🐤 Criminal content

🏦 Markets: Say goodbye to the bear market. Gains on Thursday were sufficient to officially usher in a bull market, with the S&P 500 gaining 0.6% to bring it a total of 20% higher than it was at its recent low point in October.

The Dow Jones was up 0.5% and the Nasdaq was the day’s big winner with gains of about 1%.

Wall Street’s future is always uncertain, but the most recent bear market was shorter and had less severe losses than usual.

🌫️ Code Purple: The environmental impact of Canadian wildfires continues to spread across much of the United States this week. In a statement on Thursday, President Joe Biden stressed the importance of “affected communities” to “listen to the guidance of their state and local officials from this point forward.” The government issued a high-level Code Purple warning due to reduced air quality and several events in and around D.C. were canceled.

🚗 Sharing is caring: Ride-hailing app Uber has offered a car-sharing service in Australia since last year, and now it's coming to North America. Uber Carshare will soon be launching in Toronto and Boston before spreading to other markets. The service allows people to rent someone else’s car by the hour or the day and return it at the same place it was obtained. The company provides a suggested price that includes the cost of fuel.

🙅‍♂️ Presidential veto: Biden’s effort to erase a significant amount of college student loan debt has been met with significant criticism — particularly on Capitol Hill. Republicans led an effort to cancel the president’s plan, and a few Democrats even joined forces to vote in favor of it. But Biden hit back by vetoing the measure, calling it “a shame for working families.” The U.S. Supreme Court could have the final word when it rules on the matter later this year.

🧐 Scientific method: There’s been a lot of confusion since ChatGPT went live over whether particular documents were written by a human or an AI bot. But that doesn’t seem to be an issue in the scientific community. There’s a new algorithm that reportedly has a more than 99% accuracy rate in determining whether scientific papers were authored by AI. Taking style, tone, and language into consideration, the software has proven very effective so far.

In the age of social media, sometimes it’s the most ridiculous content that goes viral the quickest. And sometimes, that includes blatant criminal activity.

Combine that environment with a critical flaw in certain Kia and Hyundai models and you’ve got the recipe for creating a wide group of thieves known collectively as the “Kia Boys.”

How it started

While car theft has been an issue since the earliest days of the motor vehicle, it’s become particularly troublesome in recent years. And the two aforementioned Korean automakers are at the root of the problem due to an easy-to-exploit vulnerability that makes some models quite easy to steal.

Some say that boredom surrounding COVID-19 lockdowns also added to the troubling trend, and the evidence seems to support that theory:

• In 2019, there were 3,500 car thefts in Columbus, Ohio — and there were more than 4,000 during just the first half of last year.
• Milwaukee car thefts tripled between 2019 and 2021.
• The vast majority of vehicles stolen in these and other cities are Kias and Hyundais.

Introducing the Kia Boys

You can easily find videos on social media that show young men cruising in stolen autos. These joyrides are often set to music, including original songs by rappers like Marry Mac and Shawn P. of Milwaukee.

In their song “Shake Yo Nay Nay,” the duo kick things off by declaring: “If I see a Kia, then I’m taking your s***.”

It’s a huge threat to public safety since many of the stolen vehicles are driven recklessly. It’s also a massive inconvenience to the many people victimized by the crime. And finally, it’s an expensive problem for Kia and Hyundai, which reached a $200 million settlement meant to address the fundamental reason so many of their vehicles are being stolen.

If you’re reading Early Chirp in the U.S. on a device connected to the internet through fiber cables, then consider yourself extremely fortunate.

Although such networks are overwhelmingly more popular than other types of service where it’s available, most households in America cannot get it.

Let’s explore what it is and why it’s so far out of reach for millions of Americans.

How fiber stacks up

According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, there’s really no comparison between fiber and other internet services for most folks who can access it.

Michigan State University professor Forrest Morgeson, a longtime ACSI associate, explained that “fiber service shows a strong advantage — from data transfer speed and service reliability to touchpoints like call centers and websites.”

The index rates customer satisfaction on a 100-point scale, and it’s easy to see that fiber is the clear favorite.

• AT&T Fiber comes out on top with a score of 80.
• The average of all fiber services combined is 75.
• Non-fiber connections have an average of 66.

Americans are missing out

With all of the benefits of fiber internet, it might seem surprising that a majority of U.S. households can’t get it. But cable companies currently dominate the nation’s internet market, and there’s a big push to limit availability.

While the Federal Communications Commission reported that roughly 38% of Americans could get fiber, less than 3 in 10 have access to gigabit download speeds and 100 megabits-per-second upload speeds.

AT&T is clearly having success where its fiber network is available, but there’s no indication that the company plans to significantly increase its service. For that reason, Morgeson said that customers should make the best of what they can get for now and encouraged providers to improve non-fiber services whenever possible.

When you think about critters running wild in the streets of the Big Apple, your mind might first go to the viral video of “pizza rat.” But one of the biggest animal-related issues to impact New York City in recent years involves feral cats.

How bad has it gotten?

Some estimates suggest there are half a million or more cats roaming the nation’s most populous city, and it's impossible to avoid these felines if you spend any significant amount of time there.

But the true number remains shrouded in mystery — and the founder of one nonprofit organization says that’s by design.

“No one knows, and the city doesn’t care to know,” explained Flatbush Cats founder Will Zweigart. “Because if they knew, they would be accountable to do something about it.”

What can be done?

A growing number of good-natured New Yorkers have taken it upon themselves to care for and feed the cats, but that doesn’t do anything to address the root problem. That’s where groups like Flatbush Cats come in.

The organization has been pursuing a somewhat controversial, but arguably effective, strategy known as “trap, neuter, return,” or TNR for short.

As its name implies, the response involves capturing feral cats and letting them loose again after they have been rendered unable to reproduce. It’s a slow process, but in the end, it’s been proven effective in reducing the cat population in other communities.

Why is it so important?

There are a few serious issues that can result when thousands of feral cats are roaming free. For starters, the food often left out to feed the felines can attract rodents and other creatures that create their own unsanitary infestations.

Furthermore, the wide number of birds that call New York City home are constantly under attack by these cats.