The Know Daily - Friday 9 February 2024

_{Read in 5m 44s ∙ Listening to Tracy Chapman ∙ Share us to your socials ☝️}

We’re offering one lucky reader a dreamy two-night UK treehouse stay for up to five people, courtesy of TreeDwellers. You’ve been automatically entered into the draw just by opening this email - but you can 👉 refer a friend 👈 to The Know for five extra entries! 

Happy Friday, readers!

It’s Esther here, kicking off this week’s edition with some big news - we’re saying goodbye to Kate, our seriously wonderful editor-in-chief.

Over the past year, Kate has brought buckets of experience and a bunch of new ideas, helping to transform The Know into the publication you know and love. But on a personal level, Kate has also brought kindness, wisdom, wit and lots of laughter. We will miss her so much - although this definitely isn’t goodbye forever.

Kate leaves incredibly big boots to fill - something I’m especially aware of, given that I’m stepping up into the position of editor. Having joined The Know as staff writer in October 2022, I’ll never stop being amazed at just how much our unique, jargon-free journalism is needed - and we’re so excited to continue making the media landscape that bit more accessible and hopeful.

With this in mind, I want to know: how are you all feeling about The Know right now? What are we doing well, and what could we improve on? Please tell us here.

We also have a wonderful new multimedia journalist, Effie, joining the team next week, who you’ll be hearing more from very soon. So, lots of change, but it’s all exciting.

Love,
Esther x 

P.S. Scroll down for a very exciting Galentine’s gift from us to you, thanks to our friends at Beauty Pie ❤️‍🔥

POLITICS & GLOBAL AFFAIRS

👑 King Charles has been diagnosed with cancer, a statement from Buckingham Palace revealed on Monday. The monarch “remains wholly positive about his treatment”, it added.

🌡️ The average global temperature for the past 12 months exceeded 1.5C for the first time in history, according to data released this week.

🇵🇰 Pakistan headed to the polls yesterday in the country’s “least credible election yet”, according to many analysts.

CULTURE

📺 Streaming services are changing. Hulu and Disney+ announced a Netflix-style password-sharing crackdown from next month, while Amazon Prime Video this week began showing “limited advertisements” to its UK subscribers. 

🛫 Taylor Swift’s lawyers threatened legal action against a student who tracks the routes of her private jet (and the jets of other public figures) and shares the information online.  

💃 Rio Carnival - one of Brazil’s “biggest, boldest and brightest” annual events - kicks off today, with festivities lasting for eight days.

WORK & INNOVATION

🧬 Scientists announced that they may have solved the mystery of why women are at greater risk of autoimmune disease - and it’s all to do with the X chromosome. 

🇩🇪 Germany has begun trialling a four-day work week, with advocates arguing that the move could “help alleviate the country’s skilled labour shortage”. 

🤳 Snap, the operator of Snapchat, announced plans to lay off around 10% of its staff amid falling profits. The social media giant said the move would “reduce hierarchy and promote in-person collaboration”.

UPLIFTING STUFF

🇪🇸 Spain designated seven new marine protected areas that will serve as “safeguards against climate change” and be “havens of biodiversity”. 

🔬 A “groundbreaking” gene therapy was hailed as a “medical magic wand”, after it was shown to “transform the lives” of patients with a hereditary swelling disorder in a new trial.

🐆 India’s snow leopards were surveyed for the first time, numbering 718. Regular monitoring is crucial to ensuring the big cat’s long-term survival, conservationists have said.

Our newsletters are free, but our work is valuable. Back independent, female-founded journalism for less than £1.25 a week. This directly supports keeping our content free for all and ensures we can pay our team a fair wage.

📰 Read: The rise and fall of oat milk. The Independent’s Helen Coffey explores the reasons why the dairy milk alternative has fallen out of favour - and how it became the internet’s latest big talking point. 

📺 Watch: American Fiction (out in cinemas now), One Day (Netflix), Hot Mess Summer (Prime Video), Reindeer Mafia (Channel 4). 

🎧 Listen to: Normal Gossip - the podcast delivering “juicy, strange, funny, and utterly banal gossip about people you’ll never know and never meet”. In other words, the very best kind of entertainment. 

🍸 Make: This very fancy alcohol-free cocktail that celebrates the start of the Yorkshire forced rhubarb season. Or, if you’re seriously over Dry Jan, this gin-themed activity could be just what you’re after.

We list jobs with qualities we know our readers are looking for: purpose-driven opportunities, flexible and female-founded environments, and employers who champion mental health.

Our top jobs this week include roles at the anti-food waste company Too Good To Go, the Royal British Legion and the South Downs National Park.
 
Want to reach 200,000 women with your latest roles? Email [email protected] if you’d like to list a job with us.

We really appreciate all the reader feedback about how much you miss our OG jobs board (we miss it too!) but as a tiny team, we just weren’t able to keep it running. If you want to support us to work on projects like the jobs board in the future, please consider becoming a friend of The Know today.

Given the news about more streaming services announcing password-sharing crackdowns and introducing ads (reported ☝️ and in our Wednesday edition), we wanted to learn a little more about how this development may impact you.

While the vast majority of you (81.82%) do pay for some sort of streaming service, many of you told us that you’ve had to limit your number of subscriptions in recent months to just one or two. 

“Realistically I can’t afford to subscribe to everything,” wrote one reader, adding that if other platforms do ban password-sharing, they’d “prob end up trying to do a few months here and there and switching between platforms”.

Many of you appear to pay for Netflix - suggesting that their password-sharing crackdown (rolled out from May last year) is working. However, not everyone thinks it’s worth it, with one reader sharing that they “plan to leave Netflix this year due to lack of interest in the titles they offer”.

Help your friends feel better about the news - and support The Know at the same time. Get them to sign up using your personalised code 👉 https://theknowmedia.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER 👈 and we’ll reward you with goodies from HURR, Grubby and CRU Kafe!

The Know is an independent media company on a mission to help everyone start their day feeling informed and hopeful. We only recommend things we genuinely love but sometimes we make money out of the links we share. This directly supports keeping our journalism free for all.

Here are four ways you can support our work:

⭐ Get clicking - this tells our partners that readers are interested in our content. Let’s get started with this one (or maybe this one!).

⭐ Become a friend of The Know - back independent, female-founded journalism for just £1.25 a week. You’ll also get exclusive editions, supporter-only giveaways and more.

⭐ Refer a friend - spread the word about The Know and we’ll reward you with some amazing prizes.

⭐ Add us to your contacts or safe sender list - this makes sure we reach your inbox (and everyone else’s) each morning.

How did you find today’s email?
😍 Loved it 😕 Could be better

^{Love The Know and want to hear more from us? Switch to our UK daily edition. Support The Know here.}