Good morning, and a giant DONUT welcome to the ~6,000 new readers joining us today. We’ve got doughnuts, coffee, and fast, impartial news that's actually enjoyable to read. Grab a bearclaw and stay a while😎🍩.

Wait, one more lil thing: do you want to win a trip for two to the Margaritaville Island Reserve Riviera Maya in Mexico? It includes five-star global dining, luxurious amenities, and, most importantly, POP UP PICKLEBALL!

Enter to win here. You’ll also get hooked up with the other brands that are helping us put the contest on (they are cool and kind and we like them very much).

Wow, what a day one intro. TL;DR – welcome to the DONUT, where you’ll get fast, fun news every weekday and also a chance to win a literally free trip to Mexico.

(Our writers have asked to also notify you that this is not typical for the intro. They’re nervous you’re gonna expect new cool contests every day, and they simply cannot deliver that. But the Mexico thing is real and you should definitely sign up for that one.)

And now *drumroll* THE NEWS!

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.96 minutes to read.

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”

–Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

The Social Security trust fund that helps pay retirement, disability, and family benefits to nearly 70 million older Americans will become insolvent by 2033 – one year earlier than previously thought. After that point, Social Security will only be able to provide 80% of all benefits owed.

That’s according to an annual report published Friday by the Social Security Board of Trustees, which is tasked with overseeing the financial operations of the program.

🤔 What’s the problem?... In short: more Americans are drawing benefits from Social Security than ever before, but there aren’t enough new workers paying into the program to sustain it (since SS uses funds from those currently working to pay the retired folks).

Most experts attribute this growing discrepancy to a pair of US demographic trends in recent decades: lower birth rates, and increased lifespan for older Americans.

• In 1960, the average number of children born to a woman in the US was 3.6; by 2020, that number had declined to 1.6.
• An American who reached the age of 65 in 1960 was expected to live to 80; today, that person is expected to live to 85. (Over the same period, the minimum US retirement age increased by two years to 67.)

💥 The impact: In 2021, Social Security went all Freaky Friday and flipped the script, beginning to pay out more in benefits than it took in via taxes and interest on securities for the first time in nearly four decades. As a result, the size of the program’s excess funds shrunk by $100 billion that year, to $2.8 trillion.

And much like Benjamin Button in his tweens, the shrinking isn’t projected to stop there. Social Security’s trust fund is projected to keep diminishing over the next decade until it becomes completely depleted in 2034, forcing a 20% cut in benefits across the board (and potentially more in the future).

💡 Is there anything we can do about it?... In its report, the Social Security Board of Trustees proposed three potential solutions to keep the program solvent for the next 75 years:

1. An immediate Social Security tax increase of 3.44 percentage-points to 15.84%, split equally between employers and employees (it’s currently at 12.4%).
2. An immediate 21.3% cut in Social Security benefits across the board.
3. Some combination of the first two options, with lower tax hikes and smaller benefit cuts.

📊 Flash poll: Which of the following potential solutions would you support?

Tax hike

Benefit cut

Combination of both

Raise the minimum retirement age (like recently done in France)

Do nothing

Other/unsure

🇦🇺 Australia has banned TikTok on all government devices. The move means that all members of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing network – made up of the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand – have now banned the Chinese-owned social media app from government devices, citing national security concerns. France, Belgium, and the EU have also announced similar bans.

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia is investing $38 billion into video games. As part of a nationwide strategy to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil, the country’s Public Investment Fund is looking to develop, publish, and acquire top-tier games as part of building a local gaming industry. The Saudi investment includes $13 billion set aside for acquiring a top-tier game publisher, officials told Bloomberg.

🇦🇫 The Taliban has outlawed women from working in the UN, putting its foreign aid at risk. Working for the UN had been one of the last jobs available for women in Afghanistan, after the Taliban previously imposed a series of bans on women in education and employment. UN officials have repeatedly warned the Taliban that banning women from the agency represents a “red line” that, if crossed, would lead to the UN pulling some or all foreign aid to Afghanistan (which represented ~43% of the country’s GDP pre-Taliban takeover).

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• An entire community with the Reach Rehab Support Group

And above all, the program is simple, aiming to help keep you injury-free and achieve not just a healthy back, but a healthy life!

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Fifty years ago this week, an employee at Motorola named Martin Cooper standing on a midtown Manhattan street called his rival at AT&T and said, “I'm calling you from a cell phone. A real cell phone. A personal, handheld, portable cell phone."

Besides being quite a spicy humble brag, those were the words spoken over the first cell phone call in history. Considered the father of the modern cell phone, Cooper’s 1973 invention may have changed the course of modern communications as we know it.

• At the time, Bell Labs (the research wing of AT&T) was hard at work developing a car phone. But Cooper disagreed. If a phone was tied to a car, it was tied to a cord, and cords, Cooper argued, were against human nature.
• The future, Cooper said, was portable. And he was right – though it’d take another 10 years before Motorola released its first cell phone, the DynaTAC, to the public. Weighing in at 2.5 pounds and standing one foot tall, it retailed at the very reasonable price of $3,900 (about $12,000 today adjusted for inflation).

☎️ Zoom out: In 2021, 97% of Americans used a cell phone, up from 65% in 2002. Up next? According to Cooper, phones will soon live inside of our ears, and we’ll charge them with the energy created by eating food.

And though that may sound far-fetched, Cooper’s idea isn’t toooo far off from the brain-machine interfaces – like those developed by Elon Musk’s Neuralink – currently making waves in Silicon Valley.

💬 Quoted… “Not guilty.”

Former President Donald Trump was officially arrested and arraigned in a Manhattan criminal court yesterday, where he pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records relating to hush-money payments made just prior to the 2016 election.

In addition to the alleged $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, prosecutors accused Trump of orchestrating two other hush-money payments totaling $180,000. One allegedly involved a separate woman who also accused the former president of having an extramarital affair, and the other allegedly involved a doorman who claimed to have a story about a child Trump fathered out of wedlock.

• The 34 Class E felony counts (the lowest level of felony) refer to accusations that 34 separate business records were falsified to cover up the three alleged hush-money payments. In principle, Trump could face a maximum sentence of four years in jail for each count (136 years in total) – though first-time offenders typically avoid any jail time.
• NY prosecutors said they plan to request a trial starting in January 2024, but Trump’s lawyers have indicated they plan to push for later in the spring.

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

😊🦠 Stat of the Day: Peer-reviewed research found happiness spreads “like an emotional contagion” – especially among those who live close together. When one person becomes happier, their next-door neighbors’ chances of also growing happier rise by 34%; friends living within a mile of each other are 25% more likely to feel happy, and their friends have a 10% chance of feeling happier, too.

🤯 Did You Know?... Barbie was created by an engineer that used to work for the Pentagon, who based his design on an R-rated doll from Germany.

📖 Worth a Read: How to forgive yourself and move past a hurtful mistake → (Psyche Magazine)

💰🤖 That’s how much money Americans lose every year to 50 billion-plus robocalls, but those numbers would be a lot smaller if everyone used Incogni to protect their data.

When we visit websites or use apps, our personal info is collected and sold to data brokers, who then sell it to marketers, institutions, and cybercriminals. This results in spam, robocalls, increased rates, denied loans, and identity theft.

🛡️ As featured in PCMag, and TechRadar, Incogni is a fully automated data removal service that opts out of all broker types… a task that takes the average person 304 hours. Opting out results in:

• Limited public access to your info
• Mitigated risk of identity theft
• Your data not being sold🥳

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Protect your data today with Incogni.

• ☝️ A large red halo of light flashed in the night sky over northern Italy last week, appearing then disappearing in a matter of seconds – but not before nature photographer Valter Binotto managed to capture this shot; unfortunately (or fortunately) it’s not aliens, but instead a rare atmospheric phenomenon that sometimes occurs after intense thunderstorms.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 US markets closed down. (S&P: -0.6%; Dow: -0.6%; Nasdaq: -0.5%) | US job openings fell below 10 million for the first time since 2021.
• 🚗 General Motors announced ~5,000 salaried employees took buyouts that were offered last month.
• ⚖️ Charlie Javice, founder of student financial aid startup Frank, was arrested on fraud charges; she's accused of defrauding JPMorgan out of $175 million with fake data. | Johnson & Johnson has offered to pay at least $8.9 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits alleging the company’s talc-containing powders cause cancer.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🧙‍♂️ Amazon’s Rings of Power held ~37% of US viewers until the end of the season, per the Hollywood Reporter.  
• 🪄 A Harry Potter TV series, with each book turned into a season, is reportedly close to being finalized at HBO Max.
• 🎲 Settlers of Catan creator Klaus Teuber passed away yesterday at age 70; the board game is 14th most popular of all time, with over 32 million copies sold.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🕳️🔭 The James Webb Space Telescope recently discovered the oldest black hole ever recorded; it's 10 million times more massive than the Sun.
• 🌬️✈️ Startup Venus Aerospace aims to build a hypersonic aircraft that can carry passengers at speeds of up to 9x the speed of sound (Mach 9); that equates to 6,905 mph.
• ⚽🤖 MIT researchers created a four-legged robot that can teach itself how to dribble a soccer ball on various terrains, including sand, snow, and mud.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🗳📊 Brandon Johnson (D) won Chicago's mayoral runoff election against former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas. | Judge Janet Protasiewicz won Wisconsin's Supreme Court race; it's the first time in 15 years the court will have a liberal majority.
• 💼 Gen Z Americans aspire to work at Google more than any other company, per a new poll from Axios; the US federal government came in second, and Apple was third.
• 💰 Forbes published its 37th annual Billionaires List yesterday; Bernard Arnault topped the list with $211 billion, Elon Musk came second with $180 billion, and Jeff Bezos was third with $114 billion.

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• 🌆 Ranking America’s healthiest and unhealthiest cities in 2023.

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Ashlee Larsen was enjoying her dinner at a family restaurant in Melbourne, Australia, when her toddler got away from her. 

🔎 The search begins... She couldn't find her two-year-old son Brooklyn anywhere on the indoor playground, so she began searching through the small arcade. 

• Soon enough, Ashlee found Brooklyn, lovingly nicknamed "Dennis The Menace," in a place all kids dream about: surrounded by stuffed animals, where no adults can get to them. 

🧸 Living up to his nickname: Brooklyn had crawled into the claw machine, filling the chute with stuffed animals to block his way out. Eventually, the toddler was coaxed from the machine and went home with two new stuffed animals as collateral.

Here's how to play: We provide an incorrect stat. Then you guess whether the actual number is over or under the stated value.

🤳⬆️ 1,000: Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.

💻🌐 10M: The number of blog posts published on the internet every day.

🏃‍♂️💨 25 miles per hour: The fastest speed ever attained by a human runner.

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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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.)

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1. Under; ~500 hours 
2. Under; 7.5+ million
3. Over; 27.5 MPH

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