☀️ Star power, literally

On Monday, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried admitted to playing the game “Storybook Brawl” while he was being interviewed on a widely attended Twitter Space from his home in the Bahamas.

“I hope you’re not playing video games tomorrow when you’re trying to dissuade Congress from seeing you as a fraud,” one interviewer quipped.

Bankman-Fried wouldn’t have to worry about that. Hours later, on Monday evening, he was arrested based on charges in a sealed indictment filed by the US Attorney’s office.

On Tuesday morning…

Prosecutors unsealed their indictment, which charges Bankman-Fried with eight counts of fraud and conspiracy.

• Charges on the 14-page document span from money laundering, to misuse of customer deposits, to conspiracy to defraud the US, to campaign finance violations.

As he awaits extradition to the US, Bankman-Fried — whose net worth peaked around $26B in March and has since been wiped out — could spend time in Fox Hill, the Bahamas’ notoriously unsanitary prison.

Oh, and what ended up happening in DC?

Back in Washington, it was made clear that despite the alleged fraud’s massive scale, its complexity wasn’t all that sophisticated.

At one point, newly appointed CEO John Ray, who previously worked through Enron’s infamous bankruptcy, explained to lawmakers that FTX leaders used Slack and QuickBooks to handle the company’s finances.

“Nothing against QuickBooks — very nice tool — just not for a multibillion-dollar company,” he said.

On Tuesday evening, Bankman-Fried was denied bail. He’ll have an extradition hearing Feb. 8.

Ticketmaster is having a huge year for ticket sales — and controversies.

Over the weekend, 1.7k Bad Bunny fans were denied entry to his concert in Mexico City after Ticketmaster sold them “fake” tickets. The incident comes just weeks after fans endured extreme technical difficulties while trying to nab tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour presale.

Ticketmaster, by far the most dominant ticketing platform in the world, now faces a class-action lawsuit from Swift fans. The DOJ has opened a broad antitrust investigation of Ticketmaster parent Live Nation.

But Ticketmaster has been scrutinized many times before without serious repercussions.

Is Ticketmaster — and parent company Live Nation — too powerful? Or is the system set up to squeeze live music fans, no matter who challenges Ticketmaster?

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California made a pretty cool breakthrough in nuclear fusion this month.

Fusion is when atoms fuse together to form larger atoms, producing energy. If we could harness it, it’d be a clean energy source that doesn’t produce greenhouse gases or radioactive waste.

Fusion is what powers the sun…

… but in a man-made setting, causing that reaction takes more energy than it produces…

Until Dec. 5, at 1:03am, when LLNL scientists conducted a fusion experiment with a net energy gain, per The New York Times.

How? It’s a complicated process (which you can read about here), but essentially, they fired 192 lasers at a peppercorn-sized target filled with hydrogen atoms, replicating the heat and pressure of a star’s core.

What’s next?

The breakthrough is key in proving that it can be done, but scaling from a lab experiment to powering the nation’s toasters won’t happen overnight.

So far, private fusion companies have pulled together ~$5B, and the Department of Energy has called for a pilot plant and $50m in research grants, per Politico.

LLNL director Kimberly S. Budil said that, with “concerted effort and investment,” a power plant could be built after “a few decades of research.”

Fun fact: Bill Nye pointed out that nearly 80 years ago, on Dec. 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi and his University of Chicago colleagues created the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, leading to today’s power plants.

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