Good morning. On today’s docket:

• 🥊 McDonald’s is taking aim at Starbucks
• 📈 Female artists and athletes had a big year
• 🤔 Which non-music YouTube video has the most amount of views in 24 hours?

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be about a 4.66-minute read.

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“The wise warrior avoids the battle.”

–Sun Tzu (544 B.C. – 496 B.C.)

The phrase “Welcome to CosMc’s, may I take your order?” will be heard this week in Bolingbrook, Illinois, for the very first time in history, as McDonald’s launches a new spinoff brand called CosMc’s, the fast-food chain’s answer to Starbucks and its first new restaurant concept in its 68-year history.

CosMc’s name comes from a former mascot – more specifically, a six-armed orange alien from outer space – that appeared in ads in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. McDonald’s execs say CosMc’s was specifically created to go head-to-head with Starbucks, selling customizable drinks, coffee, and snacks popular in the afternoon segment.

As such, each CosMc’s location will feature a smaller format than a traditional McDonald’s, with only drive-thru lanes and no indoor dining room (no word yet on bathroom access). Customers using credit cards will be able to pay at the drive-thru speaker in a bid to speed up service times.

• CosMc’s will offer its own separate menu that leans heavily on customizable iced drinks, including flavored lemonades, turmeric spiced lattes, pear slushes, and churro frappés.
• Its food offerings are limited to McDonald’s Egg McMuffin breakfast sandwiches, an avocado tomatillo sandwich, and snacks like hashbrown/pretzel bites and McFlurries – assuming the ice cream machine is working.

👀 Looking ahead… CosMc’s initial rollout is small, with a total of 10 stores planned by the end of 2024 (including nine in Texas). But, if the locations are successful, McDonald’s execs say CosMc’s could be rolled out across the globe similar to their flagship restaurants today.

🍔🍟 Speaking of: In a separate announcement yesterday, McDonald’s unveiled a new expansion plan that’ll see the company add flagship restaurants at its fastest pace in history.

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🇺🇸🇸🇪 The US and Sweden signed a new military cooperation agreement. The pact gives US troops access to Sweden's 17 military bases to boost regional security and make it easier for the Scandinavian country to receive training and other support from the US. The deal comes as Sweden is pending approval to join NATO, marking a reversal of its long-standing policy of non-alignment in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The US is currently negotiating similar agreements with Finland and Denmark.

💥 Israel-Hamas war update: Israeli officials yesterday said its military had killed about half of Hamas’ mid-level commanders in Gaza since October 7 as part of a deliberate strategy to hamper Hamas’ ability to fight. Israeli airstrikes targeting Gaza have intensified since the end of a week-long ceasefire last Friday, with the country’s ground troops engaging in street-to-street combat with Hamas in Khan Younis (the largest city in southern Gaza). Hamas-led health authorities say at least 1,200 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire ended, bringing the total to at least 15,900 Palestinians killed since Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7. More than 1,330 Israelis have been killed since the October 7 attack, including ~900 civilians.

🇧🇷 A Brazilian city passed what appears to be the world’s first law entirely written by AI. In October, Porto Alegre’s city council unanimously passed legislation to prevent the city from charging taxpayers to replace stolen water consumption meters. What they didn’t know at the time was that the councilman who proposed and wrote the bill secretly used ChatGPT to come up with the entire thing, since he concealed this fact until six days after the law went into effect late last month. The councilman says he did so because he wanted to spark a debate over the merits of AI in lawmaking.

Female artists and athletes stole the spotlight in 2023, according to StubHub Wrapped StubHub’s Year in Live Experiences report published yesterday.

Women had a big year. The four leading female musical acts this year – Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Adele, and P!NK – collectively more than tripled the sales of the entire top ten artists in 2022. They were led by Swift’s Eras Tour, which was the biggest in StubHub’s history.

• Swift’s influence also extended to the NFL, where sales for Chiefs home games more than tripled after the pop/country star’s first appearance in support of Travis Kelce.

Elsewhere, overall ticket sales for the 2023 National Women’s Soccer League rose 101% from the prior year, WNBA sales rose 92%, and women’s tennis saw a 30% bump in attendance.

Big-name athletes and coaches were also major draws. Lionel Messi’s inaugural MLS season corresponded with a 160% year-over-year increase in overall league attendance, and boosted Inter Miami from the seventh-highest selling team to No. 1 by a wide margin. And, in college football, Colorado head football coach Deion Sanders drove a 15x annual increase in preseason ticket sales, propelling the Buffaloes to the No. 10 overall CFB team in terms of demand.

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💬 Quoted… “If I was the government, I’d close it down.”

• In a Senate committee hearing yesterday, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon continued his long history of bashing cryptocurrencies, telling lawmakers “the only true use case for it is criminals, drug traffickers … money laundering, tax avoidance” due to a lack of regulatory oversight. Outside of crypto, Dimon and other major Wall Street CEOs pushed back against the Senate’s proposed regulations aimed at raising the levels of capital banks need to hold against future risks.

👀👂 Stat of the Day: The new trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI broke MrBeast’s record for most YouTube views on a non-music video in a single day, racking up 85 million views in the first 24 hours after it dropped on Tuesday. And it’s not just Rockstar Games who received a power-up – Spotify said streams for the trailer’s song, Tom Petty’s “Love Is A Long Road,” spiked 36,979% this week compared to last.

🤔 Did You Know?... Stable Diffusion’s image-generating AI model uses roughly the same amount of power to generate a single image as it takes to charge a smartphone from 0% to 100%, per a new study that has yet to be peer reviewed.

📰 Worth a Read: How ‘Mr. Brightside’ Became a Generation’s Anthem → (NY Times)

• 👆 The TIME 2023 Person of the Year is Taylor Swift, who was picked from a group of nine finalists that included Barbie, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Sam Altman.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Auxx-lift

• 💰 US markets closed down across the board (S&P: -0.4%; Dow: -0.2%; Nasdaq: -0.6%). | 💼 Private payrolls increased by 103,000 jobs in November, below economists' expectation of 130,000.
• 🛢️ US crude closed at its lowest level since late June; retail gas prices hit their lowest level since January.
• 🚬 British American Tobacco, owner of the Camel, Newport, and Pall Mall brands, is writing down the value of its US cigarette business by $31.5 billion; it's one of the biggest corporate write-offs in recent history.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📱🔭 Unidentified foreign governments are likely surveilling smartphone users via push notifications, US senator Ron Wyden said yesterday in a letter to the DOJ.
• ⚖️ A fourth woman has accused Sean “Diddy” Combs of sexual assault; the woman was a minor at the time of the alleged assault.
• 📺🤝 Disney is rolling out a Hulu integration on its Disney+ streaming platform. (Related reading: The age of streaming bundles is upon us.) | 🎥 Production studio A24 signed a multiyear deal with Warner Bros. Discovery that'll see both its upcoming films and entire existing movie library – over 100 films in total – become available on HBO, Max, and Cinemax.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Coop

• 🚫☝️ Researchers successfully demonstrated an under-the-skin implant that helps treat Type 1 diabetes by secreting insulin into the body; it could offer a replacement for insulin pumps and injections.
• ⚡ The world's biggest experimental nuclear fusion reactor, located in Japan, just came online. | 🌬️ A utility-scale offshore wind farm delivered power to a US grid for the first time.
• 🤖 Google released an updated version of Bard, its AI chatbot, that's underpinned by new AI tech called Gemini; per the company, Gemini is the first model to outperform human experts on MMLU (massive multitask language understanding), which uses a combination of 57 subjects such as math, physics, history, law, medicine, and ethics for testing both world knowledge and problem-solving abilities.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• ✌️ Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced he won’t run for re-election and will exit Congress at the end of the year. (Why more and more lawmakers are choosing to leave Capitol Hill.) | 🗣️ The fourth Republican presidential debate took place last night in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
• 🙏 A shooting on the campus of UNLV killed at least three people and left one person critically wounded; the suspect was killed after a shootout with police. | 🙏 At least six people in Austin and San Antonio were killed and several more were injured by a gunman.
• 🌯 An Ohio woman found guilty of throwing her Chipotle burrito bowl at an employee was sentenced to three months in jail and also ordered to work 20 hours/week at a fast food restaurant for three months.

CLICKBAIT

• 🍽️ Is that food ultra-processed? How to tell.

Yesterday, we covered how American students suffered learning losses during the pandemic, but the negative effects were less severe compared to other developed nations.

❓ Our question to you: In general, are you satisfied with how US schools handled the Covid pandemic, given the circumstances?

• 👍 Yes: 31%
• 👎 No: 52%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 17%

Click here to read more of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 6,252 votes and 416 longform responses.

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

• ‘Hallelujah’: Woman gets unemployment benefits after spending 11 days on hold → (KUSA)
• Man shocked to discover source of headaches for 5 months is pair of chopsticks inside his skull → (Fox News)
• Thurston County candidate who didn't vote for himself loses by 1 vote → (KING 5 News)
• Paraguay official resigns after signing agreement with fictional country → (The Guardian)
• Escaped kangaroo punches police officer before Oshawa capture → (CBC News)

Kentucky school principal Jason Smith has seen plenty of misbehaving students in his 15-year career. 

However, when student Raven was sent to his office after throwing a cup of yogurt across the cafeteria during lunch, something in him struck a chord. 

• The principal asked the student if her behavior would be acceptable in a restaurant. She replied she had never been to one. 

❤️‍🩹 Tough beginnings... Raven had been in the foster care system for almost her entire life. In and out of homes, she never had a consistent or loving caretaker.

• Jason "recognized that she needed something to go in her favor, maybe for once, that it hadn’t gone in her favor in the past, but she just needed somebody to help her.”
• Jason and his wife ended up stepping in to be Raven's foster parents soon after that day in his office. Two years later, they officially adopted the teenager, becoming her legal guardians and forever family.

The ruins of Troy, pictured above, are located in which country?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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Turkey