👋 Hello there,
Welcome to another edition of the Stellar Recap, a weekly newsletter where I share interesting content you may have missed over the week. This issue features 57 bullets.
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📊 Business, Economics & Personal Finance
Donald Trump unveiled a new sneaker line called “Never Surrender High-Tops.” The all 1K gold sneakers adorned with a US flag sold out within hours at $399 apiece.
Israel’s GDP contracted by 19.4% on an annualized basis in Q4 2023 (🔒FT). Due to the war, companies were short 300K workers who were conscripted into the military. Consumer spending also fell 27% QoQ.
According to the American Horse Council, the equine industry added $177B to the US economy in 2023, up from $122B in 2017. A survey of horse owners said it costs ~$1.6K/mo. to care for their horses. For those who maintain horses for competitions, the costs rise to as much as $7.9K/mo.
Last year, VC funding fell 70% in Miami (🔒WSJ) and 42% in LA compared to 12% in the Bay Area.
A report by LinkedIn found that ~55% of jobs will be impacted by generative AI. This doesn’t mean all those jobs will be eliminated. “Globally, professionals in Technology, Information, and Media (71%), Retail (71%), Wholesale (68%), Financial Services (66%), and Professional Services (64%) are the most likely to see their roles disrupted or augmented by GAI.”
Nvidia reported that its Q4 earnings increased 22% QoQ and 265% YoY to $22.1B. Net profit surged to $12.3B compared with $1.4B the year before. Most of the rise is attributed to the H100 data center chip (🔒Bloomberg Law) which has a 6-mo. wait list and is critical for AI tech. After its earnings call, Nvidia’s market cap topped $1.7T, surpassing Alphabet and Amazon in <24 hrs. It’s “one of the quickest rises in corporate history.” As of last Fri., ~30% of the S&P 500's gain for the year was attributable to Nvidia.
Job posts in sectors with a high share of remote-eligible roles have declined by 8% from pre-pandemic levels, while demand for in-person sectors remains above pre-pandemic norms. Postings in software development showed the largest decline (-28%) while physicians & surgeons showed the largest increase (102%).
The Biden administration said it would forgive another $1.2B in student loan debt for ~153K borrowers who’ve been making payments for 10+ yrs and originally borrowed $12K or less. To date, a total of $138B in federal student loans has been forgiven.
A new study found that Argentina’s poverty rate hit 57% in Jan. That means ~27M Argentinians are poor and 15% are mired in “destitution,” meaning they cannot adequately cover their food needs.
A new report found that 52% of college grads who get jobs within 1 yr of completing their degrees are underemployed (🔒WSJ). That share only falls to 45% 10 yrs out. Underemployed means that they have a job that doesn’t require a college degree. Some areas of study fare worse than others. For example, 68% of public safety and security grads were underemployed compared to 23% of grads with health-related degrees.
Google paid $350M to settle a lawsuit (🔒Reuters) related to a security flaw in the defunct Google+ platform, after concealing a glitch that exposed user data for years.
95% of full-time livestreamers in China make <$702/mo and many are deep in debt.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund ended 2023 with ~$15B cash on hand (🔒WSJ), down from $50.4B in 2022.
A new survey from Goldman Sachs' One Million Black Women initiative found that ~31% of Black women who work full time also have a part-time job or side hustle, compared with 24% of all US adults. Only ~1 in 2 have retirement savings, compared with ~6 in 10 of all adults.
According to the IRS, US millionaires and billionaires evade $150B+/yr in taxes.
There are currently 392K+ tech job openings in the US and ~178K were added in Jan., according to CompTIA. The increase was driven mostly by the tech services and software development subsector, which added 14.5K jobs.
Car insurance premiums are up 38% since the beginning of 2020 and one reason why is that many parts of the country have stopped enforcing traffic laws, which makes it harder to account for dangerous drivers.
🧘 Health, Healthcare & Safety
A new study of 245 participants aged 65-103 who lived in senior communities showed that 80% reported a more positive attitude after using a VR headset to go on a 7-min. adventure like parachuting out of a plane or visiting North Africa.
The FDA approved a new drug (Xolair) that could help people with milk, egg, and nut allergies experience less severe reactions if exposed — though they should still avoid those foods.
A new study by RAND found that >4 in 10 Americans personally know someone who has died of an overdose and an estimated 12.5M people are currently experiencing a "significant or devastating effect."
Before the pandemic, China supplied >50% of the primates that US scientists use in biomedical research but this has since stopped. Consequently, the average price of a primate has risen from ~$7K pre-pandemic to ~$20K today.
New data from The Trevor Project’s office in Mexico showed that 57% of LGBTQ+ individuals ages 12-17 and 46% of individuals ages 18-24 said they seriously considered suicide in the last year.
A new study suggests ~1 in 3 trans men taking testosterone could still be producing eggs every month even though they usually don’t menstruate.
Jan. is the most lethal month in the US. ~20% more people die in Jan. than in Aug. In general, winter tends to be the deadliest season but the pattern doesn’t emerge until about middle age (🔒WP). The only causes of death that tend to peak in the summer months are suicide, homicide, and accidents.
Ascent Pharmaceuticals has been shut down for months due to an alleged issue with its record keeping. It produced 12% of the US’s supply of generic Adderall in 2022, plus significant amounts of other stimulant medications such as Concerta, Ritalin, and Vyvanse. Consequently, ~600M doses of ADHD meds were missing from the market last year.
74% of US adults said that they’re very or somewhat worried about being able to afford unexpected medical bills for themselves and their family. ~Half of voters said health care costs are a major reason for their negative view of the economy, though bigger factors were everyday expenses, inflation, and housing costs.
New research showed that 1 in 4 Americans have higher than recommended levels of niacin, an essential B vitamin. Excessive amounts of niacin may raise the risk of heart disease. Niacin is found in many foods, including meat, fish, nuts, and fortified cereals and breads.
The rate of firearm deaths among Black children doubled from 6 per 100K to 12.2 per 100K between 2018 and 2022, and is now 6x the rate of that for white children. In 2022, Black children made up 14% of the country's youth population but ~half of all firearm deaths among kids.
🎓 Lifelong Learning
Interesting facts about the belly button (~3 min. video).
🌴 Lifestyle & Travel
Delta Air Lines is offering a special flight from Austin to Detroit on Apr. 8, 2024 to give eclipse chasers the best chance of viewing the total solar eclipse from the sky. By the time you read this newsletter, the seats will likely have sold out. As of Feb. 21, main Cabin tickets cost $749 and Comfort+ was $859. First and Basic Economy tickets were sold out.
A new report estimated that global bag fee revenue for US airlines was >$33B last year (🔒Bloomberg), up 15% from 2022.
400 US national parks reported a total of 325.5M visits in 2023, an increase of 13M or 4% over 2022. 20 parks broke visitation records. Blue Ridge Parkway was the most popular park with 16.75M visits.
🗳️ Politics, Security & International Affairs
A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge, and The League. The plaintiffs claim that “Match benefits from users who are unable to self-regulate and disengage.”
An international operation led by the FBI and the UK’s National Crime Agency took down a ransomware group called LockBit which has caused billions of dollars in damages by forcing its victims to pay ransoms to decrypt malicious software.
Survey data released by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed that 70% of Ukrainians said shortly after the beginning of the war that their country was moving in the right direction. That share has fallen to 44%.
Oil company Buzachi Neft was fined ~$780K by Kazakh authorities for its role in one of the worst methane leaks in recorded history, which bore an environmental impact akin to 717K+ gas-powered cars being driven around for a year. In the US, the penalty would’ve topped $114M.
⏩ Pop Culture, Art, Sports & Entertainment
2 Colorado high school seniors became the 1st students to receive scholarships to play Division I cornhole for Winthrop University.
Last weekend, the Bob Marley biopic Bob Marley: One Love made $52M domestically and $29M abroad. The movie cost ~$70M to make.
Beyoncé became the 1st Black woman to hold the #1 spot on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart with her single “Texas Hold ’Em.”
🏡 Real Estate
According to Redfin, new listings rose 10% YoY during the 4 weeks ending Feb. 18, the biggest increase in 2 mo. The median sale price rose to ~$364.8K, up 5.8% YoY, the biggest increase since Oct. 2022.
The amount of farmland bought by investment firms has jumped 231% from 2008 to the middle of last year. Investors owned $16.6B worth of farmland at the end of 2023, up $9.2B from 2020. According to new Census data, the US lost ~141.7K farms and 20.1M agricultural acres from 2017-2022. For the 1st time, there are <2M farms.
50+ major cities nationwide have ditched parking mandates, allowing developers to decide how much parking is enough. A single parking spot can cost between $5K-$150K to construct.
🌎 Society
Tinder data showed that >40% of Gen Zers are open to or seeking non-monogamous relationships (🔒WP).
According to estimates from Ethnologue, a research center for language intelligence, ~1.46B people speak English around the world, of which ~380M are native speakers.
Among US adults ages 18-34, 69% of those who have never been married say they want to get married one day. 51% of those who are not parents say they would like to have children one day. A greater share of men said they’d like to be parents than women (57% vs. 45%).
<1% of researchers who were awarded 3+ NIH grants were Black compared with 73.4% of white men.
🧪 Science, Climate, Environment & Technology
A stingray at the Aquarium and Shark Lab in North Carolina is pregnant, but she hasn’t shared a tank with a male of her species in at least 8 yrs.
NASA is looking for paid volunteers to live in its Mars simulation for 1 year, starting in 2025. Applicants must be US citizens aged 30-55, speak English proficiently, and have a master’s degree in a STEM field + 2 yrs of professional experience and 1K+ hrs piloting an aircraft or 2 yrs of work toward a STEM PhD.
New data from an NIH-funded project called All of Us has documented 275M+ new human DNA variants collected from whole genome sequences of ~250K participants, half of whom are from non-European ancestry.
A new report from plagiarism detector Copyleaks found that 60% of OpenAI's GPT-3.5 outputs contained some form of plagiarism.
New findings suggest that the decimal point was invented in the 1440s, which is ~150 yrs earlier than previously thought.
A private US company called Intuitive Machines successfully landed a spacecraft on the moon on Feb. 22, marking a historic accomplishment. The laser rangefinders malfunctioned and mission engineers had to use a secondary laser to guide its descent. The condition of the spacecraft is not yet known.
Chemship, a Netherlands-based shipping company, launched the world’s 1st chemical tanker that has wind-assisted propulsion.
480+ temperature records were broken in Japan last week, with monthly records broken by >10.8°F in some cases. It was the most extreme event in 150 yrs of Japanese climatic history.
R. Frank Nims Middle School in Tallahassee, FL, is investing >$500K in an esports lab which will include a 100-inch flat-screen TV, computers, two PlayStation 5 consoles, and ~$50k worth of gamer chairs. Yes, this will be partly financed by FL taxpayers.
Wishing you a good week
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