Stellar Recap | Feb 26 - Mar 4
👋 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 70 bullets.
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📊 Business, Economics & Personal Finance
The average 401(k) balance was $103.9K at the end of 2022, according to Fidelity.
Americans in their 30s accumulated 27% more debt from late 2019 to late 2022 (🔒WSJ), which was a bigger increase than any other age group and the highest rate of debt accumulation for Americans in their 30s since the Great Recession.
In France, the annual pace of inflation rose 7.2% in Feb., the fastest pace on record.
The number of Americans working part-time rose by 1.2M in Dec. and Jan. (🔒WSJ) Most of that increase—857K workers—was driven by people who worked PT by choice and not because they were unable to find FT work or had their hours cut. Overall, more than 22M part-timers were voluntarily working fewer 35 hrs. as of last month.
Due to a shortage driven by a confluence of weather disasters and geopolitics, onion prices have spiked (🔒Bloomberg) around the world. Prices are up by 719% in Turkey, 139% in Pakistan, 260% in Ukraine, and 125% in Morocco. Consequently, some countries are halting exports to protect their supply.
New research by the Minneapolis Fed showed that older Americans (ages 55+) are working more while younger Americans are working less. Every US age group under 55 is less likely to be working than they were in 2000. More seniors aged 65-69 have a job than teens (32% vs. 31%).
Even the tooth fairy can’t escape inflation. The value of an average lost tooth hit $6.23 in Jan., up from $5.36 a year ago. That's a whopping 379% increase from 1998 when a lost tooth fetched $1.30 on average.
Pilots at Delta Air Lines approved a new contract that will increase their wages by 34% by 2026. According to Indeed, the average Delta pilot earns $159.4K/yr.
Progress in closing the gender pay gap in the US platued 20 yrs. ago. In 2022, working women ages 16+ earned $0.82, on average, for every $1 earned by men compared with $0.80 in 2002. Employed mothers earned about the same as similarly educated women without children and both groups earned less than fathers.
In the US, gasoline cost $3.39/gal. on average in Feb., which was down 6% year over year, but up 2% from Jan.
Inflation in the EU rose at an annual rate of 8.5% in Feb., a decline from 8.6% in Jan. and well below the peak of 10.6% recorded in Oct. This is good news but one concern is that core inflation, which excludes the volatile prices of food and energy, rose to a new record of 5.6%, up from 5.3% in Jan.
Trained guard dogs can cost $55K+ in Los Angeles. Dogs born in 2022 can cost as much as $150K.
36% of Americans surveyed by Bankrate reported having more credit card debt than emergency savings. That figure is up 14% since 2022.
Global freight rates for shipping a box from China to Los Angeles fell to $1,238 last week (🔒WSJ) compared with a rate of $15.6K the same time last year.
Single filers earning $75K/yr. will pay nearly $6K in state income taxes in OR, the most of any US state.
The 10 states where people earning $75K owe the most in state income taxes, based on Tax Foundation calculations. Nonhuman primates used in lab tests during the development of medical products is in short supply (🔒WSJ). Consequently, the cost has risen to about $30K this year, up from about $2.5K prepandemic.
🧘 Health
New findings from a study of 92.1K men and women in the UK suggest that people who engage in moderate or vigorous physical activity in the afternoon (11am - 5pm) are (slightly) more likely to live longer than those who exercise during other times of the day (🔒WP).
The US Energy Dept. concluded (with “low confidence”) that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a lab leak in China. The FBI made the same conclusion, with “moderate confidence",” in 2021. Four other agencies, along with 5 national intelligence panels, still lean toward the likelihood that it was the result of natural transmission. Both sides are missing key evidence. The natural transmission theory needs to collect samples from infected animals, while the lab leak theory needs stronger evidence that a lab in Wuhan had a virus that could have been the precursor to SARS-COV-2.
The CDC is monitoring an increase in people infected with a string of Shigella bacteria, which are highly resistant to available drugs. Shigella infections, known as shigellosis, usually cause diarrhea that can be prolonged and bloody, as well as fever and abdominal cramps. It can spread via person-to-person contact and by contaminated food or water.
A new study suggests that the sweetener erythritol, which is becoming popular in snack foods and low-sugar ice cream substitutes, may increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Note that the link was associational, meaning the researchers did not conduct a randomized controlled study. The sample was also older and had existing health issues.
60% of Americans said they’d be uncomfortable with their provider relying on AI to make decisions regarding their own health care (e.g., diagnoses; recommending treatments).
An independent panel of advisors to the FDA recommended approving both Pfizer’s and GlaxoSmithKline’s RSV vaccines for adults ages 60+ but also flagged concerns about the potential link to a rare nervous system disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome.
Colorectal cancer cases among Americans under age 55 increased from 11% in 1995 to 20% in 2019. About 60% of all new cases were advanced in 2019, compared to 52% in the mid‐2000s and 57% in 1995, before widespread screening.
A report from the World Obesity Federation projected that over half the world’s population will be either overweight or have obesity by 2035 and the economic impact could reach $4.32T annually if current trends continue and policy inertia around the disease remains in place.
Feelings of loneliness may prompt changes in the brain that lead to further isolation. “Circuits in our brain and changes in our behavior can trap us in a catch-22 situation: While we desire connection with others, we view them as unreliable, judgmental and unfriendly. Consequently, we keep our distance, consciously or unconsciously spurning potential opportunities for connections.”
New data from the Governors Highway Safety Association showed that FL is the most dangerous state for pedestrians, with a rate of about 2 deaths per 100K - nearly double the national rate. Overall, in the first half of 2022, pedestrian deaths from being struck by motor vehicles nationwide increased 5% year over year.
Eli Lilly announced that it would cut the cost of its non-branded insulin to $25/mo. and cap out-of-pocket costs for its brand name insulin (Humalog) at $35/mo. Currently, 10mL of Humalog costs $275. Insulin generally costs $10 per dose to produce, and has seen 1,000% price inflation over the past 20 yrs.
🎓 Lifelong Learning
An explanation of what ChatGPT is doing and why it works.
A guide to the USDA Gardening Zones and recommended plants to grow in your region. Note that the zones are changing due to climate change.
Why we tend to feel colder as we get older (5 min. video).
The surprising scientific history behind the monkey bars, which date back to a patent filed on Oct. 23, 1923. Apparently, monkey bars result in more injuries than any other playground structure in the US. Various versions of the apparatus sent half a million children to hospital emergency rooms from 2009 to 2014.
🌴 Lifestyle & Travel
The average rating for entire Airbnb rentals in the US was 4.74 stars in 2022, which was pretty much the same as in 2019. This may be because renters feel “somewhat pressured to not necessarily be forthright” about their experiences. In other words, high reviews may not reflect the actual quality of a rental nor a person’s true experience there (🔒WSJ).
A CA man made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for visiting Disneyland for 2,995 straight days from 2012 to 2020.
With 12.94M visitors, Blue Ridge Parkway was the #1 most visited national park in the US in 2022. Pinnacles National Park was the least visited with just 275K visitors. In total, US national parks logged 312M visitors last year.
The most searched Girl Scout Cookies by state in the past month. FYI, you can order Girl Scout cookies online. Except for maybe the Raspberry Rally cookies since they’re sold out in many places - they’re listed on eBay for as much as $79.99 for a single box.
Based on 30 indicators of happiness (e.g., depression rate; income-growth rate; average leisure time), WalletHub ranked Freemont, CA, as the happiest city in the US, followed by San Jose, CA, and Madison, WI.
Access to the summits and trails for Democrat, Lincoln, and Bross, outside Alma, CO, have been closed off to hikers which saw approx. 30K hikers each year before the closure.
Starting tonight, the lights on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge will go dark indefinitely because many of its 25K lights are broken and “too costly to repair.” The light sculpture on the bridge connecting SF and Oakland was designed by artist Leo Villareal and installed in 2013.
Yosemite National Park is closed until further notice, after a blizzard buried the park in up to 15 ft of snow. Nearly all park roads are also closed in Sequoia and in Kings Canyon, which are just south of Yosemite.
🗳️ Politics, Security & International Affairs
Right-wing extremists committed every ideologically driven mass killing in the US in 2022, with an "unusually high" share perpetrated by white supremacists.
The US Dept. of Labor announced a crackdown on child labor after tracking a 69% increase in illegally employed kids since 2018. In the last fiscal year, 835 US companies employed more than 3.8K children illegally.
One of the last major Covid relief programs — the expansion of SNAP benefits (aka food stamps) — ended last week in 32 states, DC, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands. The expanded program kept about 4.2M or ~8% of Americans out of poverty and reduced poverty rates for children by 14% in Q4 of 2021.
Hackers stole $3.8B worth of cryptocurrency last year, surpassing the $3.3B record in 2021. N. Korean hackers accounted for $1.7B of the total.
Self-help author Marianne Williamson announced that she will run in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary, making her the first Democrat to announce their candidacy.
A majority of countries, including the US, do not offer paid leave to care for sick parents. For context, a 2020 survey by AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving found that nearly 42M adults said they were a caregiver of someone over the age of 50 — typically a parent or a parent-in-law.
A new report by US intelligence agencies concluded that “Havana syndrome,” the strange acoustic sensations that afflicted US government workers abroad, was not caused by an energy weapon or the actions of a foreign adversary (🔒WP).
Key Russian ally, Belarus has lost at least 120K people since 2020. The loss is especially prominent in the IT sector which lost around 20K workers.
800+ girls across 26 schools in Iran have suffered from poison gas attacks over the past 4 mo. The attacks cause nausea, dizziness, and shortness of breaths but, fortunately, there have been no reported deaths.
US legislators passed a bill to overturn a Labor Dept. rule designed to ensure that financial fund managers can consider environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors when making investments. The aim of the bill was not to change the law (since a veto was always certain) but rather to create a 2024 campaign issue.
⏩ Pop Culture, Art, Sports & Entertainment
According to the critics, the best game ever made is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which was created for N64 in 1998.
The most popular film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture is Forrest Gump (1994), with a net favorability of 76%. Among self-identified avid film fans, Titanic (1997) is the most popular at 80%.
Novak Djokovic broke the record for the longest time spent as the #1 player in tennis, reaching 378 wks.
The Atlantic announced its winners of the 2022 World Nature Photography Awards (🔒). The grand prize winner was Jens Cullmann’s image of a crocodile in a mud pool in Zimbabwe.
A survey of 1.3K NFL players showed that the Washington Commanders was ranked as the worst organization, based on its working conditions (e.g., treatment of players’ families; nutrition; training staff; travel accommodations), while the Minnesota Vikings was ranked as the best (🔒WSJ).
🏡 Real Estate
Why don’t more developers build more apartments for families and why are apartments designed the way that they are? (41 min. podcast)
US office occupancy stands at 40%-60% of prepandemic levels (🔒WSJ), varying within that range by month and by city. That compares with a 70%-90% rate in Europe and the Middle East and 80%-110% rate in Asia.
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, which measures home prices across the US, rose 5.8% year over year in Dec. (🔒WSJ), down from a 7.6% annual rate the prior month. The increase was the lowest Dec.-to-Dec. change since 2019.
Less than a year after it sold for almost $40M, the most expensive home ever sold in UT is back on the market — for $50M. The home is ~17.5K sq ft and boasts six bedrooms (each with its own terrace), 11 bathrooms, a bowling alley, an indoor sports court, a golf simulator and a 4-car garage, according to its Zillow listing.
🌎 Society
Fewer Americans are reading news stories related to the war in Ukraine, as the conflict drags on past its 1-year mark.
A recent poll of Americans who moved in 2022 found that the top motivation for moving was to seek a better quality of life (🔒NYT) (e.g., safe neighborhoods; affordability; good school districts; closer proximity to work). 75% of respondents expressed some form of regret about the decision.
Women leaders now run more than 10% of Fortune 500 companies (🔒Fortune), a milestone in the list’s 68-yr. history.
🧪 Science, Climate, Environment & Technology
Long-time Fitbit users are complaining about what they perceive as a recent drop in service quality (e.g., server outages; the end of popular social features).
A new study estimated that wild land and marine mammals have a total biomass of 62M tons, while humans weigh in at 390M tons and domesticated animals (e.g., livestock; pets) weigh in at 630M tons. Dogs alone make up as much biomass as all wild land animals (22M tons) and cows are the dominant species on planet Earth at 420M tons.
The European Space Agency (ESA) called for establishing a new time zone for the moon. A “day” on the moon can last as long as 29.5 Earth days and clocks on the moon run 56 microseconds faster per day than on Earth.
New data suggest that the “triple-dip” La Niña event is waning while the odds of El Niño forming in the tropical Pacific Ocean are increasing. El Niño events release a lot of ocean heat into the atmosphere and could increase the odds for a record warm year in 2024.
SUVs accounted for roughly 46% of global passenger vehicle sales last year and oil consumption of SUVs globally increased by 500K barrels per day, accounting for one-third of the total growth in oil demand. Bigger, heavier vehicles consume about 20% more oil than the average medium-sized non-SUV.
New findings suggest that the influenza virus originated hundreds of millions of years ago in primordial aquatic animals that evolved before the first fishes.
A pair of Boeing engineers recently earned a spot in the Guinness World Records for the farthest flight by a paper aircraft, which flew 88 meters (290 ft). The pair spent up to 500 hrs. using principles of origami and aerodynamics to build different prototypes for this achievement.
A new study suggests that flamingos tend to hang out with members of their flock that share similar personality traits.
Ski resorts are dedicating more resources to creating artificial snow (🔒Bloomberg) as the temp. on slopes are warming and precipitation is declining.
Wishing you a productive week
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