Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 🏬 Sam’s Club is opening a technology testing ground
• 🌀 Hurricane Milton makes landfall
• 🗣️ The loudest human shout ever recorded

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.53-minute read (1,206 words).

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"Being happy never goes out of style."

–Lilly Pulitzer (1931-2013)

Sam’s Club shoppers in Grapevine, Texas, can forget about long checkout lines and awkward small talk. This month, the Walmart-owned retailer is opening a new, tech-forward location without cashiers it hopes will serve as a testing ground for new ideas.

How it works: No cashiers = more space = more room for showcasing products and prepping customers’ online orders for curbside pickup and home delivery, according to executives.

• Shoppers scan items with Sam’s Club’s Scan & Go app, then simply exit the store. The app handles payment.

Testing, testing

This new Dallas-area location will serve to inform Sam’s Club on whether it makes sense to more widely roll out new technology and features – or send them back to the lab for an overhaul.

The method is a tried and true one for the retailer. Since Walmart founder Sam Walton opened the first Sam’s Club in 1983, the membership-based club has become the more tech-savvy arm of its retail-behemoth parent. The club has spun out several key innovations that its parent company now uses, too, such as Scan & Go, CNBC reports.

This emphasis on innovation has led to Sam’s Club increasingly attracting a young and tech-savvy customer base.

• 1 in 3 members already use Scan & Go when shopping in clubs. And about half of new members that joined during the most recent quarter were millennials or Gen Z, according to the company.

🧠 It’s alllll part of the plan: Sam’s Club is betting its technology- and- experience-focused approach will help it catch up to the undisputed king of warehouse clubs: Costco, which currently generates ~$90 billion more in annual net sales ($176 billion vs. $86 billion in the latest fiscal year).

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🌀 Hurricane Milton made landfall last night as a Category 3 storm. Local evacuation orders grew to encompass 15 Florida counties and ~7.2 million residents as of yesterday evening. Over 50,000 utility workers and 9,000 National Guard members were deployed across Florida in anticipation of Milton, which is on track to cut across the state before heading into the Atlantic Ocean later today. Nearly two million people have lost power. Several airports have closed; emergency services in multiple counties have been suspended. (Note: while the storm may take out cell service, Floridians can still send iPhone texts via satellite if updated to iOS 18.)

🎰 The Tropicana, one of the last remaining casinos from Vegas’ mob era, was demolished. The Tropicana, which closed in April to make way for the relocating Oakland A’s stadium, had been linked to mob activity on multiple occasions over its 67-year tenure. In true Vegas fashion, the demolition at 2:30 am local time Wednesday was turned into a live-streamed spectacle featuring 555 drones and a fireworks display.

😬 A Danish museum’s beer can artwork was accidentally thrown in the trash by staff. The artwork “All the good times we spent together,” which takes the form of two hand-painted beer cans, was accidentally thrown away by a museum mechanic who had just started the job. The museum’s curator managed to rescue the cans from the trash, and found them a new display spot.

Communities across Europe are increasingly employing the services of AV1, a high-tech robot developed by Norwegian firm No Isolation to help students with high absence rates keep up with their studies.

How it works: Essentially, AV1 is attempting to mimic what would happen if WALL-E was paired up with a student who’s forced to miss an extended amount of school (due to a medical condition or otherwise).

Once AV1 is placed on a desk with an ample view of the teacher, the student can remotely control the robot to see a live feed of the class, speak to their classmates/teacher in real time, raise their “hand” to participate in discussions, and even change the robot’s expression – all without leaving the home or hospital.

• On top of keeping up with their studies, No Isolation says its AV1 robot also helps students maintain social bonds while away from school.
• There are currently 3,000 active AV1 units across 17 countries, with the robots mostly located in the UK and Germany.

👀 Zoom out: In recent years, robots have become a growing part of humans’ everyday lives – a trend that appears to be accelerating. Recent advances include high-tech medical robots that can perform surgeries with less room for error, new robot-powered Amazon delivery warehouses, and an increasing number of robotaxis on America’s roads.

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“We need to stay connected to the core of our business, so we can truly understand the challenges and opportunities our store associates face every day.”

Home Depot is ordering all its workers to don the apron and help dads pick out 2x4s. All corporate staff will be required to work an eight-hour retail shift each quarter beginning in Q4 2024, according to a recent memo sent by CEO Ted Decker.

• The move is aimed at supporting in-store associates and enabling corporate staff to better understand their daily challenges, and revives a program that was suspended during the pandemic due to safety concerns. It also follows a unionization push from some Home Depot workers in 2022.

​​👩‍💼🧹 Zoom out: Other companies also see benefit in putting corporate workers on the front lines. DoorDash requires all of its employees, including the CEO, to perform periodic driving or customer service duties.

• ☝️ The Natural History Museum unveiled the winners from its Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024 contest, which drew a record-high 59,000+ entries from 117 countries and territories.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Armoire

• 💰 US markets rose across the board (S&P: +0.7%; Dow: +1.0%; Nasdaq: +0.6%).
• 🔎 The DOJ is seriously considering breaking up Google, per a new court filing; the move stems from an antitrust case where a judge ruled Google has illegally monopolized online search.
• 🎄 Spirit Halloween will open 10 “Spirit Christmas” stores this year. | 🐶🏥 Walmart is opening five more pet services centers over the next month, after shuttering all of its health clinics for people.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎾 Wimbledon is replacing line judges with technology, breaking tradition; the French Open is now the only Grand Slam tournament without some form of electronic line-calling.
• 🤔🪙 Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, a new HBO documentary centered around the true identity of pseudonymous bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, points to 39-year-old Canadian software developer Peter Todd – though many others, including Todd himself, disagree.
• 🎭 Broadway theater owners agreed to dim the lights across all 41 theaters in honor of the late performer Gavin Creel, instead of fewer than one-third of theaters as previously planned; owners also said they’d reconsider the process for determining who to honor with full and partial dimmings. | 🏰 Disneyland is raising prices for most park tickets by ~6%, and increasing prices for annual passes by 6%-20%.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Caliber

• 🏆🧬 The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to a trio of scientists – David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John Jumper – who discovered techniques to decode and design novel proteins; their work could potentially transform how new drugs and other materials are made.
• 🏥 US health insurance premiums for a family of four cost an average of $25,572/year for coverage through an employer, a 7% year-over-year increase, per a new KFF health benefits survey.
• ☀️🛰️ Baiju Bhatt, billionaire co-founder of Robinhood, launched a new space-based solar power startup called Aetherflux; the company aims to use satellites to collect and transmit solar energy back down to Earth.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🚰 US federal regulators finalized new rules requiring American utility companies to replace all lead pipes used in water lines within 10 years.
• 🛬 A Turkish Airlines flight traveling from Seattle to Istanbul was forced to make an emergency landing at Kennedy International Airport in New York after the pilot lost consciousness and died mid-flight.
• 🇺🇸🇮🇱 President Biden spoke with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu by phone yesterday for the first time in seven weeks; the conversation came as Israel expands its ground incursion into Lebanon, and considers how to respond to Iran’s recent ballistic missile attack. | 🗳️💰 VP Harris’ 2024 campaign and affiliated party committees have raised $1+ billion in less than three months since she declared her presidential candidacy, per multiple reports.

CLICKBAIT

• 🗣️💰 Use these two words to help successfully negotiate your next raise.

🎮 Stat of the Day: On Sunday, US teen Michael Artiaga became the first person in the world to achieve a “rebirth” on the classic NES game Tetris – meaning he cleared all 255 levels coded into the 35-year-old game, forcing it to reset back to Level 0. Artiaga, who streams on Twitch under the handle “dogplayingtetris,” eventually finished his historic rebirth run with 29.4 million points. Woof.

🤔 Did You Know? The loudest shout ever recorded from a human was by Annalisa Flanagan, a primary school teacher who yelled “Quiet!” at an ear-shattering 121.7 decibels in 1994 (roughly as loud as a jet engine).

📰 Worth a Read: The million-dollar mystery of milk.com → (The Hustle)

Yesterday, we covered how the US is becoming a nation of homebodies, with Americans spending more time at home than ever before, per a recent analysis of data from the annual American Time Use survey

❓ Our question to you: In general, which of the following best describes your personal experience over the past 5-10 years?

• I’ve been spending more time at home: 57%
• I’ve been spending more time outside of the home: 16%
• My time at home hasn’t changed significantly: 27%

Click here to read some of the most thoughtful longform responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 2,685 votes and 278 longform responses.

Last month, when runner Chrystal Rinehold collapsed near the seven-mile mark of the Jersey City Half-Marathon due to a cardiac episode, Dr. Shane Naidoo couldn't have been in a better place to help. 

• Dr. Naidoo, a fellow runner, was just behind Chrystal when he saw her fall. After running over to help, he gave the woman edible sugar gel packs to bring her blood sugar up, and supported her head while telling passers-by to call 911. 
• Dr. Naidoo escorted her to the hospital with the ambulance, then returned to finish the race.

Daintree Rainforest, the world’s oldest rainforest, is located in which country?

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