Good morning. Hope you had a fun and relaxing Thanksgiving weekend. We're baaaack – with some good news and some… interesting news. First, the good: there's a new Bambi movie coming!

Now the interesting news: it's going to be a horror movie. And we've got a feeling it's going to be a lot more traumatizing than the original (which, come on, was already very traumatizing).

Let’s just say the hunted has become the hunter – and leave it at that.

In today’s edition:

• 🇨🇳 Anti-government protests broke out in China
• 🪙 A mysterious heist took place in Germany
• 🐺 Catch a parasite, turn into a pack leader

… and more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.83 minutes to read.

“All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.”

–Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

This past weekend’s shopping numbers are in. And to quickly recap: an estimated 166 million Americans hunted for a come-up, then popped some tags with only a little money in their pocket. Someplace somewhere, Macklemore must be proud.

🤿 Diving into the numbers: This year saw the biggest Black Friday sales day… well, ever. Online shoppers spent a record $9.12 billion, according to Adobe Analytics, a 2.3% increase over last year.

And if there was a winner’s podium for the past weekend, Thanksgiving would be standing at #2 – though Saturday and Sunday weren’t far behind.

Turkey Day pulled in an all-time high of $5.29 billion in online sales, up 2.9% year-over-year, while consumers spent an estimated $4.52 billion on Saturday and $4.99 billion on Sunday. For context, online shoppers typically spend about $2 billion to $3 billion per day.

What are people spending all that extra moolah on, you ask?

• The most popular items this weekend were electronics (sales up 221% over an average day in October), exercise equipment (218%), and toys (285%).
• Mobile shopping was also a big winner. Black Friday shoppers made 48% of all online purchases via smartphones, an all-time record and increase from 44% last year.

🤔🛍 Big picture: While these numbers may be a promising indicator for retailers overall, warning signs remain aplenty. Consumer sentiment has weakened in the past month, and still-high inflation is increasingly driving consumers to dip into savings or fund purchases with credit.

Per data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the personal savings of Americans hit $626 billion in the third quarter of this year, down from $4.85 trillion in Q2 2020. Which seems to be leading many folks to put this year’s gifts on their tab – Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) orders rose 78% during Nov. 19-25 compared to the week prior.

📊 Flash poll: Has inflation impacted your holiday shopping so far this year? Click one of the links below to vote. The best long-form responses to the question will be featured in tomorrow's newsletter.

Yes

No

Unsure/other

🇺🇦 The “vast majority” of Ukrainians were left without power last week due to Russian missile strikes. President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said basic utilities were gradually being restored across the country, but more than half of Ukraine's 27 regions still had problems getting fresh water. The missile strikes caused all four of Ukraine's nuclear power plants to go offline simultaneously for the first time in 40 years, though three of them were back up and running by the weekend.

🇩🇪 German police launched an international manhunt for thieves who stole $1.7 million worth of ancient coins from a museum. The stolen loot included 483 Celtic coins dating back nearly 2,000 years, and was snatched in a way that had to make Danny Ocean's ears perk up. After discovering the coins were missing, the museum reviewed its security tapes and found the entire heist was carried out in under nine minutes without triggering any alarms.

🇨🇳 Chinese anti-government protests broke out in Beijing, Shanghai, and other major cities – as well as at dozens of universities – over the weekend. Hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police over frustrations with Beijing’s strict ‘Zero Covid’ strategy, where since early 2020 dozens of snap lockdowns have been imposed preventing millions of residents from leaving their homes – sometimes for up to 100 days at a time. The ongoing protests, a rare occurrence under the authoritarian regime, are the largest in mainland China since President Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago, per Reuters.

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If you heard a collective sigh of relief last Tuesday, it was probably because the Education Department extended its freeze on federal student-loan payments – for the seventh time. The latest moratorium was previously scheduled to end on January 1.

✋🚗 Driving the most-recent pause… Ongoing legal challenges to the Biden administration’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 worth of student-loan debt for tens of millions of borrowers.

• The program was placed on hold last month due to two separate court rulings, one of which struck down the program entirely. The White House filed an appeal in both cases, initiating a process that typically takes months to fully resolve.
• Federal student-loan payments are now scheduled to resume 60 days after all court battles have concluded. And if the litigation isn’t resolved by June 30, payments would resume on September 1.

🤔 One interesting thing: Around 500,000 people are still making federal student-loan payments despite the freeze, per the latest data – a number representing 1.16% of all such borrowers. That’s down from 18.1 million people who were voluntarily making payments shortly after the initial pause came into effect in March 2020.

+Dive deeper: See the 360° view on the Biden admin’s student loan forgiveness plan.

We're now over a quarter of the way through the World Cup – and here are the three biggest pieces of news from our holiday break.

🇸🇦 David beats Goliath: Saudi Arabia, ranked 51st in the world, beat No. 3-ranked Argentina, the team favored by bettors to win the World Cup, on Tuesday in one of the biggest upsets in tourney history. The 2-1 loss snapped a 36-game unbeaten streak for Argentina, which was one shy of the all-time record, and kicked off a a national celebration in Saudi Arabia. Following the upset victory, Saudi's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, declared November 22 a national holiday and promised each team member a Rolls-Royce Phantom.

🇺🇸 Win or go home: The US Men’s National Team finished with its second consecutive draw after playing England on Friday, with neither team scoring a single goal (this result means England still has never beaten the US at the World Cup). Up next for Team USA is Iran, a matchup scheduled for tomorrow. If America wins, they’re guaranteed to advance to the knockout round – but a tie or loss means elimination.

🏳️‍🌈📱 Meanwhile, off the field: European teams all walked back plans to wear rainbow armbands in support of LGBTQ+ rights, after FIFA warned it would issue a yellow card to any player wearing it. Separately, the US Soccer Federation briefly displayed Iran’s national flag on social media without the emblem of the Islamic Republic, a move the federation said was intended to show support for ongoing anti-government protests.

+Dive deeper: See a full tournament schedule and results.

💬 Quoted…​​ “Immediate mitigation.”

This was one reportedly of the options on the table at an Adidas board meeting in December 2018, after Kanye West asked to be named creative director of the company, per documents reviewed by the WSJ. The proposal advocated for the company to separate from Ye, then sell off its remaining Yeezy products and replace them with other revenue streams (including products from other celebrities).

• The company’s board ultimately voted to go in a different direction.

🏈 Stats of the Day: This year was the NFL’s most-watched Thanksgiving ever, with a total of 138 million unique viewers across three games; it represents a ~10% increase over the previous all-time record set in 2016.

🤯 Did You Know?... Soccer players in the World Cup run an average of 7 miles every single game.

📖 Worth a Read: How to test if we’re living in a computer simulation → (The Conversation)

• ☝️ You’re looking at the winners of the 30th annual National Gingerbread House Competition; it’s the largest such contest in America, with 219 entrants competing for $40,000 in total prize money.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🪧 Thousands of Amazon employees across 40 countries participated in protests and walkouts on Black Friday.
• ✈️ More than 4,000 flights were delayed yesterday due to a storm system approaching the Northeast; the Sunday after Thanksgiving is considered one of the busiest air travel days of the year; an estimated 55 million Americans traveled at least 50 miles for the holiday, 98% of prepandemic level.
• 🐦 Twitter CEO Elon Musk said a “tentative” rollout for the company’s new $7.99/month verification system will begin on Friday; verified companies will receive gold check marks, governments will get gray ones, and individuals will have the traditional blue checks; all accounts will be manually authenticated before receiving the check mark, per Musk.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🍿 Amazon announced plans to spend $1 billion/year on producing movies that’ll be released in theaters.
• 🏈 College football: No. 3 Michigan beat No. 2 Ohio State 45-23, while No. 6 USC defeated No. 15 Notre Dame 38-27 (New AP Top 25) | EA Sports said its first college football video game in over a decade will come out in summer 2024.
• 🍿 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever led the holiday weekend box office with $65 million in domestic ticket sales, bringing its worldwide total to $676 million; Netflix’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery has earned ~$13 million as part of its week-long, exclusive theatrical release ending Tuesday, per THR. (Background)

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 😋 The world’s oldest known meal was recently discovered in a 550 million-year-old fossil of a slug-like animal.
• 💧 Bruce Lee's sudden death in 1973 was caused by drinking too much water combined with a previous kidney injury, a new peer-reviewed study suggests.
• 🐺🦠 Wolves infected with a parasite known as Toxoplasma gondii are more likely to end up as pack leaders due to the parasite making them more bold, per a new study published Thursday in Nature.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🛢️ The Biden administration granted Chevron an expanded license allowing the company to resume oil production in Venezuela and import it into the US.
• 🦈 The COP19 voted to regulate global trade of shark fins for 60 species of shark, including tiger sharks and six species of hammerheads.
• ⚖️ The Supreme Court denied former President Trump’s request to block a House committee from accessing his tax returns. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 🛍️ The best Cyber Monday deals to shop right now.

Monday: It's Cyber Monday, a day where Americans are projected to spend $11.2 billion, per Adobe, a 5.1% increase over last year

Tuesday: The 10th annual Giving Tuesday

Wednesday: The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree will be lit; New federal data on US job openings and labor turnover in October

Thursday: The first day of December; World AIDS Day

Friday: November jobs report; Pac-12 football championship game

Seven years ago, Jamal Hinton received a text from a random number inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner. 

The message came from Wanda Dench, who thought she was texting her grandson.

• "You not my grandma," read Jamal's reply. Half joking, he continued: "Can I still get a plate though?" 
• He was shocked when Wanda quickly answered yes. 

🦃 A holiday tradition was born... The two sparked up a friendship that day in 2016 and have spent every Thanksgiving together since. 

• “Thanksgiving year 7! 🦃🖤," Jamal posted this year. “From year 1 as strangers, to year 7 as family but now BUSINESS PARTNERS! I’m very thankful for my family, friends, fans.”

Guess the definitions of the following Greek/Latin root words:

1. Bar
2. Corn
3. Endo
4. Pale
5. Peri

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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1. Bar = Weight/pressure (e.g., barometer)
2. Corn = Horn (cornucopia, unicorn)
3. Endo = Inside (endocrine, endothermic)
4. Pale = Old/ancient (paleontology)
5. Peri = Around (peripheral, perimeter)