Good morning.

It’s March 20. Suddenly it’s iced coffee season (it’s 48° but okay), long walks (you walked once), and “getting back into a routine” (we love a seasonal personality). So here’s your very serious, extremely scientific guide to surviving the seasons transition:

Take your vitamins. Not because you’re disciplined, but because winter drained you like a toxic relationship. Vitamin D is not optional anymore.

Fix your sleep. Or at least pretend to. Go to bed earlier, scroll less, stop negotiating with yourself at 1:30am. You’re not winning.

Go outside. Even if it’s ugly out. Especially if it’s ugly out. Your brain needs daylight, not just screen brightness at 100%.

Also, thank you for reading this. And for leaving reviews. Yes, we read all of them. We see you. We judge you a little. But mostly we appreciate you.

Today’s stories:

Stocks tried to recover Thursday but still closed lower, as markets tracked the Iran conflict and oil refused to settle down.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.27% to 6,606, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.28%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 204 points. Notably, all three clawed back from deeper losses earlier in the session — the Dow was down nearly 500 points at one stage — but the rebound didn’t quite stick. That makes it two straight down days.

Oil added another layer of confusion. West Texas Intermediate edged down slightly to $96, while Brent crude climbed 1.2% to $108 — its highest close since mid-2022.

Translation: stocks are searching for direction, oil is not helping, and geopolitics remains firmly in charge.

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Everyone started whispering that Tim Cook might retire. He went on TV, smiled, and basically said: I love this job, I’m not leaving, stop asking. Man’s been at Apple for 28 years and claims he “can’t imagine life without it.” Which is either passion or a very intense situationship. The timing is interesting. Apple’s leadership team has been a bit… messy lately. Big execs leaving, AI struggles, Siri still not delivering what was promised. Meanwhile, Apple is about to turn 50 and is trying to convince everyone it’s still innovative. Think foldable iPhones, AI glasses, and hopefully a Siri that actually listens for once.

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Uber is betting $1.25 billion on robotaxis again. Uber just announced it’s planning to invest up to $1.25 billion into Rivian to roll out as many as 50,000 robotaxis over the next few years. The deal includes Uber committing to buy at least 10,000 autonomous versions of Rivian’s upcoming R2 electric vehicle, with the option to scale up to 40,000 more starting around 2030, which sounds ambitious considering the entire robotaxi industry has a history of overpromising and underdelivering. The plan is to launch these driverless cars in about 25 cities across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, with San Francisco and Miami first in line by 2028, assuming everything goes perfectly, which it usually does not. Uber is also putting down an initial $300 million investment right away, with more money coming later if certain milestones are hit, plus extra fees to use Rivian’s autonomous driving software, so yes, this is a very expensive way to see if cars can finally drive themselves without chaos. Investors reacted exactly how you’d expect: Rivian stock went up, Uber dipped slightly, and everyone politely pretended this time might be different.

Meta tries to buy relevance. Facebook has officially reached the “we’ll pay you to hang out with us” phase, and honestly, it was only a matter of time. Meta just launched a new program designed to lure creators from TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube over to Facebook, offering guaranteed monthly payments along with boosted reach, which in platform language basically means “we promise people will actually see your posts.” Creators with at least 100,000 followers can get $1,000 a month, while those with over a million followers can earn $3,000 a month, which sounds generous until you realize the payments only last for three months and then you’re left with exposure and vibes. The company is framing this as helping creators who find Facebook “intimidating,” which is a very polite way of saying most of them simply weren’t interested in posting there in the first place. This comes after Meta already spent nearly $3 billion paying creators last year, with the majority going to Reels, and yet somehow TikTok and YouTube are still where everyone actually wants to be.

Tax break for car buyers (terms and conditions apply, obviously). There’s a new tax deduction this year, and before you get excited, let’s manage expectations. If you bought a new car in 2025, you might be able to deduct the interest on your auto loan, which sounds great until you realize how many conditions are attached. First, it only applies to new cars, so if you bought used—which, realistically, most people do—you get nothing. If your loan started before 2025, also nothing. Then there’s income limits. If you make too much, the benefit starts disappearing, because of course it does. And your car has to be assembled in the U.S., which doesn’t mean buying an “American” brand, it means actually checking the VIN like you’re doing a background check on your vehicle. If you qualify for all of that, you can deduct up to $10,000 in interest per year, but let’s be clear: this is a deduction, not a credit. So you’re not getting that money back—you’re just slightly reducing your taxable income, which translates to… some savings. Not life-changing. Meanwhile, this replaces some previous incentives like EV tax credits, which are now gone, so overall it’s less “big win” and more “small consolation prize.”

Gen Z is side-eyeing capitalism. Gen Z is suddenly very into China, and it’s less about China and more about being tired of how things are going at home. On TikTok, China looks like a futuristic dream—fast trains, clean cities, cheap rent, food delivered by robots, everything working the way it’s supposed to. Meanwhile, back in the U.S., rent is high, infrastructure is… a suggestion, and everything feels slightly stuck. So naturally, people are comparing. Videos showing life in cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen are blowing up, with millions watching tours of nice apartments, smooth transportation, and a level of convenience that makes everyday life look easy. It’s giving “why is everything over there working.” At the same time, Gen Z isn’t completely delusional. They know about censorship, long work hours, and the whole “996” situation. China isn’t some perfect utopia. It just looks… functional. And that’s the problem. A lot of this fascination is really frustration with capitalism in the U.S., where things feel expensive, slow, and harder than they should be. Support for capitalism among young people is dropping, and fewer of them even see China as the enemy anymore. Still, this is very much a curated perspective. Social media shows the sleek trains, not the burnout. The convenience, not the trade-offs. Meanwhile, people in China are also tired, overworked, and questioning their own system. Different country, similar exhaustion.

Apple finally updated AirPods Max after four years, and the result is… basically the same headphones with a new chip. The AirPods Max 2 look identical, cost the same $549, and come with the H2 chip, which makes noise canceling a bit better and adds some smarter features like voice isolation and adaptive audio. That’s pretty much it. Still heavy. Still bulky. Still the same weird case that protects nothing. Just slightly improved sound and a few software tricks. Meanwhile, Sony and Bose have been upgrading nonstop, making lighter, better, actually practical headphones, while Apple showed up late with a mild update and called it a day. So yes, they’re better. Just not four-years-later better.

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AI cars are getting chatty now. Your car is about to become that one friend who listens to everything and occasionally interrupts with suggestions you didn’t ask for. Amazon and NVIDIA just teamed up to build next-level AI assistants for cars, aiming to move beyond the current situation where you have to talk to your vehicle like it’s a confused robot from 2012. The goal now is much bigger: cars that can actually follow real conversations between multiple people and understand what’s happening around them in real time. So instead of saying “navigate to restaurant,” you and your friends could casually argue about dinner plans, and the car just… jumps in, suggests places, and starts driving there. This works by combining Amazon’s experience with conversational AI (aka Alexa, who already knows too much about you) with NVIDIA’s powerful automotive tech that processes everything happening inside and outside the car, from conversations to traffic to that cyclist you definitely didn’t see. Car companies have been trying to make voice assistants feel natural for years and mostly failed, leaving us with systems that only work if you speak like a customer support script. This partnership is basically an attempt to fix that and finally make cars feel “smart” instead of just… reactive. Of course, the tech behind this is complicated—handling multiple voices, understanding context, tracking conversations, analyzing the environment—all in real time, without lag, and ideally without creeping you out too much. So yes, your car will soon understand your conversations, your plans, and probably your poor decision-making.

VR isn’t dead, it’s just not popular. Meta almost pulled the plug on VR for Horizon Worlds, then changed its mind at the last second, likely after realizing at least a few people would notice. The company had said it would stop supporting the app on its Quest headsets and move everything to mobile and web, which already felt like a quiet admission that the whole “let’s all hang out in VR” idea didn’t exactly take off. Then suddenly—never mind. VR is back. Crisis averted for the five people still logging in. Even with the reversal, the message is pretty clear: Meta is done pretending VR is the main character. The focus is now mobile, where people actually exist and download things without needing a headset strapped to their face. Meta has burned through about $73 billion on its Reality Labs division since 2021, while headset sales are dropping and even Apple quietly scaled back its very expensive Vision Pro because… shockingly… people weren’t lining up to spend $3,500 to sit in a digital living room. Horizon Worlds itself has decent download numbers on mobile, but almost no one is spending money in it, which is kind of important when you’ve invested billions trying to build the future. So yes, VR support is staying. But mostly as a reminder of a very expensive experiment that people politely ignored.

New startup wants to speed up building. Alphabet’s X, aka the place where big ideas go to either change the world or quietly disappear, just spun out a new startup called Anori, and this time it’s going after one of the most painful problems on earth: getting buildings approved. For context, building anything today is a slow-motion nightmare where architects, engineers, investors, and governments all take turns reviewing things, disagreeing, starting over, and somehow turning a simple project into a multi-year saga before a single shovel even touches the ground. Anori’s big idea is to put everyone—developers, designers, regulators—on one shared platform from the beginning so issues get flagged in weeks instead of months or years, which sounds obvious, but apparently no one has managed to do it without chaos. The startup just raised $26 million, with major real estate players investing early, which is important because this whole system only works if the same people causing the delays actually agree to use it. Also worth noting: X has already tried this twice before and failed, so this is very much a “third time’s the charm” situation. The difference now is that the industry itself is getting involved earlier, meaning instead of ignoring the product until it’s finished, they’re helping build it, which at least gives it a slightly better chance of surviving. There’s already a pilot with Rio de Janeiro to modernize building approvals, though nothing has actually been approved yet, so we’re still in the “promising idea” phase. So yes, Silicon Valley is once again trying to fix bureaucracy with software. And honestly, if they manage to make permits take less than two years, that alone might qualify as a miracle.

Well, that was fun while it lasted. After decades of “no one knows who Banksy is” (everyone had a guess), a Reuters investigation just… ended it. Banksy is reportedly Robin Gunningham. 51. From Bristol. The big reveal came from old documents—like a 2000 arrest in New York where he vandalized a billboard and casually signed his real name. The most secret artist in the world forgot the whole “stay anonymous” part. Since then, he apparently changed his legal name to something painfully basic: David Jones. The most invisible name possible. Honestly, smart. There’s also travel records, school files, photos, and enough evidence to make this less of a mystery and more of a “we had this in a drawer for 20 years.” Banksy’s team is silent. Lawyer says some details are wrong. Classic.

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Breaking up with America just got cheaper. In case you were planning a dramatic “I’m done with this country” moment—good news, it’s on sale. The U.S. just slashed the fee to give up your citizenship from $2,350 to $450. Black Friday energy, but for life decisions. This change was promised back in 2023 and… like most things… took its time. Now it’s finally live and priced like it was in 2010. So if you’ve been waiting to officially break up with America, congrats. It’s never been more affordable to leave.

Government might be getting ready to talk aliens.The U.S. government just quietly secured the domain “Aliens.gov,” and no, this is not a joke, this is a real sentence you’re reading in 2026. The site isn’t live yet, which somehow makes it worse, because now everyone gets to spiral and imagine what could possibly be coming, especially since this popped up right after Trump said he wants government agencies to start releasing files about UFOs, extraterrestrial life, and basically everything we’ve all been side-eyeing for years. To be clear, the government hasn’t explained what the domain is actually for, which means it could be groundbreaking disclosure… or just a placeholder that someone thought was funny.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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