Good morning, and Happy Election Day. On today’s docket:

• ⚖️ Trump testifies in New York civil fraud case
• 🐝 Bumble has a new queen bee
• 🤔 How often does AI hallucinate?

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be about a 4.97-minute read.

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BREAKING: WeWork, once valued at $47 billion, has filed for bankruptcy. Read more here.

"It's the job that's never started that takes the longest to finish."

–J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

Former President Donald Trump took the witness stand yesterday to testify in a New York civil trial accusing him and the Trump Organization of manipulating real-estate valuations for financial gain.

📅 Some quick background: New York Attorney General Letitia James has charged Trump and his company with fraudulently inflating the value of their real-estate portfolio by ~$2 billion in recent decades to obtain better financing terms from banks, a strategy which allegedly earned the Trump Org an extra ~$100 million.

• In late September, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled Trump and his business are liable for fraud, in a decision which canceled the New York business certificates of Trump, the Trump Org, and other defendants (including two of his sons).
• The current court proceedings, which are scheduled to run through December 22, will decide whether Judge Engoron imposes any or all of the $250 million in fines sought by AG James.

⏩ That brings us to yesterday… Trump spent about seven hours on the witness stand answering questions from the AG’s office, during which he often avoided direct answers (drawing ire from Judge Engoron), and characterized the charges from Democratic AG James as politically motivated.

The former president also denied any direct involvement in the Trump Org’s annual financial statements, and said he believes they underestimated his net worth by failing to capture the full value of his brand or properties like Mar-a-Lago.

⚖️ Zoom out: In addition to the ongoing New York civil trial, Trump is also facing 91 criminal counts across four state and federal indictments. Collectively, these cases cover allegations that Trump:

• Illegally tried to overturn the 2020 election (both in Georgia and during the January 6 Capitol riot).
• Mishandled classified US government documents after leaving office.
• Falsified business records to hide a hush-money payment during the 2016 campaign.

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🌌 2024 will bring the most intense northern lights displays in over two decades, scientists say. The Sun is projected to reach the peak of its 11-year solar activity cycle between January and October 2024, causing the northern lights to appear further south across the globe due to higher chances for solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other forms of Sun-induced space weather. The current 11-year cycle is expected to produce significantly more solar activity – aka more instances of aurora borealis – than the previous cycle, which was the weakest in the past 100 years.

💥 Israel-Hamas war update: Israel’s military continued to hit the Gaza Strip with airstrikes yesterday, as its ground forces began pushing into Gaza City after fully surrounding the area last week. Hamas-controlled Gaza health authorities said more than 10,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have died since the war began on October 7. More than 1,400 people in Israel died in the attacks that sparked the war, while 24 Israeli soldiers have been killed since ground operations began in Gaza late last month. The heads of 18 humanitarian organizations issued a joint statement yesterday calling for an “immediate humanitarian cease-fire,” with UN officials saying the war has killed the highest number of its workers of any single conflict.

🇺🇸🇨🇳 Major US law firms are downsizing in China. Nearly half of the 73 largest US law firms in China shrank their domestic attorney presence over the past decade, per a new Reuters report. The firms cited a wide range of reasons for pulling back from China, including struggles to rebound from Covid, an ongoing property sector crisis, and new privacy restrictions limiting the transfer of sensitive data outside China.

At its first-ever developer conference yesterday, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4 Turbo, an improved version of its flagship chatbot, GPT-4.

The updated version will be rolled out to the masses over the coming weeks. Here’s what’s new:

• More up-to-date information. GPT-4 Turbo provides answers with context up to April 2023. Prior versions were cut off at September 2021.
• Longer prompts. Earlier versions limited prompts to about 3,000 words. GPT-4 Turbo accepts inputs up to 300 pages long, an exciting update for those still writing book reports (SparkNotes has been realllll quiet since this dropped).
• Cheaper prices and more options for developers. GPT-4 Turbo is slated to be 3x cheaper than the previous version. And OpenAI now offers access to APIs for GPT-4 Turbo with vision (which can analyze images and use them in conversations) and DALL-E 3 (which can generate images), as well as its in-house text-to-speech model.

*Billy Mays voice* But wait – there’s more! OpenAI also announced Copyright Shield, which basically means it’ll cover all the legal costs if any of its paying customers are sued for copyright infringement. And, on a separate note, the company is rolling out the ability to make custom versions of its AI chatbot, called GPTs, and will create a marketplace for people to sell them.

🔢 By the numbers… ChatGPT has about 100 million weekly active users, OpenAI said Monday. More than 92% of Fortune 500 companies are also using the platform, up from 80% in August.

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Bumble founder and chief executive Whitney Wolfe Herd is stepping down as the company’s CEO, the WSJ first reported yesterday. The dating app has also already swiped right on a replacement: Lidiane Jones, who became the CEO of Slack this past January.

Background: The 34-year-old Wolfe Herd, who became the world's youngest self-made female billionaire when she took Bumble public almost three years ago, founded the female-focused dating app following an acrimonious departure from Tinder (which she co-founded). The idea underpinning Bumble was that having women initiate conversations with prospective partners would help weed out unwanted messages and put them in control of their romantic lives, per the WSJ.

📸 Big picture: Wolfe Herd’s replacement, Lidiane Jones, a 44-year-old tech-industry vet who worked for Microsoft for more than a decade and later became an exec at Salesforce, is taking over the company at a time when Wall Street is souring on dating apps like they were Warheads. Bumble shares, which hit a high of $84.80 in 2021 shortly after its IPO, dropped to a record-low of $12.29 following yesterday’s announcement, and are now down 36% for the year.

Match Group isn’t doing too hot either. Its stock is down 31% for the year, and dropped more than 15% after reporting Q3 earnings last week that showed a continued decline in the number of paying users on Tinder.

💬 Quoted… “It’s fanboy stuff, but certainly conceivable.”

• In a new interview, legendary director Peter Jackson, whose AI-enhanced technology was used to create the brand-new Beatles song “Now and Then” that was released last week, said there may be more to come from the world’s most popular band (by units sold). Jackson revealed that he owns footage in which Beatles members riff on a musical idea in the studio, and said he “might end up with a decent song” if AI tools were used to create new content from the footage.

🤖🚫 Stat of the Day: When summarizing facts, ChatGPT makes things up ~3% of the time, while other AI systems invent information as high as 27% of the time, per new research from startup Vectara.

🤔 Did You Know?... Most modern scanners, copiers, and printers are equipped with technology that recognizes and prevents any user from trying to copy US currency.

📰 Worth a Read: The one thing George Orwell's 1984 got wrong → (BBC Culture)

• ☝️ The Indian city of Delhi is experiencing an ongoing bout of severe air pollution that has forced the closure of all local schools; scientists say local residents are breathing in the equivalent of smoking 25-30 cigarettes per day.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Finance Buzz

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board (S&P: +0.2%; Dow: +0.1%; Nasdaq: +0.3%).
• 🚗 Cruise, the GM-owned autonomous driving company, responded to allegations that its cars are not really self-driving because they require frequent help from humans.
• ☕ Starbucks is increasing pay and benefits for most of its US hourly workers.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚾ The Chicago Cubs fired manager David Ross and signed Craig Counsell to a five-year, $40 million contract, making him the highest-paid manager in MLB history.
• 🐻📺 The Bear was renewed for a third season at FX/Hulu.
• 📝 The Big Ten formally notified Michigan’s football program that it could be facing disciplinary action from the league over allegations of illegal off-campus scouting and signal stealing. | 🗣️ A former employee at a Big Ten football program told the AP his job was to combine details from multiple conference schools to steal Michigan’s signs before his team played the Wolverines last season.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Tenikle

• 🌌 The oldest black hole in recorded history – dating back to 470 million years after the Big Bang – was recently discovered by a team of US astronomers.
• 🌿🫀 Daily cannabis use is linked with higher risks of severe heart disease, similar to frequent cigarette smokers, per a new NIH study; though the research didn’t differentiate between smoking and edibles.
• 🥕🍅🛢️ Brominated vegetable oil, an ingredient used in citrus-flavored sodas since the 1930s, is facing a potential FDA ban after recent toxicology studies indicate it’s harmful for humans; BVO is already banned in the EU, India, Japan, and California (as of 2027).

*From our partners: 🐙 Octopus-inspired for infinite camera angles… The revamped Tenikle PRO boasts enhanced suction, longer lasting adhesion, and fits all smartphones even with cases. AKA it’s the last phone mount you’ll ever need. Get the Tenikle PRO here.

MISCELLANEOUS

• 🗳️ Voters in more than three dozen states head to the polls today for Election Day 2023, which features a range of state- and national-level races and ballot propositions.
• 🐅⚖️ Bhagavan “Doc” Antle, an exotic wildlife preserve owner who gained notoriety in Netflix’s Tiger King, pleaded guilty yesterday to animal trafficking and money laundering.
• 🌐 Sensitive, highly-detailed personal data for thousands of active-duty and veteran US military members can be purchased online for as little as 1¢/name, per a new Duke University study.

CLICKBAIT

• 🐭✍️ Exploring a century of Disney's animation innovations.

Yesterday we covered the 2024 presidential election, which is starting to come into focus thanks to new polling data and recent campaign announcements.

❓ Our question to you: If next year’s presidential election were held today, who would you vote for?

• 🐘 The Republican candidate: 29%
• 🫏 The Democratic candidate: 39%
• 🟢 A third-party candidate: 17%
• 🔞 I’m too young/I don’t vote: 7%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 8%

Click here to read the best longform responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 8,402 votes and 463 longform responses.

A whale-watching group in California got the tour of their life as two humpback whales paid them an unsolicited three-hour visit.

• The whales swam directly up to the boat off the Orange County coast and "played" with the humans for multiple hours.

🐋 Fish are friends... "I had one of the best humpback encounters of my career yesterday!" shared Captain Delaney Trowbridge. "They were pushing the boat around, making crazy vocalizations, and spyhopping a bunch. I’ve never experienced a “mugging” as intense as this one before!"

Check out the video here. 

❓ Trivia: What is the name for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros?

🪵 True or False?... Beavers live in dams.

🤔 Riddle Me This: A is the brother of B. B is the brother of C. C is the father of D. So how is D related to A?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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❓ Trivia: A googol

🪵 T/F: False

🤔 Riddle: D is A's niece/nephew