Good morning. On today’s docket:

• ✍️📝 A closer look at the tentative deal between Hollywood’s writers and studios
• 🐖 Pig organs are becoming more viable for humans
• 🏓 THWAP → thwap: Pickleball is about to get a lot quieter

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be about a 4.73-minute read.

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"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear."

–Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Hollywood’s writers and studios have reached a tentative deal, all but ending a strike that’s lasted ~150 days.

The final language is still being drafted and the deal still needs to be approved by a majority of the ~11,000 Writers Guild of America (WGA) members in the coming days, but based on the initial response from the writers’ side that doesn’t appear to be a major concern.

📝 Deal points: Writers got much of what they demanded, including minimum staffing for TV shows and guarantees that artificial intelligence won’t usurp writers’ credits and compensation.

Another major sticking point for writers was how residual payments would be doled out in the streaming era. In this instance, studios reportedly agreed to increase compensation for streaming content.

But expect residuals to be a key sticking point in the future, too

Basically, every time a new piece of technology is invented that alters how content is distributed – from the radio to the TV to online streaming platforms – the old way of compensating creators doesn’t necessarily apply.

This reality has been a point of contention between creators and companies for nearly 100 years. A few examples:

• 1930s: Radio performers were required to perform a show live for East Coast listeners, then wait a few hours to perform the same show again for West Coast listeners. The invention of recording technology flipped this process on its head, since the first show could just be recorded and played again. Performer pay was halved, but radio companies didn’t trust the tech, and paid performers to remain on-hand anyways in case of any technical difficulties – which is how the concept of residual payments was born.
• 1950s: TV networks had the same worry about tape and adopted the same policy as radio companies, per the NY Times. The Screen Actors Guild then started pushing for residuals when movies were replayed on television. In 1960, the networks and studios agreed.
• 2023: Hollywood’s writers – and actors – go on strike, in part because of how the distribution of content (and the compensation associated with it) has changed in the streaming era.

🤔 Speaking of actors… Hollywood’s writers may have a tentative deal, but their in-front-of-the-camera brethren are still on the picket line. The writers’ deal could accelerate negotiations and provide a framework to help resolve the actors’ strike, however, because it addresses many of the same concerns regarding streaming residuals, AI, and other issues.

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🇨🇳🐼 China is set to reclaim its pandas from the National Zoo in Washington, DC. The zoo is hosting a “Panda Palooza” event to celebrate its three pandas before their return to China on December 7, which will leave DC’s main zoo without any such animals for the first time since President Nixon formalized diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1972. Fun fact: Almost every panda in the world is technically owned by the Chinese government, which has been loaning some of them out to zoos around the world since the 1940s as part of a program dubbed “panda diplomacy.”

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia agreed to grant the UN full oversight of its nuclear activities. The move is aimed at reassuring the international community that any nuclear facility Saudi Arabia opens in the future would be purely for energy purposes, and not an attempt to produce fuel for a nuclear bomb. Last week, the WSJ reported that Israel is working with the Biden administration to set up a US-run uranium-enrichment plant in Saudi Arabia, as part of a three-way deal to establish official diplomatic relations between the two Middle Eastern nations.

🇩🇰🧱 Denmark’s Lego is moving away from using recycled plastic bottles to make its bricks. After two-plus years of internal testing, Lego concluded a company-wide transition to bricks made from recycled plastic bottles wouldn’t end up reducing its carbon emissions, since the process to create those bricks produces more emissions than the potential savings. The Danish company has invested $1.2 billion in reducing carbon emissions by 37% over the next decade, with an emphasis on developing an environmentally-friendly material that’s functionally identical to current oil-based plastic bricks.

On Friday, surgeons at the University of Maryland transplanted a genetically modified pig’s heart into a man with terminal heart disease and no other treatment options, marking the second successful operation of its kind in history.

🐖 Some quick background: Pigs have been used in human medicine for decades, since their organs are anatomically similar to ours. They're also less likely to have unique diseases, due to close contact with humans for generations.

But prior to 2021, all attempts at pig-to-human organ transplants had failed because people’s immune systems immediately destroyed the foreign tissue. This led scientists to develop a new method, where pigs are genetically modified to make their organs more human-like.

This new process is already seeing results. Last year, the same Maryland team performed the world’s first transplant of a genetically-modified pig heart into another dying man, who survived for two months following the surgery.

• And, earlier this month, NYU scientists ended their experiment in which a genetically-modified pig kidney worked normally inside a brain-dead man for a record two months.

📸 Zoom out: Roughly 106,000 Americans are currently on the organ transplant list, with about 17 of them dying each day.

And while 60% of the US population is signed up to be an organ donor, only 3 in 1,000 people die in a way that allows for their organs to actually be donated – though scientists hope genetically-modified pig organs will soon be able to solve existing shortages.

💬 Quoted… “By working together with manufacturers and the entire industry, we can develop quieter options that benefit everyone.”

• USA Pickleball, the governing body for America’s fastest-growing sport, announced a new initiative yesterday to address the noise complaints associated with pickleball. Their plan includes the creation of new equipment that generates half as much noise compared to typical paddles, which produce a popping sound as loud as 70 decibels – roughly the same as a vacuum cleaner – each time they strike a pickleball.

🧑‍💻 Stat of the Day: Gen Z Americans are ~3x more likely to get caught up in an online scam than Baby Boomers (16% vs 5%), per a recent Deloitte survey. Stay vigilant out there, folks.

🤔 Did You Know?... Scientific retractions are on the rise. At least 5,500 faulty scientific papers were retracted in 2022 compared with 119 in 2002, according to Retraction Watch, a website that keeps a tally; the overall rate stands at ~0.8% of all publications.

📰 Worth a Read: The totally perplexing and possibly never-ending treasure hunt for the golden owl → (Atlas Obscura)

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• ☝️ The NYPD unveiled a new police robot called K-5 that will patrol the Times Square subway station for the next two months as part of a pilot program.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Meowtel

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board (S&P: +0.4%; Dow: +0.1%; Nasdaq: +0.5%).
• 🤖 Amazon agreed to invest up to $4 billion in generative AI startup Anthropic, a top competitor to OpenAI. | 🤖 Speaking of OpenAI: The company released an update to its ChatGPT apps for iOS and Android that’ll allow the chatbot to talk out loud in five different voices; the update also includes image-based enhancements.
• ⚡🚗 Nissan announced Monday that all new models it launches in Europe will be fully electric.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📱🤖 TikTok launched a new tool to help users label any posts created with the help of AI; the company’s existing AI policy requires all manipulated content involving realistic scenes to be labeled as fake or altered.
• 🎟️💰 A new IRS law requires ticketing platforms like StubHub and Ticketmaster to give the federal government information on any US users who made a profit of at least $600 from reselling tickets.
• 🏈 Monday Night Football: The Eagles defeated the Buccaneers 25-11, while the Bengals beat the Rams 19-16.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with EnerHealth

• 🦠💊 Pharma giant Merck’s widely-used antiviral Covid pill can cause mutations in the virus that occasionally spread to other people; that’s per a new peer-reviewed study which found no evidence the drug produced more transmissible or severe Covid variants.
• 🦴 Traces of a syphilis-causing bacteria were discovered in a seventh-century French skeleton, challenging the theory that Christopher Columbus brought syphilis from the New World back to Europe.
• 🌌 Over the next 18 months, the Northern Lights will be at its highest activity level in 20 years, scientists told NBC News.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🇺🇦 Over a dozen US-made Abrams tanks have arrived in Ukraine months ahead of schedule, President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed yesterday.
• 🗣️ California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) will debate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on November 30; the event will be held on Fox News and moderated by Sean Hannity.
• 🏛️ Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) denied any wrongdoing and rejected calls to resign from fellow lawmakers – including members of his own party – in his first public comments since being indicted on federal bribery charges; Menendez also said he still plans to run for re-election in 2024. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 💼 Why America has a long-term labor crisis, in six charts.

Yesterday, we covered how the US passenger train industry is attempting a resurgence after decades of losing market share to cars and planes.

❓ Our question to you: If given a choice, which of the following options would be most prudent for you and your current situation when taking a medium- or long-distance trip?

• 🚗 Personal vehicle (aka driving): 23%
• 🚄 High-speed rail: 43%
• ✈️ Airplane: 22%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 12%

Click here to read some of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 10,023 votes and 1,174 longform responses.

A group of fishmongers in Central France made a 1-in-2-million discovery when they found the rare blue lobster pictured above in one of their catches.

• Rather than sell the crustacean for culinary purposes, however, the group went out of their way to rescue it instead.

🦞 Living her best lobster life... The fishmongers, together with the local tourism office, were able to locate an area on the island where fishing is not allowed. They released the lobster back to the wild, so she "can live a long peaceful and happy life." 

​​❓ Trivia: In The Matrix, does Neo take the blue pill or the red pill?

🪐 True or False?... Uranus was originally named “George’s Star.”

🤔 Riddle Me This… What five-letter word sounds the same when you take away the first, third, and last letter?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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❓ Trivia: The red pill

🪐 T/F: True

🤔 Riddle: Empty

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