Greetings N2K reader!

This week’s world famous news haiku competition™ is about new limits for a rent algorithm that prosecutors say lets landlords drive up prices. Send me your entry — to our spiffy new email address, haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET on Thursday for consideration by your Cheddar peers! Also…

Don’t miss the crypto-friendly SEC chair live on Cheddar at 10 a.m., just as crypto is tanking

This morning at 10 a.m. ET, Cheddar will be airing Paul Atkins’ remarks at the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. Atkins is Crypto-friendly chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He also happens to have been the guy who called for looser regulation on banks in the run-up to the 2008 fiscal crisis, when he was last a commissioner at the SEC. Critics have said that’s a big part of what caused (checks notes) the financial crisis. But Mr. Atkins has remained unrepentant. He also blames the government, not stock market regulation, for the 1929 Wall Street Crash. I hope he’ll say something about Bitcoin this morning as it plunged below $85,000 yesterday, much to the Winkelvoss twins’ chagrin (the two Facebook founders who were both played by one Armie Hammer in “The Social Network” movie said on Friday, “this’ll be the last time you’ll be able to buy Bitcoin below $90k”).

Check it out wherever you watch Cheddar — or watch directly on cheddar.com. And now for something completely different!

—Matt Davis, Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

• ‘Rage Bait’ is the word of the year

• Loop incoming! Chipmaker buys $2B stake in company …

• Less you for less dough as Eli Lilly drops Zepboun …

• Zootopia 2 shatters global box office records

• AI helps Black Friday shoppers break spending reco …

• Poll of the day: Did you spend more than last year …

What’s the stock market up to, eh?

$SPX ( ▲ 0.47% ) $DJI ( ▲ 0.04% ) $NDX ( ▲ 0.9% )

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$NVDA ( ▲ 2.5% )  $SNPS ( ▲ 2.82% )  $AMD ( ▲ 3.63% )  $INTC ( ▼ 0.69% )  $DIS ( ▼ 1.44% )  $SCOR ( ▼ 1.34% )  $ADBE ( ▼ 0.55% )  $WMT ( ▼ 1.65% )  $AMZN ( ▼ 0.71% )  

‘Rage Bait’ is the word of the year

The Oxford University Press has crowned “rage bait” as its 2025 Word of the Year. Defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive,” the term triumphed over contenders like “biohack” and “aura farming.”

“Even if people have never heard it before, they instantly know what it means,” said Casper “The Nerdly Ghost” Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages. “And they want to talk about it.” Usage of the term has surged threefold over the past year, highlighting its cultural resonance. Casper further explained that the word aims to inspire reflection: “The point of the Word of the Year is to encourage people to reflect on where we are as a culture, who we are at the moment, through the lens of words we use.” Then he threw a color TV out the window.

As Casper noted, the finalists reflect how deeply the internet shapes emotional manipulation. Whether sparking anger or sparking conversation, it seems “rage bait” has hit a nerve. Our word of the year here at Cheddquarters is, of course, “haiku.” But nobody cares what we have to say. Kinda makes us angry…

Song of the Day: Flight to London, ‘No One’s Forgiven’

The debut single from their first album, "Instructions for Losing Control," this song has a politically charged theme and blends ‘80s-inspired synth textures with a modern, driving beat. The song draws strong stylistic parallels to icons like Tears For Fears, Heaven 17, Spandau Ballet, ABC, Phil Collins, and Depeche Mode, and is being described as "new-stalgia." The video is AI-generated, and somewhat ridiculous. Enjoy!

Loop incoming! Chipmaker buys $2B stake in company that relies on its chips

Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 2.5% ) , a leading AI chipmaker, has invested $2 billion in a leading chip design software maker, Synopsis $SNPS ( ▲ 2.82% ) , aiming to accelerate the development of AI-powered tools for designing products across industries, from chips to jet engines.

In other words, it’s invested heavily in another company in the hopes of making it more reliant on the product it produces. This is perhaps why many are concerned about circular investment deals in the AI space, of which this is only the latest:

Announced Monday, the deal seeks to shift industries reliant on older central processing units toward Nvidia’s advanced graphics processing unit technology. Synopsys software, widely used to virtually simulate designs, currently requires weeks of computation power. But under Nvidia’s framework, the process could take hours. “The order of magnitude speed-up is going to unlock opportunities that have never been possible before,” Nvidia CEO Jensen “I Used to Clean Toilets” Huang said during a press conference announcing the move.

While Nvidia and Synopsys have partnered to optimize the latter's software for Nvidia’s GPUs, both companies emphasized the non-exclusive nature of the deal. “If an AMD $AMD ( ▲ 3.63% ) or Intel $INTC ( ▼ 0.69% ), or whichever customer wanting to capture a similar opportunity, approaches Synopsys, we’re willing and happy to work with them,” said Synopsys CEO Sassine “Will That Be Cash or Charge?” Ghazi.

Quote of the Day

Less you for less dough as Eli Lilly drops Zepbound price

Eli Lilly $LLY ( ▼ 1.13% ) has joined the race to cut the cost of GLP-1 medications after competitor Novo Nordisk $NVO ( ▲ 3.63% ) dropped the price of the first two months of Ozempic to $199.

Patients can now purchase the starting dose of 2.5mg for $299 per month, down from $349, using Lilly’s healthcare platform, LillyDirect. Similarly, higher doses under the Zepbound Self Pay Journey Program have seen reductions of up to $50, now priced at $449 per month.

The average American gym membership costs from $50 to $65 a month but that’s hard work, fam.

"Far too many people who need obesity treatments still face cost and coverage barriers," said Ilya “License to Ill” Yuffa, an executive at Lilly, highlighting the company’s commitment to terminating financial challenges faced by patients.

Lilly made $3.59 billion in profit from Zepbound in the third quarter, and the company’s market value now exceeds $1 trillion. Its CEO was paid $29.2 million last year, 243 times the average employee’s pay of $120,000. If only there were other ways for the company to make its weight loss drugs more affordable.

Should you check your 401(k) today?

👎️ 

We had a good run last week. Let’s not spoil it by getting greedy on a Tuesday, shall we?

Zootopia 2 shatters global box office records

Disney’s highly anticipated (by some people) sequel, “Zootopia 2,” has opened to, let’s see… staggering numbers, smashing records globally. The film raked in $96 million in North America over the weekend and an impressive $156 million over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday, bringing its worldwide total to a monumental $556 million since its Wednesday debut. For context, that’s just over a quarter of what $NVDA ( ▲ 2.5% ) spent on a software company!

According to Disney’s $DIS ( ▼ 1.44% ) estimates, this marks the highest international opening ever for an animated movie and the fourth-largest global debut of any kind.

Paul “Conventional Wisdom” Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore $SCOR ( ▼ 1.34% ) , called the debut "a beloved franchise delivering what audiences were looking for around the world." 

Chinese audiences, famous for their love of anthropomorphic animals, proved to be a key contributor to the film’s success, generating nearly half of the film’s global revenue with $272 million in ticket sales, the biggest opening ever for an American-made animated film in the country. I imagine that’s because the film includes significant themes about human rights, Taiwanese self-determination, and the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Wait, correction here: “Zootopia 2” follows two animal cops around as they pursue “new and mysterious reptilian resident Gary De'Snake,” in an effort to clear their names.

Dergarabedian noted that the film’s performance may signal “a thaw in the freeze” for Hollywood’s presence in Chinese theaters after years of strained geopolitical relations.

I’ll take Richard Linklater’s movie “Nouvelle Vague” on Netflix any time, thank you. But the movie business takes all sorts, doesn’t it?

AI helps Black Friday shoppers break spending records

This Black Friday, American shoppers embraced AI, which we’re told stands for “artificial intelligence,” like never before, catapulting online spending to a staggering $11.8 billion—a 9.1% increase from last year, according to Adobe Analytics $ADBE ( ▼ 0.55% ) . The record-setting surge was fueled by advancements in AI-powered tools designed to make it easier to spend all your money streamline the shopping experience.

In 2025, AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail websites soared by an astonishing 805% compared to 2024, when we mostly had to trawl Amazon like Neanderthals. Tools such as Walmart’s $WMT ( ▼ 1.65% ) “Sparky” and Amazon’s $AMZN ( ▼ 0.71% ) “Rufus” have empowered consumers to quickly locate deals and compare prices. As Suzy Davidkhanian, an eMarketer analyst, told the New York Post, “Consumers are using new tools to get to what they need faster. Gift giving can be stressful, and [large language models] make the discovery process feel quicker and more guided.”

Nearly half of U.S. consumers used or plan to use AI tools for their holiday shopping this season, an Adobe survey revealed. (The other half are buying you socks for Christmas.) Popular items flying off shelves included Pokémon cards, LEGO sets, Apple AirPods, KitchenAid mixers, Nintendo Switches, and PlayStation 5 consoles. Please note: All of these things are popular whether or not a robot tells you to buy them. Most N2K readers tell us they don’t care if a loved one uses a 🤖 to help choose their gift — they just want something nice. Nicer than socks, at least.

Notably, Black Friday followed another record-breaking day of online sales during Thanksgiving, which brought in $6.4 billion — a 5.3% increase from last year as people tried to escape the crushing weight of spending time with their families by spending money on consumer goods. God bless America, where total U.S. consumer debt reached a record high of $18.6 trillion in the third quarter.

Poll of the day: Did you spend more than last year on Black Friday?

Poll of the day: Jimmy McMillan would be proud

We asked: How's the rent?

You answered:

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Too damn low (22)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Juuuuuust right (19)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Too damn high (363)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ As high as a Campbell's IT VP (182)

586 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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