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🏦 Markets: Some encouraging economic news earlier in the week seemed to pave the way for Wall Street to recoup some of last week’s losses, but that trend was derailed on Wednesday.

The Federal Reserve announced another interest rate hike — this time it was a less severe 0.50% — and signaled that more increases are likely in 2023. Although the underlying message is that inflation appears to be cooling off, the announcement nevertheless spooked investors.

All three major indexes finished the day down by a fraction of a percent.

🏈 Brady’s gambit: While Tom Brady is sure to go down as one of the NFL’s all-time greats, it seems as if he won’t be ending his storied career on a particularly high note. The Tampa Bay quarterback has struggled throughout this season, posting up some lackluster numbers that don’t match up to his earlier statistics. As it turns out, one of the people who might be most disappointed in his decision to sign on for another year in the league is the man who shares his name. Tom Brady Sr. reportedly shared his thoughts with retired NFL pro Cris Carter ahead of his son’s appearance in last year’s Super Bowl. “He said the only thing he’s worried about is the kid, the kid won’t go home,” Carter recalled. “He said ‘the kid is outside still playing, and he won’t come in. It’s raining, everything.’ He said, ‘I am only afraid the kid won’t stop playing even if he wins.'”

🤑 FTX fortunes: While disgraced CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and countless investors lost millions when cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed earlier this year, that doesn’t mean the company isn’t still making people rich. Well, one person in particular. As it turns out, Bankman-Fried’s replacement, John Ray, is raking in a staggering $1,300 an hour as he guides the company through a complex bankruptcy process. This isn’t Ray’s first rodeo, either. During a previous gig helping a company navigate its bankruptcy, he reportedly earned more than $120,000 in just two months. He appeared in front of Congress this week to weigh in on what he’s found thus far from studying FTX’s books. He called it a clear-cut case of “old-fashioned embezzlement.”

📹 Cause of death: A sad story came out of the ongoing World Cup competition in Qatar recently with the report that U.S. reporter Grant Wahl died while covering the games. While there was some speculation surrounding the cause, particularly in light of complaints about the host country’s record of human rights abuse allegations, Wahl’s wife cleared things up in a statement this week. Citing a medical examination, Dr. Celine Gounder wrote that her husband “died from the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium,” asserting that there “was nothing nefarious about his death.” In a podcast just days before his death, he confirmed that he had been struggling with bronchitis.

🧅 Grinch patrol: While the Dr. Seuss character is trotted out each holiday season as a symbol of intolerance and the antithesis of the Christmas spirit, one Florida cop is using his Grinch costume to deliver some good cheer to naughty motorists. According to reports, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Col. Lou Caputo has been pulling over drivers who are caught speeding (at 5 mph or less over the limit) through an area school zone. Instead of handing out citations, however, he gives them a choice. After producing an onion, he tells the speeding motorists that they can either take the vegetable or get a ticket. “It’s about education — awareness that our school zones are still operating even though it’s the holiday season,” he said. Obviously, the drivers always take the onion. Caputo noted: “I’ve had them eat the onion right in front of me.”

There’s been a lot of chatter on the internet about the latest developments in artificial intelligence. One product that has gained a lot of attention in recent days is ChatGPT, which stands to revolutionize how we search for information online.

While there are some reasons to be intrigued by the progress, not everyone is convinced it’s a good thing. Let’s discuss why.

What ChatGPT does

As its proponents explain, the interface provides responses that mimic conversations with an actual person instead of the clearly computer-based results that come in response to a Google search.

In a recent article, I discussed the positive attributes of such a program — such as searching for a recipe. Instead of finding pages of links that take you to sites with a dense wall of text before getting to the cooking instructions, ChatGPT delivers a succinct answer to the query.

At the same time, the program is not upfront about how it finds its information, so there’s no guarantee that what you receive will be accurate. As it turns out, though, that might just be the beginning of the bad news.

Opponents sound the alarm

Following developments in AI art and other services that creators believe will put their livelihoods at risk, ChatGPT might present the biggest risk yet of computers replacing actual jobs.

Furthermore, there are serious concerns that it will soon be hard to tell what type of information comes from an actual human expert and what has been compiled by AI programs like this one.

Finally, critics point out that it is pretty easy to convince this type of generative artificial intelligence to reflect racism and some other nasty biases.

While it’s a cool concept on the surface, skeptics are hopeful that some serious regulations will help rein in its power.

Most traditional stock traders either spend the time necessary to learn the ins and outs of Wall Street or rely on a trusted adviser to guide them in their investments. These days, however, almost everything has some direct tie to social media — including financial advice.

That might seem convenient at first since a few compelling tweets or a couple of videos offer a lot of salient facts that would otherwise be difficult to find. When the people behind those posts are fraudsters, however, victims can lose a lot of money.

Pump-and-dump allegations

Federal prosecutors have accused a group of mid-level social media influencers of attempting to use their platforms to convince followers to invest in stocks and artificially inflate their respective prices. All the time, they were allegedly planning to dump their own shares in the companies and make off with a healthy profit.

In total, an indictment unsealed this week in Texas showed that the fraud totaled a whopping $114 million over the course of under two years.

Through Twitter posts, podcast appearances, Discord conversations, and other online commentaries, the defendants are accused of swindling their most gullible fans.

In addition to pending federal counts, the Securities and Exchange Commission also handed down its own charges against the group.

Damning communications

According to the SEC complaint, members of the group were brazen in their discussion of the illegal ploy. When one suspect expressed some remorse about their behavior and said he wanted to “do it the right way,” an alleged co-conspirator shot back: “The f—king right way? We’re robbing f—ing idiots of their money.”

Such rhetoric is not likely to bode well for them at trial.

Joseph Sansone of the SEC described the alleged scheme succinctly, asserting that they fed their followers “a steady diet of misinformation."

If you’re old enough to remember the days of flipping through a few networks to find something worth watching on TV, you were likely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content that has been available through numerous competing streaming platforms in recent years.

Sadly, that type of growth and expansion is simply not sustainable — and we appear to have passed the point of peak entertainment.

Slim pickings

Instead of wondering if they’d be able to find something to watch, consumers in recent years have had the opposite problem of trying to find time to watch everything that interested them. By juggling a handful of services from Netflix to Amazon Prime to Disney Plus to HBO Max, it was impossible to check out every show or movie that seemed interesting.

Well, that might not be such a problem anymore.

There are a few reasons that even seemingly popular streaming programs are getting canceled or dropped by such services these days:

• It costs a lot of money to produce original content
• Residual fees can make it expensive to carry old content if the audience isn’t big enough
• Competition is growing fiercer, so corporate bosses feel the need to tighten their belts

It all adds up to fewer options, even if the cost of these services stays the same or continues to increase.

The cost of being selective

During the rise of streaming services in general, each company was incentivized to put out as much stuff as possible to keep audiences engaged. Now, many of the same services have found that there’s just too much available that not many people are actually watching.

Unfortunately, that means that experimental content as well as shows and movies that appeal to a narrower base are likely to be the first ones axed.