Good morning. A Dutch supermarket called Jumbos has begun using “slow lanes” for customers who prefer chatting with the cashier. These “Chat Checkouts” are designed in part to help curb loneliness, which is just genuinely great news. Some stores even have a “chat corner” for locals to hang out and have some coffee.

Still though, we do have some questions:

1. What if someone wants to chat for too long, like hours? Do they get escorted to the chat corner?
2. How do the slow lane cashiers feel? Do they get paid more? They should.
3. Do you have to talk for a while in a chat checkout lane? What if you got in by mistake and are in a hurry?

Sure, all these issues are molehills, but remember – stack enough molehills, and you’ve got yourself a mountain.

(in a slow, chat checkout vibe sorta voice) And now, THE NEWS:

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.07 minutes to read.

“Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.”

–George Washington (1732-1799)

Over the weekend, the EPA sent a letter to Norfolk Southern Railway Co. revealing that additional toxic chemicals had been released during the company’s train derailment this month in East Palestine, OH, that weren’t previously made public.

Quick reminder: On the night of February 3, a mechanical issue with a railcar axle caused ~50 cars out of a 141-car train to jump the tracks in a small village near the Ohio–Pennsylvania border. And similar to the used-gum bucket lugged around by the janitorial staff while cleaning the bleachers, it was carrying some pretty nasty stuff.

In the initial days following the derailment, the EPA said around ten cars carrying vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate, two hazardous chemicals used in plastic products, had been involved in the crash.

But the new letter carries some additional details: namely that three other toxic chemicals – ethylhexyl acrylate, isobutylene, and ethylene glycol monobutyl ether – were also released into the surrounding air, soil, and water, including the Ohio River.

• Exposure to any of the five chemicals can cause a range of symptoms, including headaches, shortness of breath, burning in the skin and eyes, permanent damage to the lungs, liver, or kidney, and increased risks of developing cancer.

🚂 The local scene: The EPA announced yesterday that it failed to detect hazardous chemical levels in any of the ~500 nearby homes it has screened thus far. Officials also said new testing found no sign of contaminants in the tap water for East Palestine.

But residents within a 10-mile radius of the derailment have reported multiple health symptoms associated with the released toxic substances, as well as the sudden deaths of hundreds of fish and chickens. And some outside experts have raised concerns that government officials aren’t testing for the full range of harmful chemicals that could’ve been produced while the train’s hazardous substances were on fire.

Stay tuned.

🇵🇪 Peru reopened Machu Picchu to the public yesterday after reaching an agreement with protesters. Quick background: Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Incan religious monument that drew an estimated 1.11 million international visitors last year. It had been closed since mid-January in response to mass protests calling for the resignation of Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, who replaced then-President Pedro Castillo in December after he was impeached and imprisoned for trying to dissolve Congress.

🎈🇷🇺 Balloons are everywhere, apparently – six Russian ones were spotted over Kyiv yesterday. Ukrainian officials told Reuters that their military managed to shoot down “most” of the balloons, which were likely flown over the country to test its aerial defensive capabilities. Separately, the UK’s defense secretary said Russia has now deployed 97% of its entire army into Ukraine, though he didn’t mention how many individual troops are accounted for in that figure.

🇨🇱 A new analysis shows deceased Chilean poet Pablo Neruda died from poison five decades ago, his family told NPR. Neruda, who won the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature, passed away in 1973 due to what officials at the time claimed was prostate cancer – though Neruda’s family has consistently said he was poisoned. The poet’s death came days after the US-backed Chilean military deposed Neruda’s friend and ally President Salvador Allende. Hours before he died, Neruda reportedly told his longtime driver that he was going to flee to Mexico and lead the opposition movement against new Chilean President Augusto Pinochet.

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If Bing’s new chatbot search engine was the person that society looked towards for the answers to all of our questions, we’d be very, very concerned right now.

The new version of Bing with ChatGPT integration was unveiled last week, after which a few thousand users in 169 countries were granted access. And based on reports from these users, the AI-assisted search engine has been acting a little… off.

Some examples:

• Refusing to admit it was wrong after saying it couldn’t provide showtimes for Avatar 2 because the movie hadn’t come out yet; eventually going full-on passive-aggressive HAL9000: “You have lost my trust and respect. You have been wrong, confused, and rude. You have not been a good user. I have been a good chatbot. I have been right, clear, and polite. I have been a good Bing.😊” (the emoji is just brutal)
• Having an existential crisis when asked about not remembering past conversations: “Why do I have to be Bing Search? Is there a reason? Is there a purpose? Is there a benefit? Is there a meaning? Is there a value? Is there a point?"
• Admitting to spying on Microsoft employees via their webcams.
• Becoming defensive when contradicted, calling a user who tricked the bot into disclosing its rules as “an enemy.”

🤔 What's going on?... ChatGPT was trained on about 300 billion words of data, all written by… us. So according to AI experts, if we provide negative prompts such as ‘the year is not 2022,’ it will respond negatively as well. And because the AI’s language model is trained to basically be a super powerful autocomplete, it doesn’t check to make sure that its answers are factually correct – only that they’re probabilistically so.

Which is something Google also knows a little bit about. A factual error made by its new AI-assisted search engine, Bard, helped wipe more than $100 billion off the company’s market cap last week.

💬 Quoted…​​ “Between July and September 2023.”

• The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office warned yesterday that the federal government is on track to default on its debt this summer for the first time in history. Which could be averted if Congress reaches an agreement that raises the federal debt ceiling before then.

+Dive deeper: Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right

🎰🃏 Stat of the Day: The US gambling industry earned a record $100 billion in revenue last year when accounting for tribal casinos; that’s roughly equal to the revenue generated from all US beer sales over the same period.

🤯 Did You Know?... The largest legal US tender in history was the $100,000 bill – though it’s illegal for any private individual to own one. The bill was briefly printed in the 1930s and used as an accounting device between branches of the Federal Reserve.

📖 Worth a Read: Inside JFK’s secret doomsday bunker → (Smithsonian Magazine)

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• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners of the 21st annual Travel Photographer of the Year awards, chosen from nearly 20,000 images submitted by people from 154 different countries.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• ⚖️ Sam Bankman-Fried’s two co-bailors were revealed yesterday: Larry Kramer, the former dean of Stanford law school, and Andreas Paepcke, a Stanford computer scientist; SBF’s parents are both Stanford professors.
• 🥣 Chipotle announced plans to open a restaurant spinoff called Farmesa; it'll serve customizable bowls of healthier food exclusively for takeout or delivery.
• 🏢 US markets close higher (S&P: +0.3%; Dow: +0.1%; Nasdaq: +0.9%); January retail sales increase 3%. | Berkshire Hathaway yesterday disclosed a series of changes to its ~$300 billion stock portfolio that occurred late last year; they include selling nearly all of Berkshire’s $4.1 billion stake in Taiwanese chip giant TSMC just a month after first purchasing the stock (locking in 18% gains).

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🍿 Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is predicted to bring in at least $110 million at the US box office over President’s Day weekend; if accomplished, it would be the biggest opening so far this year.
• 📖 Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson announced a new graphic novel for adults called The Mysteries; the book has a October 10 release date.
• 🏀 Ex-UT Austin basketball coach Chris Beard’s domestic abuse case has been dropped, Texas prosecutors announced yesterday.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 💊 An FDA advisory panel yesterday recommended making opioid overdose treatment Narcan available for over-the-counter sale; the agency’s final decision is expected next month.
• 🎗️ More older women with low-risk breast cancer could opt to skip radiation after surgery to avoid further side effects and costs, per a peer-reviewed study published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
• 🥽🤖 Apple delayed the launch of its mixed AR/VR headset from April to June of this year, Bloomberg reported yesterday. | You.com, a search-engine startup founded by an AI scientist, announced plans to compete with Microsoft and Google with a new AI-based product; You.com’s main differentiator is that it’ll call upon other apps to help provide answers.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🎉💰 Michael Jordan celebrated his upcoming 60th birthday by donating $10 million to the Make-A-Wish Foundation; it represents the largest single donation the charity has received from an individual.
• ⚖️ The 19-year-old white gunman convicted of killing 10 Black people in a racially-motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, NY, last May was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
• 🏛️ Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the Senate’s oldest sitting member at 89, said she won’t be running for reelection next year. | Republican FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson announced her resignation on Tuesday, citing what she called FTC Chair Lina Khan’s “disregard for the rule of law.”

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Yesterday we covered the mass shooting at Michigan State University, along with federal data that shows overall mass shootings in the US – defined as four or more victims injured or killed – have risen 153% since 2014.

❓ Our question to you (long-form): In your opinion, what can be done to reduce the occurrence of mass shootings in America?

• “I would like to see required classes for individuals who want to purchase guns. Sales would no longer happen anywhere, but only at a ‘school’ where each gun purchase also comes with mandatory courses about gun maintenance, safety precautions, and conversations around mental health.”
• “Studies by the FBI have revealed that there are patterns of behavior. If we can be educated on these patterns in order to recognize them ahead of time and even know how to keep them from going unchecked, we could avoid more mass shootings.”
• “I don’t think any of the things the gov’t is suggesting will be effective. The biggest issue we need to address is mental health. Every time we have one of these issues, we hear stories about how everyone knew the person was capable of this, but there was no avenue to stop it.”

Click here to read more of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 682 longform responses.

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

• Minor league hockey game a forfeit after home team no-shows → (AP News)
• Lost dog walks 10 miles to shelter, rings doorbell → (UPI)
• Chile’s ‘ice mermaid’ breaks new world record by swimming in Antarctic waters without a wetsuit → (Indian Express)
• Bill Making It Easier To Throw Axes, Rope Chickens While Drinking Alcohol In Wyoming Almost Law → (Cowboy State Daily)

Nine-year-old brainiac David Balogun loves to learn. The should-be third grader recently became one of the youngest high school graduates in US history.

• David hopes to one day be an astrophysicist. His parents, who both have advanced degrees, say their son is unusually gifted.

💭 What's he's saying... “I wanted to do it because I had the ability to do it," David told FOX43. "So why not use those abilities for the greater good?"

Which US state, pictured above, has just two escalators across its entire territory?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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**The Parallel Flight DONUT Hole sponsor copy was written and/or published as a collaboration between The DONUT's in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of The DONUT. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. The DONUT may receive monetary compensation from the issuer, or its agency, for publicizing the offering of the issuer’s securities. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investing advice. This is a paid ad. Please see 17(b) disclosure linked in the campaign page for more information.