October 30, 2026
Good Morning. Patrick Stewart was 47 and an unknown British Shakespearean actor when Star Trek handed him the Enterprise. Plus, a $6.3 billion hack, 600 haunted yards for St. Jude, and Chris Pratt’s SEAL training camp (first time here? Join 523,000 Betterists ).
Yesterday’s most clicked link : Weil Gotshal, the 95-year-old law firm behind Lehman and Enron, plans to wind down
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Remembering Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart died Wednesday at 86 , at home in Los Angeles after a brief battle with Alzheimer’s and Lewy body dementia. He played Captain Jean-Luc Picard for seven seasons and four films, and Professor X for 26 years.
Growing up in Yorkshire, he often stepped between his father’s fists and his mother. His father, a Dunkirk veteran, likely had undiagnosed PTSD. Stewart later championed abuse survivors and veterans’ mental health.
Star Trek’s creator doubted a bald Brit could lead the show, and Brent Spiner hung a sign above his dressing room: “Unknown British Shakespearean Actor.” He returns as Professor X one last time in December’s Avengers: Doomsday .
▲ See the 25 best Next Generation episodes | Read his memoir, Making It So
Biggest Crypto Heist
Hackers pulled about $6.3 billion out of Binance on Thursday, the largest crypto theft on record and about four times Bybit’s $1.5 billion in 2025. The world’s biggest crypto exchange paused withdrawals and says it will cover all losses.
The way in, Binance says: one engineer’s compromised laptop. Trackers say the money left in about 20 minutes across ten blockchains , and stablecoin issuers have since frozen billions of it .
Binance expects to restart withdrawals within 48 hours. Worth knowing: unlike a bank account, money parked on a crypto exchange isn’t federally insured, so the exchange’s own reserves are the backstop. Here’s what we know so far (w/video).
Haunting for Good
More than 600 households are turning their Halloween yards into fundraisers for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Skeletons for St. Jude has raised over $1.1 million since 2020 and is aiming for $2 million this year.
It started when a retired Army vet in North Carolina watched a toddler with cancer laugh at his skeletons . Now one Michigan yard packs more than 40 animatronics , and a California lawn has a 12-foot flaming skeleton.
Many displays stay up through Christmas, with a donation jar out front. Find a haunt near you on the group’s map, which listed 202 homes a week before Halloween, out of 625 signed up.
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The 5-Minute Horror Short to Watch Tonight
Curry Barker shot Obsession in 20 days for $750,000. It has grossed more than $500 million , the most ever for a film bought at a festival.
On Thursday, he went back to where he started and dropped a new short on YouTube. “Mama Bear” (w/video) runs five minutes: a young house cleaner takes a frantic phone call, and it spirals from there. Next up: Anything But Ghosts , with Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard.
Bonus: Pauly Shore’s 14-minute horror short, Remain Calm (w/video), has more than 9 million views. The one rule: feel anxious, and the monster can see you.
Also, don’t miss tomorrow’s Saturday edition. It’s all Halloween, from a witches’ brew to the night the holiday almost got banned.
7 High-Protein Crockpot Meals to Double and Freeze
42% of readers who voted cook most nights at their house (and 12% said DoorDash) . Either way, let the crockpot do the work: make a double batch, eat half and freeze the rest. Each of these has 30g of protein or more per serving.
- Creamy gouda chicken pasta : 66g
- Honey hog pepper beef mac : 53g
- BBQ beef protein pasta : 49g
- Steak, rice, and fire corn bowl : 59g
- White chicken chili : 41g
- Turkey white bean pumpkin chili : 32g
- Chicken enchilada soup : 30g
Freeze single portions flat in quart bags, and move one to the fridge the night before.
TRENDING
5 Stories
▲ Clocks fall back an hour at 2 a.m. Sunday, and sunsets arrive about an hour earlier | Could Congress end the switch for good
▲ Bodum recalled 5.9 million French presses sold since 1974 after glass carafes broke and burned 48 people | The fix: stop stirring with metal spoons
▲ Iran says four oil tankers hit naval mines in and near the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday | A UK monitor reported a ship burning off Oman
▲ US officials believe a Chinese executive close to Nvidia’s Jensen Huang passed business information to Beijing | Nvidia’s $36 billion bet on AI cloud firms
▲ DoorDash agreed to buy Instacart for $17 billion, and members would pay one fee instead of two | The $65-a-share terms, closing as late as 2028
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Fun Links
The blood test that saved Ben Stiller [ Blog ]
Cities with the steepest delivery markups [ Map ]
Weight loss plan that scans for muscle loss [ Partner* ]
Chris Pratt is in the new Jocko Willink movie [ Trailer ]
Jimmy John's Picklewich is back, with plushies [ Article ]
Site that lets strangers fill empty wedding seats [ Video ]
Hear the War of the Worlds broadcast, 88 years on [ Audio ]
Why 1% Better? Most self-improvement swings between burning out and rusting out. 1% Better is the antidote. In five minutes each morning, we help you get smarter about the news, your health and your money, with small tips you can use to get a little better every day.