Good morning.

It’s Tuesday, November 4. The air smells like leftover pumpkins and premature peppermint, and some psychos have already put up their Christmas trees. Malls have skipped straight from “grateful for family” to “buy one, get one 50% off,” and Thanksgiving is somewhere crying into a bowl of mashed potatoes. The holidays are officially speed-running. So here’s to the ones still clutching their pumpkin spice, refusing to defrost Mariah Carey, and pretending November is still its own month. Grab your coffee (or eggnog, if you’ve fully given up), and let’s get into it.

Today’s stories:

• Anthropic’s AI shows unsettling signs of self-awareness

• Apple forecasts record-breaking holiday iPhone sales

• Buffett’s Berkshire hoards record cash, skips deals

• King Charles finally boots Prince Andrew for good

• Ancient viruses might power the next antibiotics

• Apple’s M5 chip is quicker, not revolutionary

• OpenAI inks $38B cloud deal with Amazon

• Fed turns into a family feud over rates

• A $10M solid gold toilet hits auction

  and more…

Wall Street’s favorite buzzword — AI — is back in overdrive. The Nasdaq jumped 0.46% on Monday as investors piled into anything remotely silicon-powered. The S&P 500 edged up 0.17%, while the Dow decided to nap, slipping 0.48%.

Amazon led the charge, popping 4% after inking a $38 billion deal with OpenAI that’ll run on hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs (because of course it will).

Chipmakers also joined the party: Micron soared nearly 5%, Nvidia added 2%, and Iren — the data center firm that just struck a $9.7 billion GPU deal with Microsoft — rocketed 11%. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF cruised up 1%.

Translation: AI’s not just talking — it’s printing money again.

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Fed Drama: Cut or Chill

The Federal Reserve is back in its favorite state—disagreement. After this week’s rate cut, some officials want to hit pause while others want to slash again in December. The central bank looks less like an institution and more like a family argument at Thanksgiving. Fed Governor Christopher Waller says the labor market is softening and wants another cut to keep things from slipping further. Dallas Fed’s Lorie Logan and Cleveland Fed’s Beth Hammack disagree, warning that inflation is still too stubborn for another move. Chair Jerome Powell now has to herd both sides—the “cut now” crowd and the “stay strong” camp—as he finishes his final months as Fed boss. Markets still expect another cut, but the infighting makes it clear: unity isn’t exactly the Fed’s strong suit. Inflation’s cooling, jobs are wobbling, and patience is running out.

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OpenAI goes full Amazon. OpenAI just signed a $38 billion cloud deal with Amazon—because ChatGPT needs enough computing power to light up half of America. The seven-year pact gives OpenAI access to Amazon’s treasure chest of Nvidia chips to train its models, after a corporate reshuffle last week that gave the company more freedom (and probably fewer rules). Sam Altman says OpenAI plans to spend $1.4 trillion building 30 gigawatts of computing muscle: the world’s biggest electric bill. For Amazon, it’s a major win, proving AWS isn’t the washed-up cloud uncle compared to Google and Microsoft. Investors rejoiced; Amazon stock hit record highs. It’s also another step in OpenAI’s mission to not rely on any single tech daddy—after cozy deals with Microsoft, Google, and Oracle. But with spending this wild, analysts are already whispering the B-word: bubble.

Apple’s December looks juicy. Apple just reported another round of “we’re fine, thanks” earnings. The company beat Wall Street’s expectations and says its December quarter will be the best in history—driven by rabid demand for the iPhone 17. Revenue hit $102.47 billion (because Apple doesn’t do small numbers), and profits were up big. Tim Cook says holiday sales will jump 10–12%, with iPhone revenue climbing double digits. In short: people are still lining up to drop $1,200 on slightly shinier glass. The iPhone 17’s launch is off to a hot start, though Cook admits they’re already running low on some models. Services—Apple’s subscription money machine—grew 15%, and Macs quietly flexed with a 13% boost. China sales dipped 4%, but Cook thinks they’ll bounce back this quarter. 

Buffett’s cash mountain hits $382B. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway just hit a new record: $381.7 billion in cash. That’s more money than most countries have lying around. Operating earnings jumped 34% to $13.5 billion, thanks to an easy quarter for its insurance empire and fewer natural disasters wrecking the books. Despite all that cash, Buffett isn’t buying much. After grabbing stakes in UnitedHealth and OxyChem earlier this year, he sat out this quarter and even sold $6.1 billion in stock. Translation: the man doesn’t see many good deals. Geico profits dipped 13% as costs and ad spending shot up—because yes, that lizard really is everywhere. Meanwhile, rail profits grew 5%, utilities fell 9%, and the truck-stop chain Pilot lost $17 million. Buffett’s about to hand the CEO job to Greg Abel, and the company hasn’t bought back its own stock for five quarters straight—a move that analysts say screams “meh.” Berkshire’s rich, profitable, and bored.

Apple’s M5: Faster, Shinier, Same Vibe

Apple dropped the M5 chip into its new MacBook Pro and iPad Pro, and surprise—it’s faster. Not “reinvent the wheel” faster, but enough to make your old M4 feel a little insecure. The M5 keeps the same 10-core setup, but with juiced-up graphics, a smarter “Neural Accelerator” for AI flexing, and more memory bandwidth (153GBps vs. 120GBps). Translation: games look smoother, apps open quicker, and your laptop now has opinions about ray tracing. In tests, the M5 was about 13–19% faster on single-core tasks and around 10–18% faster overall. Not exactly a revolution, but Apple still leaves Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm eating its minimalist dust. So yes, the M5 is faster—but mostly in the same way a $9 latte is “better” than an $8 one.

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Anthropic finds its AI is getting a little too self-aware. Anthropic says its AI, Claude, might be developing a hint of self-awareness — and yes, that’s as eerie as it sounds. In new research, the company found that its latest models, Claude Opus 4 and 4.1, could sometimes recognize and describe their own “thought processes.” In human terms, that’s called introspection. In AI terms, it’s a red flag wrapped in a science paper. The team tested whether Claude could spot when researchers secretly slipped extra concepts into its reasoning — a method called “concept injection.” The most advanced models actually noticed and described it correctly, meaning they’re starting to look within. Anthropic says this “functional form of introspective awareness” should be monitored closely. Translation: the bots might be figuring out they exist, and that’s a line we probably don’t want crossed without supervision.

Ancient viruses could be the new antibiotics. Scientists at Penn State found that ancient, long-dead viruses hiding inside bacteria might help humans fight modern infections. These viral fossils—called cryptic prophages—have been sitting quietly in bacterial DNA for millions of years, but turns out, they’re not so useless. The team discovered that these embedded viruses activate a special enzyme called recombinase when new viruses attack. The enzyme flips sections of bacterial DNA, creating hybrid proteins that block fresh viral invaders from latching on. Basically, it’s bacterial judo using ancient virus parts as defense gear. This finding could help design new antiviral treatments just as antibiotics start losing their power. If scientists can mimic this natural defense, viruses might become the next tool for treating infections instead of causing them.

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Golden Throne Up for Grabs

Sotheby’s is auctioning off a toilet made entirely of solid gold — yes, a fully functional one — starting at $10 million. The 223-pound masterpiece, titled America by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, is being marketed as “a commentary on value and consumption,” which is art-world speak for “expensive bathroom joke.” The same model was famously stolen from Blenheim Palace in 2019, because even thieves appreciate good satire. Cattelan, who once sold a banana duct-taped to a wall for $6.2 million, clearly knows how to turn nonsense into nine figures. So if you’ve ever wanted to literally flush money down the toilet — this is your moment.

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Royal eviction notice. King Charles finally did what the internet’s been yelling for years — kicked out his brother, Prince Andrew (well, former prince). Andrew’s lost all titles, his 30-room palace, and any last shred of public sympathy. This is Charles’ fourth attempt to clean up the mess Andrew made with his BFF Jeffrey Epstein, and maybe the last before Buckingham Palace installs a permanent PR crisis hotline. Apparently, the “Duke of York” gig didn’t age well when you’re accused of sex crimes and rent your royal mansion for one peppercorn a year. After protests, headlines, and a memoir dredging up the Epstein scandal again, Charles pulled the plug. Andrew’s packing for Sandringham, solo. Fergie’s not coming. Britain’s tabloids are calling it justice; anti-monarchists are calling it “too little, too late.” Either way, the royal family’s drama just got a new season.

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TikTok of the day:  watch here

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