Maritime Oopsie ⚓
  We're gonna need a bigger boat ... And more truck drivers. And a vaccinated workforce. Let's get into it. ⚓ ANCHORS AWEIGH 
Two big headlines from Southern California are colliding in a decidedly 2021 way.
There's the unprecedented port congestion snarling deliveries of, well, everything. And there's the underwater oil pipeline leak that pumped up to 144,000 gallons of oil into the ocean.
Investigators now say that the two may be linked — that a delayed cargo ship dropped anchor and snagged the pipeline.
The CEO of Amplify Energy, which owns the pipeline, put it rather poetically: "The pipeline has essentially been pulled like a bow string."
We may not know the exact cause for a while, but what we do know is that this is unlike anything we've seen before.
HOW WE GOT HERE My colleague Chris Isidore explains that before the pandemic, ships typically arrived and went straight into the Port of Los Angeles or the Port of Long Beach. Now, there's an average wait time of 10 days before ships can dock and unload their cargo.
Experts say that even with all this congestion a ship should have been able to avoid pipelines, which are clearly indicated on nautical maps. But it's not hard to imagine that mistakes will be made under the stress of hauling a massive transport ship around the globe and then having to wait a week and a half at sea before docking.
Another thing we know for sure: This is partly our fault. All of us. Or at least any of us who've kept gobbling up goods online throughout the pandemic. American consumerism, combined with a severe shortage of truckers to take the goods from the ports, is exacerbating the slowdown.
"What you're seeing is the American consumers' buying power on display," said Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles.  🤝 SPONSOR CONTENT BY LENDINGTREE  Rates Could Rise After the Fed Meets. Lock in Now. Economists are urging Americans to refinance to take advantage of historically low refinance rates. These low rates are not going to last much longer.
#️⃣ NUMBER OF THE DAY $1,115,000 Apartment sales in Manhattan cratered during the worst of the pandemic last year. Now they're back with a vengeance. Sales in the third quarter just the highest level in more than 32 years. The median price? A depressing $1,115,000, according to a new report. (That's about $100,000 off the record median sale price, set in 2019.) 👎 ZUCKY  On Tuesday night, hours after Frances Haugen testified before Congress about how Facebook poses a danger to democracy, Mark Zuckerberg posted a 1,300-word screed trying to discredit her.
A Facebook spokesperson, meanwhile, described Haugen as "a former product manager at Facebook who worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives."
Allow me to — *cracks knuckles* — push back on that a bit.
SPIN 101 First of all, we've seen this a million times — smearing a whistleblower's credentials is Chapter One of Corporate Crisis Management for Dummies.
And Haugen's bona fides are a particularly difficult target: She studied electrical and computer engineering, has an MBA from Harvard, and worked at several tech firms before Facebook, including Google, Pinterest, Yelp and Hinge. She specializes in "algorithmic product management."
Even if her resume weren't so stacked with qualifications, Haugen still had access to tens of thousands of internal reports. Odd that a tech company as powerful as Facebook would let such an insignificant employee have access to such sensitive reports, including many that were attorney-client privileged.
SHOW YOUR WORK If it is the case that Haugen, the Wall Street Journal, and members of Congress are misconstruing these documents, prove them wrong, Zuck! Just release the proverbial tapes, my guy.
At the end of the day, it is Zuckerberg and the rest of Facebook's leadership who cannot be trusted to share Facebook's research with the public.
CNN Business' Donie O'Sullivan has more on the ways Facebook has cherry-picked from its own data to present a much rosier picture than reality, raising questions about what else Facebook knows that it doesn't want to tell us.
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON? 📈 Stocks rallied to finish the day in the green after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell floated options to prevent America defaulting on its debts.
🥄 Around 1,400 Kellogg cereal workers went on strike after yearlong negotiations between their union and management broke down.
🌱 Burger King is testing out plant-based Impossible nuggets.
🎤 Tina Turner reportedly sold the rights to her music catalog spanning six decades to music publishing company BMG for $50 million.
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