Stellar Recap | Jul 14-20
21 JULY 2024
👋 Hello there,
Welcome to another edition of the Stellar Recap, a weekly newsletter where I share interesting content you may have missed. This issue features 67 bullets.
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📊 Business, Economics & Personal Finance
The USPS increased the price of first class letter stamps to $0.73 each. It’s the 2nd price increase this year and the 5th in 24 mo.
Americans wrote ~3.4B checks in 2022 compared with ~19B in 1990. However, the average size of a check rose from $673 (~$1.6K in today’s dollars) to $2,652.
The economics of a martini at 5 top bars in the US.
Adobe Analytics predicted that consumers would spend $7.1B on day 1 of Amazon’s Prime Day and $6.9B on day 2 of the sale. Those predictions were pretty good. US consumers spent $14.2B over the 2-day event.
The average price of 10 popular menu items at fast food chains has increased by 63% since 2014. McDonald’s saw the largest increase at 100%.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is the #1 company that US teens aspire to work for, according to a survey by the National Society for High School Scholars.
After all of its operating costs are accounted for, Match Group’s operating margin was 21.5% ($185M) in Q1.
Billionaire Ken Griffin bought a stegosaurus skeleton at a Sotheby’s auction for $44.6M, which is the highest price ever paid for a fossil. The anticipated sale price was $4M-$6M.
A Bankrate/YouGov poll found that ~1 in 3 US adults are taking on a 2nd job to pay bills and fund discretionary extras.
🧘 Health, Healthcare & Safety
A new study found that changes in financial behavior are linked to dementia diagnoses. The study showed that in the 4 yrs leading up to a diagnosis, people who are generally careful with their money may start to miss payments, overspend on random purchases, make double withdrawals, and accrue debt.
A new study found that an imbalance of T-cells is associated with lupus. Other disease experts cautioned that more research is needed to determine whether this is the primary cause of the autoimmune disorder.
New CDC data showed that Covid cases are growing or likely growing in 45 states and territories. 70%+ of infections are from KP variants which are descendants of the highly contagious JN.1 strain. Covid-related ER visits increased 23.5% week over week on Jul. 6.
A new study found that ~1 in 4 US adults with anxiety and depression said they couldn’t pay their medical bills in 2022 and medical debt was associated with foregone healthcare.
Turkiye has become an attractive destination for US men seeking cosmetic procedures for receding hairlines. On average, hair transplants cost $7.5K-$15K in the US but only $3.5K-$8K in Turkiye. In total, 1.5M+ medical tourists went to Turkiye in 2023 and spent ~$3B.
A new study found that genetically engineered mice that can’t produce the inflammation-boosting protein IL-11 live 25% longer than mice that can produce the protein. IL-11 also exists in humans.
🎓 Lifelong Learning
How the NYT/Siena College Poll is conducted (🔒NYT). The process includes 15 min. live interviews with ~1K respondents mostly by cellphone (90%) but also through landlines. <2% of people respond to calls. Polls about the upcoming presidential race focused on callers in only AZ, GA, MI, NV, PA, and WI because those states “are likeliest to decide the outcome of the race.” They survey 1K respondents because the margin of error (3-4 % pts) doesn’t improve substantially by increasing the number of respondents.
A timeline of the 7 assassination attempts against US presidents.
100 yrs of sex testing in sports (38 min. podcast).
How to select the best watermelon, according to the Groceries Editor at The Kitchn.
How to write about zero and are your emails accidentally rude? (17.5 min. podcast & transcript)
25 fascinating facts about Mexico.
“You can fit 30 European countries in Mexico and still have room to spare.”
🌴 Lifestyle & Travel
Svalinn dogs are bred to be protective but cuddly family dogs. They cost $150K+ each and only ~20 are sold each year. There are currently ~350 in the world.
The European Travel Commission projected that tourists will spend €800B in Europe this year (🔒Bloomberg), up 37% from pre-pandemic levels.
Extreme weather events delayed Amtrak trains 4K+ hrs in the 2023 fiscal year (Oct. 2022 - Sep. 2023; 🔒NYT). That was the highest number of weather-related delays in at least 20 yrs.
🗳️ Politics, Security & International Affairs
A couple of billionaires endorsed Donald Trump after he was shot in an assassination attempt last weekend (see a visual timeline of the shooting here.). One of those billionaires, Elon Musk, pledged to give $45M/mo to a new super PAC backing Trump. A couple of billionaires are bankrolling JD Vance, Trump’s new VP pick.
The EPA spends $90M on its headquarters in DC, which accounts for 40% of its total leasing budget. In 2023, 17 of 24 federal agencies used 25% or less of their office space.
The personal info of as many as 1 in 3 Americans may have been compromised in the Change Healthcare cyberattack a few months ago. Some of which is purportedly being trafficked on the dark web and could enable identity theft and tax, insurance, and mortgage fraud but no one has been notified if they’ve been affected. UnitedHealth estimated that the costs from the cyberattack could reach $2.3B-$2.45B.
CDK Global, which makes software for auto dealerships, appears to have ended their hack by paying a $25M ransom. Sources said that CDK paid ~387 bitcoin to a cryptocurrency account controlled by hackers affiliated with a type of ransomware called BlackSuit on Jun 21. A week later, the software platform was up and running again.
Reuters explored famine around the world through the lens of starving children in Gaza.
A purported hacker group called NullBulge published 1.1TB of data it claimed to have stolen from Disney’s internal Slack channels (🔒WSJ), which included info about unreleased projects.
The Cyberspace Administration of China is requiring that all companies developing AI must prepare 20K-70K questions designed to test whether the models produce safe answers. Companies must also submit a data set of 5K-10K questions that the model will decline to answer - of which ~50% relate to political ideology and criticism of the Communist Party.
The latest poll by the NYT/Siena College showed VP Kamala Harris has a ~2 pt lead over Biden (🔒) but her favorability ratings are low among some demographic groups in a few key battleground states like PA and VA.
Trader Joe’s Everything but the Bagel seasoning has been banned in South Korea since 2022 (🔒NYT) but people are sneaking it in as contraband. It’s banned because it contains poppy seeds which are considered a narcotic.
The top UN court said on Fri. that Israel’s 57-yr occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is 'unlawful' and called on Israel to cease its presence in the occupied territories, including dismantling Israel settlements there and paying reparations.
Donald Trump’s presidential nomination acceptance speech was 92 min., which is the longest recorded speech in history.
⏩ Pop Culture, Art, Sports & Entertainment
Based on 70K+ votes from its contributors, ESPN published a list of the top 100 professional athletes since 2000.
Luminate reported that music streaming rose 15% YoY globally in the first 6 mo. of 2024 to 2.29T. Latin music saw the greatest increase at 0.51 % pts while R&B and hip hop saw the largest decline at 1.81 % pts.
The 90-sec trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6) topped 200M views on YouTube. For comparison, the trailer for Barbie has ~85M views and Oppenheimer has ~71M views as of this writing. In 2023, the video game industry made $6 for every $1 spent at the box office.
The watch time of the movie adaptation of J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy on Netflix jumped 1,179% from 1.5M min. last Sun. to 19.2M min. one day later.
TV journalist Willow Bay and her husband, Disney CEO Bob Iger, finalized a deal to buy the women’s soccer team in LA for $250M, making it the most valuable women’s sports team in the world.
On-location filming of reality TV in LA fell 57% YoY to 868 total shoot days from Apr-Jun. Reality TV production is down overall 18% YoY.
FX’s The Bear received 23 Emmy nominations, which is the most for a comedy series. The previous record was held by 30 Rock with 22 nominations. Game of Thrones holds the overall record for nominations with 32.
The 100 best album covers of all time, according to Rolling Stone.
🏡 Real Estate
Some estimates show that as many as 20% of loans on apartment properties in the US are at risk of default (🔒NYT). This is unlikely given that only ~1.7% of multifamily loans are 30+ days delinquent but we could see a bump in delinquencies when ~$250B worth of multifamily loans are due later this year.
Hawaii has the highest “hidden” costs associated with homeownership at ~$29K, up from ~$21K in 2020.
Calabash, NC is the most affordable beach town for retirees, according to Realtor.com.
~25% of renter households in America spend 50%+ of their income on housing (🔒WSJ), according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
The average sale price of a single-family property in Palm Beach, FL hit a record $28.6M in Q2, up 68% YoY.
🌎 Society
~33% of the 309K public swimming pools in the US are closed as of 2023 (🔒The Texas Tribune) due to low staffing.
America’s top HR association, SHRM, removed “equity” from its IE&D language (🔒WSJ) because it implies seeking a level playing field for workers. Instead, SHRM means to imply that no group of workers should appear to get preferential treatment.
47% of all teen births globally occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2020. By 2023, 67% of teen births are projected to occur there.
~2.1K+ public schools in 25 states have adopted a 4-day school week, for reasons such as teacher recruitment, cost-cutting, and boosting student attendance. Research on student outcomes in 6 states shows that students on a 4-day schedule learn less during the school year than students on a 5-day schedule. However, students in rural areas fared better on a 4-day schedule than students in non-rural areas.
48% of US adults said they are more likely to answer a stranger at their front door vs 35% who said they would ignore them. Older adults are more likely to answer a stranger at their front door than younger adults.
200+ plants, fungi, and algae species will be renamed because their current names contain the word “caffra,” which is a racial slur used against Black people and others mostly in southern Africa.
🧪 Science, Climate, Environment & Technology
68 wildfires have consumed ~700K+ acres in the US in Jul. The largest fires are burning in Alaska, California, and Oregon. The number of wildfires is down 22% YoY.
Researchers with Project Ceti used AI to reveal the “phonetic alphabet” used by sperm whales which is similar to the different sounds that humans combine to form words.
A new study suggests that the last universal ancestor (LUCA) shared by all living organisms was a microbe that lived ~4.2B yrs ago (🔒Science). That’s only a couple hundred million yrs after Earth formed, suggesting that life emerged and evolved quickly.
Google’s greenhouse gas emissions increased 48% from 2019-2023 and Microsoft’s emissions are up 29% since 2020. The surge was attributed to data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions, particularly due to AI.
Based on temp. data from Jun., a new NOAA report projected a 59.3% odds of 2024 being the hottest year on record, up from 49.8% in May. Berkeley Earth stated that 2024 is likely to be the warmest year on record. Their data showed that the global mean temp in Jun was 2.87 °F ± 0.17 °F above the 1850 to 1900 average.
The New Madrid Seismic Zone, which is in the middle of the US, has consistently seen a 7.0+ earthquake every ~500 yrs for the last 5K yrs. The US Geological Survey estimated a 25%-40% chance of a magnitude 6.0+ earthquake in the next 50 yrs, with a 7% chance that it’s 7.0+. The area encompasses major cities like Memphis and St. Louis and seismic activity there could cost an average of $10B/yr for 100 yrs.
The latest sockeye salmon run between the border of Washington and Oregon has hit a record 740K which is 235% above the 10-yr average. The temps in the streams there are ~83F. Salmon prefer 68F and human intervention may be needed to help these fish reach the streams where they were born.
A network of 25 moored buoys that measure temp, salinity, and pressure in the Indian Ocean, aka RAMA, has only returned 2% of the expected data since the end of 2022, which is 87% less than prepandemic levels. A new cruise aims to bring RAMA’s data collection back to 50% (🔒Science).
34M people live in 65 cities where the built environment can amplify temps by ~8°F+. See the interactive maps here.
Major airlines, medical facilities, businesses, and police forces around the world were disrupted on 7/19 due to a glitch with Microsoft Cloud caused by a software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The outage affected ~38K flights worldwide.
A new study asked 105 humans to provide their funniest responses to a series of prompts and AI-generated answers were deemed funnier by human judges ~70% of the time.
Melting ice sheets are making the Earth spin more slowly because the water from that ice is drawn towards the equator. This “fattening” of the planet slows its spin by ~1 milliseconds per 100 yrs which means that each day is getting slightly longer.
Wishing you a good week
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