Fires, Meta, A Black Box, & The Billionaire Space Race
January 13, 2025
Hello, readers – happy Monday! Today, we’ll be talking about the Los Angeles fires, whatever’s going on over at Meta, the Middle East, some updates about the South Korea plane crash, Jack Smith’s resignation, J.D. Vance’s thoughts on Greenland, and the Jeff Bezos vs. Elon Musk feud that might be brewing.
On Friday, we asked you all if you made New Year’s resolutions. 1,198 (38%) of you said you did, and 1,960 (62%) said you did not.
“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” – Galileo Galilei
Windy With A Chance Of Wildfires

The disaster in Los Angeles shows no sign of stopping. Three wildfires in the northern reaches of L.A.’s metropolitan area have destroyed about 1,800 structures, damaged 10,000 more, and placed 150,000 people under evacuation orders. Oh, and officials predict that the winds that helped the fires grow to their current state are expected to continue this week as first responders have only been able to keep the blazes about 30% contained. The damage has been so extensive that California Gov. Gavin Newsom predicted it will be one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history “in terms of just the costs associated with it, in terms of the scale and scope.”
Meanwhile, the state is continuing to use prisoners to bolster its firefighting forces. According to California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the state’s 7,500-person firefighting operation is leveraging the labor of 939 prisoners who get paid between $5.80 and $10.24 per day. California’s prison system, like many other states, requires prison inmates to work during their incarceration – according to some estimates, prison labor contributes about $11 billion to the U.S. economy every year.
Want To Know More?
- Police Arrest 2 Suspected Burglars At Kamala Harris’ Brentwood Home Amid Fires (Deadline)
- Republican congressman calls for halting of disaster relief to California (Guardian)
- Adam Schiff wants independent commission to review wildfire response (Politico)
- Trump Calls Officials Handling Los Angeles Wildfires ‘Incompetent’ (NYT, $)
- Climate change plays key contributing role in LA fires (Axios)
Freeing The Facebook Freaks
Meta is making some moves, and we’re not sure they’re for the better. The social media company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, announced some earth-shaking policy changes last week in the leadup to the Trump inauguration. Those changes circumvented the company’s normal policy procedures, involving only a small group of Mark Zuckerberg’s top advisors making sweeping shifts over a 6-month sprint. The company will now loosen restrictions on divisive topics (such as immigration or sexuality), replace its fact-checking program with a Twitter-esque community notes feature, and push more political content into people’s feeds.
If that wasn’t worrying enough, the company’s CEO made a pit stop on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” On the almost 3-hour podcast episode, Zuckerberg railed against the current “cultural elite,” which apparently includes “journalists” (rude) and “TV news anchors,” and called for a “new class” of social media creators to “become the new kind of cultural elites.”
“I kind of think in 2016 in the aftermath, I gave too much deference to a lot of folks in the media who were basically saying, ‘OK, there’s no way that [Trump] could have gotten elected except for misinformation,’” he added in an attempt to explain some of Meta’s past decisions. “Some of it started with the Russia collusion stuff, but it kind of morphed into different things over time.”
The Ultimate Inspiration Is A Deadline

- It’s happening (again) – it seems like Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks are reaching yet another critical point as the Biden administration prepares to leave Washington. Officials from both the U.S. and Israel claim that they’re looking to reach an end to the bloody conflict by January 20, when Donald Trump is inaugurated as president.
- “We are very very close [to a Gaza deal] and yet far because we are not there. It is possible to get it done before January 20 – but I can’t be sure,” said White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan yesterday. Why the rush? It’s likely that the Democrats want to come out of the Biden era with some type of win following Trump’s landslide victory last November, and the incoming president has promised that there will be “hell to pay in the Middle East” if a ceasefire deal isn’t reached by the time he comes into office.
A Black Box Blackout
- Things around South Korea’s deadly Jeju Air crash in January just keep getting weirder. As South Koreans mourn the deadliest air disaster in their country’s history, authorities sent the plane’s black boxes – which record flight data and cockpit voice communications – to the U.S. for analysis (for some reason, Korea didn’t have the proper equipment). Now, that analysis is done – and it shows that both black boxes mysteriously stopped recording data four minutes before the crash occurred.
- “The black box data is crucial in the investigation,” said the chairman of the Korea Association for Aviation Security. “If the investigators don’t have it, it will create a serious problem for them.” Authorities were hoping that the black box data could fill in the large gaps in the story leading up to the crash, as their only other information is a few voice transmissions of the pilot reporting “Mayday, mayday, mayday,” and, “Bird strike, bird strike,” before saying he was “going around” for another landing attempt. It’s unclear how the story will unfold from here.
More Mixed Nuts
- 6.2 earthquake jolts southwestern Mexico, causing no damage or casualties (ABC)
- Yoon Suk Yeol to miss start of South Korea impeachment trial on safety grounds (Guardian)
- Biden extends protections for immigrants from Venezuela, El Salvador and Ukraine (NPR)
- Fire in a restaurant in northern Czech Republic kills 6 people (AP)
- Poland backs Trump push for NATO to boost defense spending to 5 percent of GDP (Politico)
- Mayotte hit by floods and mudslides from second storm Dikeledi (BBC)
Hit The Road, Jack
- After submitting his report of the investigation into President-elect Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, special counsel Jack Smith has resigned from the Justice Department. Now, it remains unclear what will come of the report.
- The Trump-appointed judge who presided over the classified documents case granted a defense request to temporarily halt the report’s release, but prosecutors said they intended to proceed with the release of the election interference one. Smith’s resignation was revealed in a court filing Saturday, but noted that he had left on Friday.
Another Green Light For Greenland
- We’ve talked quite a bit about President-elect Trump’s plan to take over Greenland, but it wasn’t entirely clear how the rest of his administration felt about the plan. Now, Vice President J.D. Vance (who I sincerely forgot existed for a couple of weeks) is weighing in.
- Vance said in an interview aired Sunday that “there’s a deal to be made in Greenland.” He noted that military force isn’t needed in Greenland and that the U.S. already has troops stationed on the island, but agreed with his boss that it is “really important for America strategically” and has “a lot of great natural resources.”
More Nuts In America
- Trump can still vote after sentencing, but can’t own a gun and will have to turn over DNA sample (AP)
- Tulsa race massacre probe finds 1921 horror was ‘coordinated, military-style attack’ (ABC)
- Vance says Jan. 6 participants who committed violence ‘obviously’ shouldn’t be pardoned (AP)
- Trump tells House Republicans to find a ‘fair number’ on SALT (Politico)
- Rudy Giuliani’s Florida condo and World Series rings at stake in trial over assets (AP)
A Billionaire Rocket-Measuring Contest
- For years now, SpaceX has dominated the private spaceflight…uh, space. Since 2008, the Elon Musk-owned aerospace company has executed more launches than any other private company or national space agency, making it one of the most important companies in the world. Now, though, a new private aerospace firm backed by a fellow billionaire with delusions of grandeur is making its debut on the scene.
- Today, Blue Origin – a rocket company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos – is set to launch its first-ever rocket, a 32-story behemoth named New Glenn. The rocket is bigger than Falcon 9, SpaceX’s current flagship rocket, though it’s a bit smaller than the next-gen Starship reusable rocket system. Aside from its size, New Glenn’s main other selling point is its reusable booster, which is ejected from the larger rocket as it leaves the atmosphere, and will (hopefully) land upright and fully intact. The company hopes to make the upper stage of the rocket fully reusable as well, though it’s not using that feature in this initial launch.
- Further down the road, Blue Origin has plans to introduce a private space station (Orbital Reef), a moon lander (Blue Moon), and a cargo-moving space tugboat (Blue Ring). Amazon is also looking to compete with SpaceX by developing its own satellite network (Project Kuiper) which will attempt to eat up Starlink’s market share.
More Loose Nuts
- The 8 most interesting PC monitors from CES 2025 (Ars Technica)
- Americans stocking up on foreign goods before Trump tariffs: ‘a sense of urgency’ (Guardian)
- USDA report finds Boar’s Head listeria outbreak was due to poor sanitation practices (NPR)
- Apple may add an iPhone Air to its lineup (TechCrunch)
- Venu Sports has left the building (NBC)
Team Thoughts
Kayli – I’ve tried for years to figure out how to disconnect my Facebook from my Spotify so I can deactivate Facebook. These latest changes have me even more desperate.
Marcus – I don’t even want to know what the weirdos on Facebook will be posting with even less content moderation.