Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 🗳️ Election Day 2024: By the numbers
• 🖥️ The AI supercomputer funded by Ozempic
• 🌳 Earth’s largest organism

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.95-minute read (1,317 words).

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“There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.”

–Plato (427 BC – 347 BC)

Election Day is finally here, with millions of voters heading to the polls today across the country.

Let’s take a look at some key stats surrounding the 2024 US election:

It carries a record-high price tag. The overall 2024 election cycle (including all races) cost $15.9 billion, exceeding the previous record of $15.1 billion spent in 2020. When it comes to the presidential race, the Harris campaign has spent $1+ billion compared to $380+ million for the Trump campaign, while super PACs and other outside groups have spent ~$1.3 billion.

Early voting is a popular option. 80+ million Americans had voted early as of yesterday afternoon, equivalent to ~52% of the total vote in 2020. For reference: early votes comprised ~36% of all votes in the two presidential elections held prior to the pandemic.

Americans are putting their money where their ballot is. Election betting is legal and widespread for the first time in the US following a court ruling last month – and the action is hot. Americans have legally wagered $123+ million on the election so far, per betting site Kalshi, with analysts predicting that figure will grow significantly in the future to reach similar levels as March Madness ($2.7 billion in 2024) or even the Super Bowl ($23.1 billion).

More wealthy Americans are planning a post-election exit. Attorneys and advisors to family offices and high-net-worth families in the US say they’re seeing record-high demand from clients looking for second passports or long-term residencies abroad.

👀 Looking ahead… Voting in the 2024 US election officially concludes at midnight ET tonight, when Alaska and Hawaii stop collecting ballots.

• Many of the less-competitive elections will likely be called sometime this evening.
• The results for closer races, like Trump v. Harris, could come as early as tonight – or they could be delayed for several days (or even weeks) if the margins are too close to call.

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🇩🇰🤖 Denmark unveiled a national AI supercomputer funded by Ozempic. The country’s new Gefion supercomputer was built with technology from Nvidia and funding from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, a charitable organization that’s also the Ozempic-maker’s largest shareholder. Gefion, which is bigger than a basketball court and cost $100 million to develop, will be made available to Danish scientists and businesses (like Novo Nordisk) to help drive research in medicine, quantum computing, green energy, and more.

🏘️ The typical US homebuyer is more likely to be a married couple, or single, older, and a woman. In a report tracking transactions between July 2023–June 2024, the NAR found first-time home buyers decreased to 24% of the market (from 32% last year), marking the lowest figure since data collection began in 1981. The median age of a first-time buyer also reached a record high (38 years old). The NAR also found the share of married couples increased to 62% of all buyers, while single female buyers rose to 20%, single males decreased to 8%, and unmarried couples dropped to 6%.

✈️👍 Boeing machinists voted in favor of a new contract, ending their 7+-week strike. In its latest proposed contract, which was approved with 59% support from workers in yesterday's vote, Boeing offered pay raises of 38% over four years (which works out to ~43% when compounded), plus ratification and productivity bonuses. Pensions were a main sticking point in negotiations, with Boeing resisting workers’ demands to restore their pension plan frozen nearly a decade ago. Now that the contract is ratified, workers are scheduled to return to the job by November 12.

Ask anyone who’s ever lost an iPhone: backups can be crucial. The US Space Force recently selected four companies to develop concepts for new satellites that will act as a backup to the existing Global Positioning System (GPS).

A global force

Since the US Air Force (which oversees the Space Force) began deploying GPS ~50 years ago, this series of satellites has become critical to military and economic activity, generating $1.4+ trillion in economic benefits, according to a 2019 Commerce Department study. GPS is used across multiple industries – from enabling your Chinese takeout-carrying DoorDasher to navigate to your address, to allowing you to stalk your bf’s location via Find My Friends.

• There are currently 31 operational GPS satellites in orbit, a mix of modern and older spacecraft providing varying levels of capability, C4ISRNet reports.
• The US Space Force program, dubbed Resilient GPS (R-GPS), aims to launch a total of 24 new satellites across three phases to act as a backup to this existing infrastructure. The first phase would launch as early as 2028.

The driving idea: A GPS outage would be economically costly (~$1 billion/day) and affect military capabilities. Subtext: The potential threat from US adversaries like Russia and China is growing.

🖐️ But… Not everyone is on board with the plan. The House Appropriations’ defense subcommittee denied a $77 million funding request for R-GPS in the 2025 fiscal year, due to concerns about the plan's effectiveness vs. other potential options, such as alternative positioning or timing systems.

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“ive got the long legs all i need is the dadddddy.”

Like Wednesday Addams on the dance floor, Dunkin’s marketing team spent this Halloween being unhinged. In the weeks leading up to the spooky holiday, the company released a series of posts on X, TikTok, and Instagram (above) of a spider on a doughnut set against edgy, sometimes sexually suggestive, comments.

With the move, the chain beloved by East Coasters becomes the latest company to experiment with “unhinged” marketing, which contains a tinge of edge and irreverence designed to be humorous – basically the antithesis of the buttoned-up, corporate PR speak of old.

• This marketing strategy was spearheaded around a decade ago by Wendy’s, who leaned into Twitter clapbacks. Ryanair and Scrub Daddy quickly followed suit.
• In recent years, more brands have leaned into unhinged marketing, including Nutter Butter and Duolingo (s/o Duo, you sly dog, you🦉).

📈 When done right, it can be effective. Zaria Parvez single-handedly grew Duolingo’s TikTok from 50,000 to 5 million followers using this strategy – and with a team, further scaled the account to 13+ million. This translated into real business results: between 2022-2023, the company’s daily active app users grew 62%.

• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the best science images from October, as selected by the journal Nature’s photo team.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Going

• 💰 US markets fell across the board yesterday (S&P: -0.3%; Dow: -0.6%; Nasdaq: -0.3%). | 🤔 What the stock market typically does after the US election, according to history. (Read)
• 🤑 Berkshire Hathaway is sitting on a cash pile of $325 billion, up from $276.9 billion in Q2, after offloading portions of its Apple and Bank of America holdings. | 📊 Palantir reported strong Q3 results; revenue increased 30% to $725.5 million, while net income was $144 million, a company record.
• 🚢 Key ports on Canada's West Coast have been shut down by a labor strike; an estimated $800 million in trade flows through West Coast ports each day.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏀 College basketball: The men’s and women’s seasons tipped off yesterday. | 🏈 The New Orleans Saints fired head coach Dennis Allen after a seventh straight loss; the Saints’ 2-7 record is tied for worst in the NFL.
• 🙏 Quincy Jones, a music legend and mega-producer who worked closely with hit artists from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson, passed away at 91.
• 📰🪧 600+ tech workers at the New York Times went on strike yesterday after failing to reach a new contract. | 🚫📱 Blocked users on X can now see public posts by those who have them blocked, after a new policy change took effect. | 🎮🎶 Fortnite launched a new music-inspired season called Chapter 2 “Remix,” featuring partnerships with Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Ice Spice, and Juice WRLD.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Surfshark VPN

• 🍬📉 Reducing a child’s sugar intake for the first 1,000 days after conception – from gestation through age 2 – may reduce their risk of developing chronic illnesses in adulthood, per a new study.
• 🤖 MIT researchers debuted a new method to teach robots new skills that was inspired by the technique for training large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4.
• 🐦 A 12-million-year-old fossil is the largest known member of a species called the “terror bird,” standing 10+ feet tall.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• ⚖️ The Supreme Court agreed to take up a case involving a dispute over the consideration of race in Louisiana’s efforts to draw a congressional district map.
• 💰🗳️ A judge denied a request by Philadelphia’s DA to block a $1 million daily giveaway by Elon Musk’s political action committee to swing-state voters; in court, members of Musk’s PAC testified that winners weren’t chosen at random, but rather specifically handpicked and paid to act as spokespeople.
• ✈️💥 Two incendiary devices recently shipped via DHL are believed to be part of a covert Russian operation aimed at starting fires aboard cargo or passenger aircraft flying to the US and Canada, per a Wall Street Journal report citing Western officials. | 🇮🇱 Israel arrested an aide to PM Benjamin Netanyahu and others for allegedly leaking "classified and sensitive" intelligence taken illegally from the IDF.

CLICKBAIT

• 🐶 Why do dogs wag their tails?

🌳 Stat of the Day: A quaking aspen tree in Utah named Pando is between 16,000–80,000 years old, making it one of the oldest known organisms on Earth, per a newly published study based on DNA samples. Pando, whose name means “I spread” in Latin, consists of a vast root system connected to 47,000 individual trees spread across ~106 acres. Because of the way aspens reproduce, Pando is technically all one tree supported by a single gigantic root system, with its combined ~13 million pounds of organic matter ranking as the largest organism ever found.

🤔 Did You Know? Permanent daylight saving time (aka more sunlight in winter evenings vs. mornings) was briefly enacted by President Nixon in 1974 – but the law was reversed after only a year due to its widespread unpopularity.

📰 Worth a Read: Many retailers offer “returnless refunds.” Just don’t expect them to talk much about it → (Associated Press)

Here are five stats from this past week that made our team go “whoa.” Hopefully you will, too.

• 📱 TikTok is the most popular social media platform among US teens for the third straight year, with 39% ranking it as their favorite – ahead of Instagram (32%) and Snapchat (18%), per Piper Sandler.
• 💼 42% of US workers say they don’t want a promotion because they're happy where they are, per a recent survey.
• 💰📈 The amount the average American believes they need to save for a comfortable retirement has risen from $951,000 in 2020 to $1.46 million this year.
• 🇨🇳💒 China saw 17% fewer marriages in the first nine months of 2024 than in the same period last year.
• 🍟 Over a third of all Americans (34%) have worked at a fast-food restaurant at some point in their lives, per YouGov.

Yesterday, we covered how data shows the 2024 election hinges on the significant portion of Americans who are undecided – not over which candidate to support, but whether to cast a vote at all.

❓ Our question to you: To all our readers who are voting age: to which category do you belong?

• Super voter (2016, 2018, 2020, & 2022): 58%
• Only presidential-year voter (2016 & 2020): 15%
• Occasional presidential-year voter (either 2016 or 2020): 9%
• Under 26 years old: 11%
• I haven’t voted in recent presidential elections: 7%

+Note on sample size: We received 3,407 votes and 358 longform responses.

It's not just human residents who have needed help since Hurricane Helene swept through the US Southeast in September. The natural disaster also took a toll on Florida’s beloved manatees, leaving countless “sea cows” stranded throughout the state in streets, fields, and ponds.

🌊 The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has rescued several of the 1,000+-lb "sea potatoes" in a team effort following the storm. 

🤔 Hmmm: A look at the mysterious fees raising your grocery bill.

🛠️ Explore: The year's 200 best inventions.

📖 Read: About the mystery of Siberia’s giant exploding craters.

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🌎 True or False?... Earth is the densest planet in our solar system.

🤔 Riddle Me This: What’s light as a feather, but can’t be held for 30 mins?

Working your way towards a sweet tumbler? AirPods? The $100 gift card? Good news: prizes stack, so when you’re emailed to claim your prizes, you don’t have to wait. Just reply to this email for more info or with any questions🍩✌️.

🌎 T/F: False

🤔 Riddle: Your breath