Miss USA R'Bonney Gabriel, the first Filipino American to be crowned as such, was declared the winner of this year’s Miss Universe competition; it’s the first time Miss USA has won since 2012.
• ❗ President Biden declared major disasters in California and Alabama on Sunday, following deadly storms that hit both states last week.
• 📑 Five additional pages of a classified document were discovered at President Biden’s Delaware residence on Saturday, after an initial document was located there last Wednesday; classified documents have also been found at an office Biden had used after his vice presidency but before becoming president. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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On Friday, we covered how US-based media website CNET has been quietly publishing dozens of finance articles that were written by an AI since mid-November.

❓ Our question to you: In your opinion, AI chatbots will ultimately have a ____ impact on society.

• 👍 ​​Good: 7%
• 📈 Mostly good: 16%
• 🙅‍♀️ Neutral/zero-sum: 17%
• 📉 Mostly bad: 33%
• 👎 ​​Bad: 14%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 13%

Click here to read some of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 9,185 votes, and 723 longform responses.

Eleven-year-old Jude Nyame Yie Kofie went viral in September after his father discovered his natural piano abilities and posted a video of him playing online. 

🎶 A natural talent .... Jude had never taken a piano lesson before – but seemed able to play any song he heard by ear. 

• "[My] first reaction was, 'This kid is Mozart level,'" said professional piano tuner, Bill Magnusson. "And he deserves the very best."
• So Bill used his inheritance money to purchase Jude a grand piano and sponsor piano lessons.

🎹 Why, you ask?... "The ripple effects for the next 70 or 80 years are incalculable," Bill said. "It's not just for him. It's for all the people he's going to touch."

Can you guess the definitions of the following Greek/Latin root words?

1. Acr
2. Bront
3. Cirr
4. Lig
5. Olig

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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1. Acr = Height (e.g., acrobat, acrophobia)
2. Bront = Thunder (brontosaurus)
3. Cirr = Orange (cirrhosis)
4. Lig = Bind (ligament, ligature)
5. Olig = Few (oligarchy, oligopoly)