• ☝️ Red Bull’s Max Verstappen earned his fourth consecutive F1 World Driver's Championship (!) with a fifth-place finish at the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix early Sunday; Mercedes’ George Russell won the race, with his teammate Lewis Hamilton placing second.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Pique

• 💰 US markets rose last week (S&P: +1.7%; Dow: +2.0%; Nasdaq: +1.7%); the Dow ended Friday at a record high. | 🪙 Bitcoin is trading near $100,000, though it has yet to break the mark.
• 🤖 Amazon is investing another $4 billion into OpenAI rival Anthropic; it brings the tech giant's total investment to $8 billion. | 📡 DirecTV ended its deal to buy Dish TV over a failed debt swap.
• 🍔 McDonald's is expanding its US value menu starting January 7, 2025, as it continues to try and win back price-sensitive customers; its $5 meal deal will also be extended.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎶 Mustaaaaaaaaard: Kendrick Lamar released a surprise 12-track album called GNX; it’s his sixth studio album, and first official release since the chart-topping “Not Like Us” in May.
• ⚾🏆 MLB MVP Awards: Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani and New York Yankees' Aaron Judge both unanimously won the 2024 NL and AL MVPs, respectively.
• ⚽ The Orlando Pride beat the Washington Spirit 1-0 to win their first National Women's Soccer League championship. | ⚽ WNBA star Caitlin Clark joined an ownership group seeking to bring a National Women’s Soccer League team to Cincinnati; the effort is led by the MLS’ FC Cincinnati.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Paleovalley

• 🤏🍝 Introducing – nanopasta: Chemists at University College London created the world’s thinnest spaghetti, which is ~200x slimmer than a human hair; it demonstrates a technique to create tiny fibers, with applications in medicine and electronics.
• 🔫 Alderaan beware: Chinese scientists say they’ve created a Death Star-like microwave weapon that combines several high-powered electromagnetic waves into an energy beam.
• 🚀🌕 NASA began stacking the first stage of its Artemis II Moon rocket; the mission, which aims to send astronauts around the Moon for the first time since 1972, will launch September 2025 at the earliest.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🏛️ President-elect Trump finalized his list of Cabinet nominations, including Scott Bessent for Treasury Secretary, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (OR) for Labor Secretary, and Dr. Marty Makary for FDA chief.
• 🦠🥩 A four-state listeria outbreak that’s killed one infant and sickened 10 adults is connected to ready-to-eat meat products from Yu Shang Food, per the CDC.
• 🇱🇦 Six tourists in Laos died last week – including a US citizen – due to suspected poisoning from alcohol cut with methanol. | 💥 Israel launched a series of airstrikes into Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, that killed at least 29 people; it prompted large-scale airstrikes from Hezbollah in retaliation, with ~20 injuries and no deaths reported across Israel and Palestine. | 🕵️ Wired tracked nearly 200 visitors to Epstein Island, using cellphone location data from a controversial broker with ties to the US Defense Department. (Video)

CLICKBAIT

• 🇺🇸😋 The 25 Most Important American Recipes of the Past 100 Years.