Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 🪓 Kodak is axing its pension plan
• 🤔 D.B. Cooper mystery solved?
• 📖 Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.66-minute read (1,240 words).

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“Truth is the offspring of silence and meditation.”

–Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

Kodak, as it tries to channel a popular rapper and become Kodak in-the-Black, is preparing to terminate its US pension plan in order to access the fund’s surplus, according to a new Wall Street Journal report.

The pension covers ~35,000 participants, and has $3.5 billion in assets vs. $2.3 billion in liabilities. Retiring the plan would allow Kodak, which has struggled to find its footing after digital cameras became a thing, to access some of the excess funds.

• The company expects to book an after-tax cash gain of $530 million–$585 million after settling liabilities, selling illiquid assets, and replacing the terminated plan with a yet-to-be-outlined new one for employees.
• For context, the company’s entire market cap is ~$502 million.

With the move, Kodak once again arrives late to a trend. Though pensions are still offered in many government jobs, only 15% of private sector employees are covered by them, compared to 46% in 1980.

On the death of pensions

Pensions were once a staple of mid-20th-century employment. But starting in the 1970s, the government began tightening regulations around pensions to ensure companies wouldn’t default on their obligations to retired employees.

Meanwhile, businesses realized the costliness of guaranteeing lifetime retirement payments. Pension plans were replaced by 401(k)s, which rely on employee contributions often matched by the employer. This shifted the burden of risk and responsibility from employer to employees, but offered more flexibility – a helpful feature as job-hopping became the norm.

👀 Looking ahead… Kodak’s move could become more commonplace. Companies with defined-benefit pensions in the S&P Composite 1500 Index – including household names such as Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz, and Johnson & Johnson – were sitting on a combined $137 billion surplus as of February 29, 2024, the WSJ reports. In late 2016, they had a deficit of $500+ billion.

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🚘🔌 California plans to keep offering EV tax rebates if the existing federal program is cut. Governor Gavin Newsom (D) yesterday announced a new proposal to create a program offering tax credits for qualified buyers of EVs or plug-in hybrids, similar to the current $7,500 federal tax rebate introduced in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Not every brand would be eligible, however: The program would exclude Teslas in order to promote competition, Newsom’s office told Bloomberg. Newsom says his proposed program would only kick in if the upcoming GOP-controlled Congress moves to eliminate the federal EV tax credit, which has been criticized by President-elect Trump and other Republicans.

🚫💥 Israel and Hezbollah are reportedly nearing a ceasefire deal. Officials from the US, Israel, and Lebanon say they’re closing in on an agreement to temporarily halt fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, which began shortly after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel last year. The 13+ months of fighting have been marked by continuous airstrikes from both sides, the successful assassinations of Hezbollah’s leader and several top commanders by Israel, and an Israeli ground invasion in southern Lebanon. The new ceasefire deal has been approved by Hezbollah and is currently awaiting a vote from Israel’s security cabinet as soon as today, per multiple reports.

🤔 The math isn’t mathing at Macy’s. The retailer on Monday revealed that a single employee had intentionally made erroneous bookkeeping entries to hide up to $150 million in corporate delivery expenses since Q4 2021, leading the company to delay the release of its quarterly results that were expected today. Macy’s says the employee is no longer with the company. KPMG, Macy’s auditor since 1988, declined to comment. While an investigation is ongoing, some analysts believe the employee was trying to boost the profitability of their department to increase compensation. Macy’s now becomes the latest company to report issues in financial statements – upending Super Micro, who appears to have escaped a delisting after hiring a new auditor – amid a continuing shortage of qualified accountants in the last several years.

The FBI may be one step closer to answering the only unsolved air piracy case in US history: the D.B. Cooper hijacking.

Background: D.B. Cooper is the pseudonym of an unidentified man who, using a bomb threat, hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft above US airspace in 1971, taking everyone on board hostage.

• After the plane was grounded in Seattle and the 36 passengers exchanged for $200,000 and four parachutes, Cooper had the plane’s crew take off again for Mexico – then jumped out shortly after takeoff.
• The FBI unsuccessfully probed the incident for decades, before declaring their investigation inactive in 2016.

But new evidence has potentially emerged. In 2023, the FBI reportedly requested a meeting with Dan Gryder, a retired pilot/skydiver who believes he uncovered evidence identifying Cooper.

Gryder handed the FBI a recently discovered parachute rig belonging to Richard McCoy II, an ex-Green Beret who was convicted of a near-identical plane hijacking five months after D.B. Cooper.

• Gryder says the parachute rig is “literally one in a billion” due to unique modifications – which appear to perfectly match one of the parachutes Cooper was provided.
• FBI agents later searched McCoy’s property after receiving the parachute, per Gryder and evidence reviewed by Cowboy State Daily.

🤔 The real McCoy? Much like D.B. Cooper’s plane, not everyone is on board. Some former officials who worked the case say McCoy wasn’t Cooper, pointing to several reasons including the 10 witnesses who said the hijacker didn’t look like McCoy.

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• ☝️ National Geographic published its annual "Picture of the Year" issue, featuring 20 winning images chosen from a pool of 2.3 million.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Nuts.com

• 💰 US markets rose across the board (S&P: +0.3%; Dow: +1.0%; Nasdaq: +0.3%).
• 🙌 Warren Buffett donated an additional $1.1 billion in Berkshire Hathaway shares to his family's charitable foundations.
• ☕ Coffee futures are at their highest levels in decades, amid supply chain and weather issues. | ⛔ Microsoft's business products, including Outlook and Teams, suffered a temporary outage yesterday.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎶 Drake sued Universal Music Group and Spotify, accusing the companies of conspiring to artificially inflate Kendrick Lamar’s diss track, “Not Like Us.” | 🎮 Sony is working on a handheld PlayStation console that could play PS5 games, per a Bloomberg report.
• 🏀 State Farm signed USC women’s basketball star JuJu Watkins to an NIL deal; the move follows the company’s deal last week to sponsor Unrivaled, a 3x3 women’s basketball league.
• 🌊 The Lilo & Stitch live-action remake has a new teaser trailer; the film is set to hit theaters May 2025. | 🎭 A Glen Powell lookalike contest held in Austin drew hundreds of contestants, with judges including Powell’s mother and aunt; Powell himself FaceTimed in to promise the winner a cameo in his next film.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Commons

• 🛰️👃 A Russian cargo spacecraft that recently docked with the ISS contains an "unexpected odor" preventing astronauts from fully accessing its contents, NASA says.
• 🦕 Scientists built mathematical and physical models to recreate the cry of a dinosaur species called Parasaurolophus.
• 🤖💨 A robot dog built by South Korean researchers is the first quadrupedal robot to complete a full-length marathon in an official competition.

*From our partners: 🌎 Sustainable living should be simple… Skip the greenwashing and find brands that work for you with a source you can trust – Commons. They independently evaluate and rate brands with their team of sustainability experts. Find sustainable brands at Commons.

MISCELLANEOUS

• 👮 The entire police department of McColl, South Carolina, resigned en masse, with all five departing officers citing a hostile work environment created by one local councilman.
• ⚖️ The Menendez brothers’ resentencing hearing was delayed from December 11 to late January; the brothers are requesting a review of potential new evidence that could alter their life sentences for the 1989 killings of their parents.
• 🏛️🧑‍⚖️ Special Counsel Jack Smith filed motions to dismiss all federal charges against President-elect Trump related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents, as well as his alleged effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election; hours later, a federal judge granted Smith’s motion to dismiss the election-related case; Smith’s moves stem from DOJ policy prohibiting prosecution of a sitting president. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• ☝️ Warren Buffett suggests all parents do one thing before they die, regardless of their wealth.

📖 Stat of the Day: Dictionary.com’s 2024 Word of the Year is very mindful, very cutesy. The word in question? “Demure.” Between January and the end of August, this term saw a ~1,200% increase in usage in digital web media alone, according to Dictionary.com, which attributes its rise to a series of videos made by Jools Lebron (an American TikToker, not an iced-out version of the basketball player). Alongside demure, Dictionary.com identified five words that shaped the cultural conversation in 2024 – brainrot, brat, extreme weather, Midwest nice, and weird.

🤔 Did You Know? In the Polish edition of Scrabble, the letter Z is only worth a single point – as opposed to 10 points in English – since it’s used so widely within the language.

📰 Worth a Read: Cracking the recipe for perfect plant-based eggs → (Knowable Magazine)

Here are five stats from this past week that made our team go “whoa.” Hopefully you will, too.

• 💰🕵️ ~40% of the S&P 500’s entire market cap is accounted for by companies currently under federal antitrust investigation.
• 🏛️♀️ Legislation proposed by state governors in their State of the State addresses from 2001-2006 was ~20% more likely to become law if the governor was a woman.
• 🎁💳 Americans are sitting on ~$27 billion in unused gift cards, an average of ~$244/person, per a recent Bankrate survey.
• 🦃🍽️ A typical Thanksgiving dinner for 10 will cost ~$58 this year, down 5% from 2023 but 19% higher than in 2019.
• 📈 In 1980, ~6% of US households owned mutual-fund shares; by last year, that figure had risen to 52%.

Yesterday, we covered what President-elect Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, plans to achieve in its role as a presidential advisory commission.

❓ Our question to you: In general, do you support the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency?

• 👍 Yes: 45%
• 👎 No: 41%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 14%

Click here to read more of the most thoughtful longform responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 2,684 votes and 295 longform responses.

Nila Ibrahimi, 17, just won the International Children’s Peace Prize for her determination to sing when silenced. 

The Afghan teen is known for supporting the rights of girls in the wake of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan. A few years ago, Nila helped overturn the "no singing" ban when her brother posted a video of her singing proudly online.

• After fleeing to Canada with her family, Nila co-founded "Her Story," an organization that encourages Afghan girls to share their stories.

🍘 Trivia: Why do crackers have holes in them?

🦫 True or False?... Baby beavers are called kids.

🤔 Riddle Me This: What breaks but never falls? And what falls but never breaks? (Two answers)

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🍘 Trivia: To prevent air bubbles

🦫 T/F: False, they’re called kits

🤔 Riddle: Day and night