Good morning. On today’s docket:

• 🌎 Google is harvesting electricity directly from the Earth
• 📈 America’s life expectancy is starting to recover from the pandemic
• 🗣️ Some career advice from Charlie Munger

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be about a 4.63-minute read.

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"Success is more permanent when you achieve it without destroying your principles."

–Walter Cronkite (1916-2009)

A first-of-its-kind geothermal energy project has begun pumping emission-free electricity onto the Nevada grid to power local Google data centers, the tech giant announced this week.

• Geothermal energy is defined as using heat energy from the Earth for electricity generation. It represents an emission-free, always-on source of energy, since heat is continuously produced inside the Earth.

How it works: The overall idea for the Nevada project is to do for geothermal what fracking did for oil and gas – open up resources that would otherwise be inaccessible. Fervo, a startup partnering with Google on the project, does this by drilling horizontally into deep rock, then injecting pressurized fluid to create the kind of fractured, permeable rock needed to harvest geothermal energy.

Once the right kind of rock is created, Fervo gives it the ol’ sauna treatment and sends a large dose of water through fractures in the rock, which then heats the water up and generates steam back at the surface. It’s a closed-loop system, so the water gets reused after its heat energy is extracted and turned into electricity via turbines.

• Since Fervo is testing out a novel process, its Nevada plant is a relatively small project, with the capacity to generate 3.5 megawatts of electricity (for context: 1 megawatt is enough to power ~750 homes).

👀 Looking ahead… Fervo’s next geothermal energy project is scheduled to begin delivering 400 megawatts of clean, round-the-clock power to Utah’s electrical grid by 2028 as part of a state government contract. And that’s only scratching the surface (unlike the process to create geothermal energy). Overall, the Department of Energy recently said the US has potential for 90 gigawatts of geothermal electricity by 2050, equivalent to powering 65+ million homes.

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🇦🇪🇺🇳 The 28th UN Climate Conference (COP28) kicks off in Dubai today. Representatives from nearly 200 countries will convene for 12 days to discuss fast-tracking energy transition, slashing emissions, and achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement to phase out fossil fuels by 2050. The UAE is expected to use the global spotlight to promote an increase in oil and gas production, saying it uses renewable energy to power part of its production and is also investing in carbon-capture technology.

💥 Israel-Hamas war update: Saudi Arabia’s government has reportedly approached Iran with an offer to boost cooperation and invest in its economy if Iran stops its regional proxies – including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen – from turning the Israel-Hamas war into a wider conflict. Hamas released a total of 16 hostages yesterday, including 10 Israeli citizens, in return for 30 Palestinian prisoners released by Israel. It marked the final exchange under the cease-fire agreed to by both sides, which was extended for one more day yesterday minutes before it was set to expire. One more thing: of the 180 prisoners released by Israel since last Friday, 128 of them were detained and hadn’t been charged, put on trial, or given an opportunity to defend themselves, per CNN.

🇬🇧 Uber will begin listing London’s famous black cabs in early 2024. Black cab drivers, who must memorize thousands of routes in London to become certified, can now sign up on Uber to take booked journeys, with the US-based company offering a no-commission deal for the first six months. A group representing the majority of London cab drivers dismissed the offer, saying they don’t want to align black cabs – the world’s number-one-ranked taxi – with Uber’s poor safety record.

The average child born in the US last year is expected to live to the age of 77.5, per a new CDC report. That figure is over a full year higher than 2021, but still below what it was before the pandemic.

Background: For decades, US life expectancy rose slightly almost every year. But in the early 2010s, the curve began to flatten and even decline some years, a trend blamed largely on a recent surge in overdose deaths and suicides.

• Once Covid hit, US life expectancy fell sharply, going from 78.8 years in 2019 to 76.4 years in 2021.

But last year, things were different. The CDC says more than 80% of the year-plus increase in life expectancy between 2021 and 2022 can be attributed to a drop in Covid deaths, which fell from 462,000 to 245,000.

Fewer deaths from heart disease, unintentional injuries, cancer, and homicides also helped boost life expectancy in 2022 – though some of the gains were offset by increasing mortality from pneumonia, influenza, kidney disease, and suicides.

📸 Big picture: The US has trailed many other developed nations in terms of life expectancy since the 1980s, with the gap slowly growing wider each year. In 2019, the most recent year with available data, the average life expectancy across OECD countries was over two years higher compared to the US (81.0 vs 78.8).

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💬 Quoted… “I have three basic rules for career satisfaction that have always helped me. I believe they can help any young person evaluating a career decision. While meeting all three is nearly impossible, you should try anyway.”

In some of his last writing before passing away at 99 on Tuesday, legendary investor Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway's vice chairman and Warren Buffett's right-hand man, shared some insights into career satisfaction. The three basic rules?

1. Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself.
2. Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire.
3. Work only with people you enjoy.

RIP to a legend🫡.

🎶 Stat of the Day: Taylor Swift can add yet another trophy to the 13,000,000 already on her mantelpiece. Spotify Wrappeds dropped yesterday (more coming on that tomorrow), and the data shows Taylor Swift was the most-streamed artist on Earth, with more than 26 billion streams. Bad Bunny, Spotify’s top-streamed artist for the previous three years, was the runner-up. And, according to a Spotify exec, it wasn’t a close second.

🤔 Did You Know?... Ants were practicing agriculture up to 65 million years ago, right around the time the first primates appear in the fossil record. For context, evidence indicates humans began farming ~12,000 years ago.

📰 Worth a Read: Nature's invisibility cloak: the sea creatures with the power to go unnoticed → (Nautilus)

• 👆 China’s space agency published panoramic images showing the full structure of its Tiangong space station for the first time yesterday.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Auxx-Lift

• 💰 US markets closed mixed (S&P: -0.1%; Dow: +0.04%; Nasdaq: -0.2%). | 📈 US GDP grew at an annualized rate of 5.2% in Q3, a larger-than-expected upward revision from last month's reading of 4.9%.
• 🚗 GM yesterday announced $10 billion in share buybacks, a 33% dividend increase, and "substantially lower" spending at its robotaxi unit Cruise; the automaker also reinstated its 2023 guidance and said its new labor deals will cost the company $9.3 billion. | 📝 Speaking of the UAW… the auto workers union has launched a campaign to unionize 13 non-union automakers in the US; the push covers 150,000 workers at BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Lucid, Mazda, Mercedes, Nissan, Rivian, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Volvo.
• 🗣️ Elon Musk, Disney CEO Bob Iger, FTC Chair Lina Khan, and Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav spoke at the 2023 DealBook Summit yesterday.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏓 Major League Pickleball asked players to take a 40% pay cut in return for a reduction in work obligations.
• ⚖️ Actor Jonathan Majors’ domestic violence trial began yesterday.
• 🎮 Netflix subscribers will be able to play the three original 3D Grand Theft Auto games – GTA III, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas – on iOS and Android starting in December.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Nutrafol

• 🐦 Ancient animals were walking around on bird-like feet more than 210 million years ago, per a new study; that timeline predates the earliest known body fossils of birds by 60 million years.
• 🌌 Astronomers discovered a six-planet galaxy that has remained largely unchanged since its inception billions of years ago; the discovery could lead to a better understanding of how planets are formed.
• 🚗🚗 Air pollution from traffic can cause a significant rise in blood pressure that lasts up to 24 hours, per a new study from the University of Washington; the spike is comparable to the effect of a high-sodium diet and can contribute to cardiovascular problems.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 👴 Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger passed away yesterday at 100 years old. 
• 🇮🇳🇺🇲 US prosecutors yesterday alleged an Indian official plotted to assassinate a Sikh separatist leader in New York as part of a thwarted murder conspiracy.
• 🙏 US suicide deaths reached a record high of ~49,500 last year but decreased among children and young adults, per new CDC data. (IMPORTANT: If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988, or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.)

CLICKBAIT

• 🤔🧾 Do you tip more or less often than the average American?

Yesterday, we covered how a growing number of federal student-loan borrowers are filing for bankruptcy to get rid of their debt, a move that became far easier following a recent change to longstanding federal policy.

❓ Our question to you: Do you agree with the Biden admin’s new guidelines making it easier for student loans to be discharged through bankruptcy?

• 👍 Yes: 35%
• 👎 No: 51%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 14%

Click here to read more of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 6,879 votes and 439 longform responses.

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

• Man tries to scare off birds, accidentally creates 'magpie god' → (UPI)
• Child driving stolen construction forklift leads Ann Arbor police on chase → (NBC News)
• Indian woman sets record with world’s longest hair measuring over two metres → (Guinness World Records)
• 'He was a very good boy': Dog rescued from Kentucky sewer drain → (12 News)
• ‘Extraterrestrials’ return to Mexico’s congress as journalist presses case for ‘non-human beings’ → (APNews)

Alexandria Cowheard was working her usual shift at her local Wendy's when she saw a customer collapse in the parking lot. The 22-year-old student ran out to check on him, and noticed he was blue in the face and not breathing.

• “I didn’t panic visibly, but in the back of my mind, I was like, ‘What do I do?’” shared Alexandria. “I kind of short-circuited a little bit before I was like, ‘Girl, you know how to do CPR.’”

🙏 How to save a life... Alexandria called 911 and started performing chest compressions on the fallen customer. He eventually came to and was taken to the hospital, where he's expected to make a full recovery. 

• “I helped a man, and I am proud of myself for that,” Alexandria said about the event. 
• She even went back in to finish out the rest of her shift after the ordeal. 

Mosquito Bay, the world’s brightest bioluminescent bay, is located in which Caribbean country/territory?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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