Good morning.

It’s Friday, January 23.

January is finally running out of steam. Resolutions are quietly being renegotiated. Gyms are noticeably emptier. 

You’re almost there. One more push before the weekend. Wishing you a smooth day, fewer meetings, and just enough energy to finish strong.

Today’s stories:

• Lemonade will slash Tesla insurance rates when Full Self-Driving is on

• Gold hit another record as tariffs, fear, and dollar doubts pile up

• United Airlines is thriving as premium travel keeps paying off

• Workplace robots are coming fast — and mostly from China

• OpenAI may launch AI earbuds as its first hardware play

• NYC is collecting anonymous love letters to itself again

• Taylor Swift just joined the Songwriters Hall of Fame

• The internet has crowned 2016 the last good year

• Apple is finally turning Siri into a real AI chatbot

  and more…

Stocks rallied Thursday as geopolitical nerves cooled and buyers stepped back in.

The Dow jumped 307 points (+0.6%) to 49,384, clawing back losses from earlier this week after Trump’s Europe tariff scare. The S&P 500 added 0.55% to 6,913, while the Nasdaq led the charge, up 0.9%, powered by big tech names like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Meta.

The rally cooled into the close — the Dow was up more than 500 points at its peak — but the mood still improved. For the week, the Dow is barely positive, while the S&P 500 (-0.4%) and Nasdaq (-0.3%) are still in the red. Relief rally, not a victory lap.

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Insurance Is Cheaper When The Robot Drives

Lemonade says it will cut insurance rates by 50% for Tesla drivers when Full Self-Driving is on. Yes, half off. The robot gets the discount. Lemonade claims its data shows Tesla’s FSD makes driving about twice as safe. To prove it, Tesla is sharing detailed driving data so Lemonade can tell when the car is driving versus when the human is. Every second. Every move. Comforting. The discount applies to Lemonade’s pay-per-mile insurance. Tesla already offers smaller discounts through its own insurance. Lemonade just went bigger.

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Gold keeps climbing. Fear is doing great. Gold just hit another record, climbing past $4,800. Investors are hiding in shiny metal again after fresh tariff threats from the White House and renewed trade war anxiety. After a monster 2025, gold entered 2026 fully caffeinated. Geopolitics are messy, real interest rates are falling, and everyone is slowly backing away from the dollar like it’s awkward at a party. According to the London Bullion Market Association, analysts now expect gold to break $5,000 this year. Some are aiming higher. Way higher. ICBC Standard Bank says gold could hit $7,150. Because why stop at realistic. Lower U.S. real rates, a friendly Federal Reserve, and central banks ditching the dollar are doing most of the work. Gold is just standing there, being dramatic.

United is making money again. United Airlines says 2026 is off to a strong start and record earnings are on the table. Travel demand is up. Premium seats are selling. Business travelers are back. Even basic economy is doing numbers. United expects adjusted earnings of $12 to $14 per share this year. Wall Street wanted $13.16. Close enough for confidence. Q1 earnings are forecast at $1 to $1.50 per share. Analysts expected less. United enjoys exceeding expectations. United joins Delta Air Lines in predicting a big year. Together, the two basically carried U.S. airline profits through most of 2025. Everyone else is trying. Premium revenue jumped 9% in Q4 and 11% for the full year. First class is winning. Basic economy tickets also rose 7%, proving people will accept anything if it’s cheaper. Fourth-quarter profit hit $1.04 billion. Capacity increased. Cabins got nicer. Prices stayed high. Airlines are very focused on charging more for legroom and calling it innovation. Flying is expensive. United is thriving.

Siri Is Becoming A Real Chatbot

Apple is revamping Siri into a real AI chatbot. An actual ChatGPT-style assistant built into iPhones and Macs. According to Bloomberg, the update is codenamed Campos and lands later this year. Biggest Siri overhaul in over a decade. Long overdue. It’ll debut at WWDC in June and roll out in September as the headline feature of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS updates. Apple is not building this alone. The chatbot runs on a custom version of Gemini, thanks to its partnership with Google. Privacy-first branding remains. Competition panic is visible. Siri is moving past “set a timer” and into real conversations. Apple watched OpenAI dominate the culture and decided silence was no longer a strategy.

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OpenAI might be making earbuds. OpenAI says it plans to ship its first hardware device in 2026. And yes, it might be earbuds. AI, but make it wearable. After buying former Apple design chief Jony Ive’s startup last year, OpenAI has been teasing hardware like it’s a personality trait. At Davos, exec Chris Lehane said the first device should be announced in the second half of this year. Sam Altman previously said the device would feel more “peaceful” than an iPhone. Translation: no screen, pocket-sized, less doom scrolling. Leaks suggest the product could be AI-powered earbuds, codenamed “Sweet Pea.” Supposedly custom-designed, running on a fancy 2-nanometer chip, and handling AI tasks locally. Manufacturing might involve Foxconn. First-year goal: 40–50 million units. Confidence remains strong.

Your first robot coworker will probably be Chinese. Humanoid robots are coming to work. And odds are, they’ll be made in China. At a major AI conference in Shanghai, humanoid robots were everywhere. Dancing. Boxing. Carrying boxes. Occasionally falling over. Humans still control most of them with game controllers, but the point is clear: this is no longer sci-fi cosplay. Experts expect humanoids to reshape the workforce fast. Amazon is already testing robots in warehouses. Analysts predict 10 million humanoids shipped per year by 2035. By 2050, nearly a billion could be in use. About a third of them in China. One company is far ahead: Unitree. While Tesla’s Optimus still struggles through demos, Unitree’s robots sprint, kick, and backflip. They’re also cheap. Tens of thousands of dollars instead of hundreds of thousands. Scale loves that. China has more than 200 humanoid robotics companies. The U.S. has around 16. Even China’s government is worried there might be too many. That’s not a bad problem to have. Robots aren’t replacing you tomorrow. But when they do show up, they’ll probably arrive speaking Mandarin.

Everyone Decided 2016 Was The Last Good Year

The internet has collectively chosen 2016 as the peak of civilization. Since January, Instagram has been flooded with a 2016-themed “add yours” trend. Over 5.2 million posts later, nostalgia is doing numbers. Spotify jumped in too. User-made “2016” playlists are up 790%, and Spotify is now openly “romanticizing 2016 again.” No shame. To be fair, 2016 felt simpler. Masks were just masks. Twitter was still Twitter. Pokémon Go had people touching grass. But memory is selective. We’re pretty sure people hated 2016 while living in it. Nostalgia is undefeated.

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Taylor Swift becomes a Hall of Fame songwriter. Taylor Swift was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, becoming one of its youngest members ever at 36. To qualify, your first song has to be at least 20 years old. Swift’s debut single “Tim McGraw” came out in 2006. Time is real. She just aged well inside it. She’s now the second-youngest living inductee. Stevie Wonder still holds the record after getting inducted at 32. Legends only. Swift submitted songs like “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” “Blank Space,” “Anti-Hero,” and “Love Story.” In case anyone forgot she writes her own music.

NYC is collecting anonymous love letters again. Bright red mailboxes are popping up around NYC. Not for bills. Not for rent checks. For anonymous love letters to the city. This is POPUPFLORIST’s Love Letter Gallery, back for year two. You can drop handwritten notes into red mailboxes placed inside cafés and boutiques like Big Night, The Elk, Tarin Thomas, and Bon Bon. Errands, but romantic. You write a letter. You don’t sign it. You disappear into the city like a main character in a soft indie film. The team will pick 30 standout letters and turn them into floral art for a one-day exhibition on February 7 at HOST on Howard. It’s anonymous, handwritten, and slightly dramatic. Very on-brand for New York City.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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