Good morning. A big shoutout to everyone who wrote in yesterday with suggestions about topics you want to see us cover more. You, dear readers, never cease to amaze us – and that cuts both ways.

For every few well-thought-out suggestions about various political, scientific, business, or sports topics, we received an off-the-wall one like: “talk more about dogs with human arms.”

And you know what? We just might.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be about a 5.13-minute read.

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“Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.”

–Vince Lombardi (1913-1970)

Last week, US unemployment claims fell unexpectedly to reach 187,000, the lowest level since September 2022, per Labor Department data published yesterday.

It marks the latest example of the US labor market showing surprising resilience in recent months, despite attempts by the Federal Reserve to slow the economy – and the jobs market in particular – through a historic series of interest rate hikes.

• Employee wage gains have outpaced inflation every month dating back to July, while the unemployment rate has bounced between 3.7% and 3.8% for the past five months, per the recently published December jobs report.
• Overall, US unemployment has stayed below 4% for 23 straight months, marking the longest such streak since the 1960s.

But the labor market is also showing signs of uncertainty. Businesses aren’t hiring as aggressively as they were a year ago, per the latest Fed data, while over a dozen major tech companies – including Amazon, Google, Meta, and Spotify – announced layoffs in recent weeks.

• Additionally, the rate at which US employees voluntarily quit fell last month to its lowest level since February 2021, signaling that workers aren’t as confident in their ability to find other jobs as in recent years.
• And end-of-year cash bonuses for US workers fell an average of 21% in 2023, indicating that employers have grown less concerned about losing talent, per Bloomberg.

👀 Looking ahead… The Federal Reserve, which has left rates alone at its last three meetings following 11 consecutive hikes, is widely expected to begin cutting rates sometime later this year – a move that typically results in higher wages and more job creation across the US economy.

📊 Flash poll: To all our readers in the workforce: How would you rate the current job market in your respective industry?

• Excellent (aka many available opportunities and high wage growth)
• Pretty good
• Average
• Pretty bad
• Terrible (aka few available opportunities and low wage growth)

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🇩🇪🇫🇷 German and French farmers held separate vehicle protests against agricultural policies. Around 30,000 German farmers participated in a mass protest on Monday against a plan to scrap tax breaks on diesel, bringing the capital city of Berlin to a standstill. On Tuesday, ~1,000 French farmers and 400 tractors converged on the southwest city of Toulouse to dump manure, hay, and rotten produce on city buildings as part of a protest against recent tax hikes and a general increase in the cost of living.

🇵🇰🇮🇶 Pakistan launched retaliatory airstrikes targeting Iran. Yesterday’s airstrikes, which killed nine Iranians, came two days after Iran launched missiles targeting an alleged terrorist group in Pakistan, which Pakistani officials say killed two children. The unprecedented attacks by Iran and Pakistan on either side of their border appeared to target militant groups with similar separatist goals. Both countries accuse each other of providing a haven to the groups.

🇨🇭 The World Economic Forum’s 54th annual meeting in Davos concludes today. Representatives from 100+ governments and 1,000+ companies convened in Switzerland for five days to discuss urgent global issues. During the summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky advocated for a new peace agreement, which Russia rejected. Separately, Israeli officials said normalizing diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia would be a key element of ending the ongoing war with Hamas.

In January 2023, Caltech scientists launched the first-ever test of a satellite that can collect solar power in space and then beam it down to Earth. Now, one year later, the scientists announced their experiment was a resounding success.

How it works… The Caltech team’s satellite is equipped with a sail-like structure that captures sunlight in Earth’s orbit, then converts it into electricity. A custom-built transmitter onboard the satellite turns the electricity into electromagnetic energy, beaming it down to Earth via microwaves.

The potential advantages of space-based solar power are simple. It allows for a higher collection of the Sun’s energy due to lack of atmosphere, as well the potential for 24-hour solar power. But, much like your coworker’s billion-dollar app idea, there are still a few obstacles to overcome before widespread adoption.

Scientists experimenting with microwave technology across long distances have only been able to transmit enough energy to power a handful of LED light bulbs thus far.

• Using current technology, beaming several gigawatts of solar energy (or enough to power 1-2 million homes) would require a transmitter measuring roughly 1.2 miles in diameter – both on Earth and in space (for context, the ISS measures 361 feet by 243 feet).

⚡ Zoom out: Nearly all of the top global superpowers are currently funding space-based solar power projects, including the US, UK, EU, China, Russia, India, and Japan.

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If you’ve started appending “Reddit” to every search-engine query you make, this bit of information may not surprise you: Google’s search results are getting worse.

That’s according to a new study by German researchers, who examined 7,392 product review queries on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo over the course of a year. They found sites that ranked high in search results were far more likely to be of poor quality and geared towards affiliate marketing, where the sites receive commissions for driving purchases on websites like Amazon.

How it goes down: Per the researchers, search engines are basically locked in a cat and mouse game with spam and affiliate sites, who perform certain actions – like consistently registering and hosting content on new domains – in order to game the algorithms and rank highly in search results before eventually being discovered and taken down.

But, per the researchers, this quashing only results in "a temporary positive effect." Many of these sites are part of large-scale affiliate link spam campaigns – and, like in Whac-A-Mole, once you smack that puppy on the head it’ll always try to come back (especially if it’s making money).

👀 Looking ahead… The advent of generative AI, and its ability to crank out massive volumes of content, all but ensures the cat and mouse game will get harder for search engines.

💬 Quoted… "Whoever controls space will control the destiny of this Earth… [space is the] ultimate military high ground.”

• As we covered yesterday, NASA recently pushed back the schedule for its Artemis missions due to issues with some of the systems needed in order to take humans back to the Moon. And many members of Congress are concerned with the delay. In the opening remarks of a House Science, Space and Technology Committee meeting this week, held to go over the new Artemis schedule, committee chair Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) stated: “I remind my colleagues that we are not the only country interested in sending humans to the moon. The country that lands first will have the ability to set a precedent for whether future lunar activities are conducted with openness and transparency or in a more restricted manner.” Other officials reiterated this position, voicing special concern about being beaten to the Moon (and in space) by China, which built its own space station and has a goal of putting astronauts on the lunar surface by 2030. Artemis III, NASA’s mission to put astronauts on the Moon, is scheduled for 2026 under the new timeline.

🤖🤝🏫 Stat of the Day: 1 = the number of partnerships OpenAI has with universities. The ChatGPT-maker and Arizona State University yesterday announced a first-of-its-kind deal that will bring AI chatbot access to all of the school’s students. ASU plans to build a personalized AI tutor, allow students to create “creative budd[ies]” for studying certain subjects (like bots that can sing or write poetry about biology), and broaden the university’s prompt engineering course, among other things.

🤔 Did You Know?... Roughly 1 in 8 people in the US (~12%) live in the New York City, Chicago, or Los Angeles urban areas. But those areas account for only 0.2% of America's land, proving once and for all that size isn’t what matters and that small things really can pack a punch.

📰 Worth a Read: Bill Belichick's hidden playbook – the 19th century origins of 'The Patriot Way' → (The Conversation)

• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners from the inaugural Nature Photography Contest, which drew hundreds of entrants from across the globe.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Sabavi Home

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board (S&P: +0.9%; Dow: +0.5%; Nasdaq: +1.4%). | 💾 Chipmakers had a big day on Wall Street.
• 🇨🇳👚 China launched a security review of Shein. | 🏬 Macy's is cutting 3.5% of its workforce, or 2,350 jobs; the retailer will also close five of its mall locations. | 📝 Reddit has reportedly drawn up detailed plans to IPO in March.
• ✌️ Former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg is leaving the social media giant’s board. | 🐭 Activist investor Nelson Peltz is making a push to nominate himself and former Disney CFO Jay Rasulo to Disney’s board.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏈 NFL playoffs: The Divisional Round takes place this weekend, with two games apiece on Saturday and Sunday.
• 🎓 University of Miami tight end Cam McCormick was granted an NCAA waiver for an unprecedented ninth season of eligibility.
• 📺 Amazon purchased a minority stake in the Bally Sports regional TV networks owned by bankrupt firm Diamond Sports; Bally owns rights to local broadcasts for 37 teams in the NBA, MLB, and NHL.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Olyra

• 😴 The average American gets less than 6.5 hours of sleep each night, per a new study that tracked data from US Apple Watch users.
• 💉📈 List prices for Ozempic, Mounjaro, and dozens of other widely used medicines rose by a median of 4.5% during the first half of January, according to a WSJ analysis.
• 🫨 Nearly 75% of America is at risk of experiencing a “damaging” earthquake at some point within the next century, per a new US Geological Survey report.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 📝 The Uvalde law-enforcement response to the May 2022 mass school shooting was disorganized, chaotic, and marked by failure across every aspect, per a new Justice Department report.
• 🗣️ Hunter Biden agreed to appear before House lawmakers next month to deliver closed-door testimony as part of Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s business dealings.
• 🏛️💰 The House and Senate both approved a bipartisan stopgap funding bill that prevents a federal government shutdown until March 1; President Biden is expected to sign it into law shortly. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 🚗 The best and worst states to drive in.

Two zoos are offering unique fundraisers in honor of Valentine's Day that both involve what some would consider the opposite of a romantic gesture – live cockroaches. 

🤷‍♀️ Whatever floats your boat... The Bronx Zoo in NYC is giving customers the chance to have a Madagascar Hissing Roach named after their partners. 

• "You don’t always have the right words," reads their website, "but you can stil l give them goosebumps. Name a roach for your Valentine, because roaches are forever."

Zoom out: In a similar vein, the San Antonio Zoo is hosting its annual "Cry Me a Cockroach" festival, which allows patrons to have a roach, rat, or vegetable named after their ex-lovers before it's fed to another zoo animal.

The DONUT’s weekly news quiz is back. In just two minutes or less, see how your news superpowers stack up against our team.

Below are three lists of ingredients. All you have to do is give us the completed dish they make. Easy peasy! (The rules, at least.)

☝️ Recipe #1:

• Cabbage
• Salt
• Carrots
• Red onions
• Jalapenos
• Dried oregano
• Apple cider vinegar

✌️ Recipe #2:

• Garlic
• Salt
• Dried oregano
• Black peppercorns
• Lime
• Roasted chicken
• Vegetable oil
• Tomato sauce
• Dark brown sugar
• Chicken stock
• Yellow onion
• Sazon con achiote y culantro
• Adobo con pimienta
• Russet potatoes
• Carrots
• Recaito
• Manzanilla olives
• Capers
• Fresh parsley
• Rice

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Sugar
• Water
• Light corn syrup
• Butter
• Slivered almonds
• Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate

☝️ Recipe #1: Cutido

✌️ Recipe #2: Pollo guisado

3️⃣ Recipe #3: Almond roca