Good morning.

It’s Thursday, November 20 — the day of the week that feels like it’s trying so hard to be Friday but still shows up in sweatpants. Consider it the pre-game stretch before the national holiday known as Black Friday, when everyone pretends they “just needed a new TV” and not a little retail therapy to fill the void.

New York is doing that cute thing where it’s cold but not winter-cold, just “did you really leave the house without a scarf, you brave idiot?” cold.

We made today’s issue with love, caffeine, and a healthy amount of delusion. Grab your coffee, settle in, and enjoy the read.

Today’s stories:

• Bond Street becomes world’s priciest shopping strip

• Health-tracking AI startup scores massive funding

• Tom Cruise earns honorary Oscar, stays partying

• Kissing predates humans by millions of years

• Netflix finally discovers the magic of merch

• Target’s holiday outlook continues slipping

• Starship delays push moon landing further

• Oracle’s OpenAI bet torches its valuation

• Perseverance spots a meteorite on Mars

• Bitcoin sinks as investors bail fast

  and more…

After four tech-heavy down days, the S&P 500 finally snapped back on Wednesday as investors counted down to Nvidia’s earnings. The index rose 0.38%, the Nasdaq added 0.59%, and the Dow squeaked out a 0.1% gain.

Alphabet led the rebound, popping 3% to a fresh record on hype around its new AI model, Gemini 3. Nvidia also jumped nearly 3% ahead of its results, with Wall Street expecting yet another blowout quarter powered by insatiable demand for its AI chips — because at this point, Nvidia is the market.

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Bitcoin Slips Under $90K

Bitcoin slipped under $90,000 on Wednesday, officially entering its “oops, never mind” era. The world’s biggest crypto has wiped out all its gains for the year and is now sitting about 30% below its October peak. Tough month for people who changed their Twitter bios to “crypto visionary.” Blame the usual drama: the Fed can’t make up its mind about interest rates, and both big investors and regular folks are dumping their coins like they suddenly remembered rent exists. BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF even saw its biggest outflow ever — over half a billion dollars gone in one day. Ouch.

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Oracle lost $374B trying to impress OpenAI. Oracle’s giant $300B deal with OpenAI is already backfiring. Since announcing it in September, the company has lost up to $374B in market value — basically watching a Fortune 100 company evaporate for sport. The issue: Oracle is funding this “AI power move” entirely with debt, while cash flow is expected to stay negative for five years. Capex jumps from $35B this year to $80B annually by 2029, and debt nearly doubles by 2030. Investors are looking at the math and quietly backing away. Oracle says it’ll all make sense once OpenAI builds out massive data centers and brings in $166B in cloud revenue by 2030. For now, the market response is: cute story, but no.

Holiday season still looks weak for Target. Target lowered its profit outlook after another quarter of weak sales and shoppers sticking to deals-only mode. Store trips are down, carts are lighter, and the company is trimming its full-year earnings expectations to $7–$8 per share, mostly below last year. The holidays aren’t offering much hope either — Target still expects a small sales decline in Q4. Incoming CEO Michael Fiddelke gave the usual corporate pep talk about “progress,” while quietly approving a $5 billion spending spree next year to revive stores and spark growth. Sales have been flat for four years, competition is eating into every category, and the brand is still dealing with fallout from its DEI backlash earlier this year. The big red bullseye is feeling more like a stress ball.

Netflix learns the ancient art of selling T-shirts. Netflix is finally doing what every big media company figured out decades ago: selling stuff. After years of pretending merch was beneath them, the streamer is now pumping out products tied to hits like “Bridgerton,” “Squid Game,” and “Wednesday.” T-shirts, plush toys, games, live events — if it’s printable, wearable, or mildly collectible, Netflix wants in. The company took its time getting here because, until about ten years ago, it barely had any original content to sell. “House of Cards” kicked things off in 2013, and fandom had to grow the slow, organic way before Netflix could cash in properly. Now it’s running its own shop, licensing less, owning more, and building a whole ecosystem of merch, mobile games, Fortnite tie-ins, and IRL experiences like Bridgerton balls for people who love corsets a little too much. Netflix is finally acting like a real Hollywood studio — just one that waited long enough to make sure you were obsessed before charging you $29.99 for a themed candle.

$298M for an AI that knows your cholesterol. Function Health just raised a massive $298 million Series B at a $2.5 billion valuation to become the place where all your health data goes to live, mingle, and hopefully make sense. The startup wants to take your lab results, doctor notes, Fitbit drama, and whatever else your body tracks, then feed it all into an AI model that tells you something more useful than “get more sleep.” The round pulled in everyone from a16z to NBA players to the founder of Roku — apparently all united by the dream of better bloodwork. Function also announced its “Medical Intelligence Lab,” basically a doctor-trained AI engine that promises personalized insights and an AI chatbot that can read your scans and labs without judging your life choices. The company swears your data is locked down, encrypted, and not for sale, which is the bare minimum when you’re hoarding 50 million lab tests and expanding from 75 to nearly 200 locations. The pitch is simple: more tests, more data, more AI, more “you should drink more water.”

Scientists Discover Everyone’s Been Kissing for 16 Million Years

Scientists now say kissing has been around for at least 16 million years, which means even prehistoric creatures were swapping spit long before humans showed up and made it awkward. Gorillas, orangutans, baboons, fish, ants — apparently everyone’s been making out except your last Hinge date. Researchers still have no idea why kissing exists. It doesn’t help survival, it barely helps reproduction, and it mostly just spreads germs and emotions. But it does require trust and vulnerability, which makes it basically the original “soft launch.” The real plot twist: Neanderthals might’ve kissed humans back in the day, suggesting interspecies kissing was an actual thing and not just a chaotic joke from a freshman anthropology class. Scientists now want more research, more field notes, more data on smooching — because if bugs, birds, apes, and ancient humans were all doing it, kissing might be the world’s oldest hobby.

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NASA finds a Mars rock that definitely isn’t from Mars. NASA’s Perseverance Rover just found a rock on Mars that absolutely doesn’t belong there — basically the cosmic version of spotting a stranger at a family reunion. The 31-inch chunk, named “Phippsaksla,” looks nothing like the flat, boring Mars rocks around it, and a quick scan showed it’s loaded with iron and nickel. That combo screams “meteorite,” not “local resident.” These iron-nickel space rocks usually come from the core of giant asteroids, meaning this one likely crash-landed on Mars ages ago. Perseverance has never found one before, so the rover is basically having its “first meteorite” moment. Scientists still need to confirm it, but if this is truly an interstellar visitor, it could help decode Mars’ early history — or at least give Perseverance something more interesting to look at than red dust and emotional support pebbles.

SpaceX delays the moon… again. SpaceX’s Starship is running late again, and now NASA’s big “we’re going back to the moon” moment is getting pushed to… 2028. Artemis 3 was supposed to land astronauts on the lunar surface in 2027, but SpaceX’s internal timeline basically says “lol, no.” A leaked SpaceX doc says the company won’t even try its first orbital refueling test until mid-2026, then an uncrewed moon landing in mid-2027. If all that magically goes well, the earliest humans touch the moon again would be September 2028. NASA hasn’t been told any of this yet, which is adorable.

Starship has had a chaotic year: five launches, three flops, and two “okay fine, that worked” attempts. The rocket is aiming for full reusability, but right now it’s still very much in its “learning to walk” phase while NASA stares at the calendar like a stressed parent at school pickup.

Meanwhile, back in the Apollo days, NASA was launching missions every four months. Now we’re averaging one every two years because SpaceX is still trying to convince its giant metal skyscraper to stop exploding.

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At 63, Cruise Gets a “You’ll Get a Real One Soon” Trophy

Tom Cruise got an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards and then did the most Tom Cruise thing possible: he refused to leave. While every other celeb sprinted for the exits the second the show ended, Cruise stayed behind like a golden retriever at a cocktail party — shaking hands, posing for photos, chatting with absolutely anyone who still had a pulse. An hour after the ceremony, the ballroom was basically empty, the staff was taking the stage apart, and Tom was still there grinning like it was opening night for Top Gun 12. Someone literally turned around and said, “He’s still here?” Yes. Yes he was. At 63, he’s technically too young for the classic “lifetime achievement” pity trophy, but Hollywood gave him one anyway — probably to keep him busy so he’d stop hanging off planes for a minute.

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The world’s most expensive street. London just snatched the crown for the priciest shopping street on Earth. New Bond Street is now officially the place where your bank account goes to cry, beating Milan and New York thanks to rents jumping a ridiculous 22% in a year. Bond Street is basically a runway for brands you pretend to know: Burberry, Dior, Gucci, Louis Vuitton — plus Sotheby’s casually sitting there like, “Yes, please drop a million on a vase you don’t need.” So if you were thinking about doing Christmas shopping there, bless your optimism. Unless you’re in the “casually buys a Rolex on a Tuesday” tax bracket, stick to window-shopping. The windows are free… everything behind them, not so much.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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