Good morning. Think fast: who is credited with the first resume in history?

Socrates, whose resume was 100% full of questions? Na.

Cleopatra, who sent a CV hoping to land the coveted “Queen of Egypt” gig? Nope.

Marco Polo, who wrote a super nice cover letter outlining his hopes of becoming a kid’s pool game for eternity? No.

The correct answer is of course Leonardo Da Vinci, who’s credited with using the first resume in history when he applied for a job at the court of Ludovico Sforza in the early 1480s.

• Da Vinci, who wasn’t on LinkedIn at the time, sent in a list of ten reasons why he should be hired, including his owning small cannons “with which to hurl small stones almost like a hail-storm” being super sneaky when moving from one place to another. (Seriously.)
• As an afterthought, he wrote: “Likewise in painting, I can do everything possible as well as any other, whosoever he may be.”

Humblebrag much, Da Vinci?? Maybe the dude knew what he was doing though, cuz he ended up getting the job. Ten years later, he was commissioned to paint The Last Supper by none other than his former boss, Sforza.

And now: THE NEWS.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.97 minutes to read.

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

–Epictetus (~50 AD – 135 AD)

In a first-of-its-kind report published Wednesday, the US Secret Service analyzed trends across dozens of mass attacks that have occurred in public spaces around the country in recent years.

📝 A deeper dive… Researchers from the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center defined a mass attack as one “in which three or more people, not including the attacker, were harmed.”

They analyzed 173 such attacks that were carried out in public places like businesses, schools, or churches across the US over a five-year period ending in December 2020.

Here are some of the top data points:

• 96% of the attackers were male, which the Secret Service said is consistent with previous analyses of mass attacks.
• The attackers’ ages ranged from 14 to 87, with an average of 34.
• 73% of the attacks involved one or more firearms – and in nearly 25% of such cases, at least one gun was acquired illegally.
• 51% of the attacks were motivated by “perceived wrongs” related to personal, domestic, or workplace issues.
• 64% of the attackers had previously displayed behaviors or shared communications that were "so concerning, they should have been met with an immediate response."
• 58% of the attackers experienced mental health symptoms before or during their attack, though researchers emphasized that mental health factors shouldn’t be considered causal explanations for why the attacks occurred.

📸 Big picture: The landmark Secret Service report came as the US is experiencing its deadliest January ever recorded in terms of mass killings, per a database compiled by the AP, USA Today, and Northeastern that dates back to 2006.

Since 2015, the three months with the most mass killings – defined as four or more dead, not including the offender – have all occurred since October 2022. There were 42 mass killings overall last year, representing a 14% increase from 2021 and the second-highest total on record.

📊 Flash poll (long-form): In your opinion, what can be done to reduce the occurrence of mass attacks in America? The best responses will be featured in tomorrow’s newsletter.

• Click here to leave a response.

🇮🇳 India-based conglomerate Adani Group has lost a combined $48 billion in market value since Wednesday, after being shorted by US firm Hindenburg Research. Hindenburg, which typically takes short positions in companies before releasing investigations accusing them of wrongdoing, published a report late Tuesday claiming the Adani Group, worth $218 billion at the start of this week, engaged in “a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades.” Gautam Adani, the conglomerate’s founder/chairman and previously third-richest person in the world (now seventh), called Hindenburg’s report baseless and “selective misinformation.”

🇱🇧 Lebanon’s ex-PM and other senior officials – both current and former – were charged with homicide in relation to a deadly 2020 explosion in Beirut. The blast killed at least 218 people, left an estimated 300,000 more homeless, and caused ~$15 billion in damages to areas near Beirut’s port. The incident was caused by hundreds of tons of nitrate that had been stored in poor conditions since being unloaded in 2013, and prompted charges of criminal negligence against top Lebanese officials. The decision to now charge these officials with homicide comes after the criminal negligence investigation has been stalled for over a year, due to a series of lawsuits filed by the accused politicians.

🇵🇸 Palestine suspended security collaborations with Israel yesterday, following a shooting that killed nine Palestinians. Israeli officials said its soldiers were searching for an active Islamist terrorist cell when they were fired upon by Palestinian gunmen, and then returned fire. A total of seven Palestinian gunmen and two civilians were killed in the crossfire, per local Palestinian officials, while at least 20 other Palestinians were injured (Israeli forces were reportedly unharmed). Israel’s military said it plans to investigate the deaths of any civilians killed in the operation, which marked the deadliest single raid in the occupied West Bank in two decades, per the AP.

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Yesterday, Southwest revealed that its December meltdown will cost the airline more than $1 billion. Which is a three-comma club they probably Wanna Get Away from.

Around $800 million of that cost (pre-tax) was directly tied to the ten-day stretch between December 21 and December 31, when the airline scrubbed 16,700 flights – or about one-third of its entire schedule – due to a winter storm that ultimately caused its technological system to break down. Southwest expects to take an additional ~$350 million revenue hit this quarter because of the situation’s “lingering effects.”

• While the airline hasn’t revealed how many customers were ultimately affected, it granted awards of 25,000 frequent-flier points to nearly two million people.

🤔 Is anything changing moving forward?... Potentially. The airline has commissioned GE, the creator of its operations software, to modify its tech to remove what Southwest calls “an unforeseen gap.” That update should be ready in a couple of weeks, the airline said yesterday.

✈️😬 Zoom out: While travel demand has rebounded following its pandemic slump, so have delays, cancelations, and other incidents. More than 1 in 5 domestic flights were either canceled or delayed in 2022 – and 2023 hasn’t gotten off to a much better start.

Over the first few weeks of the year, there’s been an FAA system outage that caused a brief nationwide grounding of all planes, as well as two minor plane collision incidents at JFK Airport.

The plan sounded like an Ocean’s Eleven heist: send a guy fighting a speeding ticket into court with an earpiece that would secretly record audio of the trial, passing it along to an AI chatbot. The bot would then dictate responses into the defendant’s ear for him to repeat in open court.

Well, at least that was the plan that Joshua Browder, CEO of legal chatbot startup DoNotPay, concocted a few weeks ago. But after several state bar associations threatened legal action, Browder ultimately decided against the idea on Wednesday (and then probably fired off some angry emails with the subject line “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH”).

• Some states require that all parties consent to be recorded, which rules out the possibility of a robot lawyer entering many courtrooms.
• Of the 300 cases DoNotPay considered for a trial of its robot lawyer, only two were feasible, CBS reports.

⚖️🤖 Zoom out: AI chatbots aren’t the only bit of emerging tech in the legal spotlight. Earlier this week, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a probe into Madison Square Garden’s reported use of facial recognition technology to prevent lawyers employed at firms involved in MSG-related cases from entering the venue for events.

💬 Quoted…​​ “Burrito season.”

Chipotle announced a new campaign to hire 15,000 new workers ahead of its busiest time of the year, aka “burrito season,” which typically stretches from March until May.

• A company spokesperson attributed the seasonal demand increase to better weather and more daylight, as well as increased business at restaurants located near universities.

🎓 Stat of the Day: 7,600+ = the amount of phony nursing diplomas and transcripts issued as part of a coordinated $100+ million fraud scheme that was recently busted by the DOJ.

🤯 Did You Know?... Nearly 1.4 million Americans have Top Secret security clearance, per the latest available federal data.

📖 Worth a Read: Student. Athlete. Mogul? → (NY Times)

🤯 Did you know… research demonstrates investing a couple of minutes every day in journaling is one of the best things you can do for your mental health? When used as an outlet for positive self-talk, it becomes an effective tool for:

• Managing anxiety
• Reducing stress
• Coping with depression.

⚖️🧠 It isn’t the silver bullet to a better life, but journalling is a tried and true method for maintaining a healthy mind. That’s why 4 guys in NYC set out to build The Scribes – they knew that creating a quality journal could force a positive series of actions in one’s life.

They’re a company and initiative we can really get behind… for every journal they sell, they donate one to students in need.👏🦸

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• ☝️ An asteroid the size of a small bus whizzed by Earth last night at a distance of 2,200 miles, or within the orbit of some satellites; it marked one of the closest passes of our planet in recent history.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📈 US GDP grew at a 2.9% annual rate in Q4 2022, the Commerce Department announced yesterday; that’s down from 3.2% in the third quarter but above analysts' projections of 2.8%. | US stock markets closed higher (Nasdaq: +1.8%, Dow: +0.6%, S&P: +1.1%), though Bed Bath & Beyond shares fell 22% after saying it lacks cash to pay down its debts.
• 🌿 The FDA said yesterday that it cannot regulate CBD products in food or supplements; the agency asked Congress to provide new laws around regulating the substance.
• ✂️💼 Hasbro said it will lay off 15% of its employees yesterday, or about 1,000 people. | Dow, IBM, SAP, and 3M each announced layoffs of over 1,000 employees this week.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📺 Netflix held 13 of the top 15 spots in Nielsen’s 2022 Most Viewed Original Programs list with Stranger Things, Ozark, and Wednesday taking the #1, #2, and #3 spots, respectively.
• 🤖 Buzzfeed will use ChatGPT to enhance its creative content, the company’s CEO announced yesterday; for example: AI-powered quizzes that personalize results based on user responses.
• 🏈🏀 The NFL Conference Playoffs kick off on Sunday with the 49ers v. Eagles at 3pm ET and Bengals v. Chiefs at 6:30pm ET. | The NBA announced its All-Star starters.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 📸 Images of fake people generated by a neural network look more real to the average person than actual human beings, per a new peer-reviewed study published in iScience.
• 🧠 Human brain development in-utero became more human-like and less chimp-like around 1 million years ago, new research based on fossils of prenatal teeth suggests.
• 🐜 Ants can be trained to detect cancerous tumors in the urine of mice, according to a new peer-reviewed study.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🌐 The DOJ announced the seizure of computer servers and dark web sites associated with the Hive ransomware gang, which has extorted over $100 million in ransom payments from 1,500+ companies in over 80 countries.
• ⚖️ ​​Five former Memphis police officers who were fired after the Jan. 7 arrest of Tyre Nichols – a 29-year-old Black man who was hospitalized and later died after a forceful traffic stop involving the officers (all of whom are also Black) – were arrested yesterday on charges including second-degree murder, aggravated assault, and kidnapping; video footage of Nichols' arrest is set to be released tonight.

CLICKBAIT

• 📱 Using your phone before bed hijacks your sleep – but not for the reason you think.

Our weekly news quiz is live. Ace it, and we just might buy you a cookie.😉

Take the quiz here.

UK resident Nikata Moran had just opened a fresh package of strawberries in her Manchester home, when she spotted a tiny gecko among the fruit. 

• "I couldn't believe it.," she said of the discovery. "It seemed very alert, so I managed to get it onto a spoon and pop it into a plastic container, where it moved very, very fast."

🦎🍓 Sneaky gecko... Upon calling a reptile rescue, Nikata was informed the baby gecko had somehow traveled a whopping 2,500 miles – all the way from Egypt – in the small box of strawberries. 

• "I have no idea how something so tiny survived for such a long time in transit in a sealed up container," said animal rescuer Rachel Henderson, who added that the gecko would soon be re-homed.

Below are three lists of ingredients. All you have to do is give us the completed dish they make.

☝️ Recipe #1:

• Red beets
• Acron squash
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Maple syrup
• Salt & pepper
• Sourdough bread
• Grapefruit juice
• Garlic
• Thyme
• Dijon mustard
• Scallion
• Parsley leaves
• Pomegranite seeds
• Grapefruit
• Blue cheese

✌️ Recipe #2:

• Butter
• Brown sugar
• Salt
• Vanilla extract
• Egg
• Flour
• Pink & white animal cookies
• Rainbow nonpareils

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Pecans
• Caramel sauce
• Salt
• Yellow cake mix
• Water
• Vegetable oil
• Eggs

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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☝️ Recipe #1: Winter rainbow panzanella salad

✌️ Recipe #2: Animal cookie blondies

3️⃣ Recipe #3: Pecan upside-down cake