Stellar Recap | Jul 23-29
Discover more from Stellar Recap
👋 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 77 bullets.
Thank you for being here. If you enjoy this newsletter, please share it with a friend. If this message was forwarded to you, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future issues 😊.
📊 Business, Economics & Personal Finance
Of the 43 US firms on Forbes’ list of top AI companies, 35 are headquartered in California.
An average of 100 US-based Amazon warehouse workers were injured every day (🔒Bloomberg) in 2022.
Spotify is raising its subscription prices by $1-$2/mo for the first time since 2009. Nearly all major streaming companies have raised their prices within the past year.
Credit: Axios Getting into sororities is nearly as tough as getting into a top university and some consultants are charging $4K+ for advice (🔒WSJ).
New Hampshire and South Dakota are tied for the lowest unemployment rates in the nation at 1.8% in Jun. Nevada had the highest jobless rate at 5.4%.
36% of Americans ages 55+ said they'll be able to retire at the time they expect. 20% said they don't think they ever will.
The UK has experienced the fastest rise in debt costs linked to inflation (🔒WSJ) in the Group of 7 advanced democracies, such that 24% of its debt is now tied to inflation.
Japanese company Yamagata developed a new variety of cherries called the Benio, which it claims is the optimal flesh-to-seed ratio. They're selling for $60-$80/kg, on average, at markets in Tokyo.
US household incomes were $16K higher in 2021 ($61K) than in 1984 ($45K in 2021 dollars) but the average household spent $5K more on housing, which was equivalent to about 37% of the average household budget.
Unemployment for young people ages 16-24 in China hit a record 21.3% in Jun., with some estimates suggesting 47%.
Cardiologists are the best-paid profession in the US with an annual mean wage of $421.3K in 2022.
🧘 Health
The American Psychological Association developed an evaluation model, called App Advisor, which assesses mental health apps based on access, privacy and security, clinical foundation, usability, and data integration toward a therapeutic goal.
Researchers tested 57 supplements advertised as “fat burners,” “thermogenic,” “preworkout”, or “metabolism boosters” and found that only 11% had accurate labeling. 12% contained an ingredient banned by the FDA. 40% didn’t contain the active ingredient listed on the label. Of the 60% that did contain the active ingredient, the amount ranged from 0.02%-334% of the dose listed on the label.
Fertility treatments are so expensive in the US ($22K+) that more Americans are going abroad. In Colombia, American patients can expect to pay around $3K for a cycle of egg freezing, plus an additional $1K-$1.5K for medications. New Life IVF Greece in Thessaloniki offers a package deal for ~$2.5K. In Mexico, a cycle of IVF costs ~$5.8K (excluding medication).
A new report found that 36% of rural adults skipped medical care because they couldn't afford it - which was higher than the next high-income nation, Australia, by 12%.
There were ~1.05M licensed physicians in the US in 2022, 23% more than in 2010. The physician population is aging alongside the general population, with the number of licensed physicians aged 60+ yrs increasing by 54% over the same period.
A review of research on the long-term effects of wildfire smoke exposure on health, including increased risk of influenza, asthma in children, and multiple types of cancer.
A new study showed that the East and Southeast US have the highest prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease among adults ages 65+. Maryland (12.9%), New York (12.7%), and Mississippi (12.5%) topped the list of states ranked by the estimated number of cases.
Research by the CDC showed the prevalence of alpha-gal syndrome (an allergy to mammalian food products, particularly red meat) increased by 41% between 2017 and 2021 in the US. Another study found that 42% of 1.5K US healthcare providers don’t know about the syndrome and that another 35% were “not too confident” about AGS diagnosis and treatment.
Alcohol-related deaths in the US rose ~45% between 2018 and 2021 (🔒WP). Deaths in Mississippi rose by 159%, the nation’s biggest leap.
A new study estimated that trans teens in Florida need to drive a median of 9 hrs to access gender-affirming healthcare (which every major medical association approves of) because of the state’s new restrictions.
>3M cases of the mosquito-borne viral disease, dengue, have been reported in the Americas so far this year, with 1.3K+ deaths.
From 2019 to 2022, people awaiting treatment for mental illness or substance abuse were held in jail without charges at least 2K times in just 19 Mississippi counties, sometimes for days or weeks. ~130 stays were longer than 30 days.
🎓 Lifelong Learning
Arnold Schwarzenegger has a daily newsletter that shares content related to nutrition, wellness, and fitness.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich posted lectures from his UC Berkeley Wealth & Poverty course on YouTube.
A collection of interactive music theory tools and visual references.
A look back at when the publishing industry feared photocopiers.
🌴 Lifestyle & Travel
There are >9.7K breweries in the US as of 2022, more than 3x the number from a decade ago.
"Tattourism," aka traveling for a specific tattoo artist or style, has been on the rise among Gen Z and millennials. For context, ~half of people aged 13-39 have at least one tattoo.
Mansion Entertainment Group announced that it is opening a $2B Disneyland-sized McDonald’s theme park in Vinita, OK, in 2026.
More working US adults took a vacation in the first 6 mo. of this year (🔒WSJ) than in any other Jan.-to-Jun. stretch in over a decade.
🗳️ Politics, Security & International Affairs
Last weekend, wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes sparked an evacuation of ~19K people (mostly tourists), the country’s largest in history.
New visa programs for remote workers in Germany, Canada, and the UK, are sparking fears of a talent exodus in Africa. For example, the number of Nigerians who received work visas in the UK rose by 303% from Dec. 2019 to Jun. 2022.
In state after state, fast-growing, college towns are generating higher voter turnout and ever-greater Democratic margins.
Israel’s Parliament passed a controversial law that limits its Supreme Court’s ability to overrule decisions made by the government. Critics say the judicial overhaul removes checks and balances from the government, threatening Israel’s very democracy, while the governing coalition maintains it will strengthen democracy by limiting overreach from unelected justices.
Over the past 25 yrs, the medical examiner’s office in Tucson has logged 4K+ migrant deaths in Southern Arizona, a figure that border researchers widely agree is an undercount.
Singapore has 1 landfill on an island (Semakau) 5 mi. off its coast and it’s projected to run out of space by 2035 (🔒Bloomberg).
Singapore hanged a woman for the first time in 19 yrs. for allegedly trafficking 1 oz of heroin, despite human rights groups calling on the country to end capital punishment for drug-related crimes.
Republicans and Republican-leaning independents saying they believe Trump has done "nothing wrong" dropped 9% in the last month, from 50% to 41%. Still, a solid majority — 58% — continue to say they would support Trump as their standard-bearer and he continues to lead the field by wide margins.
A new study suggests that changing how people see news and other content on Facebook and Instagram doesn’t change their political opinions to any measurable degree.
US officials believe that China has embedded malware in the power, communications, and water networks that feed American military bases (🔒NYT). The malicious code could give China the power to disrupt or slow American deployments or supply operations, including during a potential Chinese move against Taiwan.
⏩ Pop Culture, Art, Sports & Entertainment
147 out of the 152 Taylor Swift songs that have amassed 100M+ plays on Spotify are songs in which Swift is the lead artist. The latest daily data from Spotify shows that Swift averages ~98M streams a day, more than 2x the next most popular artist, Bad Bunny, who is racking up 48M streams a day.
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie pulled in $155M domestically and $337M globally last weekend, making it the best opening of the year and the best domestic opening for a woman director in history. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer grossed $80.5M domestically and $174M globally.
Learn about some of the women that Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer ignores.
“I’m a Barbie girl” in the style of 6 classical composers (6.5 min. video).
Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard won his 2nd-straight Tour de France, completing the 3-week, 3,401 km competition with an average speed of 41.43 km/hr (25.74 mph).
Former Manchester United and Real Madrid football star Cristiano Ronaldo earned an estimated $2.4M per sponsored post on Instagram in 2022.
A Norwegian mountaineer and her Nepali sherpa guide set a new record (🔒Reuters) as the fastest climbers to summit 14 of the world’s highest mountains, taking just 3 mo. and 1 day.
Saudi Arabia offered $332M to transfer Kylian Mbappe from Paris Saint-Germain to its Al Hilal team. They also offered to pay him a 1-yr salary worth $776M.
A visualization of amateurs racing against the Tour de France’s top cyclists (🔒NYT) in the Pyrenees or Alps via Strava (an app that tracks a person’s speed and distance). This year’s Stage 6 of the Tour featured the Col du Tourmalet which climbs ~10 mi. with an average grade of 7+. Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia, a 2-time Tour champion and the eventual stage winner completed it in 41 min. 43 sec. On average, it takes an amateur cyclist 2x+ that long.
A new film by Anton Corbijn explores the creative legacy of Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson, the go-to designers for Pink Floyd’s and Led Zeppelin’s album art.
🏡 Real Estate
Property owners in Colorado filed 308K+ appeals for property assessments that will determine their property taxes — 3x the average of the prior 3 assessment cycles. In the Denver metro area, the median increase in residential property values is ~35%, ~45% for multi-family housing, and ~17% for commercial property. So far, Denver metro county appraisers have denied about 3 in 4 appeals.
New data showed that the median price of a new home in Jun. was $415.4K, less than the median price of an existing home which was $416K.
🌎 Society
Researchers emailed 30K+ US principals and asked them to call 1 of 2 phone numbers, for a fictitious mom or dad, to discuss potentially enrolling their imaginary child. The principals called mom 59% of the time. When the fictitious mom said she was busy, they still called her 26% of the time, compared to just 10% for fictitious dads who were said to be busy.
A new survey found that remote workers are more likely to spend their time exercising and doing chores compared to in-office workers (🔒WSJ). On-site workers are more likely to take shorter breaks than remote workers overall.
A new study showed that the most prestigious US private colleges prioritize wealthy applicants over less affluent ones even when the latter have similar test scores and academic qualifications. When comparing applicants who were similar in every other way, legacy applicants were 8x more likely to be admitted. "In effect, the study shows, these policies amounted to affirmative action for the children of the 1 percent, whose parents earn more than $611,000 a year." 12% of Fortune 500 CEOs went to an Ivy, as did ~25% of US senators and 13% of the top 0.1% of earners.
Credit: 🔒NYT A new study showed that denial rates for student visas, known as F-1s, for African students have been at or near 50% from 2015-2022 compared with an average of 10% for European students.
Asian Americans are the only group that accounts for a much smaller share of medical school department chairs than their share of the faculty. Asian American underrepresentation at leadership ranks has been well-documented in fields beyond medicine.
New data shows that most Americans eat dinner between 5:07pm and 8:19pm, with peak dinner time at 6:19pm. People in Pennsylvania have the earliest dinner time (5:37pm) while people DC eat the latest (7:10pm).
Researchers analyzed the DNA of 94 individual family members at a 6.5K-yr-old burial site of a farming community in modern-day France and found that they spanned 7 generations. None were half-siblings, suggesting that monogamy was standard, and most adult women were not closely related to others in the group, suggesting that men tended to stay put while women moved around.
~Half of Germans said spending time with others is one of their main personal pastimes compared with only 25% of Americans.
🧪 Science, Climate, Environment & Technology
The US’s power grid has so far withstood the grueling heat (🔒WSJ), partly due to luck and new energy supplies. Solar power in Texas, for example, has increased by ~2x and is helping to offset problems with some coal-fired and gas-fired plants. In California, record precipitation last winter in the spring has been boosting hydroelectric power.
Some Florida Keys coral reefs are losing their color weeks earlier than normal this summer because of record high water temperatures.
An analysis by Redfin shows that ~400K people moved to the most flood-prone counties in the US in 2021 and 2022—a 103% increase from the prior 2 yrs. The counties with the highest wildfire risk and heat risk saw a 51% and 17% increase, respectively, over the same period.
Some job seekers are copying and pasting a list of relevant keywords for a job into their résumés and changing the font color to white (🔒WP) in the hope that AI bots or digital filters in applicant tracking systems will recommend them for an interview. One recruiter said this tactic works but sometimes applicant tracking systems sparse out sections for human reviewers - when it does, the text is no longer white.
Hausa is the 2nd most spoken African language, with an estimated 60M- 80M speakers, and it’s just one of 2K+ African languages that are mostly absent from AI research and products. A group of researchers and coders are trying to fill the gap (🔒Science).
Software developers are the least likely to look for jobs outside of their field over the past year, according to a new analysis from Indeed.
A buoy near Manatee Bay, FL, recorded a temperature of 101.1F (the same temp in hot tubs), which would make it the world’s warmest ocean surface temp. ever recorded if verified.
A new study suggests that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a key current in the Atlantic Ocean that moves water and heat around the world hand helps to regulate everything from the rate of sea level rise on the East Coast to Europe's average temps, may dramatically slow down — and then turn off completely — during the next few decades.
Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and TomTom released an open map dataset containing 59M “places of interest,” along with data on buildings, transportation networks, and administrative boundaries - to compete with Google Maps.
The average global temp. of Jul. has surpassed the all-time record (62.51F as of Jul. 23), according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization.
Tesla exaggerated its EV range and became so overwhelmed with complaints (2K/week) around its cars’ ranges that it formed a group known internally as the “Diversion Team” to cancel customer service appointments. One study showed that its cars had an average range that was 26% (and as much as 50.5% in cold weather) below what the company advertised.
Half the world’s population lives in Asia, and many Asian countries rely on a region called the Third Pole, which includes the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas, for their water. The headwaters of those rivers originate in China but are relied on by 18 different downstream nations. Decisions by China to dam or irrigate those headwaters poses significant issues downstream. This is acutely felt because those Third Pole glaciers are projected to lose 30%-40% of their volume by 2100 (🔒NIKKEI Asia).
NASA is giving 11 US companies $150M to help develop a permanent facility on the moon. Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin received the most at $34.7M.
Wishing you a good week
Thanks for tuning in! Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter, if you haven’t already. If you have the means, show your support by making a donation.