👋 If RTO is your least favorite acronym, we have bad news. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is seemingly gearing up to require its 300k+ employees to return to the office full time. Not so shocking given that CEO Jamie Dimon has been outspoken about the importance of the office, saying remote work hinders “spontaneous idea generation.” Let’s hope your boss isn’t feeling inspired.
📝 Fact-checking no more: In a blog post, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the end of third-party fact-checking on its platforms with a move toward a community notes model (like X’s). The company is also making changes to its content moderation policies around political topics, lifting restrictions that limit the amount of political content on users’ feeds. Meta said the changes will “allow more speech” and “take a more personalized approach to political content.” The changes will be implemented across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, starting in the US.
🍔 McDonald’s brings the McValue: The fast-food chain rolled out a new menu in US restaurants yesterday, its biggest menu change in years. The McValue menu, which features John Cena as the face of its marketing campaign, will offer more in-app exclusives and location-dependent food and drink deals. It’s McDonald’s latest attempt to lure back budget-conscious diners who feel the chain has grown too pricey — the average price of its menu items has climbed ~40% since 2019.
🎮 Video game shake-up: The employees who resigned from Annapurna Interactive last summer will form a new company and assume Private Division: a portfolio of games previously owned by Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., which sold it for an undisclosed amount last year, that includes titles like “Tales of the Shire” and “The Outer Worlds.” Annapurna Interactive’s hits include “Kentucky Route Zero,” “Outer Wilds,” and “Stray,” a game in which players are an adorable cat. And, yes, they motion-captured real cats.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
The Biden administrationfinalized a rule that will stop medical debt from being included on credit reports and ban lenders from considering certain medical info in loan decisions. The rule would wipe ~$49B in bills from the credit reports of ~15m people.
Getty Images is acquiring Shutterstock to form a $3.7B company. The merger — which the companies said will offer customers a larger catalog of photographs, videos, music, and 3D imagery — comes as visual content companies race to keep up with generative AI.
Nvidia founder Jensen Huang unveiled the company’s newest products at CES 2025, including its most advanced consumer graphics processors yet and a $3k desktop supercomputer.
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We know this to be true: Food prices are out of control. In the US, they’ve increased 28% since 2019, outpacing inflation.
This economic crunch adds a touch more tragedy and urgency to an all-too-common scenario: When that delicious french fry slips out of your hand and tumbles to the ground below.
Of course, according to a common myth, you now have exactly five seconds to grab it before it absorbs enough bacteria to become inedible.
But here’s the bad news
The five-second rule effectively has no basis in reality, per Popular Science:
In 2003, a Chicago student determined that bacteria transfers to food “very quickly.”
In 2006, food scientists at Clemson University found that a contaminated tile transferred 99% of its bacteria to a piece of bologna after just five seconds.
Ergo, even five seconds won’t save you.
Obviously…
… this flies in the face of what may seem like basic logic. Surely, the less time a piece of food spends on the floor, the fewer opportunities it has to collect bacteria, right?
Actually, yes!
A more recent study exploring contamination levels on different foods and surfaces determined that food collects more bacteria the longer it touches the surface.
However, some bacteria are transferred “instantaneously” — which is faster than five seconds.
Who doesn’t enjoy the occasional bacteria?
According to PopSci, most of the bacteria on your kitchen floor is harmless. Eating a little floor-food here and there likely isn’t going to be a death sentence.
That said, the last sentence said “most,” not “all.” It’s hard to tell how clean a floor is, especially if it’s carpeted or — God forbid — wet, so it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Yes, every french fry is precious — especially in light of the ongoing “potato cartel” price-hiking scandal — but no matter how much you’ve been overcharged for it, that french fry on the ground just isn’t worth it.
Fun fact: Women are more likely to eat food off the floor than men, according to a 2003 study, and people are more likely to eat fallen sweets than vegetables.
Big Energy wants a slice of the AI pie — are they in luck?
A little-known success story: The secretary who launched a $170m+ Liquid Paper empire.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Pieces of Monopoly memorabilia owned by UK resident Neil Scallan, the Guinness World Record holder for the world’s largest Monopoly collection.
Scallan’s haul is mostly composed of various editions of the board game, including location-specific sets and tie-ins like Star Wars and McDonald’s.
His collection includes a coveted edition that only guests of the pricey Park Hyatt Sydney can buy, but not his “Holy Grail”: a rare set made for the Cronulla Sharks, an Australia rugby league club.
Monopoly traces back to Lizzie Magie’s The Landlord’s Game, patented in 1904 and intended as an anti-capitalist cautionary tale. Later, Charles Darrow created his own version and licensed it to the Parker Bros., which was acquired by Hasbro in 1991. To date, Hasbro has sold an estimated 300m+ Monopoly games.
AROUND THE WEB
⚖️ On this day: In 2016, drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was captured by Mexican authorities. Guzmán had escaped from prison in a laundry cart in 2001 with the help of 70+ people, including the prison’s director.
❄️ That’s interesting: How the snow globe was invented.
If you die at a higher elevation than the one you were born at, thus having a net elevation gain over your life, all of your life has been an uphill battle. If you die at a lower elevation, then, after you were born, it was all downhill from there.SOURCE
