Good morning. On today’s docket:

• 🛰️ SpaceX’s bet on satellite internet is paying dividends
• 🖥️ How fast are the fastest supercomputers in the world?
• 📉 Americans are souring on science

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be about a 4.67-minute read.

P.S. First time reading? Subscribe here for free.

“Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.”

–W. Clement Stone (1902-2002)

SpaceX is discussing plans to spin off its Starlink satellite internet service via IPO as early as late 2024, and has already begun moving Starlink's assets to a wholly-owned separate unit, per a newly-published Bloomberg report.

And while CEO Elon Musk said the report was more false than your grandpa’s teeth, the billionaire entrepreneur has previously indicated Starlink will go public at some point in the future once its revenue is “reasonably predictable.”

Speaking of revenue… Earlier this month, Musk said Starlink has finally achieved breakeven cash flow. And Bloomberg previously reported SpaceX expects Starlink to generate ~$10 billion in sales next year, eclipsing its rocket launch business for the first time and accounting for two-thirds of SpaceX's overall revenue.

• The estimated figure would represent a significant jump compared to 2022, when Starlink reportedly earned $1.4 billion (up from $222 million in 2021). Starlink’s 2023 revenue isn’t publicly available.
• SpaceX investors say they’re closely watching the financial performance of Starlink, since it makes up a large portion of the overall company’s ~$150 billion valuation.

📸 Big picture: Since launching its first satellite in 2019, Starlink has grown to become the largest operator in the world, accounting for more than half of the 8,700+ active satellites currently orbiting Earth. The SpaceX subsidiary had more than 2 million internet customers spread across all seven continents as of late September.

🛰️ Fun fact: Starlink’s satellites are designed to last five years before they fall out of orbit and burn up, meaning the company has to continually manufacture and launch them to keep up its services.

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🇨🇳🤝🇺🇸 Chinese President Xi Jinping met with President Biden in San Francisco. During the two-plus hour meeting, Biden and Xi discussed potential agreements on restoring military contacts between the two nations, combating fentanyl trafficking from China to the US, and cooperating over global challenges including climate change and AI. Xi also urged Biden to stop arming Taiwan and support China’s peaceful unification with the self-governing island, calling it “the most important and most sensitive issue” in the bilateral relations. Yesterday marked the leaders’ first meeting since November 2022, and the second since Biden took office.

🇺🇦 Ukrainian forces have entered Russian-occupied territory in their ongoing counteroffensive. On Tuesday, Ukraine said its forces established a foothold in an area of the southern Kherson region that Russia had captured shortly after launching its invasion in February 2022. Russian officials acknowledged Ukraine’s advance yesterday, but said the opposing troops are currently pinned down after the Kremlin sent reinforcements to the area. Separately, the EU proposed new sanctions against Moscow aimed at curtailing its sources of revenue for the war in Ukraine, including restrictions on Russia’s diamond industry.

🇻🇦 The Vatican confirmed a ban on Catholics becoming Freemasons (sorry Nic Cage). The Freemasonry is one of the oldest fraternal organizations in the world, with a current global membership of ~6 million, and former members including at least 13 US presidents. While Freemasonry itself isn’t a religion, many local groups require members to believe in one God or “Grand Architect of the Universe.” The decree from Pope Francis came in response to a bishop from the Philippines concerned about the country’s growing Freemason population.

The three fastest supercomputers in the world are all currently located in the US, according to new rankings published this week by Top500.

At the top of the list is the Frontier, a supercomputer built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise in Tennessee, which can perform just under 1.2 million trillion calculations/second (here’s that number written out: 1,200,000,000,000,000,000).

• Frontier is more than twice as fast as the second-ranked supercomputer, the Department of Energy’s new Aurora system in Illinois. However, Aurora is currently operating at around one-quarter of its full capacity, and is expected to overtake Frontier with 2+ million trillion calculations/second by next year.
• The third spot is occupied by another new supercomputer, called Eagle, which is also operated by the Department of Energy. It contains 1.12 million high-end computing cores, including Nvidia’s H100 GPU and Intel’s Xeon Platinum 8480C, which both retail for $10,000+ a pop.

📸 Big picture: China and the US have dominated the biannual Top 500 rankings for decades, but America is channeling Lightning McQueen near the finish line and starting to pull ahead. The US has 161 supercomputers on the most recent list, up from 150 last year, while China dropped from 134 to 104 over the same period.

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💬 Quoted… “Value.”

• Target execs used this word 👆 17 times and variations of “affordable” seven times on a call with investors yesterday, as it reported strong earnings for Q3. And if you thought we miswrote “Target” instead of “Walmart” – you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Target, which has traditionally relied more on consumers’ discretionary spending, is making a concerted effort to appeal to budget-conscious shoppers. The bullseye retailer has struggled to improve sales as shoppers focus more on essentials – whereas Walmart, which draws more than half of its annual revenue from groceries and is known for low prices, has beaten analysts’ expectations on earnings and revenue for the past five quarters. Also yesterday: Target CEO Brian Cornell said customers are giving them “a big thank you” for putting some products inside locked glass cases to prevent theft, and that this move hasn't had a measurable impact on sales or in-store traffic. However – 26% of consumers surveyed by Coresight Research in August said they would shop elsewhere if their local store put items under lock and key, and 26% said they would move online.

🦃 Stat of the Day: Thanksgiving dinner is expected to be cheaper this year. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the average cost of a dinner for 10 people will be $61.17, down 4.5% from last year’s record-high but still up 25% compared to 2019.

🤔 Did You Know?... 57% of Americans now say science has had a mostly positive impact on society, down from 73% in 2019, per Pew Research Center.

📰 Worth a Read: Coyote vs Acme and the blockbusters that may never be seen → (BBC Culture)

• ☝️ National Geographic published its annual Pictures of the Year issue featuring the most breathtaking and culturally relevant photos from a pool of 2 million candidates.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with RYSE

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board (S&P: +0.2%; Dow: +0.5%; Nasdaq: +0.1%). | 💸 US retail sales fell 0.1% in October from a month earlier, per new Commerce Department data; it’s the first decline since March and comes after a 0.9% increase in September.
• 🛻 Tesla has removed a clause in its purchase agreement that allowed the company to sue Cybertruck buyers who tried to flip the vehicle in the first year after purchase. | 📲 Venmo is rolling out Groups, a new feature that lets users track and split ongoing group expenses.
• 💻 Microsoft unveiled two chips at its Ignite conference in Seattle on Wednesday; one is an artificial intelligence chip that could compete with Nvidia; the second is aimed at general computing tasks and could compete with Intel processors.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏈 Cleveland Browns QB Deshaun Watson will undergo season-ending surgery on his throwing shoulder.
• 🤖 YouTube is requiring creators to label AI-generated content.
• 📱Cobell Energy, a series from director Adam McKay’s Yellow Dot Studios, debuted on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube on Tuesday; the series, which consists of weekly, short episodes just a few minutes long, was shot vertically, so it’s easy to watch on mobile.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Auxx-Lift

• 🌎 ​​Some of today’s earthquakes may be aftershocks from the 1800s, according to a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.
• 🦈 The ability to taste bitterness likely first evolved in vertebrates roughly 460 million years ago, when sharks and other cartilaginous fishes separated from bony vertebrates like ourselves, per a new study.
• 🚀 SpaceX has been cleared by the FAA to launch the second spaceflight attempt of its massive Starship rocket.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🏫 Negotiations remain ongoing between Portland teachers and the city’s public school system; a teacher's strike has canceled nine school days in the district since November 1. (Background)
• 📝 The Texas House of Representatives approved immigration bills this week that would appropriate more than $1.5 billion for additional border barriers and make illegally crossing the Texas-Mexico border a state crime; they now head to the governor’s desk and are expected to be signed into law.
• 🗳️ New Hampshire announced its presidential primary will be held on January 23, which goes against the Democratic National Committee’s wishes to make South Carolina’s February 3 primary the first in the nation.

CLICKBAIT

• ✈️ The best and worst US airports of 2023.

Yesterday, we covered the Supreme Court’s first-ever formal code of conduct, which followed recent reports describing previously undisclosed benefits received by several Justices.

❓ Our question to you: Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s new code of conduct?

• 👍 Yes: 14%
• 🚫 No, it’s unnecessary: 11%
• ➕ No, it doesn’t go far enough: 65%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 10%

Click here to read more of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 8,186 votes and 471 longform responses.

We bring you the most unusual, off-the-wall and occasionally laugh-out-loud headlines from this week.

• Tasmanian woman tells office she can't come in as 600kg 'Neil the seal' is blocking her car → (ABC Australia)
• ‘It never ends’: the book club that spent 28 years reading Finnegans Wake → (The Guardian)
• Chuck E. Cheese removes animatronics in all locations except 1 following release of 'Five Nights at Freddy's' → (WTHR Indianapolis)
• Pennsylvania school district welcomes 17 sets of twins all set to graduate in 2036 → (Fox News)
• Plane forced to return to JFK Airport after horse on board gets loose → (ABC News)

Fifteen-year-old Auldin Maxwell set his first world record two years ago, when he successfully stacked 638 Jenga blocks on top of a single block. 

The British Colombia teen has since set another record with giant Jenga blocks, and then went on to break both of his records and claim new titles. 

🎅🏼🧱 Maybe Santa loves Jenga... This year, the handy teen's story is being turned into a Hallmark Christmas movie called A World Record Christmas. Auldin even got to make a cameo in the film. 

• "When we found out that it was actually happening, we were absolutely thrilled!" Auldin shared. "It felt like an out-of-body experience for me – it's such an incredible honor for our family."

Which country, highlighted in red, is the smallest by land mass in South America?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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Suriname