đ If everyone in your orbit is already on your last nerve today⊠The Scottish Wildlife Trust is hiring a ranger to supervise the remote Scottish island of Handa, a six-month gig providing housing and a $31k salary. Handa is a stunningly scenic seabird sanctuary devoid of human residents, and all that honestly sounds pretty nice right about now.
đ While you were sleeping, Jeff Bezos definitely wasnât: Bezosâ rocket outfit, Blue Origin, was set to launch its first vehicle into orbit overnight. At press time, New Glenn, one of the most powerful rockets ever built, was on track for its historic liftoff, but if the unmanned mission was delayed or ended in disaster, itâd fit Blue Originâs moseying narrative. Progress has been slow for the 24-year-old company, at least compared to its younger competitor SpaceX, which ran up the score with 134 orbital launches last year alone.
đ Corporate culture is making a hard beeline toward last decade: Meta and Amazon are the latest companies to toss their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs by the wayside. The DEI rollbacks follow similar moves from the likes of Walmart, McDonaldâs, and Ford. Meta cited a âshifting legal and policy landscapeâ while eliminating its DEI team; Amazon said it was âwinding down outdated programsâ â but its memo to its employees was signed off with â#InThisTogether,â so you know they still care.
đ” Just what you needed:more rap from a convicted fraudster. Heather Morgan will soon report to an 18-month stint in prison for her role in a $4.5B crypto laundering scheme. But first, sheâll release new tunes under Razzlekhan, the rap pseudonym that made this already wild story even wilder, designed to tell her version of events. Morgan told Business Insider that her new music video for âRazzlekhan vs. The United Statesâ is full of hidden messages and that thereâs more to Razzlekhan than the media has portrayed, akin to a âsexy, juicy artichoke.â
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Real spicy: Mark Zuckerberg smack-talked Apple, saying it hasnât âinvented anything great in a whileâ and so must resort to âsqueezingâ developers for profit.
Wayfair is putting up solid sales numbers in the US, but over in Europe? That’s been a tough nut to crack. The company shuttered its operations in Germany, impacting ~730 jobs.
The IRS will begin processing 2024 tax returns on Jan. 27. Taxpayers will see new features this year, including chatbots and voicebots that will field your dumbest questions.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
How AI is driving sales efficiency
If you, as a sales rep, are not under pressure to spice up your workflow with AI, then let us be the ones to drive it home.
Itâs getting powerful. Enough to let you take a longer lunch. And the people who spend less time squinting at spreadsheets and more time talking to prospects are already winning.
So we asked 750+ sales leaders about:
Which AI tools are saving reps time
How leaders are achieving peak efficiency
Their sentiments on Ai adoption and job security
Itâs true â weâll probably be using completely different tools by the time 2030 gets here. Still, itâs best you start experimenting now.
NASAâs tiny robots are gearing up for an icy, moonlit swim
Life on Earth in the first few days of 2025 has been anything but easy, so itâs comforting to learn that exploration is still very much underway to find out if other planets can support life.
Researchers are particularly interested in moons like Jupiterâs Europa and Saturnâs Enceladus, which hold large oceans under their icy outer layers, perWired.
Why is this a thing?
Because lots of water means the potential to support lots of life.
And NASA has been busy seeing whatâs possible:
It launched its Europa Clipper probe in October to study the conditions on Europa.
Its Jet Propulsion Laboratory is working on a project called SWIM (Sensing With Independent Micro-swimmers) that will send tiny autonomous underwater robots to explore the ice moonsâ oceans.
The ~12-centimeter-long, wedge-shaped bots will hitch rides aboard a device called a cryobot, which will use nuclear energy to melt the icy outer crust of these moons and deliver the bots to the oceans below.
Each cryobot would hold ~48 robots and slowly slip through the ice shell over several years.
Sink or swim
Like anyone learning how to swim, the bots had to practice first: They successfully steered through a swimming pool. But those were 16.5-inch 3D prototypes doing the paddling.
The bots must be made ~3x smaller for spaceflight and would be armed with a wireless underwater acoustic communication system for sending data back to Earth.
Theyâll also be outfitted with a chip that can measure things like water temperature, pressure, and chemical composition to see which moons could be hospitable to life.
And since teamwork makes the dream work, the bots will function in teams, exploring the same areas to make sure no icy moon stone is left unturned.
Netflixâs failed experiment: The idea that cost the streaming service 800k subscribers.
Could âcontent managerâ be your next job? Also, what exactly does one of those even do?
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Number of Instagram followers an unnamed social media influencer had, per a bizarre court case out of Melbourne, Australia.
A young woman claims she participated in what she thought was a faux wedding for her fianceâs Instagram account so that he could increase his follower count. Months later, she learned it had been a real wedding as her now-husband had been seeking asylum.
The judge ultimately annulled the marriage. Weâll just be over here shaking our heads.
AROUND THE WEB
đ On this day: In 1999, NBA superstar Michael Jordan retired from the Chicago Bulls for the second time, citing a desire to spend more time with his family. He played again, briefly, for the Washington Wizards from 2001 to 2003.
đ„ Haha: A captcha thatâs just âDoomâ on nightmare difficulty. You win when you defeat three enemies.
