Thanks for that

If you turned on the radio right around now in ‘84 you might’ve heard Chicago’s You’re the Inspiration. It was a month into its march to the top of the charts, where it landed just into the new year.

From the band to the city, Chicago can mean different things, and the city is now set to be associated with a tasty new trend. You’ve heard of gingerbread houses? Well, this year, Chicago will host a “Charcuterie Chalet” popup.

Gimme 25 or 624 of those, please ;)

Welcome to Day 1 of our annual 12 Days of Giving! Each weekday between now and December 20th we’re giving away a $100 Amazon eGift card and all you have to do to get in on the fun is answer the poll question before 6PM (ET)!*

NOTE: If you’re checking us out here online and would like to take part in the giveaways, please subscribe to the newsletter. Good luck!

If you thought Black Friday was big this year, just wait until you hear how hard shoppers went on Cyber Monday.

According to Adobe Analytics, consumers spent $13.3 billion on Monday, up 7.3% from the total recorded on the biggest digital shopping spree of 2023. That chalks up to $15.8 million spent every minute.

Consumers need to get their Christmas shopping done one way or another, and while inflation has cooled off, prices remain significantly higher than they were a few years ago. Each of these factors combined to make discount deals more attractive than ever before.

“While Cyber Monday remained the season’s and year’s biggest online shopping day, year-over-year growth was stronger on both Thanksgiving and Black Friday,” Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement.

Over the course of the five days leading up to and including Cyber Monday, Adobe says shoppers spent $41.1 billion. It anticipates when all is said and done, sales between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31 will hit $240 billion, up 8.4% compared to 2023.

According to the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV), wine production fell to 231 million hectoliters this year, a 2% drop compared to 2023, and a 13% decline compared to the ten-year average.

“To find a smaller vintage than 2024, we must go back to 1961,” said Giorgio Delgrosso, head of statistics at the OIV. “The reasons seem quite clear: climate variability, with frosts, heavy rains and droughts, has severely impacted production.”

Production has been lagging significantly in the global south, with shortages reflecting the overall decline recorded across the world. The Southern Hemisphere produced 46 million hl this year, down 2% year-over-year, and 12% compared to the five-year average.

South African production was hit extremely hard by flooding and disease, dropping 5% annually, while Brazil and New Zealand also came up short. Argentina was the only southern producer to come out ahead, producing 5% more than last year.

The EU is expected to produce just 139 million hl, a 12% drop compared to the five-year average.

“If confirmed, it will mark the lowest production level of this century,” said Delgrosso. “Adverse climatic conditions played a major role, with droughts, heavy rains and storms affecting vineyards across the region.”

Netflix made history when it aired last month’s Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight, drawing 108 million viewers globally across the broadcast. It also demonstrated the potential limitations of live streaming sporting events.

Hundreds of thousands of viewers—if not millions—experienced technical difficulties during the fight, including buffering delays and resets. Are Netflix and other streamers prepared for the live sports migration to streaming?

“We were overwhelmed in the sense of the expectation—it far exceeded our expectations in terms of how many people came to the fight,” said Brandon Riegg, Netflix’s vice president of nonfiction series and sports. “It’s as simple as that. As much as we forecast how many people would come, many, many more people came. It’s impossible for our engineering team to test that magnitude of traffic and viewership unless they have a real, live thing, which is what happened.”

It’s unlikely such technical difficulties will be tolerated by sports leagues or advertisers as a regular occurrence, but the world is sure to find out soon. Netflix will air NFL football on Christmas Day, and WWE’s Monday Night Raw will air exclusively on Netflix worldwide every week starting on Jan. 6.

According to Slingshot Aerospace, there are about 14,000 satellites currently in low Earth orbit, including 3,500 that are inactive. Without a cooperative global effort to manage it, this level of orbit will become unusable for future space missions.

A U.N. panel on space traffic coordination released a statement in October saying just that, urging global space agencies to come together to build a shared database of all orbiting objects to bring order to the region of space most relied upon by humans on the ground.

"There's no time to lose on space traffic coordination. With so many objects being launched into space, we have to do everything we can to ensure space safety, and that means facilitating the sharing of information between operators, be they public or private, in order to avoid collisions," said panel co-chair Aarti Holla-Maini, director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.

The low Earth orbit region is vitally important, not just for navigation and exploration, but for most of the planet’s communication networks. The region is rapidly filling up as private enterprise increasingly enters the frontier, making the area both more important and more dangerous. According to Slingshot, close approaches per satellite rose 17% in the last year alone. 🤯

A few weeks back, we wrote about the effectiveness of catchy jingles in advertising. And now comes news that Kraft Heinz has brought back the classic Oscar Mayer Bologna song.

Aired during Thanksgiving football the other day, the song was reintroduced to celebrate its 50th anniversary the same way it debuted all those years ago. But this time, Kraft Heinz is asking everyone to sing along.

“Jingles from the past typically stay in the past and become a part of history– but the cultural impact of ‘The Bologna song’ is undeniable,” says Shelby Max, brand manager at Oscar Mayer.

“From being featured in episodes on The Simpsons to inspiring a parody by Weird Al Yankovic…we have worked hard with this campaign to re-insert our iconic jingle into the fabric of today’s culture.”

“Whether that be re-airing the iconic ad on TV, launching a partnership with Instacart to reward fans who sing, or leveraging top-tier influencers to help reinvigorate our song across TikTok – we hope to cement the jingle in today’s culture and bridge the gap between those who grew up spelling B-O-L-O-G-N-A and those who are just now seeing it for the first time.”

Huge thanks to the record number of Stakers who turned out for our final game of the season. And congrats to our winners Dave Ketchum and Joanne Masci. As Quizmaster Joey always says, it was a blast!🎄🎁🤗

Let’s finish where we started with today’s trivia all about the Windy City’s most famous band ;)

Have a great day ahead Staker!

Trivia courtesy of funtrivia.com. Today’s issue written by Michael Cowan, Joey Cowan, and Maureen Norman.


*SEE FULL GIVEAWAY RULES HERE