This week in the news | 18 Nov 23

News from the past week, and a few other things.

Nov 18, 2023

👋 Hello Reader, I hope you had a great week. Below are the items that stood out to me in the news. If you haven’t yet subscribed to Curated Compositions, please sign-up here.

THE QUICK SHOT 🚀

A lock icon (🔒) indicates articles behind a paywall, and a chart icon (📊) indicates an informative chart/graphic in “Slow Brew.”

World

TAKEAWAYS - Biden and Xi meeting: Taiwan, Iran, fentanyl and AI (Reuters)

North America

More Migrants on Terrorism Watch List Crossed U.S. Border (NYT🔒)
Mexico’s Moment: The Biggest US Trading Partner Is No Longer China (Bloomberg🔒) 📊
Mexico’s Water Crisis Is Spilling Over Into Politics (Americas Quarterly)
An Extremely Detailed Map of New York City Neighborhoods (NYT🔒)

Europe

Space

Government

Economy

Core Inflation Falls To Lowest Level Since September 2021 (Forbes🔒) 📊
U.S. Retail Sales Fall for First Time Since March as Holiday Season Approaches (WSJ🔒) 📊
While All Inflation Feels Bad, Housing Inflation Is the Worst (WSJ🔒) 📊
Wall Street Divided Over Just How Aggressive Fed Cutting Will Be (Bloomberg🔒) 📊
Here’s Where Wall Street Says S&P 500 Will Head Next Year (Don’t Expect Record Highs) (Forbes🔒)

Business

Publishers should seek billions from Google, study argues (Semafor)
Letting People Work From Home Is Good for Companies’ Revenue Growth (Bloomberg🔒)
Fake Reviews Are Rampant Online. Can a Crackdown End Them? (NYT🔒)

Energy

Electricity Use Booms in Texas, a Harbinger for the Country (WSJ🔒) 📊

Auto

Real Estate

October 2023 Monthly Housing Market Trends Report (Realtor) 📊
The Share of Americans Who Are Mortgage-Free Is at an All-Time High (Bloomberg🔒) 📊
The Clearest Sign Yet That Commercial Real Estate Is in Trouble (WSJ🔒) 📊
When It Comes To Home Buying, The Suburbs Are Roaring Back (Forbes) 📊
Welcome to Hochatown, the Town Created by Airbnb (NYT🔒)

Personal Finance

The 4% Rule for Retirement Is Back (WSJ🔒)

Technology

New Breed of Supercomputer Aims for the Two Quintillion Mark (WSJ🔒)

Cyber

Microsoft, Google will not challenge EU gatekeeper status (Reuters)
Windows is now an app for iPhones, iPads, Macs, and PCs (The Verge)
Apple agrees to improve texting between iPhones and Androids (The Guardian)
Inside Wall Street's scramble after ICBC hack (Reuters)
Omegle Was ‘The Perfect Storm’ For Child Abuse Problems. Now It’s Dead (Forbes🔒)

Artificial Intelligence

Microsoft Launches Custom AI Chips, As Competition Heats Up With Nvidia And Google (Forbes🔒)
Exclusive: Google in talks to invest in AI startup Character.AI (Reuters)
Companies Tried to Spend Less on Cloud. Then AI Showed Up. (WSJ🔒) 📊
ChatGPT Has Been Turned Into A Social Media Surveillance Assistant (Forbes🔒)

Life

Health

Food & Drink

Your Thanksgiving Costs, Broken Down (WSJ🔒) 📊
South Korea to ban eating dogs (Reuters)
FTC cracks down on food industry for paid dietitian ‘influencer’ posts (WP🔒)
The Trouble With America’s Ultra-Processed Diet (WSJ🔒)
The Biggest ‘Shrinkflation’ Scandal Yet: Oreo Fans Think Cookies Have Less Filling (WSJ🔒)

Travel

Why A Major Airline Waived Fees Just For Taylor Swift Fans (Forbes🔒)

Entertainment

Harry Potter stuntman: Breaking my neck made a man of me (BBC)

Sports

For Fun

The Man Who Invented Fifteen Hundred Necktie Knots (New Yorker)
What3Words

Vocabulary

Consequence (Merriam-Webster)
Prerogative (Merriam-Webster)

Share Curated Compositions

THE SLOW BREW ☕

A more relaxed approach to news summaries.

World

TAKEAWAYS - Biden and Xi meeting: Taiwan, Iran, fentanyl and AI (Reuters)

U.S. President Joe Biden and China's Xi Jinping met for about four hours on Wednesday to discuss issues ranging from military conflicts to drug-trafficking. Biden welcomed the Chinese leader at the Filoli estate, a country house and gardens about 30 miles (48 km) south of San Francisco, ahead of a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. Here's the key issues discussed.

North America

More Migrants on Terrorism Watch List Crossed U.S. Border (NYT🔒)

An increasing number of migrants arrested at the southern border over the past year are on the United States’ terrorist watch list, according to government data. From October last year to this September, officials at the southern border arrested 169 people whose names matched those on the watch list, compared with 98 during the previous fiscal year and 15 in 2021, according to government data. But that is a minuscule fraction of the total number of migrants who were apprehended at the border over the past year, more than two million. The increase appears to reflect at least two factors, a surge in illegal crossings and the number of people arriving from a wider variety of countries than in previous years.

Mexico’s Moment: The Biggest US Trading Partner Is No Longer China (Bloomberg🔒) 📊

The new Cold War is a business opportunity, and Mexico looks better placed than almost any other country to seize it. US-China tensions are rewiring global trade, as the US seeks to reduce supply-chain reliance on geopolitical rivals and also source imports from closer to home. Mexico appeals on both counts—which is one reason it’s just overtaken China as the biggest supplier of goods to the giant customer next door.

Mexico’s Water Crisis Is Spilling Over Into Politics (Americas Quarterly)

Mexico is running out of drinking water. From the arid and desert regions of the country’s north to sun-baked tropics of the south, water shortages are becoming increasingly common—and the national implications are already being felt in the form of mass protests, economic threats, and increasing attention by the leading candidates in the country’s presidential race. Citizens are angry. In recent months, thousands have taken to the streets to protest water outages, and with good reason. According to the Mexican constitution, access to water is a human right that the government must guarantee. But right now, for an increasing number of citizens in major metropolitan areas and small municipalities alike, their right to clean drinking water isn’t being met. While 57% of Mexico’s population lacks access to a reliable, safely managed water source, 105 of the 653 aquifers in the country are being overexploited beyond their capacity to recharge, a study by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands concluded in 2020. For years, the country has been among the world’s largest per-capita consumers of bottled water, along with China and the United States.

An Extremely Detailed Map of New York City Neighborhoods (NYT🔒)

We asked New Yorkers themselves to map their neighborhoods and to tell us what they call them. The result, while imperfect, is probably the most detailed map of the city’s neighborhoods ever compiled. As of publication, it includes more than 350 distinct neighborhoods, based on more than 37,000 responses.

Europe

Cameron returns to UK government as foreign secretary, Braverman sacked (Reuters)

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak brought back former leader David Cameron as foreign minister on Monday in a reshuffle triggered by his firing of interior minister Suella Braverman after her criticism of police threatened his authority. It was the latest reset for a prime minister whose party is badly lagging the Labour Party before an election expected next year. The return of Cameron suggested Sunak wanted to bring in more centrist, experienced hands rather than appease the right of his party which supported Braverman. It also awakens divisive debate over Brexit: Britain's decision to leave the European Union, which Cameron triggered by holding a referendum in 2016 even though he backed staying in the bloc. Under fire from opposition lawmakers and members of the governing Conservative Party to eject Braverman, Sunak seemed to have brought forward a long-planned reshuffle to bring in allies and remove ministers he felt were not performing.

Military training efforts for Ukraine hit major milestones even as attention shifts to Gaza (AP)

As the Russian invasion grinds into a second winter and casualties — already estimated in the hundreds of thousands — continue to mount on both sides, combat training programs provided by Ukraine’s allies are helping it hold out and its odds of eventual victory. By continuing to prepare Ukrainian troops for battle even as the Israel-Hamas war diverts global attention, Ukraine’s backers also are making concrete their promises to stick with it for the long haul. France is on course to have trained 7,000 Ukrainians this year — some in Poland, others at French bases — as part of a European Union military assistance mission for Ukraine that launched a year ago this week. The French army granted The Associated Press access to a training base in rural France last week to observe the latest class of Ukrainian infantrymen being put through its paces at the tail end of a four-week course. The EU mission’s initial goal was to train 15,000 soldiers, but it has far exceeded that target and now expects to hit 35,000 by the end of this year. All but three of the EU’s 27 member countries, plus non-member Norway, have provided training courses or instructors, the EU Commission says. The United States has trained about 18,000, mostly in Germany, with an additional 1,000 in the pipeline, the Pentagon says. In Britain, 30,000 have learned soldiering in the past 17 months, a training program the U.K. government says is unprecedented since World War II. As well as basic training with weapons, battlefield first aid and other skills, instructors are also imparting specialized military know-how, ranging from clearing mines and launching waterborne attacks aboard small boats to equipment repair, officer training and even help for Ukrainian military chaplains.

Former UK PM Cameron in surprise return to government as foreign secretary (Reuters)

Former British leader David Cameron was named as the country's new Foreign Secretary on Monday, in a surprise appointment made by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as he reshuffled his top team. David Cameron, 57, served as British prime minister from 2010 to 2016, resigning after the outcome of the Brexit referendum, when Britain voted to leave the European Union.

France issues arrest warrant for Syria's Bashar al-Assad (Le Monde)

France has issued an international arrest warrant for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, accused of complicity in crimes against humanity chemical attacks in 2013, a judicial source and plaintiffs in the case said on Wednesday, November 15. The judicial source told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Assad was also suspected of complicity in war crimes for the attacks, blamed by the opposition on the regime, that killed more than 1,400 people near Damascus in August 2013. International warrants were also issued for the arrests of Assad's brother Maher, the de-facto chief of a Syrian elite military unit, and two armed forces generals. The Paris court's unit concerned with crimes against humanity has been investigating the chemical attacks since 2021. France claims worldwide jurisdiction for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Middle East

Three live-update news sites:

Mapping the conflict in Israel and Gaza (Reuters)

Maps: Tracking the Attacks in Israel and Gaza (NYT🔒)

Israel and Hamas (Economist🔒)

Israel Releases Footage of Tunnel at Gaza’s Largest Hospital (WSJ🔒)

The Israeli military released footage of a tunnel opening from within the largest hospital in Gaza on Thursday, the first evidence to support its claims that Hamas’s vast tunnel network runs underneath the medical facility. With pressure mounting on Israel to show proof to justify sending troops into the Al-Shifa Hospital, Israel said it was still in the process of combing through the complex. Hamas has denied the claims that it has used the medical facility as a command center and has requested that the hospital be reviewed by international organizations. The search of the hospital presents Israel with a political and diplomatic challenge. Finding a command center at Al-Shifa would help Israel legitimize to Western nations that support its decision to send troops into a hospital. But if its intelligence turns out to be faulty, it would increase international scrutiny of the broader military campaign.

Israel finds second hostage body as UN says it cannot take aid into Gaza (BBC)

Israel says its troops have found the body of a second woman held hostage by Hamas, during a search close to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. Noa Marciano, a 19-year-old soldier, was one of about 240 people kidnapped by Hamas gunmen during the 7 October atrocities, which killed 1,200 people. Israeli forces raided Al-Shifa hospital earlier in the week, believing it to contain a Hamas command centre - something Hamas denies. Meanwhile, the UN says a lack of fuel means that it can no longer bring aid into Gaza from Friday.

Israel signals wider offensive in Gaza’s south, where hundreds of thousands have fled (AP)

Israeli forces dropped leaflets warning Palestinians to flee parts of southern Gaza, residents said Thursday, signaling a possible expansion of their offensive to areas where hundreds of thousands of people who heeded earlier evacuation orders are crowded into U.N.-run shelters and family homes.

Many Arab governments would like to see Hamas gone (Economist🔒)

THEY all want the war to end. And they all want someone else to end it. That was the message, at once banal and controversial, from the leaders of the 22-member Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC), a grouping of 57 mostly Muslim-majority states. It was all to show from an extraordinary summit on November 11th in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The meeting came more than a month into a Gaza war that remains a fixture on television screens and in conversations across the Middle East. The plight of the Palestinians captures Arab attention and inflames emotion in a way that the plight of Sudanese or Yemenis or Syrians does not. The joint summit ended with a sharp statement reflecting that anger: it called for an immediate ceasefire, implored member-states to “break the siege on Gaza” and urged an arms embargo on Israel. Deep contradictions sit beside the regional reaction to the war. Many Gulf states, for example, would like Israel to get rid of Hamas, even as they fear that doing so will awaken extremism in their own countries. They want to see Iran’s “axis of resistance” of proxy militias wounded, but worry about being caught in the crossfire. For several years they have promoted the narrative of a new Middle East, focused on economics rather than ideology. They fret that a long war in Gaza will upset such plans.

US conducts more airstrikes against Iran-backed groups in Syria (Military Times)

The Pentagon and U.S. officials say U.S. fighter aircraft conducted airstrikes on locations in eastern Syria involving Iranian-backed groups, likely causing casualties and destroying weapons stored at the two targets that were struck — a training facility and a safe house. The U.S. has conducted three strikes over the last two weeks against Iranian-tied weapons depots in Syria to retaliate for the more than 50 rocket and drone attacks that militant groups have launched against U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, which have caused dozens of minor injuries among U.S. personnel. Many of the militant groups are operating under the umbrella of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

Navy warship wasn’t targeted by drone it shot down, Pentagon says (Navy Times)

An airborne drone launched from Yemen and shot down by the Navy destroyer Thomas Hudner in the Red Sea Wednesday was not targeting the warship, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters Thursday. A Defense Department assessment concluded that while the Hudner was not the drone’s intended target, it “got so close to the crew that the commander did feel it necessary to engage and shoot down the drone,” Singh said. She declined to comment on how close the drone came to the ship, or which weapons Hudner used to down it. Thomas Hudner was traveling in international waters Wednesday when it fired on the drone in self-defense, according to a brief Pentagon statement.

Iran Increases Stockpile of Near Weapon-Grade Uranium by 5% (Bloomberg🔒)

Iran increased its stockpile of uranium enriched just below the level needed for nuclear weapons, potentially compounding Middle East tensions already heightened by the Israel-Hamas war. Nuclear inspectors from the United Nations watchdog told diplomats Wednesday that Iran’s stockpile of highly-enriched uranium gained 5% since September, compared with a 7% increase the previous quarter. The rise follows a US decision to re-freeze $6 billion of Iranian funds stranded in Qatar due to the risk Tehran was involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel, which triggered the ongoing conflict. Iran began enriching uranium to 60% in retaliation for a 2021 attack on its largest nuclear-fuel plant in Natanz, which it blamed on Israel. While that purity is still below the 90% grade typically used for weapons, it’s much higher than the cap set by the now-defunct nuclear accord that Iran agreed with world powers in 2015.

Africa

Sudan: UNHCR warns of increasing violence and human rights violations against civilians in Darfur (UNHCR)

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is gravely concerned at the latest developments in Sudan as fighting escalates in the Darfur region. Those who have managed to escape across borders are arriving in droves. More than 8,000 people have fled into neighbouring Chad in the last week alone – a figure likely to be an underestimate due to challenges registering new arrivals. UNHCR, with the government and partners on the ground in Chad, is preparing for more arrivals of refugees as the conflict in Sudan rages on. More than 800 people have been reportedly killed by armed groups in Ardamata, West Darfur, an area so far less affected by the conflict. Ardamata also housed a camp for internally displaced people, where close to 100 shelters have been razed to the ground. Extensive looting – including of UNHCR relief items – has taken place in the area. Reports of continued sexual violence, torture, arbitrary killings, extortion of civilians and targeting of specific ethnic groups are deeply alarming. Other reports also indicate that thousands of internally displaced people had to flee a camp in El Geneina.

Asia-Pacific

Taiwan’s opposition parties unite (Economist🔒)

Taiwan will hold presidential elections in January that could lead to a significant relaxation of the island-state’s defiant posture towards China. That would be a big geopolitical event. And after Taiwan’s main opposition parties announced on November 15th that they had struck an electoral pact, it looked a lot likelier. Less than ten days before the deadline to register candidates for the election, Hou Yu-ih of the Nationalist Party, or KMT, and Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) said they would run on a joint ticket. They had not agreed which of them will be its presidential candidate. But as both are far friendlier towards China than the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (dpp), victory for either would bring a big change.

China needs to pull 'multiple levers' for property turnaround, say analysts (Reuters) 📊

China's direct interventions to ease a cash crunch for crisis-hit property developers are a step in the right direction, but analysts say these actions must be complemented by stronger fiscal and monetary policies to shore up demand in the sector. The extended slump in property sales, investment, and home prices last month has piled more pressure on authorities to step up efforts to prevent contagion across the broader financial sector.

Indian authorities contact Thai cave rescue team as urgency increases to reach trapped men (CNN)

Indian authorities trying to rescue dozens of workers trapped for more than 90 hours deep inside a Himalayan mountain have reached out for international help, contacting the Thai team that rescued a boys’ soccer team from a flooded cave in 2018. The 40 men have been trapped since a tunnel collapsed during construction work in northern Uttarakhand state on Sunday, with rescue efforts becoming more urgent amid reports some are becoming ill.

Space

Watch SpaceX's Starship launch on its 2nd-ever test flight today (Space)

SpaceX plans to launch its giant Starship vehicle for the second time ever this morning (Nov. 18), and you can watch the action live. Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, is scheduled to lift off from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas today during a 20-minute window that opens at 8 a.m. EST (1300 GMT; 7 a.m. local Texas time). SpaceX is developing Starship to get people and cargo to the moon and Mars, as well as perform a variety of spaceflight duties closer to home. NASA picked Starship to be the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program, and the vehicle has several private moon missions on its docket as well.

Lost in space: $100,000 tool bag from NASA spacewalk (UPI)

Every construction worker who ever accidentally left their tools at their worksite now has something in common with NASA astronauts, who lost a tool bag worth $100,000 during a spacewalk on Nov. 1, the space agency announced. The white satchel, which can now be seen orbiting the Earth with a telescope or a good pair of binoculars, is hovering about 200 miles above the planet. The bag eluded astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara during a maintenance spacewalk on the International Space Station. The astronomy website EarthSky said the tool bag, which is orbiting in the sky just ahead of the space station, is shining just below the limit of visibility to the unaided eye, where it could be seen with minimal help. For those worried about the tools falling on someone's head on Earth, experts said there is no chance of that happening. The tool bag is expected to remain in orbit for a few more months, where it is expected to descend and promptly disintegrate in Earth's atmosphere.

Government

Biden signs temporary spending bill averting government shutdown, pushing budget fight into new year (AP)

President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a temporary spending bill a day before a potential government shutdown, pushing a fight with congressional Republicans over the federal budget into the new year, as wartime aid for Ukraine and Israel remains stalled. The measure passed the House and Senate by wide bipartisan margins this week, ensuring the government remains open until after the holiday season, and potentially giving lawmakers more time to sort out their considerable differences over government spending levels for the current fiscal year. Biden signed the bill in San Francisco, where he is hosting the summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation economies. News of the signing came late at night. The president signed the bill at the Legion of Honor Museum, where he held a dinner for APEC members.

American Foreign Policy Decision-Making at the Agency Level: The Department of State as Exemplar? (FP21)

As the lead US foreign policy agency, the Department of State plays a critical role in foreign policy decision-making. Much has been written about the formal and informal processes used by various presidents to manage this process via the National Security Council (NSC). Still, gaps exist in the literature on agency-level processes, particularly about State. In general terms, State develops and coordinates foreign policy via a mechanism that tends not to lead to optimal policies. This mechanism – known internally as the “clearance process” – involves internal coordination to determine State’s position on a given topic, as well as external coordination with other executive branch agencies. It relies on adversarial consensus-building via a document editing and approval process, sometimes supported by meetings or phone calls.

NOTE: Big thanks to a reader of this newsletter who shared this with me. It’s an informative article on the interagency process, decision making within the Department of State, as well as the NSC, Principles & Deputies Committees, etc.

Economy

Core Inflation Falls To Lowest Level Since September 2021 (Forbes🔒) 📊

The government’s more steady core inflation index moderated in October to its lowest level in two years, though there’s still plenty of work to do to bring inflation down to the Federal Reserve’s goal. Consumer prices rose 3.2% on an annual basis last month and flat month-over-month, according to Labor Department data released Monday morning. That comes in just below consensus economist estimates of 3.3% annual inflation and a 0.1% monthly jump, according to FactSet. It’s the first time since July 2022 that prices did not rise month-over-month and the lowest annual reading since this July, also coming in far below October 2022’s 7.7% annual inflation.

U.S. Retail Sales Fall for First Time Since March as Holiday Season Approaches (WSJ🔒) 📊

Consumers cut their spending at stores, dealerships and gas stations last month, tapping the brakes on economic growth ahead of the holiday shopping season. U.S. retail sales fell 0.1% in October from a month earlier, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That is the first decline since March and comes after a 0.9% increase in September and robust gains earlier in the summer. The retail figures, combined with slower hiring and easing inflation, indicate that the economy is cooling after surprisingly strong growth much of this year.

While All Inflation Feels Bad, Housing Inflation Is the Worst (WSJ🔒) 📊

Gasoline and groceries are a big part of your budget, and you buy them every week, so you notice when the price goes up—and stays up. Their prices have also risen especially steeply: 43% and 20%, respectively, since January 2021, versus 15% for the consumer-price index excluding food and energy. This helps explain why consumer sentiment is lower than unemployment and inflation would predict. Specific prices don’t enter into the University of Michigan’s index. That said, a rising share of respondents spontaneously mention food or gas prices in the interview and they have much lower sentiment than those who don’t, Joanne Hsu, director of the university’s survey, said. That jibes with my anecdotal evidence. “Obviously, you don’t do much grocery shopping or have a car that uses gasoline,” was one reader’s quite typical reaction to my column. The good news is, gasoline is down about a third since its mid-2022 peak. Grocery prices haven’t fallen, but they are only up 2% in the past year; dairy, eggs, chicken and meat are flat. Even if they don’t drop, maybe a long spell of not going up will loosen their grip on our psyche. Housing is an entirely different matter. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles the CPI, doesn’t measure the cost of homeownership with home prices. Rather, it estimates what a homeowner would pay to rent their own house. This “owners’ equivalent rent” tends to track rents rather than houses and is up 17% since the start of 2021. But if you’re actually in the market, what matters is the price of a home and the mortgage rate. Since January 2021, home prices, despite a late 2022 dip, have risen 29%, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller national home price index, and mortgage rates have nearly tripled. The buyer of the typical home thus faces a monthly principal and interest payment of nearly $2,200, more than double the level of early 2021, the National Association of Realtors calculates. No wonder the net share of consumers telling the University of Michigan it is a good time to buy a home is the lowest since 1982.

Wall Street Divided Over Just How Aggressive Fed Cutting Will Be (Bloomberg🔒) 📊

There’s a stark divide among Wall Street banks over how aggressive they think the Federal Reserve will be in cutting interest rates next year. On one side are UBS Group AG and Morgan Stanley, each of which anticipate deep interest-rate cuts in 2024 as inflation cools and the economy stalls. On the other is Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where analysts expect fewer reductions and a later start.

Here’s Where Wall Street Says S&P 500 Will Head Next Year (Don’t Expect Record Highs) (Forbes🔒)

Top strategists largely expect the stock market to continue rising but remain far below historic rates next year, according to several 2024 forecasts released this week, as stocks continue to recover from last year’s brutal losses but struggle to return to their mid-pandemic highs. Goldman Sachs forecasts the S&P 500 to sit at 4,700 at the end of next year, strategists led by David Kostin said in a Wednesday note to clients, 4.4% above its current level of 4,503 and still below the benchmark index’s January 2022 all-time high of 4,797. Goldman leads a growing consensus on Wall Street that stocks will build on their 2023 rally but fail to crack the elusive highs reached just before interest rates skyrocketed.

Business

Publishers should seek billions from Google, study argues (Semafor)

The latest entry in the escalating global struggle between news publishers and giant digital platforms is a paper that makes the case that Google owes U.S. publishers more than $10 billion a year for the way snippets and headlines of news articles appear in its search. The study, released by Columbia University’s Institute for Policy Dialogue, argues that Google should distribute 17.5% of its search revenue to publishers annually. Meta owes 6.6% of its ad revenue, by the same calculations, or just under $2 billion a year. Google rejects both the study’s methods and its findings. Spokeswoman Jenn Crider said that “less than 2% of all Searches are news related.” Google, she said, drives “tremendous value to news publishers by sending more than 24 billion visits each month to their sites – at no cost to them – which they can monetize.”

Letting People Work From Home Is Good for Companies’ Revenue Growth (Bloomberg🔒)

Companies that allow remote work have experienced revenue growth that’s four times faster than those that are more stringent about office attendance, a new survey shows, adding fuel to the debate over productivity and performance in today’s workplaces. The analysis of 554 public companies that employ a collective 26.7 million people found that “fully flexible” firms — which are either completely remote or allow employees to choose when they come to an office — increased sales 21% between 2020 and 2022, on an industry-adjusted basis. That compares with 5% growth for companies with hybrid or fully onsite workforces. The study, by flex-work advisor Scoop Technologies Inc. and Boston Consulting Group, included companies across 20 sectors, from technology to insurance. Revenue growth was normalized against average industry growth rates so that employers in better-performing areas would not skew the findings.

Fake Reviews Are Rampant Online. Can a Crackdown End Them? (NYT🔒)

Fake reviews are as old as the internet itself, and they are illegal and banned by online platforms. But fake review businesses have continued to blossom anyway. Now, for the first time, a wave of regulation and moves by tech companies are coalescing in a more concerted effort to turn the tide. This summer, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a sweeping rule that would punish businesses for buying or selling fake reviews, among other restrictions. In October, several online platforms, including Amazon and Expedia, announced a coalition that would share information and resources among companies to combat review fraud. And late last month, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, issued her own warning across the state, saying in a statement that fake reviews were “illegal and unacceptable.” Experts warned, however, that the fake review problem may be so enormous that it is insurmountable, and note that fake reviewers survived previous crackdowns.

Energy

Electricity Use Booms in Texas, a Harbinger for the Country (WSJ🔒) 📊

The country’s largest electricity producer and user saw sales grow at five times the national rate for the past decade, roughly like adding Louisiana. A crushing heat wave this summer broke 10 peak demand records for the main Texas grid operator, which narrowly avoided blackouts one hot evening. Texas is an extreme example with a big population that needs a lot of air conditioning, but it is also at the center of trends pushing electricity use higher in pockets of the country: the reshoring of manufacturing, the growth of power-hungry data centers and a push to electrification.

Auto

Automakers' drive to avoid China's EV rare earth dominance gathers speed (Reuters)

The auto industry's drive to make electric vehicle motors with little to no rare earth content has hit high gear, with European, U.S. and Japanese automakers and suppliers racing for alternatives in an area dominated by China. Automakers have mostly relied on motors with rare earth-based permanent magnets, which have been the most efficient at providing the torque to power EVs. But different types of motors without permanent magnets that were previously too big and too inefficient, or those with greatly-reduced rare earth content have become commercially viable, prompting the rush for alternatives.

Hyundai to Be First Automaker to Sell New Cars on Amazon (WSJ🔒)

Hyundai customers who want to skip going to a dealership will have a new option next year: shopping on Amazon.com. The South Korean automaker announced the move Thursday with Amazon at the Los Angeles Auto Show. Starting in 2024, U.S. auto dealers will be able to sell new vehicles on the tech company’s platform, making Hyundai the first automotive brand to offer such an option for customers.

Real Estate

October 2023 Monthly Housing Market Trends Report (Realtor) 📊

According to Realtor.com®’s October housing data, the inventory of homes for sale continued to grow late into the year when it would typically decline as mortgage rates passed 20-year highs and continued to provide headwinds to both listing and home buying activity. The nation’s median home list price remained stable at last year’s levels but the share of price reductions continues to grow. While lower than last year, the share of price reductions rising could signal a softness in prices in the coming months.

The Share of Americans Who Are Mortgage-Free Is at an All-Time High (Bloomberg🔒) 📊

There’s talk of a great divide in the US housing market, as new buyers get crushed by 8% mortgage rates while earlier ones cling gratefully to loans of less than 3%. Missing from this story is a third, even more fortunate group: the rapidly growing number of Americans who own their homes outright. The share of US homes that are mortgage-free jumped 5 percentage points from 2012 to 2022, to a record just shy of 40%. More than half of these owners have reached retirement age. Freedom from mortgage debt gives them the option to age in place—or uproot to sunnier climes.

The Clearest Sign Yet That Commercial Real Estate Is in Trouble (WSJ🔒) 📊

Foreclosures are surging in an opaque and risky corner of commercial real-estate finance, offering one of the starkest signs yet that turmoil in the property market is worsening. Lenders this year have issued a record number of foreclosure notices for high-risk property loans, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Many of these loans are similar to second mortgages and commonly known as mezzanine loans. Mezzanine loans have high interest rates and offer a faster and easier path to foreclose than mortgages. The Journal analysis found notices for 62 mezzanine loans and other high-risk loans this year through October. That is more than double the number for all of last year, and likely the highest total ever for a single year, as higher interest rates and rising vacancies punish the property sector. The increase in mezzanine-loan foreclosure announcements—while not large in absolute numbers—matters because it offers a more immediate measure of commercial real-estate distress than mortgage foreclosure rates.

When It Comes To Home Buying, The Suburbs Are Roaring Back (Forbes) 📊

Last year, city dwellers ditched their condos for homes with enough yard space to raise chickens. This year, when they move they’re picking closer, suburban neighborhoods to roost. Maybe it’s due to more people working in offices post-pandemic, or perhaps country living turned out to be a better idea than it was a reality, but according to the National Association of Realtors’ annual survey, Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, released Monday, home buying in the suburbs is back to its pre-Covid rate of 50% of total sales. In 2022, it was an anomaly at 39%. The latest report tracks home transactions from July 2022 to June 2023 and shows the housing market is largely returning to its pre-pandemic state. However, rising mortgage rates and limited inventory have put home purchases out of reach for more Americans. The average household income of buyers surged from $88,000 in 2022 to $107,000 in 2023.

Welcome to Hochatown, the Town Created by Airbnb (NYT🔒)

The tiny town of Hochatown, on the shores of Broken Bow Lake in the southeast corner of Oklahoma, was created exactly one year ago. And it’s almost entirely thanks to Airbnb. “Airbnb built this town 100 percent,” said Dian Jordan, the mayor of Hochatown. Last November, Ms. Jordan and 128 fellow residents successfully fought to incorporate a narrow 11-square-mile strip of bumpy dirt roads, modest log cabins and enormous modern mansions that sits within the territory of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. During the week, Hochatown has a population of just 219 people, but on weekends, as many as 50,000 visitors, mostly from Dallas, a three-hour drive away, flock there to kayak, fly-fish and hike among the waterfalls, rapids and thick forests of pine and pawpaw trees. Before the pandemic, Hochatown had roughly 400 cabins for rent on Airbnb. There are now more than 2,400 — a staggering 413 percent increase in five years, according to AirDNA, a short-term rental business site that tracks Airbnb data. In September, the town collected its first month’s sales tax, totaling $456,000, and hopes to eventually reap as much as $1 million in tax revenue a month. “For a town of a few hundred people, this number is astronomical,” said David Francis, the business registration manager at the Oklahoma Tax Commission. “The town is basically one giant Airbnb.”

Personal Finance

The 4% Rule for Retirement Is Back (WSJ🔒)

For those wondering if now is a good time to retire, here’s some encouraging news: The 4% rule is back. Thanks to higher interest rates and bond yields, it is likely safe for new retirees to spend 4% of their nest eggs in their first year of retirement and then to adjust that amount for inflation in subsequent years, according to a new analysis from Morningstar released Monday. Though 4% had long been the gospel of retirement math, retirees in recent years were warned that starting at that spending rate raised the risk of running out of money. The recommended initial withdrawal can rise and fall with projections of future market conditions and inflation. Two years ago, Morningstar recommended starting retirement by spending 3.3% of savings. The advice proved prescient, since inflation in June 2022 recorded a 12-month increase of 9.1%, while stocks fell nearly 20% that year. Last year, the safe withdrawal rate inched up to 3.8%.

Technology

New Breed of Supercomputer Aims for the Two Quintillion Mark (WSJ🔒)

Inside a vast data center on the outskirts of Chicago, the most powerful supercomputer in the world is coming to life. The machine will be able to analyze connections inside the brain and help design batteries that charge faster and last longer. Called Aurora, the supercomputer’s high-performance capabilities will be matched with the latest advances in artificial intelligence. Together they will be used by scientists researching cancer, nuclear fusion, vaccines, climate change, encryption, cosmology and other complex sciences and technologies. Housed at the Energy Department’s Argonne National Laboratory, Aurora is among a new breed of machines known as “exascale” supercomputers. In a single second, an exascale computer can perform one quintillion operations—a billion billion, or a one followed by 18 zeros. Aurora is the size of two tennis courts, weighs 600 tons and is expected to be the world’s first supercomputer capable of two quintillion operations a second at peak performance, scientists at Argonne said.

Cyber

Microsoft, Google will not challenge EU gatekeeper status (Reuters)

Microsoft and Google will not challenge an EU law requiring them to make it easier for users to move between competing services such as social media platforms and internet browsers. As part of its latest crackdown on Big Tech, the European Union in September picked 22 "gatekeeper" services, run by six of the world's biggest tech companies, to face new rules. The Digital Markets Act (DMA) requires these gatekeepers to inter-operate their messaging apps with competitors and allow users to decide which apps they pre-install on their devices.

Windows is now an app for iPhones, iPads, Macs, and PCs (The Verge)

Microsoft has created a Windows App for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Windows, and web browsers. The app essentially takes the previous Windows 365 app and turns it into a central hub for streaming a copy of Windows from a remote PC, Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365, Microsoft Dev Box, and Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Services. Microsoft supports multiple monitors through its Windows App, custom display resolutions and scaling, and device redirection for peripherals like webcams, storage devices, and printers. The preview version of the Windows App isn’t currently available for Android, though. The Windows App is also limited to Microsoft’s range of business accounts, but there are signs it will be available to consumers, too.

Apple agrees to improve texting between iPhones and Androids (The Guardian)

Apple plans to adopt a messaging standard that will allow for a smoother texting experience between iPhones and Android devices, long a point of contention with rival Google.

Inside Wall Street's scramble after ICBC hack (Reuters)

The cyber hack of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's U.S. broker-dealer was so extensive on Wednesday, even the corporate email stopped working and forced employees to switch to Google mail, according to two people familiar with the situation. The blackout left the brokerage temporarily owing BNY Mellon BK.N $9 billion, an amount many times larger than its net capital, a measure of resources at hand to promptly satisfy claims. Those details and what happened next, some of which are reported here for the first time, show how the ransomware attack pushed the firm owned by China’s largest bank close to the brink. And they serve as a wakeup call for the financial sector and raise some concerns about the resilience of the $26 trillion Treasury market.

Omegle Was ‘The Perfect Storm’ For Child Abuse Problems. Now It’s Dead (Forbes🔒)

Before it shut down on Thursday, Omegle — a platform that paired strangers in video chats — paired a lot of children with predators. It did so for more than a decade, drawing scores of lawsuits over alleged child grooming on the app. [In 2022], Omegle reported more than half a million cases of CSAM to the nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which passes on tips to U.S. law enforcement. That was more than the volume found on other major sites like TikTok, Snapchat and Discord.

Artificial Intelligence

Microsoft Launches Custom AI Chips, As Competition Heats Up With Nvidia And Google (Forbes🔒)

Microsoft debuted its first pair of custom artificial intelligence chips designed to train large language models Wednesday as the tech giant looks to compete with chipmaker Nvidia, as well as Amazon and Google, sending the Redmond, Washington-based company’s stock to yet another record high. Microsoft announced two chips, the Microsoft Azure Maia 100 AI Accelerator and the Microsoft Azure Cobalt 100 central processing unit, which the company said are optimized for AI, generative AI and cloud computing, as the company looks to compete with Nvidia’s popular AI graphics processing units. The chips, which Microsoft plans to release early next year at company data centers, are designed to power its Bing AI chatbot, Microsoft’s Copilot and Azure OpenAI, which the company said will “help meet the exploding demand for efficient, scalable and sustainable compute power” and as users look to “take advantage of the latest cloud and AI breakthroughs.”

Exclusive: Google in talks to invest in AI startup Character.AI (Reuters)

Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Character.AI, as the fast growing artificial intelligence chatbot startup seeks capital to train models and keep up with user demand, two sources briefed on the matter told Reuters. The investment, which could be structured as convertible notes, according to a third source, will deepen the existing partnership Character.AI already has with Google, in which it uses Google's cloud services and Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) to train models.

Companies Tried to Spend Less on Cloud. Then AI Showed Up. (WSJ🔒) 📊

Business technology leaders are expecting their cloud spending to grow in 2024, an increase linked in part to the growth of new generative artificial intelligence services. Market research and information technology consulting firm Gartner said on Monday that the global cloud market will reach $678.8 billion in 2024, a 20.4% increase from $563.6 billion this year. Cloud infrastructure, or the underlying platform that powers AI, software and applications, is the segment expected to grow the most, at a rate of 26.6% next year, Gartner said.

ChatGPT Has Been Turned Into A Social Media Surveillance Assistant (Forbes🔒)

Most people use ChatGPT to answer simple queries, draft emails, or produce useful (and useless) code. But spyware companies are now exploring how to use it and other emerging AI tools to surveil people on social media. In a presentation at the Milipol homeland security conference in Paris on Tuesday, online surveillance company Social Links demonstrated ChatGPT performing “sentiment analysis," where the AI assesses the mood of social media users or can highlight commonly-discussed topics amongst a group. That can then help predict whether online activity will spill over into physical violence and require law enforcement action. Founded by Russian entrepreneur Andrey Kulikov in 2017, Social Links now has offices in the Netherlands and New York; previously, Meta dubbed the company a spyware vendor in late 2022, banning 3,700 Facebook and Instagram accounts it allegedly used to repeatedly scrape the social sites. It denies any link to those accounts and the Meta claim hasn’t harmed its reported growth: company sales executive Rob Billington said the company had more than 500 customers, half of which were based in Europe, with just over 100 in North America. That Social Links is using ChatGPT shows how OpenAI’s breakout tool of 2023 can empower a surveillance industry keen to tout artificial intelligence as a tool for public safety.

Life

More Americans are getting news on TikTok, bucking the trend seen on most other social media sites (Pew Research) 📊

A small but growing share of U.S. adults say they regularly get news on TikTok. This is in contrast with many other social media sites, where news consumption has either declined or stayed about the same in recent years. In just three years, the share of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has more than quadrupled, from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023. TikTok, primarily known for short-form video sharing, has become especially popular among teens – two-thirds of whom report ever using the platform – as well as young adults.

The Final Frontier for Helicopter Parents Inside the Facebook and WhatsApp groups where moms arrange playdates for their college kids. (The Cut)

Facebook groups for parents of college kids have become mainstream organically — in a way, joining is the final, triumphant step in the arduous college-enrollment process. Some groups are schoolwide, while others are specific to a cohort — graduating class, dorm, fraternity or sorority, team sport. At the University of California, Berkeley, for example, there are groups for Indian parents, parents who live in the Bay Area, and parents with safety concerns. For the most part, parents form and run the groups themselves, though some colleges (including the University of San Francisco, Emerson College, and UW-Madison) take the lead and have university employees moderate. That’s because parent Facebook groups can drive revenue via increased student enrollment and retention rates and keep parents from pestering administrators, according to the marketing agency Ellison Ellery, which has worked with Western Carolina University and the University of Central Florida. Parents join the groups for many reasons: to access packing lists, view dorm layouts, or find detailed instructions for building bespoke bunk-bed headboards. Some join to ask whether their kid needs a car or whether $150 a month is enough for food. Other parents just have a vague sense, as Jennifer puts it, that they “need to stay on top of things.” Regardless of the reason they join, parents often portray these groups the same way: as landing pads for helicopter parents short on fuel who want to orchestrate their kids’ lives at the precise moment they are meant to become independent. Some also say that the groups are a steady source of entertainment, particularly for mothers and fathers who have loosened their grip on their kids but still relish a little group-chat drama.

Health

Common pesticides in food reducing sperm count worldwide, study says (CNN)

Pesticides used in our homes, gardens and lawns and sprayed on foods we eat are contributing to a dramatic decline in sperm count among men worldwide, according to a new analysis of studies over the last 50 years. “Over the course of 50 years, sperm concentration has fallen about 50% around the world,” said senior study author Melissa Perry, dean of the College of Public Health at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. “What is not known is the culprit,” Perry said. “While there are likely many more contributing causes, our study demonstrates a strong association between two common insecticides —organophosphates and N-methyl carbamates — and the decline of sperm concentration.”

German watchdog considers Ozempic export ban amid Europe shortages (Yahoo)

German regulator BfArM is considering banning Ozempic exports as Europe's health systems grapple with shortage of the diabetes drug, which is in high demand for its weight-loss benefits. Use of Novo Nordisk's Ozempic for weight loss has caused shortages across Europe, where Britain and Belgium have temporarily banned its use for weight loss to secure availability for diabetics. Novo's launch of anti-obesity drug Wegovy, a high dose version of Ozempic, in Britain, Germany, Norway and Denmark, has so far done little to temper the craze for Ozempic as volumes of Wegovy have been limited due to production bottlenecks. Ozempic is approved to treat type 2 diabetes when more established therapies have failed, but it has increasingly been prescribed "off-label" to treat weight loss because it has the same active ingredient as hugely popular but scarce Wegovy. "We are currently in talks with lawmakers about what we will do if the current measures and the public messages don't show an effect," BfArM President Karl Broich told Spiegel magazine.

Food & Drink

Your Thanksgiving Costs, Broken Down (WSJ🔒) 📊

There is no avoiding relatives this year. Thanksgiving gatherings are expected to look a lot more like they did prepandemic, as prices for turkey and travel moderate. Inflation is easing overall. American families are expected to gather in pre-Covid-size crowds of nine people on average, according to turkey seller Butterball—as big as or bigger than last year’s Thanksgiving. Consumers also might catch a break on travel. Gas prices are down from this time last year and airfare has been falling overall, though peak periods—such as holidays—might still cost you.

South Korea to ban eating dogs (Reuters)

South Korea aims to ban eating dog meat and put an end to the controversy over the ancient custom amid growing awareness of animal rights, a ruling party policy chief said on Friday. The Korean practice of eating dog has drawn criticism from overseas for its cruelty but there has also been increasing opposition at home, particularly from the younger generation. The government and ruling party would introduce a bill this year to enforce a ban, Yu said, adding that with expected bipartisan support, the bill should sail through parliament.

FTC cracks down on food industry for paid dietitian ‘influencer’ posts (WP🔒)

Federal regulators announced warnings against two major food and beverage industry groups and a dozen nutrition influencers Wednesday, as part of a broad action to enforce stricter standards for how companies and social media creators disclose paid advertising. The Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters Monday to the American Beverage Association, a lobbying group whose members include Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, as well as the Canadian Sugar Institute and the health influencers who collectively have over 6 million followers on TikTok and Instagram. The agency flagged nearly three dozen social media posts that it said failed to clearly disclose who was paying the influencers to promote artificial sweeteners or sugary foods. The crackdown, which represents more aggressive enforcement of the FTC’s rules, signals that the agency seeks to set a new precedent for holding both influencers and industry accountable for social media marketing campaigns that fail to make clear who is funding them. The action also could dramatically change the social media feeds of popular influencers who now often rely on vague hashtags such as #ad or #sponsored rather than clearly naming the brand or company paying them.

The Trouble With America’s Ultra-Processed Diet (WSJ🔒)

Concern is rising about the amount of ultra-processed foods in American diets, and the effect eating so many of those foods has on our health. Part of the problem, nutrition researchers say, is that lots of healthy-seeming items—many breakfast cereals, soups and yogurts as well as granola—fall into that category. Recent studies have linked diets high in ultra-processed foods to increased risks of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and depression. Yet there is no set definition of what makes a food ultra-processed, and scientists are still figuring out exactly why eating a lot of these foods is associated with health problems. These foods are coming under a microscope as the U.S. government prepares the latest version of its dietary guidelines, which tell Americans which types of foods to eat and how much. For the first time, the government is asking its scientific advisory committee to consider how diets consisting of varying amounts of ultra-processed foods influence body composition and obesity risk.

The Biggest ‘Shrinkflation’ Scandal Yet: Oreo Fans Think Cookies Have Less Filling (WSJ🔒)

Oreos, made by snack giant Mondelez, have long attracted a devout following, making them the world’s best-selling cookie more than a century since their creation. Now, suspicion over subtle changes has prompted some devotees to protest what they believe is the latest cookie conspiracy, or try to suss out the truth about creme. Some fans are making videos of themselves twisting Oreos open to reveal scant filling. Others touted Hydrox, an Oreo competitor.

Travel

Why A Major Airline Waived Fees Just For Taylor Swift Fans (Forbes🔒)

On Thursday, the mega-popstar posted on the social media platform X that she was postponing her Friday show until Sunday in the Argentinian capital “due to the weather being so truly chaotic it would be unsafe to try and put on this concert. Good news is I get to stay in Argentina longer!!” In an unusual move, LATAM, South America’s largest airline, offered Swifties a lifeline when it announced it wouldn’t charge customers change fees or differences in fare if they rebooked their return flights from Buenos Aires. Make no mistake, LATAM’s gesture could inject tens of millions of dollars into the Argentinian economy if enough fans spend a few extra days in Buenos Aires. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has been creating economic shockwaves since last year, when ticket demand overwhelmed Ticketmaster. This year, the hospitality industry has sat up and taken notice.

Entertainment

Harry Potter stuntman: Breaking my neck made a man of me (BBC)

David Holmes vividly remembers the day he joined the Harry Potter stunt crew. It was August 2000. The first film was in pre-production at a former Rolls-Royce engine factory converted into movie studios. And the filmmakers were still trying to decide how to convincingly bring some of the magic of JK Rowling's best sellers to the cinema screen. "My first day's work was being the world's first Quidditch player," he recalls with a proud smile. Holmes, a talented young gymnast from Essex still in his late teens, was asked to become the main double for Daniel Radcliffe's Harry, performing stunts that were deemed too risky for the film's 11-year-old star. The pair quickly forged a friendship that endures until today. During the run-up to filming of the seventh story, The Deathly Hallows Part 1, in January 2009, Holmes was badly injured. Rehearsing a stunt where he was rapidly jerked back on a harness, he broke his neck. The resulting spinal injury meant he was in hospital for several months. He's permanently paralysed from the chest downwards and now uses a wheelchair.

Sports

Why The Las Vegas Grand Prix Is Formula 1’s Biggest Bet Ever (Forbes🔒)

After years stuck in neutral, F1 is finally getting into gear in America, thanks to a high-rolling, 200-m.p.h. gamble in Sin City. Saturday at 10 p.m. local time—that’s 1 a.m. on Sunday for East Coast night owls—Formula 1 racing will return to Sin City after a 40-year hiatus with the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix. Set against a neon-drenched cityscape, the high-octane spectacle will see 20 drivers take 50 laps around the 3.8-mile street circuit, with its 17 turns winding past the new MSG Sphere. After two quick bends and a hard left, it’s a straight shot down the Las Vegas Strip at speeds up to 212 m.p.h., racing past the Venetian and Caesars Palace and zipping between the famed Bellagio fountains and the Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas.

An F1 racecar’s intimidating steering wheel, explained (WP🔒)

The steering wheel of a Formula One car looks, well … nothing much like a conventional steering wheel. In fact, new fans of the sport might mistake it for a video game controller or a prop from a science-fiction movie, with buttons and knobs filling nearly every inch of its surface. Even Formula One drivers find the steering wheel intimidating when they first enter the sport. “When you make the jump to Formula One, it feels like you become more like an engineer than a racing driver in some ways — and the steering wheel is definitely an example of that,” said Alex Albon, a driver for the Williams Racing team. “[When you] join the team, they give you a booklet, and it’s this thick,” he explained, holding his fingers about six inches apart, “[describing] what the steering wheel does.”

Formula 1’s Las Vegas Race Isn’t Living Up to the Hype (Bloomberg)

Las Vegas’ first Grand Prix in four decades was supposed to be the latest big sports win for Sin City. But in the days and weeks leading up to Thursday’s start of racing, ticket prices and hotel room rates have been tumbling, a sign of dwindling excitement around the event. Liberty Media Corp., the owner of F1, has started to lower profit expectations for the race, blaming unexpected costs.

The Oakland A's are relocating to Las Vegas after MLB owners approve the move (NPR)

Three years after the NFL's Raiders abandoned Oakland for Las Vegas, MLB's Oakland A's announced they're moving there too. The owners of the 30 teams in the league unanimously approved the move Thursday, though the A's aren't expected to play in Vegas until 2028. The team will play their 2024 season at the Oakland Coliseum. But their lease at the stadium expires after that and no decision has been made on where they'll play while the stadium in Las Vegas is being built, the team said.

For Fun

The Man Who Invented Fifteen Hundred Necktie Knots (New Yorker)

Mocka invented his first tie knot in 2013, when he was forty-four. His wife was pregnant and he needed health insurance, so he got a union job as a doorman, at an apartment building where one of his friends worked. The night before his first day, he stayed up late learning to tie the Windsor knot, hoping to make a good impression. Soon, Mocka found an online community devoted to tie knots. He discovered knots like the Merovingian, which was named for a character in the 2003 film “The Matrix Reloaded”; it’s unusual because the tail is knotted in front of the blade, as though the tie is wearing a smaller tie. In the small world of tie-tying, Mocka became a minor celebrity.

How to tie a tie: https://www.ties.com/how-to-tie-a-tie

What3Words

A fun app that identifies any location on the surface of Earth with a resolution of about 3 metres (9.8 ft) using three random words.

Vocabulary

Consequence (Merriam-Webster)

Something produced by a cause or necessarily following from a set of conditions.

Recently, I heard someone say this word as “con-sequence”; which, by doing so, really highlighted the etymology of the word to me. “con" = with + “sequence” = order of succession. In essence, a consequence is that which follows in order of succession.

Prerogative (Merriam-Webster)

In ancient Rome, voting at legal assemblies was done by group, with the majority in a group determining the vote. The group chosen to vote first on an issue was called the praerogātīva, a word rooted in Latin rogāre, “to ask; to ask an assembly for a decision.” When English adopted prerogative from Latin, via Anglo-French, in the 15th century, it took only the idea of the privilege the ancient Roman voting group enjoyed; the English word referred then, as it also does now, to an exclusive or special right, power, or privilege.

irst of all, I’ve always pronounced it “per”-ogative; secondly, I never thought of it in its source meaning as described below.

Etymology - Middle English prerogatif, prerogative, borrowed from Anglo-French, borrowed from Latin praerogātīva "the century (Roman voting unit) on which the lot fell to vote first, the verdict of that century (seen as predicting the outcome of the whole vote), omen, prior choice, prior right or claim," (short for centuria praerogātīva "century voting first"), from feminine of praerogātīvus "appointed by lot to vote first," from prae- pre- + rogātus, past participle of rogāre "to ask, ask (an assembly for a decision)" + -īvus -ive — more at rogation

Have a great weekend!

The Curator

Share Curated Compositions

Two resources to help you be a more discerning reader:

AllSides - https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news

Media Bias Chart - https://www.adfontesmedia.com/

Caveat: Even these resources/charts are biased. Who says that the system they use to describe news sources is accurate? Still, hopefully you find them useful as a basic guide or for comparison.