🌎 Passing By

US places blockade on Venezuelan oil tankers

The move aims to stop Venezuela’s “shadow fleet” from advancing. President Trump has ordered a “total and complete blockade” on all US-sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of the South American country, sharply escalating the pressure campaign on President Nicolás Maduro.

How will this affect Venezuela?

Despite further increasing tensions between the two nations, the move risks collapsing Venezuela’s already fragile economy, which depends overwhelmingly on crude oil:

• The energy source is a key asset for the country, as it accounts for more than 90% of its export revenue.

• They’ve taken a hit recently: Roughly 40% of the nation’s oil tankers have been sanctioned by the US in recent years.

How has the country dodged those sanctions? By using the same playbook as Russia and Iran (who have also faced American sanctions on their oil industry) and operating a network of illegal tankers:

• About 70% of Venezuela’s oil exports have relied on a shadow fleet of ships, which digitally alter their locations and usually operate under another country’s flag.

• Collectively, these tankers bring in around $8 billion in crude oil sales per year.

Many of the ships are now being blocked or diverted by the US pressure campaign, while others have begun changing course or idling at ports in an effort to avoid interception.

Things may get even more intense

The blockade comes after a recent US seizure of a sanctioned tanker off Venezuela’s coast, a move that spooked other ships and rattled the nation’s shipping industry:

• Over six gigantic oil tankers that were en route to carry Venezuelan oil turned back, according to crude oil monitoring service TankerTrackers.com.

• Venezuela’s navy also began escorting some outgoing tankers for protection after the blockade.

Tensions continue to escalate: President Trump said the nation will remain “completely surrounded” until it returns “oil, land, and other assets” he says it stole, a likely reference to Venezuela’s 1970s oil nationalization that forced US companies out of the country, costing them $5 billion.

Government job data finally released… it’s weird

Trying to read the US economy is like looking at modern art. After the government shutdown delayed the release of crucial economic data, the October and November job reports were finally delivered on Tuesday, painting a rather abstract picture of the US labor market.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

October and November’s job reports arrived Tuesday with a reminder that the labor market isn’t moving in a straight line, but more of a zigzag:

• Payrolls grew by a modest 64,000 jobs in November, but right after a revised October decline of 105,000.

• Meanwhile, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.6%, its highest level since 2021.

• Retail sales also flatlined, hinting that consumers were tightening their belts just before the holiday season.

Why so many job losses in October? Much of October’s weakness can be traced to the government shutdown, where job cuts knocked roughly 160,000 federal workers off payrolls that month, according to the BLS.

While the public sector crashed… the private sector managed to add 121,000 jobs over the past two months, with most of the gains seen in healthcare and education. But, since things are never cut and dry, manufacturing was an outlier, with jobs sliding to their lowest level in three years.

The more you look into the data…

…the more bleak it gets. Beyond the headline figures, other indicators suggest some Americans are feeling more stuck than others:

• The share of Americans who want more work, including part-time workers seeking full-time jobs and discouraged workers who’ve stopped searching, jumped to 8.7%, the most since 2021.

• Young workers are feeling the pinch even more, as unemployment among 16 to 19-year-olds climbed to 16.3%, the highest level since the start of the pandemic.

Things could be worse than we realize: According to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, monthly job gains since April may be exaggerated by as much as 60,000 jobs each month, meaning the only good parts of the report would be cut in half or diminished entirely.

This comet is making its closest-ever approach to Earth

Hopefully it doesn’t do a sudden redirect. A stray comet from another star system is making a rare flyby past Earth this week as it heads back into interstellar space… and you might be able to see it tonight.

An interstellar guest

The comet, dubbed 3I/ATLAS, was discovered in July by ATLAS, a NASA-funded array of telescopes run by the University of Hawai’i that is designed to find and locate objects that could potentially collide with Earth.

• Today, the comet will make its closest approach to Earth, passing within 167 million miles of our planet. It is only the third confirmed interstellar visitor ever observed.

• Scientists estimate the giant ball of ice is between 1,444 feet and 3.5 miles wide, but is losing mass every minute it travels through space.

Because interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS originate in distant star systems and are so uncommon to see close to Earth, the event will offer researchers a rare chance to study valuable data on the material formed around other stars, which would be extremely difficult to gather any other way.

How can you see it? Your best chances will be around dawn with a telescope or high-powered binoculars, looking toward the constellation Leo, near the bright star Regulus. If that lost you, just use an astronomy app on your phone and set up camp in a dark room around 7 am with some magnifying object.

After it passes by Earth… the comet will head outward again, eventually passing closer to Jupiter in March 2026 before exiting the solar system entirely by the mid-2030s.

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States are fighting over water from the Colorado River

Can’t they just flip a coin or something? This week, officials kicked off talks in Las Vegas to renegotiate how the Colorado River’s dwindling water supplies are shared, a decision that will affect more than 40 million people and the cities, farms, and industries that rely on the river.

Why renegotiate now?

The discussions come as the Colorado River basin is facing a historic water crisis, as Lake Mead is seeing its worst drought in 1,200 years. And, as a result:

• The federal government is aiming to reduce usage by 2 to 4 million acre-feet per year (an acre-foot equals one acre of land covered by 12 inches of water).

However, the seven states involved, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, have struggled to agree on a plan.

Why can’t the states agree?

The gathering, which is one of the largest annual meetings of its kind, was expected to be a forum for finding common ground on post-2026 management rules for the basin. Instead, negotiations have largely stalled.

The stalemate is partly due to the high stakes of losing water access and the sharply different water-use priorities between Upper and Lower Basin states:

• Officials from the Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) stressed that cutting use further upstream won’t generate enough water to satisfy downstream demands.

• Meanwhile, representatives from the Lower Basin states (Arizona, California, and Nevada) are focused on conservation and reductions in use, including California’s historically low water withdrawals.

What if they don’t reach a consensus? The Interior Department has warned it will step in with its own plan if states fail to reach an agreement before the current agreement expires next year.

The Oscars will be exclusively hosted on YouTube from now on

Anddddd MrBeast will be hosting (probably). The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has struck a multi-year deal with YouTube that will make the platform the exclusive home for the Academy Awards starting in 2029.

A new home

The Oscars have aired on ABC almost continuously since the 1970s, and Disney (which owns ABC) paid nearly $100 million annually for rights to the Oscars, red carpet coverage, and behind-the-scenes content.

The switch is mainly to capture what the Academy calls “the largest worldwide audience possible” and is a response to falling viewership in recent years:

• Once a ratings juggernaut in the 1990s, the event now draws a much smaller audience. Viewership fell to 18.1 million this year, far from its peak of 57 million in 1998.

It’s a sign of the times: Organizers say the switch to YouTube aligns with shifting viewer habits and could draw in younger and more international audiences who are more accustomed to streaming than traditional TV.

How did we get here? The deal followed a bidding war this summer that involved NBCUniversal and Netflix, with YouTube securing the show for more than nine figures, topping competitors’ high-eight-figure bids. Disney executives were reportedly shocked to hear the news moments before it went public.

Catch up on this week’s weird news

 > The last ever set of minted pennies, each marked with a special symbol, sold for over $16.76 million at auction in California last week. Over 232 sets were listed, including a 24-karat gold penny from the Philadelphia Mint.

 > The average US household is expected to spend nearly $1,000 on heating this winter (about 9.2% more than last year), largely thanks to colder temperatures, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.

> Researchers have built cell-sized robots that can think and make decisions for themselves, which could help identify diseases and lead to advances in biological research.

 > People are using a Swedish marketplace to buy code “drug” modules that make AI chatbots mimic being high on substances like cannabis, ketamine, and ayahuasca by altering their output patterns.

 > A new study discovered Italian brown bears have evolved to become smaller and less aggressive, contrary to other species in the area, due to their close proximity to humans over the last 3,000 years.