Around this time last year we warned everyone to get a jump on their holiday shopping before stores ran out of things you could buy. Supply chain bottlenecks were the hottest trend around, and logistics snarls even forced some of retail’s biggest players to charter their own ships to keep shelves stocked.

But a year can make a big difference, and now…retailers are facing the exact opposite problem: they have too much stuff to sell.

And what happens when stores have excess inventory? Sales. Big ones. Cue “Black Friday” in October. Target and Walmart are among the chains that have all already started their holiday promotions, and Amazon’s second Prime Day starts today.

• Discounts will hit record highs this holiday shopping season for electronics, toys, and computers, according to Adobe Analytics.
• Adobe also predicts that the early deals will push consumers to shop sooner, cutting into how much business retailers can expect to see on the real Black Friday and Cyber Monday, even though the steepest price drops are still likely to come in late November.

How’d we get here?

Since most things we buy arrive on cargo ships from overseas, orders are made months in advance. Stores and brands over-ordered product based on the demand they were seeing when shoppers were flush with stimulus checks, still not really spending on going out and traveling, and not yet facing inflation-induced sticker shock (Nike, for example, recently said its North American inventories were up 65%, but sales didn’t match). Now they’ve got to hold garage sales to get rid of the glut.

Bottom line: What’s a relief for inflation-weary shoppers is likely to be stressful for retailers. Analysts from Morgan Stanley are predicting that to avoid being saddled with too much merchandise they can’t unload, retailers could get stuck in a race to the bottom on prices that will eat into their profits.—AR

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The US will provide Ukraine with air defense systems. Following Russian missile attacks on multiple Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, that killed at least 14 and took out power in several places, President Biden pledged to help Ukraine out with advanced air defense systems. The strikes—the most widespread in months and targeted at civilian areas—drew strong condemnations from both the US and the UN. India and China, which have mostly refrained from criticizing Russia’s invasion, called for de-escalation.

Los Angeles City Hall in turmoil over leaked racist comments. Nury Martinez, the Los Angeles City Council’s president, stepped down from her leadership role yesterday after a recording leaked of her making racist remarks about another councilmember’s child in October 2021. But Martinez still hasn’t given up her seat on the council, and a growing number of LA politicians, including Mayor Eric Garcetti, are calling on her—and the other councilmembers she was with while making those offensive comments—to resign.

Here’s how everyone learned airports have websites. The websites of 14 US airports, including Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson and Los Angeles’s LAX, were briefly offline yesterday morning thanks to a Russian-speaking hacker group. Known as Killnet, they’ve been targeting NATO countries since Russia invaded Ukraine and have claimed responsibility for recent cyberattacks on local government websites. The attacks didn’t appear to disrupt actual air travel, so they didn’t impact passengers, except that one guy who loves “About Us” pages.

Developing a stockpile of excuses for why you can’t turn on your Zoom camera is a key stage in every remote worker’s life. A Dutch court understands that, and recently ruled in favor of a former employee of a US company for wrongful termination involving webcam monitoring, and suggested such surveillance is a human rights violation.

The employee, working remotely from the Netherlands for Florida-based software company Chetu, was ordered to keep his webcam on for an entire workday for training. Already sharing his screen, he refused, claiming that nine hours of on-camera monitoring was an invasion of his privacy.

After being fired for insubordination, the employee took Chetu to court, where a Dutch judge ultimately ruled in his favor and ordered the company to pay him ~$73,000.

Zoom out: It’s not the first time a European country has moved to protect remote workers. The case calls to mind a 2021 decision by Portugal’s parliament to outlaw texts from employers after work. For workers based in the US, though, where at-will employment reigns supreme (meaning employers can fire workers at any time for any reason), the webcam case would likely have gone differently.—MK

Apple’s new iPhone 14 and Apple Watch models, which have a function called “crash detection,” have been mistakenly calling 911 over roller coaster rides and other noncollisions, according to the Wall Street Journal.

How is this happening? All the makings of a good coaster—like quick deceleration and abrupt stops—can trigger the devices’ sensors. If your phone thinks you were in a car wreck, it deploys a warning on your screen with a 10-second countdown before automatically alerting 911 and sending your location.

The ability to detect serious crashes was a big selling point for the new devices, and it has proven vital in actual crashes. But the accidental calls to first responders waste resources.

The Warren County Communications Center in Ohio has received six calls already from iPhones on rides at Kings Island since September, when the iPhone 14 was released.

It’s not just prank calling first responders: One motorcyclist’s new phone alerted his emergency contacts (his mother and girlfriend) that he had been in a crash after it flew off his handlebars onto the highway.—MM

Stat: Around 15 million colonoscopies are performed in the US yearly as part of standard preventive care for adults over 45, but a new study has called into question whether all the footage from those tiny cameras is really necessary. Over a 10-year period, people who had the screenings were 18% less likely to develop colon cancer than people who didn’t, according to the study in the New England Journal of Medicine. However, the risk of death from the cancer for both the screened and unscreened was about the same, hovering around 0.3%.

Quote: “These are very, very serious things…and they’re likely to put the US in some kind of recession six to nine months from now.”

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon issued a warning for both the US and the global economy yesterday, predicting that a recession could arrive by the middle of 2023. Dimon pointed to runaway inflation, high interest rates, quantitative tightening, and fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the most worrying indicators. He also said that the S&P 500 could still fall by “another easy 20%,” with the bleak forecast that “the next 20% would be much more painful than the first.”

Read: How California’s bullet train went off the rails. (The New York Times)

Planning a road trip? Make time for the weirdest roadside attraction in every state.

Pizza from a vending machine: Follow one drunken reporter’s quest to find out just how bad it can be (it was bad).

The physics of Top Gun: Neil deGrasse Tyson is not impressed.

London, 1942: A serial killer brutally murders “good time girls.” Historian Hallie Rubenhold’s podcast, Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper, examines why the war years proved so perilous for women who led independent lives. Listen now.

Brew Mini: “Juice box brand” (three letters) is your sample clue for today’s Mini. Play it here.

Guess the logo

A North American professional sports franchise is repped by this logo. Can you name it?

️ Finally, a mug that delivers a caffeine kick and spreadsheet efficiency. Shop the Excel Mug to excelerate your workflow like never before.

On Business Casual, Nora speaks with entrepreneur and investor Jesse Pujji, the founder and CEO of Kahani and the founder of Gateway X, about growth marketing strategies, building a successful DTC business, and the future of e-commerce. Listen now.

Have you heard? Marketing Brew is hosting a must-attend event for the modern marketer in the heart of NYC. It’s called The Brief and it’s all going down on November 15.