Good morning. A couple new phrases came across our desk recently…

1. The millennial pause: ever heard of it? It's that nano-second before someone starts talking in a front-facing TikTok or Instagram video to ensure the camera's recording. And it's a millennial thing? Ok, it's true.
2. The gen Z shake: hitting record on a front-facing video before you've got the camera set up, so the footage starts super shaky.

Here's internet culture reporter Kate Lindsay, who coined the term millennial pause: "Whereas the millennial pause is unintentional —real, even vulnerable — the Gen Z shake is a performance. Both could easily be edited out. The fact that neither are signifies two entirely different relationships with the internet."

And on that actually super poignant thought, THE NEWS.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.74 minutes to read.

“Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become reality.”

–Earl Nightingale (1921-1989)

Today, up to 20,000 people are expected to visit Punxsutawney, PA, (year-round population 5,770) to see if Punxsutawney Phil – who by the way has correctly predicted spring 69% of the time over the past 75 years – will see his shadow.

📅 How it all started: The Groundhog Day origin story begins with the pre-Christian Celts. Without Google Calendar, they kept things simple, celebrating eight holidays a year: two solstices and two equinoxes – also called Quarter Days – plus the midpoints between each Quarter Day (Cross-Quarter Days). Today we're just focusing on the Cross-Quarter Days.

These four days signaled the start of a new season, and are the origins of several other modern-day holidays as well:

• May 1 - Beltane (May Day)
• August 1 - Lammas (Loaf Mass Day to celebrate the first harvest)
• November 1st - Samhain (All Saints Day→ Halloween)
• February 1st - Imbolc (Candlemas → Groundhog Day)

🤔 Ok, but groundhogs?... The lore of an animal predicting an early spring (or a longer winter) begins as early as medieval Europe. And for much of German-speaking Europe, that meant looking to the wise old… BADGER. The tradition then traveled with the Dutch to Pennsylvania where, upon realizing there weren't many badgers, the immigrants improvised and went with a groundhog (which, fun fact, is also called a whistle pig or woodchuck).

🇺🇲 Zoom out: Since Punxsatawney's first Groundhog Day in 1887, many other weather-predicting groundhogs have popped up across the country, including Noah the One-Eyed Groundhog of Oxford, MI; Buckeye Chuck of Marion, OH; and – wait for it – Jimmy of Sun Prairie, WI (do NOT call him "Jim”).

🇮🇷 An Iranian couple was reportedly sentenced to 10.5 years in prison apiece for posting an Instagram video of them dancing in public. According to BBC News and a US-based human rights group, 21-year-old Astiazh Haghighi and her 22-year-old fiance Amir Mohammad Ahmadi were convicted by Iran’s government of "promoting corruption and prostitution, colluding against national security, and propaganda against the establishment." The couple was arrested after posting a November Instagram video to their combined 2+ million followers showing them dancing by a national monument in Tehran; women aren’t allowed to dance publicly in Iran, much less with a man, and Haghighi also violated a law requiring her head to be covered.

🇬🇧 Strike 1: Hundreds of thousands of UK workers walked out yesterday. The mass strike calling for public-sector pay raises, which unions said involved over half a million workers in total (including ~300,000 teachers), represented the largest such action in the UK since 2011. In the country’s public sector, average pay excluding bonuses rose by 2.7% between August and October, while nationwide inflation was above 10% over the same period, per CNBC.

🇫🇷 Strike 2: More than 1 million French workers went on strike for the second time in two weeks to protest raising the retirement age. France’s interior ministry said a total of 1.27 million people participated in Tuesday’s strike, a higher figure than 12 days earlier. But despite the mass mobilization, President Emmanuel Macron has said he remains committed to raising France’s retirement age from 62 to 64, arguing the changes are necessary to keep the country’s pension system financially viable.

+Strike 3 Update: Authorities have discovered a pea-sized capsule full of radioactive material that went missing last month somewhere along an 870-mile stretch of road in the Australian Outback.

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The Federal Reserve’s policy-making committee unanimously voted to raise interest rates by 0.25% yesterday. It's the Fed's eighth consecutive rate hike, though the lowest one since last March.

The decision also caps a 12-month period in which the Fed raised its benchmark interest rate from near-zero to a range between 4.5% and 4.75%. And interest rates have quite an impact on the US economy.

Case in point…

🛒 Inflation: Increased 6.5% year-over-year in December, after peaking at a 40-year high of 9.1% in June. The CPI has now fallen for six straight months, though there’s still a gap between the current inflation reading and the 2% target the Fed is shooting for.

💵🌏 The dollar: America’s currency fell yesterday to a nine-month low against a group of other major global currencies, per IMF data. On the flip side, the euro reached an equivalent value of more than $1.10, its highest level in nine months.

📉 Consumer spending: This sector, which accounts for ~70% of the overall US economy, fell a seasonally-adjusted 0.2% in December, per the latest federal data. Spending on services – including rent, dining out, travel, and the bulk of bills – was flat in December after adjusting for inflation, the worst monthly reading in nearly a year.

💼 Jobs: US job openings increased by 572,000 to a five-month high of 11 million on December 31, according to new Labor Department data published yesterday. There were 1.9 jobs available for every unemployed worker on that date, near an all-time high. (There was always less than 1 job per unemployed person prior to the pandemic.) Though the latest federal data doesn’t include the tens of thousands of US layoffs announced so far this year.

Yesterday, Delta began to roll out free Wi-Fi for passengers on all of its flights. Though if it’s being used 30,000 feet in the air, does it become “High-Fi” instead?

ANYways. Nearly 60% of Delta’s aircraft are currently equipped to offer free Wi-Fi. But the airline expects to offer it on about 80% of its planes by the end of this year, and on all of its regional and international aircraft by the end of 2024.

⏩ Driving the move… For a passenger to actually use the free inflight Wi-Fi, they have to be a Delta SkyMiles member (it’s free to join). Which fits nicely into the airline’s overall push to offer a more robust and personalized travel experience for customers, all linked to their SkyMiles account, TechCrunch reports.

• And speaking of a better experience: Delta’s free Wi-Fi is pretty Wi-Fly. In a December 2022 in-flight speed test, the plane’s internet delivered download speeds around 60 Mbps (more than enough to stream HD video).

🌐✈️ Zoom out: JetBlue is the only other airline currently providing free Wi-Fi to all passengers. But United, American, and Southwest have all trialed free inflight Wi-Fi recently – and Hawaiian Airlines announced a deal with Starlink to offer free Wi-Fi on flights starting sometime this year.

💬 Quoted…​​ “For good.”

Tom Brady, aka the GOAT, announced that he’s officially retiring from the NFL yesterday after 23 seasons of quarterbacking the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The announcement came exactly one year after Brady’s first retirement, though TB12 did insist that yesterday would be his final goodbye.

• Brady has more Super Bowl wins than any NFL franchise, with seven. He also holds the all-time records for starts, completions, attempts, passing yards, passing TDs, QB wins, Pro Bowls, and Super Bowl MVPs.

🥚📉 Stat of the Day: $3.05 = the current average price of a dozen eggs in the US, down more than 40% from its December peak of ~$5.30, per data from the USDA. (Not to toot our own horn or anything… but we called this price drop a few weeks ago.)

🤯 Did You Know?... The “IKEA effect” is a scientifically documented psychological bias where people tend to overvalue things that they built or assembled themselves.

📖 Worth a Read: How Fixing Notifications Changed My Relationship With My Phone → (WSJ)

• ☝️ Tyre Nichols’ family, friends, and other guests celebrated the 29-year-old amateur photographer and skateboarder’s life with tributes and songs of faith at his funeral in Memphis, TN, yesterday. (Background)

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📈 US markets close higher following the Fed's rate-hike announcement (S&P:+1.2%; Dow: +.02%; Nasdaq: +2.0%). | Three Indiana cities – Lafayette, Fort Wayne, and Elkhart-Goshen – landed the top three spots in the WSJ/Realtor.com’s quarterly Housing Index.
• 📈 Meta reported Q4 earnings that beat analysts’ expectations yesterday; it also announced a $40 billion stock buyback program; the company’s shares increased ~18% in after-hours trading.
• ❌ Adani Group withdrew its $2.5 billion share offering, the Indian conglomerate announced yesterday; its stock closed down 28%.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📺 Netflix has added anti-password sharing guidelines to its Help Center.
• 📰 Gawker will be shut down for the second time, per a statement from parent company Bustle Digital Group; BDG also announced layoffs of 8% of employees, or about 50 people.
• 🌎🎤 Beyoncé announced her global 'Renaissance' tour yesterday; the 28-time Grammy winner will start in Stockholm on May 10 and end in New Orleans on September 27. (Ticket sale info here.)

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🤖 OpenAI launched ChatGPT Plus yesterday, a $20/month version of its AI chatbot that gives users faster response times, increased access during peak times, and priority access to new features and improvements; ChatGPT’s free tier is still available.
• 🛸 Startup Enigma Labs on Tuesday launched a new app for reporting UFO sightings; it features an AI that checks for photo manipulation and assigns a credibility score to each report.
• 🧠🐟 University of Michigan scientists have discovered the oldest "well-preserved vertebrate brain" on record, found within the skull of a 319-million-year-old fossilized fish.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 📑 The FBI executed a search of President Biden’s Delaware beach home yesterday morning; Biden’s lawyer said no classified documents were discovered, but agents did take “some materials and handwritten notes” for further review. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• 🏛️ Republican Nikki Haley, who served as South Carolina’s governor from 2011 to 2017 and as US Ambassador to the UN for two years after that, will launch her 2024 presidential campaign on February 15, per multiple reports. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• 🗣 President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) met yesterday to discuss the US debt ceiling. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right | What is the debt ceiling and why does it matter?)  

CLICKBAIT

• ☕ Coffee won’t give you extra energy, it’ll just borrow a bit that you’ll pay for later.

We had two polls yesterday:

☝️ Poll #1: Alleyn’s School, one of the top private schools in the UK, recently announced plans to stop assigning written homework in English classes, claiming the advent of ChatGPT has made the practice obsolete.

❓ Our question to you (long-form): We asked the 15,000+ classrooms utilizing The DONUT – "How do you plan on addressing ChatGPT, if at all?"

• “My school has not discussed it yet, but as an ELA teacher I plan on reinforcing the writing process, showing evidence of the process, and doing more writing in class. Furthermore, once you have read your students' writing before, you can tell whether or not a piece of writing has their voice and it is easy to tell if they are cheating or using a machine.”
• “I've already had students evaluate and grade a ChatGPT essay written in response to the same prompt my students had to write. They gave it a low score, noting that the evidence didn't match the claims, though structurally it was a perfect essay and the word choices made it sound good. We've also used it for inquiry and explored ethical considerations. While ChatGPT does make it more challenging for teachers (because students WILL use it to cheat), it's also been helpful in getting students thinking about how much agency they have in their learning.”
• “The further I can get students away from technology, the better. My students truly struggle to initiate independent thought. I've had to change my practices to decrease plagiarism (I've seen more this year than any other year in my career) and I'm truly worried that these students rely on others, including AI, to get by.”

Click here to read more of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 428 longform responses.

✌️ Poll #2: Yesterday, ‘de-extinction’ startup Colossal Biosciences announced plans to bring the dodo bird back from extinction. But as anyone who's seen Jurassic Park can tell you, it could also have some pretty gnarly implications. 

Our question to you: good idea or nah?

• 👍 Good idea: 28%
• 👎 Bad idea: 56%
• 🤷‍♀️ Who cares?: 16%

+Note on sample size: We received 5,486 votes.

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

• Zoos making cockroaches a Valentine's tradition → (UPI)
• Assistant HS girls basketball coach relieved of duties for impersonating 13-year-old player → (USA Today)
• N.J. 'Seinfeld bill' would require telemarketers to provide their own contact information → (Philly Voice)
• PG&E town hall on frequent power outages in Bennett Valley cut short by power outage → (The Press Democrat)
• B.C. lawyer wins $37 after suing over ‘disappointing’ children’s laser tag birthday party → (Westerly News)

About 14 months ago, Florida unicyclist Wesley Williams was almost paralyzed after falling 27 feet from a unicycle. He required five operations, two metal plates, 35 screws, and 83 stitches, and the circus performer was told he might never walk – let alone ride – again.

But the dedicated performer made a full recovery, and got back on the cycle only a year after the accident. Then last month, he broke the world record for riding the world's tallest unicycle, which measured 31 feet, 10 inches tall.🤯 

• While strapped into a safety harness this time, Wesley said he wanted to break this record to prove to others that "nothing is impossible."

Which country, pictured above, is also the largest island in the world that's not a continent?

(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.👇

Greenland