You’ve probably heard of a businessman named Elon Musk, but this year, his name was more unavoidable than Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso.”

He’s no longer just basking in the glow of being the world’s richest person—he’s now a powerful Washington insider. After donating $277 million to Donald Trump and other GOP candidates’ political campaigns while vocally backing MAGA during election season, Musk has become one of the president-elect’s closest confidantes (for now).

Musk is tasked with tightening Uncle Sam’s belt as the co-leader (along with biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy) of the newly formed body called the Department of Government Efficiency.

Making money moves

This month, Musk became the first human in history to amass a net worth surpassing $400 billion. Tesla’s stock, a major source of his wealth, has nearly doubled in value since the presidential election because investors view Musk’s proximity to Trump as a boon. Previously, the Tesla stock price was propelled by strong earnings and the prospect of cheaper cars hitting showrooms soon.

While Musk was busy getting established in Donald Trump’s orbit this year, his companies continued their ascendancy into Earth’s orbit and firmly lodged themselves in the hemispheres of people’s brains:

• SpaceX continued to dominate the space cargo delivery market, winning at least $2.6 billion in new government contracts this year. It also celebrated the first successful test launch of its jumbo rocket, Starship, which might one day ferry astronauts to the moon and Mars.
• Traffic on Starlink’s satellite internet network tripled this year, per Cloudflare.
• Meanwhile, Neuralink implanted custom chips into the brains of its first two trial patients.

In 2025, many expect Musk’s businesses to benefit from him having Trump’s ear on economic policy and corporate regulations.

Runner-up: Interest rate cuts

After two years of hiking interest rates in response to historic inflation, Fed Chair Jay Powell and his central banker crew finally started bringing borrowing costs back to Earth. As annual inflation cooled to below 3% this year from a peak of 9.1% in 2022, the Fed slashed rates three times. And it’s expected to keep cutting in 2025, albeit less aggressively, which could lower mortgage rates, but also savings account yields.

Runner-up: The WNBA popped off

A record 54 million people watched the WNBA in the 2024 season, while game attendance rose almost 50%. The popularity surge was partially driven by the so-called “Caitlin Clark effect”: The Indiana Fever star and Rookie of the Year enthralled fans with her deep 3-point range and masterful passing. She reportedly signed a WNBA-record-shattering $28 million endorsement deal with Nike.—SK

The 2024 Oxford Word of the Year is “brain rot,” defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material…considered to be trivial or unchallenging.”

But enough about Deadpool & Wolverine.

There was a 230% increase between 2023 and 2024 in the use of brain rot, which in its current context is what happens when you endlessly scroll through large quantities of low-level social media content (not ours, obviously). Symptoms of brain rot include constantly thinking about memes, diminished attention spans, and having to explain The Rizzler and Hawk Tuah to friends who are not terminally online.

Brain rot has been around: Henry David Thoreau first used the term in 1854 to zing the people of England and it has evolved into a staple of Gen Z and Gen Alpha vernacular over the past year. Complaints of getting brain rot from staring at a screen are nothing new—critics have said for decades that too much TV will rot your brain, which may not be true.

An honor to be nominated: Brain rot was the winner in a somewhat ironic online vote that could easily meet the definition of trivial, beating out demure, dynamic pricing, lore, romantasy, and slop.

Runners-up: Finishing in second place in our voting was Raygun, the Australian breaker who finished dead last at the Olympics before announcing her retirement from competitions later in the year. Third place went to the Drake-Kendrick Lamar beef, which has the potential to continue well into the New Year.—DL

The gymnastics floor may be springy, but this summer, Simone Biles cemented herself as champion of the world. She took gold in individual all-around at the Paris Olympics and also led Team USA to the top of the podium, marking a triumphant return after a bout of the “twisties” caused her to withdraw from most Tokyo Olympics events in 2021.

In addition to getting her swag back, Biles broke 13 records this summer, including these:

• She’s now the most decorated US Olympic gymnast ever after taking home three gold medals and one silver, bringing her total count to 11.
• At the just-off-your-parents’-insurance age of 27, Biles became the oldest woman to win all-around Olympic gold in gymnastics since 1952.
• She’s America’s first two-time Olympic gold medal winner in both individual all-around and vault (2016 and 2024) and the first to notch those first-place finishes nonconsecutively.
• Biles is one of just 29 Olympic athletes who have won more than 10 medals.

Living up to her bling. After winning her second gold of the Paris Olympics, the GOAT pulled out a goat-shaped necklace encrusted with 546 diamonds.

Looking ahead…Biles hasn’t ruled out competing in the 2028 Los Angeles Games. In the meantime, she’s *checks notes* opening a restaurant called Taste of Gold at the Houston Intercontinental Airport next year.

“Hell Yeah” Award runners-up include the reopening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral five years after a devastating fire, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich’s return to the US after more than a year of Russian imprisonment, and a resurgence for Barnes & Noble.—ML

If you look up, you might be able to see the twinkle of the International Space Station, where US astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are still awaiting their return to Earth.

The two blasted off on June 5 aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, expecting to return a week later to a “Congrats on your successful space mission!” sheet cake. But after they found some leaks in the vehicle’s helium system and identified the failure of some of its thrusters, NASA and Boeing decided to bring the ship home uncrewed on Sept. 6, telling Wilmore and Williams to hold tight. They’re expected to hitch a ride back planetside on a SpaceX capsule in March.

The feeling of missing your exit after a friend offered to drive x10

Boeing has been awarded almost double the amount of money that SpaceX has to develop a space taxi but it has yet to complete a single successful crewed round trip, while SpaceX has completed eight. The fiasco was another embarrassment during a very, very bad year for Boeing.

Runner-up: CrowdStrike outage

On July 19, most of us, for the first time, learned the name of a cybersecurity firm. After pushing a flawed update to its Microsoft customers, CrowdStrike caused the largest IT outage of all time. It delayed tens of thousands of flights, wreaked havoc on banks, and even forced McDonald’s Japan to close nearly a third of its stores for a day. Still confused? Let our TikTok break it down for you.

Runner-up: Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 blowout

The door plug of an Alaska Airlines plane getting blown off mid-flight kicked off 2024. Just 10 minutes after takeoff, a panel (that later was discovered to be missing bolts) was ripped from the aircraft. All passengers (and even an iPhone that fell 16,000+ feet) survived, but the incident incited an avalanche of regulatory pressure on the airline and Boeing.—MM