🌎 The Apple for your eyes

Good morning, Quartz readers!

Here’s what you need to know

Apple’s mixed-reality headset has a release date. The $3,500 Vision Pro will hit stores Feb. 2, and preorders start Jan. 19. Apple didn’t make the announcement at CES, because Apple doesn’t go to CES, but we do have updates from the consumer tech trade show below.

Tiger Woods and Nike broke up. The US golf star and sports apparel brand have been partnered for 27 years.

Boeing shares dropped in the wake of its most recent 737 Max problem. Investors were reacting to the US government’s decision to ground some versions of the plane following a mid flight panel blowout.

Bitcoin hit a 21-month high. The cryptocurrency rose to more than $47,000 yesterday, just as investors anticipate a possible approval from the US Securities and Exchange Commission of a bitcoin exchange-traded fund.

Farmers blocked major roads with tractors in Germany to protest a subsidy change. Chancellor Olaf Scholz isn’t backing down on a plan to end a subsidy on diesel used in agriculture.

CES dispatch: AI PCs, see-through TVs, and bidets

The consumer electronic industry’s biggest trade show of the year, CES, kicked off in Las Vegas this week. We’ll be bringing you updates from CES each day for the rest of this week, starting with some notable gadgets that have been announced.

Here’s five that caught our eye:

🖥️ Nvidia released some new chips that it says will be used in AI PCs

📺 LG’s latest TV is wireless—and transparent 

💻 HP has a cute and powerful gaming laptop with a rainbow LED keyboard 

🔭 A new Unistellar telescope makes stargazing as simple as going through your phone

🚽 Kohler has a new bidet that you can talk to

Bonus: Everything Gizmodo reporter Florence Ion brings in a backpack to CES.

How to print money at sea

While the automotive industry once struggled to find chips, it now struggles to find ships. The Chinese EV branch of the automotive industry, anyway. With exports surging, China’s automakers are trying to find enough shipping capacity to get vehicles overseas, and the cost of doing so is tsunami-sized.

China hasn’t been sleeping on investing in car shipping, correctly identifying it as a key link in the supply chain critical to global expansion of the Chinese automotive industry. But it’s taking a lot more time to build those ships than it is for EV giants like BYD to churn out cars.

If you’re lucky to own one of these floating car carriers—many of which were scrapped during the pandemic—you’re now in a position to charge eye-watering prices for spots aboard them. That’s why Chinese industry observers are calling these specialty vessels “money-printing machines at sea.”

Global supply chains are getting longer and twistier

Something else is rocking the boats of industry.

Economists at the Bank for International Settlements, a Swiss-based consortium of central banks from around the world, recently mapped the realignment of global supply chains following big shocks brought on by the covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What they found is that global supply chains are actually getting longer despite less off-shoring. Quartz’s Mary Hui explains why this is happening.

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Surprising discoveries

The Navajo Nation doesn’t want human remains on the Moon. Its leaders see commercial attempts to do so as desecration of a sacred space.

More than a third of unmarried adults under the age of 50 in Japan have never dated. Many say they see it as a waste of time and money.

A 98-year-old drummer started a band of Holocaust survivors. He learned how to play the instrument in a concentration camp. 

Electrons behave strangely in strange metals. They act more like a fluid—though what that discovery can be used for isn’t clear yet.

A mouse has been cleaning up a Welsh man’s workbench at night. See also: Ratatouille has come out of retirement.

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