October 8, 2025

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. Shoppers planning on using AI for shopping this holiday season, Netflix volume comes down a few notches, and RUSH is heading back out on tour  🤘

Let’s get into it!

Online retailers looking for insights into what they can expect for holiday sales are turning to Adobe Analytics.

The e-commerce data tracker produced a report based on one trillion visits to online shopping sites in the United States, cataloguing over one million products in 18 sales categories.

It found Americans will spend roughly $253.4 billion online for the holidays this year, representing an annual increase of 5.3%. Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Thanksgiving Day are expected to record major gains this year as well, with sales rising 6.3%, 8.3%, and 4.9%, respectively.

Perhaps most notably, however, is the moonshot expected from AI-assisted retail shopping. Adobe Analytics found traffic in AI-assisted portals will rise 520% this year, with companies like OpenAI and Google allowing and encouraging users to purchase items directly inline with their AI chatbot conversations.

This form of e-commerce saw traffic shoot up 1,300% last year, and a 520% gain on 2024 represents exponential growth in recent years.

It’s not just that shoppers will use AI to make purchases, however. A survey conducted for the report found 53% of Americans may use AI services for this purpose, but also found 40% said they would use AI for recommendations, 36% for deal finding, and 30% for gift inspiration.

California may have a reputation for over-regulation, but nobody is going to have a problem with the legislation Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the other day.

Advertisers can pretend all they want, but everyone knows the volume mysteriously shoots up when a commercial interrupts a show on platforms like Netflix, Hulu, or HBO Max.

This probably only seems to be confined to streaming platforms because the Commercial Advertising Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act was only passed in 2010, when such platforms were either nascent or didn’t even exist.

Today, however, 83% of TV viewers subscribe to at least one streaming platform, and Gov. Newsom’s Monday legislation closed the loophole that allowed advertisers to evade the CALM Act on streaming platforms.

Regulators have been looking into this very issue since February, after complaints about blaring ads shooting up and a “troubling jump” last year specifically.

Unrelated to yesterday’s story about a strange wave making its way through the Milky Way, today we turn to some other space “weather” that has astronomers concerned.

Research published in the Astrophysical Journal the other day suggests that while humans have plenty of complex tools and instruments used to track and detect threatening solar events, the available technology may not be enough.

While weather on Earth can be tracked from hundreds if not thousands of different vantage points, this “360 view” isn’t really available when it comes to tracking things like coronal mass ejections from the Sun, which can knock out Earth’s electrical grids.

“Imagine if you could only monitor a hurricane remotely with the measurements from one wind gauge,” Chip Manchester, the study’s lead author and an astrophysicist at the University of Michigan, said in a statement. “You’d see a change in the measurements, but you wouldn’t see the storm’s entire structure. That’s the current situation with single-spacecraft systems. We need viewpoints from multiple space weather stations.”

Building a new array of solar detection satellite systems could prove to be a wise move, particularly during solar maximum—when the Sun is most active.

Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson never really wanted Rush to end, but at the same time, how could there be a Rush without Neil Peart?

The Toronto rock legends are getting back together to find out, and will tour next year in celebration of 50 years of the band, and in celebration of the life of their late lyricist and the greatest drummer of all time, Neil Peart, who passed away in 2020.

Anika Nilles will watch the throne for Peart—a nearly impossible task given the enormity of the shoes she’s being asked to fill. A German composer and a touring drummer for Jeff Beck, Nilles is said to be the right woman for the job, despite the band acknowledging she’s being asked to “replace the irreplaceable.”

"You and I playing with her started to put a charge in us, when we heard our songs coming back to life," Lee said as the pair in a social media post with Lifeson as the two announced the reunion.

"We'll always have a part of the show that's a tribute to Neil,” Lifeson said. “It's going to be beautiful to celebrate him every single night.”

The tour launches in June of next year, with dates announced so far in major cities across Mexico, the United States, and Canada, including two dates in Rush’s home town of Toronto. Tickets are on sale next week.

You can quote me on that

We’re back today with another round of quotable quotes. Today’s trivia tests your knowledge of some of the movies’ greatest lines. To keep you on your toes, we’re going wide so expect to see some classic gems in there.

Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 eGift Card ;)

Winner will be notified on Thursday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and your spam folder!*