• Markets: Investors chose optimism yesterday, focusing on the promise of tech over signals from the bond market and pushing the Nasdaq to a new record. AI-related stocks in particular shone, with Nvidia also hitting a record and SpaceX hitting its highest since June, making Elon Musk a trillionaire again.

BACK IN SESSION

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Jim Watson/Getty Images

The Supreme Court returned from summer break and barely had time to hang up their flip-flops before jumping into one of the thorniest cases on the new term’s docket. The justices heard arguments yesterday in Boulder, CO’s lawsuit against Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy for damages it claims they contributed to via climate change. The court’s decision could determine whether dozens of other lawsuits seeking billions of dollars from fossil fuel companies can proceed.

A big tobacco moment? Boulder’s suit claims the energy companies contributed to climate disasters, including fires, that impacted the city. Boulder says it isn’t suing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions—instead it’s focusing on consumer protection, modeling its case after successful suits against opioid makers and the tobacco industry.

• Boulder argues that taxpayers shouldn’t shoulder the bill for cleanup, emergency services, and rebuilding.
• Exxon and Suncor say greenhouse gas emissions are regulated federally, not by states, so the lawsuit shouldn’t proceed. The Trump administration agrees.

It could go a lot of ways

The justices asked both sides tough and technical questions about the impact of federal law, making it hard to know how SCOTUS might rule (likely in June). Here are some possibilities:

• The court sides with the energy companies, ending the case.
• It sides with Boulder and the lawsuit continues (and likely so do many others).
• The justices split 4–4. This is possible because Justice Samuel Alito recused himself after watchdog groups pointed out his large investments in fossil fuel companies. The justices could also say it’s too early for them to get involved, leaving the case intact but the larger issue undecided.

What else is on the docket? The Supreme Court will soon consider several cases that would grind any dinner conversation to a halt. There’s an immigration case over third-country deportations, plus cases over the Ten Commandments being displayed in schools and whether states can ban AR-15s. There could also be cases over the midterm elections.—MM

      

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World

Tour de headlines

Skydance

🎬 David Ellison’s $111 billion media conglomerate dream is now a reality. The merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery is set to close today, bringing together two storied movie studios, CNN, HBO, and more under the Skydance umbrella. Now we’ll see whether the deal is headed for a Hollywood ending or whether outbidding Netflix and securing a settlement with states bringing an antitrust suit was the easy part. Paramount took on a good chunk of debt to make the deal happen, and the new company’s net debt is estimated at $80+ billion. But Ellison has a team in place he thinks can keep the deal from following in the footsteps of the not-so-happy AOL and Time Warner tie-up.

⚕️Authorities investigate the death of a Russian anti-plague researcher. Russian authorities are looking into the death last week of a worker at the Anti-Plague Research Institute in Irkutsk province who contracted “pneumonia of an unknown cause.” US officials say they are also monitoring the incident. Nearly 200 people were under medical observation yesterday and one hospital was quarantined, although the regional governor said microorganisms linked to the deceased’s research were not detected in her body, according to NBC. President Trump told reporters he was concerned about the situation, but said “we’ll help.”

🧠 Nobel Prize awarded to developers of technique that sheds light on the brain. This year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine went to American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for developing a technique that uses light to control individual nerve cells in the brain called optogenetics. The technique lets researchers activate or shut off neurons, allowing them to probe causes of behaviors and diseases. It has also shown promise as a therapy for blindness. But even with a Nobel Prize, the kids come first: Deisseroth, a professor at Stanford, took a break from speaking with journalists yesterday to pack up school lunches (you can see him give his kids the good news here).—AR

SAFETY DANCE

Heather Diehl/Getty Images

If you don’t love AI at its breaching of databases then you don’t deserve it at its composing your work emails. That’s the gist of what Sam Altman told Politico when asked about the risks that come with the rapidly advancing technology going rogue more often. “We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology,” the OpenAI CEO said.

Other comments about AI safety from Altman to Politico include:

• On whether OpenAI agrees with its seemingly more safety-conscious rival Anthropic: “I think there’s a lot of daylight.”
• On the serious threats of AI, he said he doesn’t accept “the really catastrophic risks,” which we assume includes an Anthropic researcher saying there’s a 10% chance AI kills all humans.

In a separate interview, the entrepreneur informed Fortune that OpenAI has not solved alignment, the term for aligning AI with its creators’ values (like not hacking government websites).

The sudden media tour (which also includes a Vanity Fair interview) comes as a leader on OpenAI’s safety team quit due to, you guessed it, safety concerns. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI fired three researchers on the safety team for sharing confidential information, and, according to Kotaku, OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra broke rules to win at a video game.—DL

      

Reader Poll

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DOT SI BOOM

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Getty Images, Adobe Stock

Our sympathies to anyone who didn’t buy a website ending with .si last month. Following President Trump’s executive order last week requiring government agencies to refer to artificial intelligence (AI) as super intelligence (SI), demand is booming for sites ending in .si. That happens to be Slovenia’s country-specific domain.

Purchases for .si domain names surged 2,199% last month, to 44,000 from less than 2,000 in August, a spokesperson for Registry SI, the organization that manages Slovenia’s domains, told the BBC.

• Purchases gained momentum after Trump teased the AI-to-SI renaming on Truth Social on Sept. 19, according to data shared with Snopes.
• Then, .si registrations spiked to 11,000 on Sept. 30, the day after Trump’s order, according to Registry SI.
• Nearly 20,000 more purchases happened in the first two days of October, per Snopes.

Many .si buyers may be hoping to turn a profit by buying the domain names in case they can be upsold later. Web hosting platform Hostinger told TechCrunch that .si is now its second most popular domain (behind .com)—but only 3% of these .si domains are explicitly AI-related.

If this sounds familiar…it’s probably because Anguilla made millions of dollars off the .ai domain boom three years ago. But Slovenia probably won’t see that kind of profit because of differences in the way it collects domain fees, TechCrunch noted.—ML

      

Matty’s work-life balance

Should you get your whole body scanned?

Niv Bavarsky

On Tuesdays, the Brew’s Matty Merritt brings you the news you need to make life a little easier during your 9–5, 5–9, or OOO.

Celebrities and influencers are turning one of the most annoying medical appointments into a must-have wellness treatment. In the last few years, stories of $2,500 nonessential full-body MRIs catching early tumors and cancers have flooded social media. A preemptive scan led to actor Busy Phillipps and Bachelor star Joe Amabile finding and successfully treating brain tumors. Now:

• A new company called Neko, from Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek, just opened a New York City location offering hour-long “radiation-free” scans for skin, cardiovascular health, and blood testing for $499.
• The waitlist is already 25,000 potential patients deep.

So, should you join the list? Depends on if you’ve got the cash to spare, but most doctors warn that excessive testing could lead to health anxiety and false positives—especially for young, healthy people. The data on whether these scans save lives is scant and comes from the companies offering them. Doctors also warn these scans can miss a lot and give folks a false sense of security, so you shouldn’t opt out of more traditional, comprehensive screenings like mammograms or colonoscopies.—MM

News

What else is brewing

• President Trump said his super PAC would pay for ads praising him that drew backlash for being government funded.
• Spain’s prime minister called for an early election after weeks of protests over housing.
• Brazil’s incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will face Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, an ally of President Donald Trump, in a runoff after no one won a majority in this weekend’s election.
• Ex-American Idol contestant Caleb Flynn was sentenced to life in prison without parole for his wife’s murder. Flynn has maintained his innocence.
• Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who later served prison time after being convicted of trying to buy the silence of a boy he had abused as a high school wrestling coach, has died at age 84.
• Starbucks is being sued for allegedly labeling eight protein drinks containing sugar as “sugar-free.” The coffee chain said the claims have “no merit.”
• Alex Ovechkin, who holds the NHL’s regular season scoring record, said this season, his 22nd, will be his last.

recs

• The finalists in a comedy wildlife photography contest.
• The social skills therapists say you shouldn’t outsource to AI.
• A map of every US state’s signature ice cream flavor.
• Our favorite vacuum is currently 30% off.**

^{*A message from our sponsor. **This is a product recommendation from our writers. When you buy through this link, Morning Brew may earn a commission.}

Play

Brew Mini: Your sample clue of the day is “First word of the chorus of ‘My Heart Will Go On.’” Play the Mini here.

Guess the theme

Answer the following five questions to reveal a common theme. Can you find the connection?

1. This sequel was the highest-grossing movie of 1980.
2. It towers 12,389 feet above the island of Honshu.
3. Its theme in 2019 was “Camp: Notes on Fashion.”
4. The Tiber River runs through this European capital.
5. A creamy retro fruit salad popular in the South and Midwest, this word also translates to “immortality” in Ancient Greek.

Answer

1. The Empire Strikes Back (Star Wars)
2. Mt. Fuji
3. The Met Gala
4. Rome
5. Ambrosia

Theme: Apples!

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: cardiovascular, meaning “relating to or involving the heart and blood vessels.” Thanks to Tara from Seattle for a suggestion that got our blood pumping. Submit another Word of the Day here.