👋 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 79 bullets.
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📊 Business, Economics & Personal Finance
A report by the IMF estimated that AI will affect ~40% of all jobs. The managing director of the IMF said, "in most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality."
The Justice Department charged multiple eBay executives (🔒NYT) with stalking, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice in a harassment campaign against a couple that own a blog called EcommerceBytes. Forms of harassment included threatening direct messages over Twitter; attempts to install a GPS device on their car; posting ads for fictitious sexual events at their house; and sending anonymous items like a bloody pig’s mask.
The Federal Reserve reported a $117B deficit last year due to interest rate hikes which increased its own interest expenses from $102B in 2022 to $281B in 2023.
Since Jan. 1, tech companies have laid off 9.5K+ workers, according to data from layoffs.fyi. Amazon announced 9K layoffs last Mon.
A new report suggests that YouTube is making millions of dollars a year from advertising on climate change denial content (🔒Reuters).
The 5 richest people in the world have more than doubled their collective wealth from $405B to $869B between Mar. 2020 and Nov. 2023, while ~5B people in the world have become poorer. If this trend continues, the world will see its 1st trillionaire within the next 10 yrs.
In Dec. 2023, 457K business applications were filed in the US. That’s 143K more than the same time in 2019 and up 7.4% YoY. Colorado saw the biggest YoY change (+115%) while Georgia saw the biggest decline in growth (-10%).
An analysis of 25 key indicators by WalletHub found that Utah is the best state to start a business in 2024.
S&P 500 companies spent $65M on private corporate jets for its execs in 2022 (🔒WSJ), up 50% from prepandemic levels. Meta alone spent $6.6M on personal flights for Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, up 55% from before the pandemic.
The S&P 500 reached a new record high last Fri. The last record was set Jan. 3, 2022.
From 2013 to 2022, Americans were ripped off to the tune of $27B by scammers. Walmart’s financial services were used in ~$1B worth of those frauds.
The US is currently producing more oil than any country has ever produced in the history of the world—13M barrels per day. Meanwhile, OPEC+ has seen its global market share drop to 48%, which is its lowest share since it grew to 10 members.
Counterfeiters are creating dysfunctional versions of board games and listing them on sites like Amazon, Google Shopping, and eBay.
71% of all Asian restaurants in the US serve the food of just 3 Asian-origin groups: Chinese, Japanese, and Thai. These groups comprise 33% of the US Asian population.
Managers at Walmart will see an average salary boost of 9% to $128K this year. People earning the lowest salary ($65K) will be boosted up to $90K. Max bonuses will also increase from 150% of their base pay to 200%.
~$1 in every $7 of US deposits is stored or managed by a JP Morgan bank. JPM made ~$50B in profit in 2023.
🧘 Health, Healthcare & Safety
Researchers created an app, called MindEar, that provides Cognitive Behavioral Therapy through a chatbot with other approaches such as sound therapy to treat people with tinnitus (the perception of sounds that are not the result of an external source).
A new study of workplace wellness programs suggests that most offerings have no effect on workers. Trainings on resilience and stress management even appeared to have a negative effect. The only programs that appear to have a positive effect on wellbeing were opportunities to do charity and volunteer work (🔒NYT).
New cancer diagnoses in the US are expected to top 2M for the first time in 2024, driven in large part by an alarming increase in cancers among people younger than age 50.
During the first 2 yrs of the pandemic, stimulant prescriptions rose by 14% in the US to 5.9M new scripts.
Data from ~1M Medicare prescribers showed that just 13.1K were responsible for 45% of all topical antifungal prescriptions written in 2021. Overprescribing this treatment can potentially undermine their future efficacy for all of us.
The largest controlled trial to date on a popular breathing technique for relaxation found that it may not be any more effective than a placebo in reducing stress or improving mental health.
A new study found that the average share of a person’s life that is spent in good health declined from 85.8% to 83.6% in the past 30 yrs (🔒WSJ).
Data from a new clinical trial suggested that a drug called simnotrelvir speeds up recovery from mild to moderate Covid by ~1.5 days. Study participants were mostly young so it’s unclear whether it will reduce the risk of hospitalization and death among more vulnerable patients.
A new study estimated that families with workplace health insurance have spent an average of $125.3K in premiums over the past 30 yrs. In 1988, health care premiums on average accounted for 7.9% of a worker's total compensation, which includes wages and premiums. By 2019, that had increased to an average of 17.7%.
There’s a growing movement to circumvent onerous requirements of licensure to help people in need of therapists amid a critical shortage of mental health providers.
Cape Verde became the 4th country in Africa to eliminate malaria. No cases have been recorded since 2017.
The FHA is phasing out funny messages on freeway signs because they "might be misunderstood" or "require greater time to understand” which may confuse or distract drivers.
Pharmaceutical companies raised the list prices of 775 brand-name drugs in the US (🔒WSJ) by a median of 4.5% during the first half of Jan.
Using AlphaFold, researchers identified hundreds of thousands of potentially new psychedelic molecules that be used to develop antidepressants.
Data collected between Feb. - Jun. 2022 from Apple Watches showed that the average US adult got <6.5 hrs. of sleep a night. Data from all 50 states suggested that more than 60% of adults sleep less than 7 hrs per night.
🎓 Lifelong Learning
Maps that show where the world’s rivers empty into.
How to be more photogenic (🔒WP). Tips include 1) avoiding using the front-facing camera, 2) introducing soft (natural) lighting, 3) moving around until you find the right angle, and 4) using a camera other than the one on a smartphone because it can distort faces especially when they’re near the corners of the frame.
The level of solar activity over the next couple of years is expected to be the biggest it’s been since 2003 (🔒WP) which means that aurora sightings may be visible in lower-than-usual latitudes.
🌴 Lifestyle & Travel
For ~$2B+, you can become the proud owner of a Migaloo M5, which is a 541-ft-long submersible yacht that can accommodate up to 20 passengers and 40 crew members and dive to a depth of 820 ft and stay submerged for 4 wks.
Visitors to Mount Rainier National Park must make reservations (which cost $2) if they plan to drive to the Paradise Corridor through Nisqually or Stevens Canyon entrances between May 24 - Sep. 2 from 7am - 3pm. Reservations will be required to enter the Sunrise Corridor at the White River Entrance starting Jul. 3 - Sep. 2 from 7am - 3pm.
The biggest travel trends to expect in 2024, according to Conde Nest Traveler.
🗳️ Politics, Security & International Affairs
In 2023, Ecuador’s navy seized ~25 tons of cocaine around the Galápagos (🔒WP), which was a 150% surge from 2022. In 2019, the Navy seized 1 ton.
Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses, with 51% of Republican votes and a record 30-point lead over the next most popular candidate Ron DeSantis. Nikki Haley and her allied super PAC spent ~$28M on broadcast ads in Iowa while DeSantis and his allies spent $25M. Trump and his super PAC spent only $15M.
The WHO is seeking $1.5B in emergency funds to tackle 40+ humanitarian crises, from the war in Gaza to a resurgence in cholera.
The number of pirate attacks on the high seas has fallen worldwide from 2006 to 2022. Piracy costs the global economy ~$25B/yr. Most of it is the work of small, opportunistic groups operating in just a few hotspots around the globe.
The Space Force can start allowing some of its ~9K Guardians to work part-time, thanks to a new law.
Farmers clogged Berlin streets with their tractors last Mon., honking their horns in protest at a plan to scrap tax breaks on the diesel they use.
Microsoft said state-backed Russian hackers accessed its email systems and entered the accounts of executives and legal and cybersecurity staff.
⏩ Pop Culture, Art, Sports & Entertainment
The 2023 Emmy Award winners for shows that were aired from Jun. 2022 to May 2023. Succession swept nearly all major acting awards for drama and the show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, won his 4th Emmy for best drama writing.
Elton John became the 19th person to join the elite list of people to have bagged an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards — aka an Egot.
The Weeknd’s song “Blinding Lights” became the 1st song on Spotify to surpass 4B streams. Despite being 4 yrs old, the song still averages ~2M daily listens, which is worth ~$6K-$8K in royalties per day. Variety estimated that the track has netted $20M from Spotify streams alone.
A 22-yr-old second lieutenant in the US Air Force, Madison Marsh aka Miss Colorado, won the 2024 Miss America Pageant.
Within just 11 days of its release on Netflix, “Society of the Snow” has racked up 51M+ views. It’s hit Netflix’s Top 10 in 93 countries, including in the US.
Oregon State University could face a gap of ~$40M in its annual athletics budget due to the Pac-12’s collapse.
The chairman of English soccer club Newcastle United is facing a $74M lawsuit (🔒The Athletic) for allegedly participating in a harassment campaign against a former Saudi official on behalf of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince in 2021.
The annual rate of adoptions of dalmatians rose 300% during the 10 yrs after the release of Disney’s 101 Dalmatians film.
🏡 Real Estate
Empty-nest baby boomers own 28% of large homes (defined as 3+ bedroom homes) in the US, while millennials with kids own just 14%. Gen Z parents barely make a blip with 0.3%. Empty nesters own the greatest share in Pittsburgh, PA, and the smallest share in Riverside, CA.
60 yrs ago, women couldn't get a credit card or a mortgage without a male cosigner, but the latest data (from 2021) shows that the share of single women eclipses single men. In married households, 43% were headed by women compared to just 8% in 1990.
🌎 Society
A Gallup survey showed that 80% of parents of children aged 3-4 rated their relationship with their children as excellent, compared with only 48% of parents of teenagers aged 13-19.
China’s population fell by 2.1M people to 1.4B in 2023. The fall was partially driven by a Covid surge that pushed the death rate up 6.6% to 11.1M people, which outpaced the birth rate, which dipped 5.7% to 9.02M.
A survey by YouGov showed that at least 50% of Americans rate many aspects of their own life (e.g., healthcare; social relationships) as good or excellent but they were less likely to report positive ratings for people in their local area and the US as a whole.
The ties that bind. “If all of us just called or texted one person today who we thought could use a check in, the world would already be a better place.”
A survey by the Pew showed that 41% of Americans said that they’ve become “more spiritual” throughout their lives while 13% said they’ve become less spiritual.
🧪 Science, Climate, Environment & Technology
~20% of the globe has warmed by >3.6F compared with the late 1800s (🔒WP), before humans started burning fossil fuels on a large scale. ~5% of the planet has warmed >5.4F in an area mostly concentrated around the Arctic.
A new study suggests that the ability to produce silk has evolved at least 6 different times, including in crustaceans.
An analysis of 24 yrs of citations in scientific studies showed that the number of self-citations is falling in most of the 50 countries studied. But in some places, including Colombia, Egypt, and Indonesia, self-citation is rising potentially due to policies that incentivize high citation counts.
Global sales of BMWs rose >7% YoY in 2023 to over 2.25M, making it the world’s top-selling luxury car
Colorado cut mountain lion hunting season a month short after 198 lions were killed, of which 44% were female - posing a risk to breeding-age cubs.
In a survey of 2.7K AI researchers who had published at top AI conferences, a majority said there was at least a 5% chance that superintelligent AI will destroy humanity.
Apple surpassed Samsung as the leading smartphone brand in 2023. Samsung was #1 since 2010.
An AI tool called AlphaGeometry correctly solved 25 out of 30 geometry problems from the International Mathematical Olympiad between 2000-2022. The IMO is considered the world’s most prestigious math competition for high school students.
Helium is an essential material for research and medical equipment but it’s nonrenewable and difficult to recycle.
Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute are moving to retract a paper and correct others amid a broad investigation into data manipulation. DFCI is one of the US’s largest cancer research and treatment centers.
A new study looked at 856 tetrapods (4-limbed creatures) that haven’t been sighted for 10+ yrs and estimated that ~25% are probably extinct.
The world is using ~50B metric tons of sand per year. At this rate, we’re projected to run out of construction-grade sand by 2050 and the shortage is fueling ~$200B-$350B/yr in illegal markets.
An analysis of browsing data from 709 volunteers over the last 3 yrs showed that ~186.9K different companies sent data to Facebook about them. The average participant had 2.2K+ different companies share data with Facebook about them.
There are currently ~1.7M launch plans filed with the US International Telecommunication Union (🔒Nikkei). SpaceX alone plans to launch 42K satellites within the next couple of years.
New findings suggest that scientists may have underestimated the amount of melting that’s been occurring in Greenland’s ice sheets since 1985 by as much as 20%. The study estimated that Greenland is losing 30M tonnes of ice an hour.
Solar and wind energy in southeast Asian countries increased by 20% in 2023. Vietnam is leading the way, with 2x+ the solar and wind capacity of all other southeast Asian nations combined.
Japan’s lunar robot explorer “Moon Sniper” landed on the moon last Fri., making Japan the 5th country to touch down there after the US, the Soviet Union (now Russia), China, and India, respectively.
Wishing you a good week
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