Good morning.

It’s Tuesday, December 2, the official beginning of “holiday mode,” where everyone claims they’re feeling festive while silently panic-scrolling for gift ideas. 

Born today: Gianni Versace, king of “more is more,” and Britney Spears, queen of “leave me alone, I’m doing my best.” One gave fashion its attitude; the other gave the world its most quoted breakdown. 

So here’s to December — the month of pretending to be jolly, pretending we’re not freezing, and pretending this year didn’t age us five years. Enjoy the read, have a great week, and stay warm out there.

Today’s stories:

• AI-fueled shopping drives record online spending

• Apple preps pricey crease-free foldable iPhone

• Apple races past Samsung as demand surges

• Homeowners delist rather than accept reality

• Uber launches fully driverless rides in UAE

• Oxford crowns “rage bait” as 2025’s word

• TikTok sends K-beauty sales skyrocketing

• UK fast-tracks residency for high earners

• AI boom fuels nonstop unicorn creation

• MIT warns AI could replace millions

• Bitcoin tanks as investors flee risk

  and more…

Stocks slid on Monday, following crypto’s nosedive and kicking off December with a wince. The S&P 500 dipped 0.53%, the Nasdaq slipped 0.38%, and the Dow dropped 427 points — ending all three indexes’ five-day victory laps.

The culprit? Bitcoin face-planted about 6%, sliding under $86,000 in its worst day since March and dragging risk assets down with it. The token has been wobbling ever since last month’s plunge below $90K, and it’s still struggling to climb back. Crypto-linked names like Coinbase and MicroStrategy took the hit too, tumbling as the entire sector caught a cold.

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Apple Reclaims the Throne After a Decade

Apple is about to snatch the “world’s top phone maker” crown back from Samsung for the first time since 2011. The new iPhone 17 lineup is selling like hotcakes, or like people suddenly remembered their phones are three years old and held together by hope and a cracked screen protector. Sales are booming in the US and China, boosted by Apple finally launching something people actually want and a conveniently weak dollar that makes everything feel cheaper in emerging markets. The global phone market is barely growing, but Apple is sprinting while Samsung is jogging. Apple’s shipments are set to jump 10% next year, while Samsung’s inch up 4.6%. Consumers who bought phones during the Covid era have entered their upgrade phase, and hundreds of millions of secondhand iPhone users are ready to crawl out of their refurbished era into something shiny. Apple plans to keep the momentum rolling with a foldable iPhone in 2026, a cheaper iPhone 17e, and a full redesign in 2027. 

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Crypto starts December in full meltdown mode. Bitcoin had a rough Monday, sinking more than 7% and heading for its worst day since March. It slid below $84,000, which in crypto terms is basically “cry into your hardware wallet” territory. The fall follows its worst month since 2021, when the crypto market did one of its classic dramatic collapses. Billions poured out of U.S. bitcoin ETFs in November, enthusiasm dried up, and even big corporate holders started sweating. MicroStrategy — the company that treats bitcoin like a personality trait — cut its earnings forecast and watched its stock drop over 11%. Traders say the whole mood around crypto is fading. Tech stocks are wobbling, AI hype is cooling off, and investors are suddenly remembering risk is a thing. Ether dropped too, because misery loves company.

Sellers pull listings after reality hurts their feelings. Sellers are pulling their homes off the market like it’s an embarrassing selfie. Delistings just hit a decade high, because buyers aren’t paying pandemic fantasy prices anymore and sellers refuse to accept reality. Redfin says 5.5% of all listings have now vanished — a very dramatic “fine, I’ll just keep it then” energy. These homes will probably crawl back in spring 2026 or turn into rentals, but without more demand, inventory might explode fast. The problem is simple: sellers want 2021 prices, buyers want sanity, and no one wants to blink first. Texas and Florida are seeing the biggest delisting tantrums. The Midwest is basically the only region behaving. Pandemic buyers still think their homes are made of gold, while longtime owners are the only adults in the room who actually need to move.

AI pushes Black Friday to a record $11.8B. Black Friday just hit a new online spending record: $11.8 billion. Shoppers sat on their couches, let AI shove “perfect deals” in their faces, and apparently bought everything except self-control. Adobe says people were spending $12.5 million per minute at one point, which sounds less like shopping and more like a national blackout. Cyber Monday is expected to hit $14.2 billion, because nothing says holiday spirit like maxed-out credit cards. Adobe thinks total holiday spending will reach $253.4 billion this year, helped along by the small detail that prices are up 7% while order volumes are actually down. So yes, people are spending more by buying less. Beautiful. Salesforce claims AI influenced $22 billion in global sales, which is marketing-speak for “the algorithm bullied you into checking out.” In-store trends are still a mess — one firm says foot traffic is down, another says it’s up. No one knows what’s going on, but online shopping clearly won the weekend.

TikTok turns K-Beauty into America’s new obsession. K-beauty has taken over the U.S., and TikTok is the puppet master. Moms are wandering Ulta with shopping lists they don’t understand, dads are hunting for “that sunscreen from the girl on TikTok,” and Gen Z has turned cushion compacts into personality traits. Sales are exploding past $2 billion, leaving the rest of the beauty market looking sleepy. Every retailer is now in a K-beauty turf war — Ulta built a whole K-beauty zone, Sephora made a shrine, and even Costco wants in. South Korea just passed France as America’s top beauty supplier because TikTok said “buy this” and the country obeyed.

Driverless Ubers Land in UAE

Uber is now sending fully driverless cars to pick people up in Abu Dhabi. Order an UberX and you might get a robot van instead of a human with questionable music taste. Hit the “Autonomous” button in the app if you want a ride powered by sensors, cameras, and pure corporate optimism. Uber handles cleaning and charging, while WeRide makes sure the robot’s brain doesn’t melt. Uber says it’s bringing this robot circus to 15 more cities. The company clearly wants every possible brand of robot — minus Tesla — in its digital toy box.

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MIT says AI is ready to replace millions. MIT announced that AI can already replace 11.7% of U.S. workers. Finance, admin, HR, customer support — basically every job where someone stares at a screen and types “per my last email.” The study pegs the threatened labor market at $1.2 trillion, which is a polite academic way of saying “good luck out there.” The researchers split jobs into “Surface” tech roles and the “Iceberg” jobs — the giant pile of everyday office work no one glamorizes. AI is coming hard for the iceberg. About 17.7 million workers are sitting in the automation splash zone, and the states getting hit aren’t Silicon Valley. Think South Dakota, Utah, Delaware, plus the Midwest.

2025 is a unicorn factory, thanks to AI mania. At least 80 new tech unicorns have been minted in 2025 so far, because AI has investors throwing money around like it’s a sport. Most of the new billion-dollar babies are AI startups, but there are a few wild cards in the mix, like space ventures and blockchain experiments pretending they’re the future of finance. The vibe this year is simple: if your pitch deck mentions “agents,” “inference,” “infrastructure,” or anything vaguely science-y, someone will hand you a check big enough to cause permanent personality changes. New unicorns are popping up every month — AI platforms, drug discovery startups, fintech rockets, biotech labs, even satellite builders. Everything is getting funded as long as it promises world domination by Q4.

Apple’s foldable iPhone nears. Apple’s first foldable iPhone might drop in 2026, and the big headline is “no crease.” The other headline is the price: a spicy $2,399. Apple and its partners reportedly cracked some liquid-metal hinge magic to keep the screen smooth, and Samsung is supplying the panel because even Apple knows when to phone a friend. Production is already warming up, which means the countdown to the world’s most expensive bragging rights has begun. RAM prices are up, components are pricey, and Apple clearly wants you to feel the burn. But let’s be real — people will still line up to go broke for a crease-free flex.

High Earners Get the Shortcut to British Residency

The UK just rolled out a VIP lane for high-earners who want residency. If you make over £125,000, the government will now let you apply for permanent residency after three years instead of the usual five — and way faster than the new 10-year rule they’re slapping on everyone else. Entrepreneurs on fancy visas also get the fast lane. Everyone else earning £50,000–£125,000 stays on the five-year plan, with stricter rules on English skills and clean records. The rush of new immigration policies is Labour’s attempt to look tough while still keeping rich talent from fleeing the City of London. They’re cracking down on small-boat asylum seekers, rolling back Boris-era migration surges, and trying to calm voters who think the country is bursting at the seams. The earlier proposal to make everyone wait 10 years for residency freaked out foreign professionals, but this new fast-track route seems to have calmed the people with six-figure incomes.

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2025 Word of the Year is “rage bait”. Oxford picked “rage bait” as its 2025 Word of the Year, and no, that’s not itself a piece of rage bait. The term basically describes the entire internet: content designed to make you mad enough to scream, click, share, and ruin your day before breakfast. Usage has tripled, which makes sense because every app now survives on emotional manipulation and yelling. Oxford says the internet has shifted from “grabbing attention” to “hijacking emotions,” as if anyone needed a dictionary to explain why scrolling feels like psychological cardio. “Rage bait” dates back to 2002 but has now evolved into the default setting for social media. If it annoyed you, offended you, or made you threaten to delete your account (again), congratulations — you’ve been rage baited.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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