Good morning. We here at The DONUT are big fans of thorough, investigative journalism. Take, for example, the NYC Slice by Liam Quigley, a longitudinal study of the 464 slices of pizza he ate in New York City between 2014 and 2022.

The study’s findings, which Quigley posted on his website, reveal data both quantitative (the average price of a slice increased from $2.52 to $3.00, excluding dollar slices, of course) and qualitative (“the biggest thing I have noticed is the decline in the amount of sauce put on slices”).

Quigley, who spent a total of $1,244.22 on the 464 slices, provides a interactive map of every slice he’s eaten in New York on his website, including “The most expensive [slice which] was a $6.53 pepperoni slice at Artichoke Basille’s Pizza’s Times Square location, and it was fine.”

May we all live our lives with the same love and dedication that Quigley showed when eating all those New York slices.

And now, THE NEWS.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.95 minutes to read.

"Even though you are on the right track – you will get run over if you just sit there."

–Will Rogers (1875-1939)

In the first sentence of a story we published on Friday, we left out the "n" in the first name of 42-year-old cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was accidentally shot and killed by Alec Baldwin in October 2021.

This is the 36th correction out of the 262 newsletters we’ve published since January 2022.

The FBI discovered more classified documents at President Biden’s Delaware home over the course of a nearly 13-hour search that took place on Friday, according to the president’s personal lawyer.

The DOJ’s search, which took place at the invitation of the president's attorneys (i.e., without a warrant), uncovered six new items from Biden's time as vice president and as senator that contained documents with classified markings. FBI agents also confiscated some of Biden’s handwritten notes that were jotted down during his vice presidency.

📅 Background: Friday’s search was at least the fourth in recent months to turn up classified documents in locations that Biden used before he became president. Here’s a brief timeline:

• November 2: The initial batch of docs was found by Biden’s personal attorneys at the Penn Biden Center, a D.C. think tank that employed Biden for two years after his vice presidency, but before his presidential campaign. The National Archives took possession of the classified materials within days, but their discovery wasn’t reported to the public until January 9.
• December 20: Additional classified docs were found by Biden’s aides at his Delaware home, a discovery that was first publicly reported on January 12.
• January 12: Hours after the second batch of docs was publicized, AG Merrick Garland named former US attorney Robert Hur – a Trump appointee – to serve as an independent special counsel overseeing the ongoing DOJ investigation into Biden’s handling of classified material.
• January 14: Biden’s lawyers revealed they had found more classified docs at his Delaware home, after which the FBI conducted its own search of the property (on Friday, January 20).

📸 Big picture: Biden hasn’t been accused of breaking any laws thus far, and any such claim would have to prove he intentionally stored the classified material in unauthorized locations (which would be difficult, per legal experts). But the discoveries have raised concerns about the possibility that foreign spies could have had access to top-secret information.

The situation has also drawn parallels with an ongoing DOJ investigation into the mishandling of classified documents by former President Donald Trump, which began after the FBI retrieved about 100 classified docs while executing a search warrant on the former president's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida (quick timeline note: the search warrant was obtained after more than a year of negotiations between Trump’s lawyers, the National Archives, and the DOJ).

📊 Flash poll: Which statement most accurately describes how you feel about Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents after they left office?

What Trump did was a more serious concern

What Biden did was a more serious concern

Both were about the same

Neither was a serious concern

Unsure/other

🇨🇳 China began 15 days of celebrations for the Lunar New Year yesterday. The Lunar New Year is the most important annual holiday in China, per NPR, with many employers taking a full two weeks off. This year’s celebrations bring in the Year of the Rabbit, and mark the first time since before the pandemic in 2019 that China’s strict ‘zero-Covid’ strategy isn’t in place. In contrast to 2022’s Year of the Tiger, which is seen as a period of action in the Chinese zodiac calendar, the Year of the Rabbit is supposed to embody relaxation, quietness, and contemplation.

🇨🇦 Canada agreed to pay $2.8 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by local Indigenous tribes against its former residential school system. From the late 19th century up until the 1970s, some 150,000 Indigenous Canadian children were forcibly taken from their homes and placed in government-run schools, where many suffered emotional, sexual, and/or physical abuse that sometimes proved fatal. In recent years, investigators have uncovered several mass grave sites containing the bodies of Indigenous children who attended these residential schools, with estimates ranging from 3,200 to 6,000 total student deaths. The $2.8 billion settlement still has to be approved by a federal court before it can be disbursed to the plaintiffs.

🇵🇪 Peru indefinitely closed Machu Picchu on Saturday due to growing anti-government protests. Government officials said they closed the country’s most famous tourist attraction “to protect the safety of tourists and the population in general," as demonstrations continue across the country. Protesters are demanding the resignation of President Dina Boluarte, who replaced then-President Pedro Castillo last month after he was impeached and imprisoned for trying to dissolve Congress. At least 55 people have died in the ensuing unrest, per APNews.

Probably less than you think…

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About 1,000 residents in Rio Verde Foothills, AZ, have been without running water for more than three weeks, after the neighboring city of Scottsdale shut off their water supply.

And while it’s not the first water dispute in the region, it certainly won’t be the last. Because like the sink your dad said he’d fix himself instead of calling the plumber, the Southwest's broader water-sharing plan doesn't appear to be working too well at the moment.

Arizona is one of seven states that gets a large share of its water from the Colorado River. In 1922, the states banded together to create “The Law of the River,” which guaranteed 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year to both the Upper Basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) and the Lower Basin (Arizona, California, and Nevada). For context, an acre-foot of water is ~326,000 gallons.

☝️ There’s just one problem. The agreement was made when the River’s annual flow was about 18 million acre-feet – more than enough to cover the 7.5 mil for each Basin. But since 2000, the West has faced the worst megadrought in 1,200 years.

• Hotter temperatures and decreased rains have combined to lower the average annual flow for the River to 12.3 million acre-feet – or more than 2.5 million acre-feet short of what’s needed.
• Research indicates that flow could decrease an additional 30% by 2050, and 55% by 2100.

📸 Big picture: In June of last year, the Department of the Interior gave the seven states a two-month deadline to figure out how to cut their collective water use for 2023 by 15-30%... which kicked off a squabble reminiscent of siblings fighting over who has to sit in the middle seat on a family road trip.

After the states failed to reach an agreement in time, the federal government – aka the ‘rents – extended the deadline to January 31. And if that isn’t met, the feds may have to pull the car over and unilaterally determine how the cuts are made – meaning Mad Max may soon start to feel less like a post-apocalyptic thriller, and more like… reality TV.

💬 Quoted…​​ “like so many other of my hacks this story starts with me being bored."

The US no-fly list was leaked late last week by a Swiss hacker known as "maia arson crimew," who discovered a copy from 2019 on a server run by US regional airline CommuteAir. 

• This version of the list contains more than 1.5 million names and birth dates of people unable to fly in the US due to suspected or known ties to terrorism, including notable figures like recently freed Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout and 16 of his potential aliases.

🏘️📉 Number of the Day: 5.03 million = the number of previously occupied homes sold in 2022, per new data from the National Association of Realtors; that figure marks the US housing market's slowest year since 2014, and biggest annual decline since 2008 (-17%).

🤯 Did You Know?... French toast was first invented in Ancient Rome, centuries before France ever existed.

📖 Worth a Read: NASA’s Mars Helicopter Opens the Door for Flight on Other Worlds → (WSJ)

Look, you’re a pretty smart cookie – you’re subscribed to The DONUT after all. So like any bright critical thinker, you want your advice backed up with rock-solid research.🔬💪

🗣️😖 But each new year, there are more voices telling us what to do: get fit, supercharge your career, blah blah. Well-intentioned? Perhaps, but the sheer volume brings too much unhelpful advice/fluff.

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Listen to The Happiness Lab now, wherever you get podcasts.

• ☝️ Sunday marked the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision enshrining the constitutional right to an abortion (which was overturned last summer); the annual anti-abortion March for Life event (left) was held in D.C. on Friday, while pro-abortion demonstrators gathered in cities across the US yesterday (right).

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 Activist investor Elliott Management has taken a multibillion-dollar stake in Salesforce, per the WSJ.
• 💻 Alphabet is laying off 12,000 people, or 6% of its total workforce, the tech giant announced on Friday. | Apple increased its workforce by about 20% between September 2019 and September 2022, per the WSJ, less than increases at Microsoft (53%), Alphabet (57%), and Meta (94%) during the same period.
• 🎧 New podcast creation dropped by about 80% between 2020-2022, per Listen Notes; there were ~220,000 new podcasts created in 2022, down from over 1 million in 2020.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏈 The NFL Playoffs are down to its last four teams: the AFC’s 49ers and Eagles, and the NFC’s Bengals and Chiefs. | Damar Hamlin, the Bills’ safety who suffered a cardiac arrest on the field earlier this January, attended his team’s game against the Bengals in person yesterday.
• 🍿 Avatar 2 became the sixth film in history to make over $2 billion globally; the James Cameron-directed sequel has been out for six weeks.
• 🏀 Temple beat the NCAA Men’s No.1 ranked Houston yesterday.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 📶 Chinese scientists have demonstrated a laser-based tractor beam – aka device that can move an object from a distance – that works on large objects for the first time ever, per a new peer-reviewed study.
• 🦑 A Japanese diver recently captured rare footage of an eight-foot-long giant squid swimming in the Sea of Japan.
• 👩‍🚀 NASA astronaut Nicole Mann, the first Native American woman in space, performed her first spacewalk on Friday.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🙏 A gunman opened fire at a ballroom dance studio in Monterey Park, CA, on Saturday night, killing 10 people and injuring at least 10 more; the suspected 72-year-old male shooter was later found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
• 📈 More than 216,000 illegal migrants were stopped at the US-Mexico border in December, per new federal data, marking an 11% increase from the previous month and the highest number since President Biden took office.
• 🏛️ President Joe Biden will name former Covid response coordinator Jeff Zients as his next chief of staff, per multiple sources; Zients will replace current Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who plans to step down after the State of the Union on February 7.

CLICKBAIT

• 💕 Here’s the No. 1 phrase used in successful relationships, per psychologists who studied 40,000 couples.

On Friday, we examined how President Biden's approval rating has fared over the course of his first two years in office.

❓ Our question to you: What do you think about President Biden’s job performance over his first two years?

• 👍 Strongly approve: 17%
• 📈 Somewhat approve: 21%
• 🤷 Neutral: 14%
• 📉 Somewhat disapprove: 13%
• 👎 Strongly disapprove: 35%

Click here to read some of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 10,348 votes, and 1,120 longform responses.

Monday: The IRS starts accepting 2022 tax returns ahead of April 18 deadline

Tuesday: The Doomsday Clock’s annual update (currently 100 seconds to midnight); this year's Academy Award nominees revealed

Wednesday: National Opposite Day

Thursday: The US publishes Q4 GDP data

Friday: International Holocaust Remembrance Day

The Cumberland Police Department in Rhode Island recently received an interesting request from a concerned local resident: a young girl questioning the existence of Santa Claus. 

• After collecting evidence samples of half-eaten cookies and carrots, the girl asked the department to run DNA tests on the items to determine if St. Nick was really the cookie culprit. 

🎅🏼🔬 Keep the magic alive... According to the press release, the samples were forwarded to the state's Department of Health-Forensic Sciences Unit for analysis. They're still awaiting results😉.

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

1. Condi
2. Pac
3. Ornith
4. Cracy
5. Radic

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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1. Condi = Season (e.g., condiment)
2. Pac = Peace (pacifism)
3. Ornith = Bird (ornithology)
4. Cracy = Authority (democracy, bureaucracy)
5. Radic = Root (eradicate, radical)