Obesity, an Instagram ban & A Turkey Thanksgiving 🦃
This Week in Review☕: Ultra-processed foods found to shorten life | This country wants to remove social media for all high-school kids | Amazon looks to create its own ChatGPT | Travel to skyrocket as
Quick Bites:
Culture 🦃 : Turkey Talk! Thanksgiving is around the corner and it remains one of America's most celebrated holidays.
However, with rising grocery prices and staples like stuffing and dinner rolls being up by almost +40% since 2020, many have dreaded the cherished holiday since 3 years.
To all our friends who celebrate: No need to post your Thanksgiving dinner. We're all the eating the same thing 🙄
However, this year people have reason to give thanks as Thanksgiving dinner costs have finally come down.
This is largely due to a 6% drop in turkey prices- the meal's centrepiece dish.
The price tag of the traditional holiday meal, which also includes cranberries, sweet potatoes and stuffing, has also dropped for a 2nd consecutive year, Reuters reports.
How to cook a turkey:
Buy a turkey
Have a glass of wine
Stuff turkey
Have a glass of wine
Put turkey in oven
Relax and have a glass of wine
Turk the bastey
Wine of glass another get
Hunt for meal thermometer
Glass yourself another pour of wine
Bake the wine for 4 hours
Take the oven out of the turkey
Tet the sable
Grab another wottle of bine
Turk the carvey
About time prices are down! 🙏🏻 Thanksgiving dinner without giving thanks is like eating green bean casserole without fried onion rings
PS. NEVER trust anyone who wears jeans at Thanksgiving dinner 👋
Key Highlights, reported by Reuters:
💡Frustration over high prices was seen as a major factor in Trump's election victory over Kamala Harris
💡Economist say some of the worst inflation has finally cooled down
💡The price of a turkey, which represents the bulk of the bill, fell even as supplies dropped 6% in 2024 partly because of a bird-flu out break
💡 “I think lots of people are adding items to the menu in addition to the turkey, things like brisket and ham."
Our Thoughts💡:
It's almost December which means its time to focus on the important things 👇🏻🥰
AI 🤖 : Amazon is doubling its investment in "Anthropic" to $8 billion. This is very similar to the Microsoft's $13 billion investment in OpenAI.
Anthropic is the company behind "Claude"- one of the chatbots that, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, has exploded in popularity
While Amazon doesn't have the customer reach that ChatGPT has, like Apple, it has devices. Alexa is in tens of millions of homes today. In addition, it has a massive cloud service business in AWS.
i.e Amazon has the body. Anthropic is the brain.
Startups like Anthropic and OpenAI, alongside tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are all clashing to dominate the AI race.. Winner takes ALL mentality in a market predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade
Buckle up.. Gonna be a CRAZY 2025 🚀
Key Highlights, reported by CNBC:
💡Anthropic is an artificial intelligence startup founded by ex-OpenAI research executives
💡The new funding of $4 billion brings the tech giant’s total investment to $8 billion, though Amazon will retain its position as a minority investor
💡The partnership will allow AWS customers “early access” to an Anthropic feature: the ability for an AWS customer to do fine-tuning with their own data on Anthropic’s Claude. It’s a unique benefit for AWS customers
💡In March 2024, Amazon’s $2.75 billion investment in Anthropic was the company’s largest outside investment in its 30-year history
💡Last year, Google committed to invest $2 billion in Anthropic, after previously confirming it had taken a 10% stake in the startup
Health 🍟 : Ultra-processed foods make up more than half the calories the average adult eats, new study finds.
A new study ALSO found that if you cut out all cheeseburgers and only eat bland shit like arugula and tofu, you can eliminate whatever little shred of a will to live you have left..
Made with cheap and harmful industrial ingredients, these foods are emerging as a global concern for being linked to heart disease, obesity and diabetes.
Some are even said to shorten life, CNN reports.
When you're in denial about your unhealthy diet:
💡Us: We eat fresh poultry cuts smothered in wheat powder and boiled in olive juice
💡Our Nutritionist: That's fried chicken 🍗
Key Highlights, reported by CNN
💡 “What we saw was that people tended to overeat the ultra-processed foods diet by about 500 calories per day more than when the same people were exposed to the environment with zero ultraprocessed foods”
💡This resulted in an average weight gain of almost 1 kg per week for those on the ultra-processed diet
💡A recent, much smaller trial in Japan, found a much larger result- people on the ultra-processed diet ate an additional 813 calories per day
💡The World Health Organization estimates more than half the world will be overweight or obese by 2035.
💡In the United States alone, it’s estimated nearly 260 million Americans will be obese by 2050 unless policy makers take immediate action
💡For the first time in history, the potential role of ultra-processed foods in the US is being investigated as part of the new 2025-2030 US Dietary Guidelines
💡Once those guidelines are finalized, they will form the basis of federal nutrition policy for the next five years, CNN.
Our Thoughts💡: Eating is not complicated guys. Humans did it perfectly well for centuries without a single nutritionist or clinical study.
Then we tried to outsmart nature and decided that Frosted Flakes, Honey Nut Cheerios and Chipotle are healthier than eggs, meat, cheese and butter.
And we wonder why our generation has a global obesity epidemic.. Go figure 🤷🏻♀️
Culture 📱: Australia wants to ban social media for all kids.
The Australian government wants to pass a “world-leading” legislation to wipe all social media- including Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and X- from the devices of children under 16.
Key Highlights, reported by CNN:
💡“I want to talk to Australian parents,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a video posted to Instagram.
“Too often social media isn’t social at all, and we all know that. The truth is it’s doing harm to our children, and I’m calling time on it.”
However, those against the ban raised valid points like:
💡The idea of a ban is incredibly seductive for parents, because it feels like it’s just going to take that off your list of things to worry about [..] But in actual fact, a ban is not going to deliver the relief that parents are looking for. It’s a fact of life that this will continue to be a key part of parenting into the future.
💡If passed, the court could fine nearly $32 million on social media companies that do not take reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted children from using their service.
💡The government is not telling tech companies how to do it, but at the very least, it says it expects them to adopt age verification technologies.
💡That comes with privacy issues that the government said will be addressed in the legislation.
Sports 🏎️: Formula1 chases new ESPN deal.
As F1 enjoys the spotlight with the current Grand Prix in Las Vegas, the car giant is looking to negotiate a new media rights deal with ESPN, according to the Financial Times.
The current $85 million-per-year contract expires soon, and F1 is looking to keep up the momentum it gained in the US in 2021 and 2022, after seeing ratings inch downward last year.
F1 has been aggressively inking new sponsorships, including a 10-year deal with luxury conglomerate LVMH.
Key Highlights, reported by The Financial Times:
💡Globally, media rights accounted for roughly $1 billion of F1’s $3.2 billion total revenues in 2023
💡In terms of viewership, F1's peak was 1.2 million viewers a race in 2022
💡The Miami GP in May this year attracted an average of 3.1 million viewers, a record for F1 on live US television
💡F1TV, the sport’s own streaming service, is another vital piece of the company’s media strategy. This service, which is available in some countries, such as the US and India, allows subscribers to choose the way the follow the races as they happen.
💡F1TV pptions include accessing feed from a car’s onboard cameras or from team radios
Quicker Bites:
The United Nations' annual climate conference concluded with a $300 billion deal a year- far less than the $1.3 trillion they sought to fight climate change.
Dozens killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon.
An Israeli rabbi is abducted and killed in the UAE.
In some parts of Delhi, pollution levels exceeded 1,750 AQI this week; A reading above 300 is considered hazardous to health.
Bitcoin predicted to hit $100,000 very soon.
The US indicts Gautam Adani, one of India’s richest business men, for bribery and fraud.
Bird flu detected in Raw Milk brand in California.