Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 🥵 2024 was the hottest year on record
• 🤔 Tip culture shifting?
• 🦎 Weight loss venom

… and more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.11-minute read (1,093 words).

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"It is far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness."

–William L. Watkinson (1828-1925)

2024 featured the highest average global temperatures on record for a second consecutive year, and was the first year to meet or exceed the 1.5°C (2.7°F) threshold set by the Paris Agreement, per new reports from five international climate organizations.

The average global temperature last year was between 1.46°C–1.62°C warmer than pre-industrial levels (1850-1900), according to estimates from the NOAA, NASA, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the World Meteorological Organization, and California-based Berkeley Earth. As the great philosopher Nelly put it: It’s getting hot in herre.

Why it’s a big deal: More than 190 countries signed the 2015 Paris Agreement aimed at staying below 1.5°C warming, as part of a global effort to limit the worst effects of climate change.

• Exceeding the 1.5°C warning threshold increases the risk of rising sea levels and loss of wildlife, along with intense heat waves, floods, and wildfires – like the ongoing California blazes, which a new Nature study partially attributes to human-caused global warming.

Important to note: The 1.5°C threshold laid out in the Paris Agreement refers to a long-term average over a decade or more, so the world hasn’t technically breached that target yet. But scientists widely expect the Earth to continue getting warmer in the years to come, as both the world’s biggest emitters and emerging countries continue burning fossil fuels.

👀 Looking ahead…2025 is currently projected to be the third hottest year on record, behind the previous two years, as the Pacific Ocean cools slightly from the ongoing La Niña global weather pattern (which is expected to last through April).

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The Hindu festival of Maha Kumbh Mela, a rare religious event described as the world's largest gathering of humanity, officially kicked off yesterday in the northern Indian city of Prayagraj.

Maha Kumbh Mela is a 45-day festival, held once every 12 years dating back to at least medieval times. It involves millions of Hindu pilgrims taking a holy bath and participating in other rituals at Sangam, aka the meeting of India's three most important rivers (the Ganges, the Yamuna, and the Saraswati).

• Bathing takes place every day during Maha Kumbh Mela. But on certain scheduled dates, naked, ash-smeared Hindu monks charge toward the holy rivers at dawn.

Maha Kumbh Mela’s scale is massive

A record-high 400 million pilgrims are expected to attend this year’s festival, which typically attracts crowds so large it can be seen from space. (For context, that figure is ~200x the 2 million Muslim pilgrims who participated in the annual Hajj pilgrimage last year.)

Local Prayagraj officials have set up a temporary 10,000-acre city to house visiting pilgrims, which includes a sprawling pop-up economy of vendors alongside roughly 150,000 tents, 145,000 toilets, 3,000 kitchens, and 100 parking lots.

📅🎉 It’s a banner year for religious celebration. The Vatican and Pope Francis are currently celebrating the 2025 Jubilee, a Catholic Church holy year held once every quarter-century. It’s expected to attract ~30 million religious visitors to Italy.

After reaching a recent peak, tipping at US restaurants is on its way back down the mountain.

• The average tip at full-service restaurants sits around 19.3%, according to restaurant POS system operator Toast (aka the maker of the flippy iPads coffee shop-goers have learned to dislike), down from a six-year peak of 19.9% in early 2021.
• ~38% of Americans reported tipping restaurant servers 20% or more in 2024, according to a survey released last fall. That’s down from 56% in 2021.

Visits and sales are also lower. Restaurant traffic fell from 2023 to 2024 – a year that saw restaurant chains and operators declare the most bankruptcies in decades (outside of 2020), including Red Lobster, TGI Fridays, and Bucca di Beppo.

Less tips, less restaurants, less work. Waiters, bartenders, cooks, and other restaurant workers averaged less time working per week last year than 2023, according to federal data.

👀 Looking ahead…Many worker advocacy groups are pushing for a change to the tipped-wage system, in which many states allow restaurants to pay tip-earning workers less than minimum wage – so long as income from tips makes up the difference.

New York-based One Fair Wage, one of these groups, has successfully gotten measures passed in D.C. and Chicago that phases out the subminimum wage for tipped workers. It plans to push similar measures this year in New York, Illinois, Ohio, Arizona, and Maryland.

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BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📊 US markets closed mixed (S&P: +0.2%; Dow: +0.9%; Nasdaq: -0.4%).
• 💰 Robinhood agreed to pay $45 million to settle SEC charges over record keeping, trade reporting, and other rule violations.
• 📉 Moderna lowered its 2025 sales forecast by $1 billion; shares fell ~17% on the day. | 📉 The quantum computing selloff continued following comments from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (Why did quantum computing stocks start dropping?)

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

in partnership with Pique Life

• 🏈 NFL playoffs: The Rams beat the Vikings 27-9 to advance to the Divisional Round. | 👋 The Dallas Cowboys are parting ways with head coach Mike McCarthy after five seasons.
• 🏆 The Grammy Awards and Sundance Film Festival are among the major events continuing as scheduled amid the ongoing LA fires; this year’s Oscar nominations were delayed once again to January 23.
• 📲 RedNote, a Chinese social media app, has become the top-downloaded on Apple’s app store. (Dive deeper: The TikTok ban reaches SCOTUS.)

*From our partners: ✨🍵 Prevent dryness, breakouts, and dullness with Pique Radiant Skin Duo: Sun Goddess Matcha firms and brightens skin, and provides crash-free energy. BT Fountain hydrates skin and reduces wrinkles. Save 20% + get a free starter kit here.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🧠 ~1 million Americans/year are expected to develop dementia by 2060, roughly double today’s total, per a new study published in Nature Medicine.
• 🚀🍽️ Celebrity chef José Andrés' restaurant group is teaming up with an aerospace engineer to create a first-of-its-kind cooking device for astronauts in space.
• 🦗 Periodical cicadas are set to return across the eastern US this spring, though in lesser numbers than last year when multiple broods emerged simultaneously.

MISCELLANEOUS

in partnership with Quince

• 🔥 Los Angeles fires update: As of yesterday afternoon, the larger Palisades and Eaton Fires were 14% and 33% contained, respectively; the official death toll remained at 24, though it’s expected to rise; forecasters say more powerful winds are expected to trigger new wildfires in the area through Wednesday.
• 🎓💰 President Biden announced plans to forgive student-loan debt for another 150,000+ qualified borrowers; it brings his administration’s total student debt relief above $183 billion. | 🏛️ The Senate is slated to hold more than a dozen hearings this week for President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet picks, starting with three this morning.
• 💥🤝 Israel and Hamas are reportedly finalizing the terms of a combined ceasefire and hostage release deal, according to multiple sources.

*From our partners: 💝 Gift luxury at an affordable cost this Valentine's Day: Quince connects you directly with the factories for the world's leading luxury brands, delivering the highest quality products to you at an insanely low price. Shop Quince here.

Online jobhunters with a cup-half-full mentality are increasingly finding it drained by the application process, per a new report. Between 18%–22% of jobs advertised in 2024 never actually got filled, according to hiring software firm Greenhouse, whose 7,500+ clients hire in technology, finance, and healthcare, among other sectors.

According to industry professionals, this could happen for a few reasons: companies pausing hiring, postings staying online after a job is filled elsewhere, or to comply with federal law – which requires certain roles to be posted publicly – after a candidate has already been earmarked for the role.

One tip for spotting a fake – pay attention to the job posting date (recent is better), as well as how they’re presented. LinkedIn has started tagging job listings on its site as “verified” when it is confirmed the role is real. As of late Friday, more than half the jobs advertised on the platform were listed as verified, per the company.

☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners from this year’s World Sports Photography Awards, which featured 13,000+ entries from nearly 100 countries.

🤔 Did You Know? Semaglutide, the molecule found in weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, was originally inspired by a similar compound discovered in Gila monster venom.

📰 Worth a Read: Bigmouth buffalo: The mysterious fish that live for a century and don't decline with age.

🖱 Clickbait: Your iPhone Storage Is Full Again. Do This to Reclaim Space.

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

• 🏡 The share of US adults living with a partner rose from 56% to 58% between 2019-2023, marking the first such increase since the late 1990s, per Pew Research.
• 🚀 SpaceX is responsible for ~65% of all licensed commercial space launches in the US since its founding in 2002.
• ⚡🔢 Scientists used a combined 3,100 megawatt-hours of energy to discover a new prime number last year – enough to power ~287K US households for a year.
• 🏈 The Bills-Ravens game this Sunday is widely expected to be the 9th time in NFL history where the top-two MVP vote-getters (QBs Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen) face off in the playoffs.
• 💊 Nearly 4 in 5 American men (78%) say they’re interested in taking a male birth control pill.

Yesterday, we covered how TikTok’s hail mary legal effort to prevent a looming US ban appeared before the Supreme Court, as the popular social media app faces a Sunday deadline to either sell its US business or face a ban (barring SCOTUS’ intervention).

❓ Our question to you: In general, how would a potential TikTok ban impact your life?

• 👍 Positively: 15%
• 👎 Negatively: 14%
• ↔️ No real impact: 63%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 8%

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

+Note on sample size: We received 2,371 votes and 248 longform responses.

🐾 Athena the German Shepherd had been missing from her Florida home for nine days when the pup brought a Christmas-Eve-miracle, ringing the doorbell of her family's home upon her return.

💍 Sam Riber pulled off an epic proposal mid-flight, smuggling a ukelele onto a plane to recreate a scene from Adam Sandler's The Wedding Singer and propose to his girlfriend, Lissy. (She said "yes!")

✈️ It was the travel day of nightmares as Hannah White tried to get home to her dying mother as fast as she could. When it looked like she wouldn't make her connecting flight to North Dakota, Delta flight crews stepped in to ensure Hannah got to her mom in time. 

❓ Trivia: What animal lives in a drey?

🐙 True or False? An octopus has three hearts.

🤔 Riddle Me This: What can fill up a room without taking up space?

❓ Trivia: A squirrel

🐙 T/F: True

🤔 Riddle: Light