Good morning. For anyone keeping score in the war of Humans vs. Robots, humans may have just inched ahead.

Nick Cave, the dark poet laureate of modern music, was recently made aware of a song created by ChatGPT “in the style of Nick Cave.” Here’s what he thought:

“The apocalypse is well on its way. This song sucks.”

Cave continues: “I understand that ChatGPT is in its infancy but perhaps that is the emerging horror of AI – that it will forever be in its infancy, as it will always have further to go, and the direction is always forward, always faster.”

These days, societal conversation around AI focuses a lot on the question: is there anything human that machines cannot replicate? And we take comfort in Cave’s unequivocal answer: “This song is bs, a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human, and, well, I don’t much like it.”

Speaking of humans creating stuff for other humans, from our very human minds to yours, we present: THE NEWS.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.54 minutes to read.

“The future depends on what you do today.”

–Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

There must be a great Groupon deal on alien travel to Earth – because there’s been a big uptick in unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, sightings over the past few years.

According to a report released last week by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), US Armed Forces personnel have filed 366 reports of UAPs since March 2021. Before that, there’d only been 144 reported sightings total.

👽 So, are these all aliens?... Nope – these are just reports of weird things in the sky. Of the 366 sightings, here’s how they ultimately broke down:

• 163 were categorized as balloons
• 26 were drones
• 6 were “clutter” (a category that strangely includes birds)

But as our math-astute readers will realize, that still leaves 171 UAP sightings – some of which “demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities," per last week’s report. Though unfortunately (or fortunately), that still doesn’t mean these are alien crafts.

Other explanations of unidentified UAPs include foreign surveillance technology, car lights, and space debris, as well as drones distorted by optical illusions, classified sensors, or night-vision goggles.

📸 Big picture: When we said earlier that there had only been 144 total reported sightings of UAPs in history, that may have been a bit of a misleading use of statistics – because prior to this most recent report, government data only encompassed sightings from 2004 through early 2021. And the relatively high amount of sightings since then can be mainly attributed to “reduced stigma surrounding UAP reporting,” per the most recent ODNI report, meaning we don’t exactly have solid data available at the moment. 

So buckle up, folks: as the government works to collect and analyze more accurate info, the UAP/alien discussion isn’t going away – and it'll probably ramp up later this year. NASA recently announced an independent study program to explore how to best analyze UAP data provided by government entities, companies, and other sources, with a report on its findings expected in mid-2023.

📊 Flash poll: Do you think any UAP sightings are actually alien in nature?

Yes

No

Unsure/other

🏃‍♀️ An Australian long-distance runner just completed a 150-day trek on foot across the entire continent. Erchana Murray-Bartlett’s journey saw her travel a total of 3,900 miles, which is equivalent to running a marathon every single day for nearly half a year (a new Guinness World Record). And it wasn’t just about fitness for the 32-year-old Murray-Bartlett – she also raised more than $70,000 for the Wilderness Society.

🇨🇳 China reported an annual decline in population yesterday for the first time since 1961. Government officials said 850,000 fewer people lived in the country at the end of last year compared to 2021, bringing mainland China’s overall population to 1.411 billion people. It’s expected to mark the start of a long period of population decline in China, with UN experts predicting its population will shrink by 109 million people by 2050. India is actually projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country sometime this year, though its official census is delayed until at least 2024-25.

🇷🇺 A former commander of the Russia-aligned Wagner mercenary group was arrested in Norway after defecting. A lawyer representing the 26-year-old fighter, who is seeking asylum in Norway, said his client left Wagner after witnessing war crimes in Ukraine and being given the choice to either sign a lifetime contract with the mercenary group or be executed. His escape is thought to be the first known instance of a Wagner soldier defecting to the West, per the BBC. Separately, Russia’s defense minister said the country plans to expand its military from 1.15 million soldiers currently to 1.5 million by 2026.

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Remember a couple of months ago, when we wrote about how Yale Law School leaving the US News & World Report’s annual list of top colleges could lead to more schools denouncing the rankings? Well, not to toot our own horn or anything… but we were right. Since then, two dozen top law schools – including Stanford, UPenn, Columbia, Georgetown, Duke, and Northwestern – have all followed Yale’s lead and announced plans to leave the rankings.

And now, the exodus has spilled over to med schools. Harvard announced yesterday that its medical school, currently ranked 1st in research and 9th in primary care, will no longer submit data to US News’ annual list of top med schools.

⏩ Driving the move… Harvard Med dean Dr. George Q. Daley told the WSJ the school withdrew over concerns that the rankings incentivize colleges to falsify data, center policies around rankings, and divert financial aid from students with need to those with high test scores. Which isn’t much different than what Yale Law cited as its reasons for leaving the rankings.

📸 Big picture: The US News & World Report rankings, just like Ron Burgundy, are kind of a big deal. For decades, participating schools have highlighted their placement to prospective students, and some university leaders even get paid bonuses if their schools move up the rankings.

Though as you may expect, this setup has contributed to more scandals than in the show Scandal. The most recent of which occurred in September, when Columbia University admitted to submitting inaccurate data to US News to influence its position in the rankings.

💬 Quoted…​​ “If someone is going to spend six months and a day somewhere it is better to have them in Wisconsin than somewhere else.”

On Friday, Wisconsin’s GOP-controlled Senate proposed implementing a flat 3.25% income tax rate statewide, alleging the state’s current progressive income tax structure makes it more likely that residents will move away to greener (tax) pastures. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) vowed to veto the proposed bill, arguing it would disproportionately benefit the wealthy over poor and middle class residents.

• As it stands today, nine US states have flat income tax rates, 32 states plus D.C. have progressive income tax rates, and nine states don’t collect any income taxes at all.

🎶 Stat of the Day: Taylor Swift sold a total of 1.7 million vinyl albums in the US last year. That’s more than the next two top sellers combined – Harry Styles and The Beatles – and represents 1 in every 25 vinyl albums sold nationwide.

🤯 Did You Know?... The fastest human heartbeat ever recorded was 600 beats per minute, in a patient who suffered from extreme non-fatal tachyarrhythmia (aka irregular heartbeat).

📖 Worth a Read: Life with one of the most coveted handles on Instagram → (Slate)

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• ☝️ NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope recently captured this series of images showing a star’s final moments before it was gobbled up by a massive black hole.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🎮 Roblox shares rose nearly 12% on Tuesday following the release of its December 2022 metrics report, which showed an 18% annual increase in daily active users. | Discord has acquired Gas, a teen-focused social media platform, the company announced yesterday. (Learn more about Gas)
• 📈 Bitcoin broke $21,000 yesterday for the first time since FTX collapsed in November; the coin is up more than 26% in January.
• 💻 🚗 Apple announced an updated line of MacBook Pro laptops yesterday with Apple-silicon M2 Pro and M2 Max chips; a new Mac mini will also be released next week. | GM unveiled its first “electrified” Chevy Corvette yesterday; the new hybrid model is called the E-Ray and will be available later this year starting at $104,000.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📺 🎮 The Last Of Us, a new HBOMax series based on the popular post-apocalyptic PlayStation games, premiered to 4.7 million viewers on Sunday, the second largest debut on the streamer since 2010.
• 🎤🏟 Madonna announced a global, 35-city “Celebration Tour” starting July 15 in Vancouver.
• 🏀🏛️ The Golden State Warriors visited the White House yesterday in celebration of last year’s NBA Championship victory.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🏙️🌳 Urban green spaces can reduce the need for drugs that treat anxiety, insomnia, depression, high blood pressure, and asthma, per a new peer-reviewed study from the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare.
• 🤖 Beautiful.ai launched an AI-powered tool called DesignerBot that can build a PowerPoint presentation from scratch via user text prompts.
• ⚖️ Getty Images filed a lawsuit yesterday against AI text-to-image platform Stable Diffusion, claiming its software was trained using millions of unlawfully scraped images.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 📱 The new 988 US Suicide and Crisis Lifeline received 1.7 million calls, texts, and chats during its first five months of operation last year; the 10-digit Suicide Prevention number it replaced fielded ~1.2 million calls, texts, and chats over the same time period the year before.
• ⚖️ Solomon Peña, 39, a Republican House candidate in New Mexico who lost his race to a Democrat in November, was arrested late Monday for allegedly orchestrating a series of drive-by shootings targeting Democratic officials over the past month-and-a-half. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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🏊‍♀️ Take a dip... One California resident got the surprise of her life when she looked into her backyard to find a bear in her swimming pool.

Though contrary to the human in this story, the bear was anything but surprised. Donna Hargett, who discovered the animal, said he seemed unbothered by the pouring rain, and looked happy as ever paddling around her pool.

• Mr. Bear took a few laps around before moseying out and sauntering slowly away. 

❓ Trivia: How many witches are in a coven?

☢️ True or False?... Uranium becomes coal as it loses its radioactivity.

🤔 Riddle Me This… What object is typically broken before it’s used?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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❓ Trivia: At least three

☢️ T/F: False, it becomes lead

🤔 Riddle: An egg