Good morning,

It’s Friday, October 3. Yes, we skipped a day. Don’t panic—we weren’t hacked, we just wanted to see if you’d notice. Turns out absence makes the inbox grow fonder. Or maybe you just had less email to delete yesterday. Either way, we’re back.

On this day in 1863, Abraham Lincoln announced that the U.S. would officially celebrate Thanksgiving on November 26. Washington had tried to push a national day of thanks back in 1789, but it took Lincoln to actually make it stick.

So here’s to Fridays, fake productivity, and pretending your weekend starts at noon. A good day and a better read—because we’re back in your inbox whether you missed us or not.

Today’s stories:

• Double X chromosomes give females lifespan advantage

• Xiaomi bets billions on homegrown smartphone chips

• Robots already helped conceive twenty IVF babies

• DoorDash’s delivery robot Dot needs babysitting

• OpenAI’s Sora 2 unleashes deepfake chaos

• OpenAI rockets to $500B private valuation

• Porsche Cayenne EV is basically a screen

• Jellycat plushies fuel $449M Gen Z craze

• Coach brews lattes to sell more bags

• U.S. media trust falls to historic low

  and more…

Wall Street hits fresh highs Thursday as the AI trade flexed its muscles, overshadowing jitters about the two-day-old U.S. government shutdown.

All three major indexes closed at record levels: the S&P 500 edged up 0.06%, the Dow gained 78 points (0.2%), and the Nasdaq climbed 0.4% thanks to a 0.9% jump in Nvidia, which hit an all-time high. Intel and AMD also surged more than 3%, fueling the chip rally.

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OpenAI Hits $500B Valuation

OpenAI just wrapped a $6.6 billion share sale at a jaw-dropping $500 billion valuation, making it the most valuable private company on Earth—sorry, SpaceX. The tender offer let current and ex-employees cash out, though only two-thirds of the authorized shares sold. Internally, that’s being spun as “confidence in the long-term,” which sounds a lot like “people didn’t want to give up lottery tickets.” Investors in this round include Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, and T. Rowe Price, all thrilled to throw cash at the company Sam Altman built on other people’s copyrighted words. Meanwhile, Meta is dangling nine-figure salaries at AI researchers, because apparently billion-dollar valuations just aren’t enough to keep people around.

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Gen Z’s favorite bunny is now a $449M business. Jellycat—the plushie brand Gen Z treats like a luxury good—just doubled profits in 2024. Revenue jumped 66% to $449 million, with pre-tax profits hitting $139 million. Translation: people are panic-buying stuffed bunnies while the world burns. Founded in 1999, Jellycat now sells in 80 countries, from Harrods to Galeries Lafayette, where adults line up to buy $24 bunnies or $275 plush Christmas trees. TikTok made it a status symbol, with #jellycathaul hitting 20 million posts and collectors hoarding plushies like they’re NFTs that you can cuddle. Toy researchers say “kidults” (aka stressed-out millennials and Gen Z) are driving the market, spending $1.8 billion on toys this year. Blame nostalgia, anxiety, and the fact that hugging a bunny is cheaper than therapy.

Coach coffee shops: because a bag alone won’t do it. Coach is now serving lattes with your leather. The brand just opened its third Coach Coffee Shop in New Jersey, where you can sip a pumpkin latte while eating a Tabby bag made of cake batter before buying the real one. Another shop opens October 3 in Woodbury Common, with plans for 12–15 cafés a year globally. The move is all about keeping Gen Z hooked—because apparently handbags alone aren’t enough, but handbags plus caffeine equals “experience.” CEO Todd Kahn says young people want “a full experience,” which sounds like corporate-speak for “coffee gets them in the door.” Coach joins Ralph Lauren, RH, and Uniqlo in the retail-meets-restaurant club. Translation: luxury brands are all desperate to become Starbucks with better lighting.

Xiaomi plans new phone chip. Xiaomi wants in on the chip game but isn’t playing Apple’s annual upgrade marathon. The Chinese tech giant is building its next high-end smartphone processor, following last year’s 3nm XRing 01. Problem is, chips are insanely expensive. Xiaomi has pledged 50 billion yuan, about 7 billion dollars, over the next ten years to make it happen. To break even, it needs to ship 10 million units per release, but right now it’s closer to one million. Translation, don’t expect a shiny new Xiaomi chip every fall. Apple has been dropping A-series chips yearly since 2010. Xiaomi’s VP Xu Fei says they’re taking the long road, more like a decade to profitability, while focusing on making sure the performance is “good enough” for its HyperOS software and AI apps. Basically Apple runs sprints, Xiaomi runs marathons, and Huawei is standing in the middle trying to block both.

Sora 2 Makes Deepfakes Easy, Copyright Hard

OpenAI just dropped Sora 2, and the internet is already drowning in cursed content: Pikachu storming Normandy, Mario loose on the streets, Ronald McDonald making out on Love Island. The app hit #1 on the iOS charts in a day because people can now drop themselves (and anyone else dumb enough to give permission) into AI-generated videos with dialogue and sound effects. Cool tech, sure, but also a copyright lawyer’s nightmare. The system seems perfectly happy to pump out characters it definitely doesn’t own, leaving Nintendo, Disney, and the ghost of Ian Fleming sharpening their legal knives. OpenAI says copyright holders can “opt out.” Translation: it’s your problem, not ours.

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DoorDash’s new bot: heavy, cute, and easily bullied. DoorDash just birthed a robot named Dot to bring you ice cream at 2 a.m. without human judgment. Picture a five-foot-tall, 350-pound Pixar reject on wheels, armed with sensors and a 20 mph top speed. Dot can haul 30 pounds—basically six pizzas—while dodging bikes, pedestrians, and drunk college kids. The company swears this is the future of delivery, even though most delivery robots in history have ended up as meme content, tipped over on sidewalks, or vandalized for sport. Fun fact: Dot can’t be remote-controlled. If it gets stuck, DoorDash has to send a human to rescue it. So much for the robot uprising. Add this: humanity isn’t losing jobs to robots—we’re just babysitting them now.

Porsche’s new cayenne EV is basically a curved iPad. Porsche previewed the interior of its upcoming electric Cayenne, and it’s basically one giant bent screen. Called the “Flow Display,” it’s a curved OLED slab that cascades down the dash like a TikTok filter nobody asked for. Porsche says it’s their biggest screen ever—nearly 42 inches if you flatten it out—but the bend makes it tricky to measure, like some kind of luxury ruler test. The Cayenne EV will also pack a 14-inch cluster, a heads-up display, and an optional passenger screen so your co-pilot can binge Netflix while you pretend this is still about “driving.” Porsche claims the whole thing is “harmonious” and “meticulously thought through.” Translation: they made an iPad that melted in the sun, stuck it in the car, and called it innovation.

Robots are making babies and twenty already exist. AI has written essays, driven cars, and now it is making kids. In Mexico City, an experimental system called Aura has quietly helped conceive at least twenty babies with almost no human hands involved. Robots now pick the sperm, handle the eggs, and perform the delicate fertilization steps normally reserved for star embryologists. IVF is expensive, exhausting, and works only about half the time. Automation promises to make it faster, cheaper, and more consistent, turning conception into an algorithm. Investors are thrilled. Regulators are cautious. Patients often keep it secret because in Catholic Mexico, AI babies still sound like forbidden science. The early results look about the same as conventional IVF. If scaled, millions more families could access fertility treatments. The risk is that replacing humans with robots trades one type of inconsistency for another. Add this — from test tube babies in the 70s to robot babies today, science keeps getting called playing God, until a decade later it becomes the new normal.

Why Women Outlive Men Across Species

Scientists just confirmed what everyone’s grandma already knew. Women live longer than men, and it’s not just because guys smoke more cigars and invent dumb TikTok challenges. The real reason might be genetics. A massive study of more than 1,100 mammal and bird species found that double X chromosomes give females a backup plan when mutations hit. Men, stuck with one lonely X and a fragile Y, don’t get the spare parts. The pattern shows up across species—female mammals outlive males in three-fourths of cases. Birds flip the script because their chromosomes work in reverse, and in about two-thirds of bird species, the males live longer. Of course, it’s not all about DNA. Acting tough and growing giant antlers might get you the girl, but it also gets you an early grave. Basically, biology rewards females with longevity and tells males to enjoy their short, dumb, flashy lives.

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Only 28% of Americans still trust the news. Trust in U.S. media has sunk to Watergate-era lows, with only 28% of adults telling Gallup they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in newspapers, TV, and radio. Republicans are basically out—just 8% say they trust the press—while about half of Democrats still do. The gap isn’t shocking after years of Trump hammering “fake news” into the ground and suing legacy outlets into settlements. But the bigger issue might be the question itself: asking if people believe media reports “fully, accurately, and fairly” feels like something out of the Walter Cronkite era. These days, news comes as TikTok clips of clips of clips, and nobody is reading three balanced paragraphs before screaming in the comments.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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