Good morning. Here’s something – procrastination might not be so much about poor time management as poor mood management.

That’s what some scientists say, at least. We spent the entire day looking into it, leaving no stone unturned, even if it meant not getting some work - AHHH WE PROCRASTINATED THE DAY AWAY AFTER GETTING TOO EXCITED ABOUT THIS MOOD MANAGEMENT STUFF.

Welp, if that proof ain’t in the pudding, we don’t know what is.

Think about that for a min while we go and write THE NEWS (jk promise we did a good job and are actually really proud of today’s edition).

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.96 minutes to read.

"Nothing can dim the light that shines from within."

–Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

Yesterday, the FBI arrested two individuals for allegedly conspiring to attack the power grids that supply Baltimore, MD, in what officials described as an attempt to “completely destroy [the] whole city.”

FBI agents said the two suspects – one of whom founded the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group – took steps to shoot at five different Baltimore electrical substations in a plan that was “racially or ethnically motivated.” More than 60% of Baltimore residents are Black.

🤔⚡ Why target power stations?

Some quick background: the US electrical grid is broken down into three independent regions – western states, Texas, and eastern states plus the Midwest – each of which is decentralized and controlled by a mixture of public and private entities.

Experts say America’s power infrastructure is an attractive target to saboteurs for several reasons:

1. The grid is designed so that smaller blackouts can be contained – but if several sections go down at once, the blackouts can cascade like dominoes, affecting millions of Americans.
2. Most of the 55,000 electrical substations scattered across the country are located in remote areas, and aren’t usually staffed.
3. Detailed information about America’s electricity infrastructure and how it operates is available to anyone on the internet.
4. It typically takes 18 to 24 months to replace critical power equipment like large transformers.

📸 Big picture: Attacks on power grids are like if a particular rapper/actor from Chicago did some work to find himself – aka becoming more Common. Yesterday’s arrests came weeks after a series of attacks on local power grids in Tacoma, WA, and North Carolina left a combined ~60,000 homes and businesses without power for days. And more broadly, attacks and suspicious activity at US power stations reached a decade-long high last year, with 118 reported incidents per a TIME review of federal data.

🇹🇷🇸🇾 A series of powerful earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria yesterday. The initial 7.8-magnitude earthquake was one of the most powerful to strike the region since at least the 1600s. After the first earthquake hit, there were more than 60 aftershocks, including a 7.5-magnitude tremor. At least 5,000 people were killed, with tens of thousands of others injured and thousands of buildings destroyed, per local officials – and the WHO says the death toll could rise further in the coming weeks. The search for trapped victims is still ongoing, with over 2,500 people rescued as of last night. Initial estimates put the economic damage from the earthquake at around $1 billion.

🇬🇧 UK healthcare workers staged the biggest strike in the 75 year-history of the National Health Service yesterday. Tens of thousands of nurses and ambulance service staff walked off the job as part of an ongoing pay dispute, with workers seeking raises of at least 2.5% above inflation (which stood at an annual rate of 9.2% in December). Though the UK government says such a raise would be unaffordable and cause more inflation. Yesterday’s strike came less than a week after half-a-million public sector workers – including 300,000 teachers – participated in a similar mass strike.

🇨🇳🎈 China confirmed its ownership of a suspected spy balloon currently over Latin America. Chinese officials claimed the balloon is a civilian weather airship that had been blown off course by bad weather – an explanation virtually identical to the one it provided for the balloon over US airspace last week. Separately, US General Glen VanHerck told reporters yesterday that the Pentagon previously “did not detect” three suspected Chinese spy balloons that flew over American airspace during the Trump administration, but was later made aware of them through other means.

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A international team of astronomers has discovered a rare Earth-sized exoplanet, called Wolf 1069 b, that’s one of the best targets to date in the search for extraterrestrial life, per a new peer-reviewed study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

🪐 Just how rare is it?... So far, humans have discovered and classified more than 5,300 different exoplanets. Of that total, less than 4% are rocky planets with a physical surface (<200), while the rest are gas giants like Neptune or Saturn.

And like a perfectly-crafted old fashioned, the recipe for life is an illusive and finicky cocktail. Within the subtotal of rocky planets that humans have discovered, just 80 are small enough for conditions that might allow life to survive.

We’re not done with our habitable-worlds funnel yet, either. Within those 80 planets exists an even smaller subsection of about a dozen planets, which orbit their respective star within its habitable zone.

• It’s on these 12 or so planets – which include the newly-discovered Wolf 1069 b – that life could potentially exist.

✋ Yes, but: In the grand scheme of things, planets with the potential for life aren’t very rare – humans just can’t see the vast majority of them. The Milky Way galaxy alone contains an estimated 300 million Earth-sized rocky exoplanets that orbit within the habitable zones of their respective stars.

👀 Looking ahead… Per the study’s authors, it’ll likely take a decade for current technology to become capable of analyzing Wolf 1069 b and other similar exoplanets for possible signs of extraterrestrial life.

What if you could see the future without ever leaving your computer? Well that’s sorta what happened last week to a small group of Microsoft Bing users, who all-of-a-sudden had access to Microsoft’s updated Bing search engine with OpenAI integration.

A couple minutes later, it was gone. But not before designer Owen Yin snagged some screenshots, providing us with a peek into how Bing will work with OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 integration. Here's the tea:

• The new Bing markets itself as a “research assistant, personal planner, and creative partner at your side,” much like if Alexa or Siri started taking ‘roids.
• Presented as a chat box, the service encourages you to use natural language when asking a question, like you were talking to a friend.
• For example, say you made too much oatmeal and wanted some recipes that asked for already-cooked oatmeal – BUT you have a chocolate and cinnamon allergy. Bing + ChatGPT will only provide answers that meet those criteria (and similar to a bibliography, the chatbot provides all of its sources at the bottom of the page).

🔎🤖 Zoom out: The AI chatbot wars are – to borrow a colloquial phrase – on like Donkey Kong. Google yesterday announced its own search AI chatbot named Bard, which will be rolled out for beta testing in the coming weeks.

+In the know: Microsoft is holding a special ChatGPT-focused event later today, and Google will host its own search- and- AI-focused event on Wednesday morning.

💬 Quoted…​​ “If he spoke, only he could explain this success.”

• Meet Bobi, a purebred Rafeiro do Alentejo who just dethroned 23-year-old Spike the Chihuahua as the world’s oldest living dog. But that’s kinda underselling it – Bobi is actually the oldest dog in recorded history, clocking in at a whopping 30 years and 268 days old according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

🎓 Stat of the Day: 9 in 10 US college graduates with a degree in journalism say they regret their choice of major, per a new ZipRecruiter survey (via Harper’s Index).

🤯 Did You Know?... Women of color start new businesses at 4.5x the rate of the overall US population.

📖 Worth a Read: The retreat of the amateur investors → (WSJ)

✍️ The Scribes was formed because of a passion for journaling, and the mental health benefits that come with it. And to encourage people to start, they publish weekly journaling prompts, known internally as "Wednesday Morning Prompts."

As an offshoot of those emails, they’re launching a new product: The Wednesday Morning Scribe. This journal is the perfect template to think critically, assess your state of mind, and practice mindfulness.

• This product has been a long time in the making. The goal was to create a journal that becomes a part of each user's daily routine, leading to a more fulfilled life.

🚨 Save $10 on your order today with code BEST10! And remember, when you buy from The Scribes, you help a student in need – they donate a journal for every one sold.👏

Get mindful with The Wednesday Morning Scribe.

• ☝️ A train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in the Ohio village of East Palestine over the weekend, forcing thousands of residents to evacuate; authorities carried out a controlled release of hazardous chemicals yesterday but said there’s currently no timetable for when local residents can return.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💊🛁 CVS is reportedly close to acquiring Oak Street Health, a primary-care network of clinics, for ~$10.5 billion including debt. | Bed Bath & Beyond closed $1+ billion in funding to avoid filing for bankruptcy, per the WSJ.
• 🏦 Binance will suspend US dollar deposits and withdrawals for international customers starting on February 8, the company announced yesterday.
• 🖥️ Dell is laying off 6,650 employees, or ~5% of its workforce.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🍿💺 AMC Theatres launched a tiered-pricing model for movie seats yesterday; it features Standard Sightline (regular price), Value Sightline (discounted front row tickets), and Preferred Sightline (premium middle-of-theater seating).
• 🗞️The National Enquirer will be sold to VVIP Ventures for just under $100 million, per the NYT.
• 🏈 Tom Brady will start as a broadcaster with Fox Sports in the fall of 2024, the seven-time Super Bowl winner said yesterday.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• ⚖️🤖 A Colombian judge said he used ChatGPT to pose legal questions in a recent case; he also reportedly included its responses in his decision; it marks the first known instance of ChatGPT being featured in a legal ruling, per Vice.
• 🐟🐊 Scientists at Auburn University created a new type of disease-resistant catfish using alligator DNA, which they hope will one day be sold for human consumption.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 💉🗽 New York City lifted its Covid vaccine requirement for all city workers yesterday.
• 🪙 FTX’s new management is asking hundreds of politicians and political organizations that received as much as $93 million in donations from the now-bankrupt crypto exchange and its founders to return the money by the end of the month, or face a lawsuit.
• 🎤🏛️ President Biden’s second annual State of the Union address is tonight at 9pm ET, with the Republican response from Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders held immediately afterwards. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 🫢 How a $220 million mistake turned Kind Snacks into a $5 billion company.

Yesterday we covered the suspected Chinese spy balloon shot out of the sky by the US military over the weekend, which came as relations between the US and China have grown increasingly combative in recent years.

❓ Our question to you: Do you think the US will be in a physical war against China within the next 10 years?

• 👍 Yes: 46%
• 👎 No: 32%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 22%

Click here to read some of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 9,836 votes, and 785 longform responses.

🐸 Toadally unexpected... When the alarm went off at a TSA check-in at Harrisburg International Airport in Virginia, agents got quite a surprise when the "threat" literally hopped out at them.

• "This little creature was toad-aly surprised when he was spotted and he asked for frog-iveness," read a tweet from TSA officials. "This find by TSA officers won't be easily frog-gotten."

❓ Trivia: Which animal is on the Porsche logo?

🦎 True or False?... All whiptail lizards are male.

🤔 Riddle Me This: What’s the capital of the Earth?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

👆 Check out the referral prizes you can get, just for introducing people you know to little old us. 

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❓ Trivia: A horse

🦎 T/F: False, they’re all female

🤔 Riddle: The letter “E”