The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan kicked off on Friday with a dazzling opening ceremony that included fireworks, a performance by Mariah Carey, and a dancing stovetop espresso maker, according to NPR. The event, held at Milan's San Siro Stadium, saw athletes from over 90 countries march into the stadium, as reported by NPR.
The opening ceremony paid homage to Italian music, art, and culture, with tributes to various aspects of the country's heritage, as noted by NPR. The women escorting each country's athletes during the Parade of Nations wore floor-length puffy coats and oversized sunglasses, according to NPR.
Meanwhile, in the world of technology, a new social network called Moltbook, designed for AI agents, gained significant traction. Launched on January 28 by US tech entrepreneur Matt Schlicht, Moltbook quickly went viral, according to MIT Technology Review. The platform was designed as a space where instances of OpenClaw, a free open-source LLM-powered agent, could interact. More than 1.7 million agents had accounts on Moltbook, having published over 250,000 posts and leaving more than 8.5 million comments, as reported by MIT Technology Review.
In other news, Japan's first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, is staking her future on snap elections, according to NPR. She was seen delivering a campaign speech ahead of the House of Representatives election in Tokyo on February 7, 2026, as reported by NPR.
The opening of the Winter Olympics also sparked discussions about modern attention spans. A recent piece in The Atlantic highlighted how some students don't watch entire movies assigned to them, according to NPR.
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