 Good morning and Happy Saint Patrick's Day. What is the top US city for St. Paddy's celebrations? It's a highly contentious topic, but WalletHub joined the debate by analyzing city celebrations across various metrics. Their rankings:
- Boston
- Philly
- Chicago
- Pittsburgh
- New York
That checks out with our rule of thumb: A city will have great Saint Paddy's Day parties if residents spent the past four months being miserably cold and seeing no sunlight. —Matty Merritt, Neal Freyman, Sam Klebanov, Abby Rubenstein | | | |  | Nasdaq | 11,717.28 | | | | | S&P | 3,960.28 | | | | | Dow | 32,246.55 | | |  | 10-Year | 3.584% | | | | | Bitcoin | $25,634.31 | | | | | First Republic | $34.27 | | | | *Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 3:00am ET. Here's what these numbers mean. | - Markets: The S&P 500 posted its best day in almost two months after 11 banking giants helped out their li'l cousin First Republic Bank to show their confidence "in banks of all sizes." To give you a sense of how jumpy bank stocks have been recently, First Republic was down 36% at one point yesterday but closed up 10%.
| | | | | Alain Jocard/AFP/AFP via Getty Images Emily may have to keep posting about luxury products in her fancy Paris office for longer than she anticipated. French President Emmanuel Macron and his supporters used executive power to bypass Parliament and raise France's official retirement age from 62 to 64 yesterday, despite massive pushback from much of the country. Macron, who's 10 months into his second five-year term, campaigned on the promise of raising the official retirement age to help keep France's shrinking pension fund flush with cash. He and his supporters have noted that French people are living on average three years longer compared to a few decades ago, and the retirement age needs to reflect that. This is about as popular as your sister's new boyfriend About three-quarters of the French public is against raising the retirement age. Over the last few months, trade unions have launched eight coordinated protests across the country, and millions of citizens have marched in the streets, stymying public services. - Workers' strikes have disrupted transportation services, including trains and planes.
- More than 7,000 tons of garbage have piled up in Paris after sanitation workers walked off the job in protest.
What comes next? French lawmakers who oppose the change are preparing a no-confidence vote that if successful would essentially gut Macron's ability to do anything going forward and reverse the retirement age bump. The likelihood of that passing? Not high. So far during Macron's tenure, several previous no-confidence votes have failed. But unions have vowed to continue protests and "take things up a gear" following Macron's move. Big picture: France isn't the only country that wants to make citizens send emails for more of their lives. The UK and China have both floated the idea of raising retirement ages as their elderly populations eclipse working-age citizens. In the US, the idea of bumping the retirement age has also been proposed as a fix for Social Security reserves expected to run dry in 2034.—MM | | TOGETHER WITH MASTERWORKS | | "Inverted yield curve"…? "Bear trap"…? "Dead cat bounce"…? Hey, Wall Street, what the heck is going on? Forget about the confusing jargon. Join over 30,000 Morning Brew readers investing outside the stock market—and seeing eye-popping results—with Masterworks. In just 604 days, a $10,000 investment in a fractionalized painting from Masterworks would have secured a $4,900 profit, beating 94% of S&P 500 stocks. In fact, their 11 art sales to date have returned $30 million+ to investors, with the last three seeing 13.9%, 35% and 10.4% net returns, all while financial markets cratered. Offerings can sell out in minutes, but Morning Brew readers can skip the waitlist now. | | Super Friends/Hanna-Barbera, DC Comics via Giphy  Wall Street to the rescue. The largest banks in the US gave a $30 billion infusion to First Republic Bank, the struggling regional lender that found itself in the blast radius of SVB. JPMorgan, Bank of America, and other financial giants each poured in at least $2.5 billion to shore up confidence in the US banking system during this precarious time. If you needed more proof these are precarious times: US banks borrowed $152.85 billion from a Fed lending program in the past week, topping the previous weekly high from the 2008 financial crisis.
 Inflation hits YouTube TV: Google raised the price of its YouTube TV subscription from $65 per month to $73—a 12% bump. The service, intended as a cable replacement, hasn't experienced a price hike since June 2020. But, according to Google, "content costs have risen" since then. It didn't specify what content costs more now, but YouTube TV did recently pony up a reported $2 billion for the rights to the NFL's Sunday Ticket package. Other streaming services from Apple, Disney, and HBO have raised prices recently.
 Microsoft vs. Google locked in workplace AI battle. Microsoft wants to make its Office suite great again by infusing it with the hottest tech around: the GPT-4 large language model. The company said it will include AI-powered assistants ("Copilots") in apps such as Excel and PowerPoint to take busywork off your hands. That ai-nnouncement comes days after Google revealed it would bring generative AI features to Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Gmail.
| | Nikos Stavrinidis/Getty Images A proposal to kill farmed octopuses with extremely cold water has landed a Spanish company in hot water with animal welfare advocates. Seafood producer Nueva Pescanova aims to open an octopus farm in the Canary Islands, the world's first, where it reportedly would slaughter the mollusks for food by placing them in -3 degree Celsius slush, according to leaked documents obtained by Eurogroup for Animals. Scientists point to studies on fish to argue that the slaughter method would distress the highly intelligent animals and cause them to die slowly. Animal rights supporters note that the plan to house the octopuses in lit-up communal tanks doesn't adequately replicate their natural habitat—the animals are territorial and thrive in darkness. Nueva Pescanova rejects accusations of animal cruelty. Why are humans rallying around octopuses? Though wild-caught octopuses are a delicacy in global coastal cuisines (and one award-winning thriller), their cognitive prowess makes them a more ethically contentious culinary delight than most other seafood. - One Dartmouth University cognitive neuroscientist believes they're "as intelligent as cats," and UK law recently recognized them as sentient beings since they can feel pain and pleasure.
- A brain in each of the eight arms (and one in the head) allow octopuses to use tools, recognize humans, and even open jars.
In the US…lawmakers in Washington state are weighing a ban on the nascent octopus farming industry, inspired in part by the Netflix documentary My Octopus Teacher.—SK | | TOGETHER WITH INTUIT MAILCHIMP | | Around the clock. That's right: With fully built automation strategies from Intuit Mailchimp, your marketing automations will keep working even after you log off. Choose from a library of *fully customizable* prebuilt journeys and connect data from your frequently used platforms for personalization at scale. Grow like never before. | | Illustration: Alyssa Nasser Photo: Jim Dyson/Getty Images What do fans of The Cure have in common with Swifties? Both admire performers whose eyeliner is always on point and both are miffed at Ticketmaster. What'd Ticketmaster do this time? When The Cure announced its latest tour, the band promised to keep ticket prices affordable. To which Ticketmaster, the behemoth that handles ticket sales for just about every live concert, responded "hold my $23 beer" and appeared to drive prices to the moon by tacking on lots of fees. Angry Cureheads vented about the extra charges on social media. One fan tweeted a screenshot showing they bought four tickets for $80—but the fees amounted to another $92.10. The Cure's frontman, Robert Smith, sympathized with his fans. He tweeted, "I AM AS SICKENED AS YOU ALL ARE BY TODAY'S TICKETMASTER 'FEES' DEBACLE" and lamented that artists have no way to counter Ticketmaster. He also noted that the band had used Ticketmaster to try to avoid scalping while opting out of the company's dynamic pricing model and Platinum ticket tier because they're "a bit of a scam." Big picture: Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation have already been catching heat from US lawmakers over their market dominance in live events after botching the rollout of tickets for Swift's Eras Tour. This latest controversy could add fuel to that fire.—AR | | The Sopranos/HBO Stat: The Masters doesn't qualify for itself, and in this era of remote work, more employees are sneaking out for a midafternoon tee time. In August 2022, 278% more people played golf at 4pm on a Wednesday than three years before, according to a new study from Stanford University and Inrix. Other leisure activities are seeing a lunchtime spike, too: Noon was the most popular time for salon or spa bookings on ClassPass. Remote work researcher Nick Bloom told the NYT we've turned into a "student economy. You're in the library in the evenings, and in the afternoon you're sleeping off your hangover." Quote: "Haven't watched a second of college basketball, but I won't let that stop me today from Venmo'ing 9 friends $20." This tweet from IT Brew reporter Billy Hurley jibes with our experience yesterday. Read: It took me nearly 40 years to stop resenting Ke Huy Quan. (Decider) | | The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew's Weekly News Quiz has been compared to being completely at peace with the fact that your bracket will be a disaster. It's that satisfying. Ace the quiz. | | - Princeton (15-seed) upset No. 2 seed Arizona in an action-packed first day of the NCAA men's college basketball tournament. President Biden had picked Arizona to win it all in his bracket...
- The rate of maternal deaths in 2021 hit its highest level in 56 years, spiking 40% from 2020. For years, the US has been the most dangerous place to give birth among high-income countries.
- The US released footage of a Russian jet dumping fuel on and clipping its drone over the Black Sea.
- The prize pool for the Women's World Cup this summer jumped 300% to more than $150 million. The men's total prize money for 2022, by comparison, was $440 million.
- Cocaine production reached its highest point ever following a slump during the pandemic, per the UN.
| |  The perfect hobby doesn't exi—actually, it's right here.
If you want to sound smart at the Met: This YouTube channel explains great art in digestible videos. What's in your produce: The Dirty Dozen is the list of nonorganic produce with the most pesticides. Home office rec: Just buy this laser printer everyone has. Inside IT: IT Brew's thrice-weekly newsletter equips IT pros with the news and insights to make informed decisions faster. Subscribe for free. Be 10x faster: GPT-4 (aka the tech that powers ChatGPT) is taking on unstructured data workflows. With Klarity's new demo, you can automate workflows and even chat with your documents. Try it out.* *This is sponsored advertising content. | | As SVB collapsed in spectacular fashion, startup founders with uninsured deposits in the bank were scrambling to figure out how to pay employees and understand the legal liability they might face if they didn't. While SVB's depositors were eventually made whole, scarred founders are reevaluating their business relationships to be prepared for another debacle. "This is a huge wake-up call," Michael Lotito, co-chair of law firm Littler Mendelson's Workplace Policy Institute, told Morning Brew. Read how it went down here. | | Jigsaw: Holi has come and gone, but you can revisit the colorful spectacle in today's Jigsaw. Solve the puzzle here. Friday puzzle Dictionary.com found examples of every letter in the English language being silent…except one. Which letter is never silent? | |  Our best-selling Excel desk pad has the functions and shortcuts required to stay productive all workday long. Shop now for the Excel hack you didn't know you needed.
Curious about how businesses are using technology to streamline operations, reach new customers, and boost profits? Check this out.  AI in clinical trials might sound like something out of The Matrix, but it could drastically reduce drug costs. Healthcare Brew explains how.
| | | ✢ A Note From Masterworks "Net Return" refers to the annualized internal rate of return net of all fees and costs, calculated from the offering closing date to the date the sale is consummated. IRR may not be indicative of Masterworks paintings not yet sold and past performance is not indicative of future results. See important Regulation A disclosures at masterworks.com/cd. | | | Written by Neal Freyman, Abigail Rubenstein, Sam Klebanov, and Matty Merritt Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. Get smarter in just 5 minutes Business education without the BS Interested in podcasts? | ADVERTISE // CAREERS // SHOP 10% OFF // FAQ
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