🐤 Attention, please

🏦 Markets: November is winding down, and it’s shaping up to be a Wall Street winner despite some losses to start this week.

All three major indexes finished the day off by a fraction of a percent, but it didn’t seem to be enough to derail the optimism of investors following weeks of largely positive economic data.

With a significant spike in post-Thanksgiving consumer spending expected to go down in the books following Cyber Monday, analysts are hopeful that the month will end on a particularly strong note.

📝 Word up: Each year, Merriam-Webster selects one word that best exemplifies some aspect of the previous 12 months. And this year, the dictionary’s word of the year is “authentic.” The word can be used in a variety of ways and Merriam-Webster editor at large Peter Sokolowski said online searches for it were up significantly this year. From concerns about fake news to the confusion surrounding AI content, he explained: “We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity.”

👨‍⚖️ Tesla goes to court: Amid a strike impacting postal deliveries across Sweden and rising demands in the country for Tesla to allow its employees to unionize, the automaker is suing the Swedish government. The complaint alleges that the Swedish Transport Agency is preventing the delivery of license plates for new Tesla models sold nationwide, calling it “an unlawful discriminatory attack directed at Tesla.” The agency said it doesn’t “share this view.”

☝️ Pardon the interruption: Some gamers were thrown out of the action when an ad took over the screen during a round of “Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey.” In response to posts sharing evidence of the intrusion, developer Ubisoft blamed a “technical error” for the unwanted pop-up ad. In a statement, the company wrote: “Our intention was to display a promotion for Assassin’s Creed Mirage as part of the franchise news in the main menu of other Assassin’s Creed games.”

💸 Manic Monday: While holiday shoppers gravitated toward online deals throughout the long weekend starting on Thursday, the trend was in full swing for Cyber Monday. According to early estimates, shoppers spent about 5.4% more yesterday than they did on Cyber Monday 2022. Retailers of all types promoted deep discounts and exclusive sales, particularly on popular gift items including electronics, toys, and clothing, with estimated sales topping $12.4 billion.

It’s been nearly 40 years since the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders first included attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder for the first time, but there’s plenty of evidence that it has been around for centuries.

The number of identified cases has increased over the past few decades, however, including a rise in the rate of adult diagnoses. So is ADHD becoming more common or are doctors just getting better at recognizing its symptoms?

What is ADHD?

As its name implies, the disorder is exemplified by inattentiveness, hyperactivity, or a combination thereof. Other characteristics include impulsiveness and poor concentration, and the results can be detrimental to educational and workplace performance if not properly treated.

Although it did not officially receive its name until the 1980s, symptoms and even stimulant-based treatments have been recorded in medical journals since at least the 1930s. There was even a reference to a very similar condition as far back as the 18th century.

Recent increases

It’s not uncommon for a disorder to become more widely diagnosed as experts learn more about it and more funding is available for research. But is that what is behind the recent spike in cases or is there something that is causing higher rates of ADHD in the population?

• Prevalence in kids between 4 and 17 nearly doubled (from 6% to 10%) between the 1990s and 2016.
• Approximately 13% of children between 12 and 17 exhibit symptoms of ADHD.
• About 60% of those diagnosed as children retain symptoms of the disorder into adulthood.
• There was a 123% spike in adult ADHD diagnoses between 2007 and 2016.

While we all display certain attributes of ADHD from time to time, the disorder is unique and requires a proper diagnosis and treatment. But there’s no definitive evidence that it’s becoming more common.

You might have read news reports throughout the pandemic about how people were able to sock away some extra money. Well, those days are officially over for most of us.

In their place are rising costs and mounting credit card debt. On an individual level, high interest rates are making it even more difficult for folks to pay off their balances … but there are also much wider ramifications.

The Federal Reserve weighs in

America’s central bank has been hiking interest rates in an effort to reverse rising costs that have plagued low-income households in recent years. But that strategy is taking its own toll on cash-strapped consumers.

Here’s what the Federal Reserve has reported:

• Credit card debt rose 5% in the third quarter of the year compared to the prior three-month period.
• The average rate of savings among Americans has been on a downward trajectory since last year.
• A higher rate of credit card and other accounts (about 3% overall) were delinquent between July and September.

Who is bearing the burden?

As you might imagine, the wealthiest Americans are generally doing just fine despite the economic headwinds. But as lower- and middle-income households turn to high-interest credit cards to pay for their necessities, their plight is only getting worse.

And the overall economy is suffering as a result.

As American University economics professor Mary Hansen explained: “Consumer spending, which we all know is the base of [gross domestic product], is really being held up by credit card debt, and maybe it’s not sustainable.”

University of Massachusetts at Boston public policy professor Christian Weller, on the other hand, suggested that high-income consumers will continue to prop up the broader economy — at least for now.

“Those people still have more cash on hand,” he said.

What's the leading cause of dry skin?

Towels.

If you were like millions of other shoppers, you spent at least part of yesterday buying stuff online.

It was one of Amazon’s biggest days of the year … and that’s really saying something for the massive retailer. But the company keeps getting products out of warehouses, onto trucks, and to consumers at speeds that almost defy belief.

And AI has a lot to do with it.

Rise of the robots

Amazon engineers spent a lot of time getting ready for the shopping rush, particularly within its Robotics Research and Development Center.

At one facility near Phoenix, the automation and integration of AI is reaping serious benefits. Within 11 minutes of a shopper buying a product, robots are already processing the order.

That’s about an hour faster than at other facilities and represents the quickest turnaround time in company history.

But AI does a lot more than search warehouses for products. Here are some common applications:

• Calculating the most efficient routes for drivers using real-time weather and traffic info
• Forecasting demand for millions of products and predicting where they’ll likely be shipped
• Checking boxes for signs of damage before they are loaded up to be delivered

Here to stay

AI capabilities and demand for quick shipping are both increasing, which means that this marriage between robots and human workers across the company isn’t going to end in a divorce anytime soon.

Amazon Robotics Chief Technologist Ty Brady explained: “AI will touch just about every piece of our supply chain.”

But he tried to paint an optimistic portrait for those who are afraid that the proliferation of robots will cost humans their jobs.

With hundreds of new positions related to robotics, Brady said Amazon is creating “a beautiful ballet of people and machines working together in order to do a job.”