Stellar Recap | Jul 27 - Aug 3
4 AUGUST 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 68 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
Los Angeles is the only city to ever profit from the Olympics, largely due to its use of existing athletic facilities and a jump in TV broadcast revenues. LA hosted the games in 1984.
Hong Kong offers the highest payouts for their Olympic victors at $768K for gold medals while Australia offers the lowest at $13K for gold medals. Hong Kong only has 34 athletes competing this year while Australia has 460+ athletes. Also, some athletes receive gifts like diamonds, scholarships and free transit passes and gift certificates for food for life, in addition to cash bonuses.
The world’s largest operator of cold storage facilities, Lineage, raised $4.4B in its IPO, which is the largest public listing in 2024. Sales of frozen foods in the US hit $74B in 2023, up ~33% from 2019.
Space Force Guardians in 7 career fields are eligible for a $180K bonus, with a career cap of $360K, if they reenlist.
Job postings on Indeed were down 12.4% YoY as of Jul. 5. Declines were the steepest in Hospitality & Tourism with posts down 21% YoY and 21% below pre-pandemic levels.
160K+ SAG-AFTRA members in the video game industry are going on strike over AI protections. They last went on strike for 340 days in 2016 over royalties.
At the end of Q2, 2.4M people held student loan debt balances that were between $100K-$200K, up from 1.8M people in Q2 2017. 1M people had balances of >$200K, up from 600K.
A new study suggests that the number of “good” jobs for US workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher will grow by 15M+ by 2031 while those with a high school diploma or less will see ~600K fewer good jobs. Good jobs are defined as those offering $43K+/yr and a median annual salary of $74K in 2022 dollars for workers aged 25 - 44.
The Army paid $11M to Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, and the United Football League to promote the Army in 5 social media posts. The problem is that he’s only posted 2. The ROI is a projected -38 enlistments.
A new CFPB report found that processing fees for electronic school lunch accounts cost US parents ~$100M/yr.
According to data from Insurify, the average annual cost of full-coverage car insurance in the US hit ~$2.3K in Jun., up from $1.6K in Jan. 2021. Connecticut has the priciest average premium at ~$3.6K.
Compact and subcompact vehicles made up 41.7% of new vehicle sales in the US in the first half of 2024. Overall vehicle sales were up ~2% nationwide.
In 2023, US consumers filed ~961.6K complaints against the “Big Three” credit reporting services (TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian). Complaints against these credit services accounted for 92% of all complaints to the CFPB.
Delta's CEO said that the CrowdStrike outage will cost the company $500M in lost revenue and customer compensation. Delta canceled >5K flights because of the outage.
A LinkedIn survey found that ~4 in 10 US workers feel stuck and burned out on the job. The highest reports of burnout were among those in program and project management.
Music streams pay ~$0.004 per song play. Out of that total, the publishing side (publishers, rights org, songwriters) gets 14%. Songwriters get ~68% of that 14%. There are usually 3-12 writers per song and they must pay their managers and other interested parties.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission said that Amazon is legally responsible for hazardous products sold on its site by third-party sellers and shipped by the company. That means Amazon is responsible for the recalls of 400K+ products.
Massachusetts became the 11th state to pass a pay transparency law that requires businesses with 25+ employees to disclose salary ranges when posting jobs.
A McKinsey study found that despite the recent decreases in tech-related job postings, the number of tech-related job posts in 2023 was 8% higher than in 2021.
🧘 Health, Healthcare & Safety
A new study found that a blood test identified Alzheimer’s patients with 91% accuracy vs 61% for cognitive tests in a primary care setting and 73% for dementia specialists. There are currently at least 16 blood tests in development for detecting Alzheimer’s, but none have FDA approval yet.
A recent report found that Puerto Rico has lost 8.6K+ doctors out of ~18.8K in ~10 yrs.
A study of 5K+ women and girls in South Africa and Uganda found that 100% remained HIV-free after a twice-yearly injection of a treatment called Lenacapavir (🔒WP), sold under the brand name Sunlenca.
The FDA approved a blood test for colorectal cancer in individuals ages 45+. The Shield blood test, which costs $895 without insurance, mostly detects early-stage cancer and doesn't flag most precancerous growths. >1 in 3 eligible adults don't get colonoscopies or a stool test at all though and a blood draw could be incorporated into routine physicals to increase screening.
A new study estimated that the suicide rates of US kids ages 8-12 have been increasing by ~8%/yr since 2008, with the most pronounced increases observed among girls. Black preteens had the highest overall suicide rate while Hispanic preteens had the greatest % increase.
Emerging research suggests that shingles vaccines are associated with a lower risk of dementia (🔒WP). ~1 in 3 people will get shingles in their lifetime. The infection is a reactivation of the chickenpox virus, which can lie dormant in the nervous system.
A new study showed that cancer rates for people born in 1990 and after are increasing. Kidney, pancreatic, renal pelvis, and small intestinal cancer rates are 2x-3x higher in people born in 1990-94 than for people born in 1955-59. Mortality rates are also higher for some cancers like those in the liver and intrahepatic bile duct but only for younger women.
New findings showed that, among all military combat specialties analyzed between 2011-2021, those with higher deployment pace and blast exposure were associated with suicide rates that were 50%+ higher than the general population.
A cyberattack hit blood-donation nonprofit OneBlood last week, which serves 250+ hospitals in the southeastern US.
The FDA issued another alert for ground cinnamon products, adding at least 10 types of packaged ground cinnamon that may contain lead. Testing showed lead levels ranged from ~2ppm - 7ppm. The El Servidor brand was found to have a lead concentration of 20ppm.
A recent study found that for every 10 adolescents with youth-onset diabetes, ~6 develop a significant comorbidity that will highly impact their lifespan and quality of life within 15 yrs of diagnosis. ~28% develop 2+ complications within that period.
New data showed that 40% of people in the US said they had “a lot of trust” in physicians and hospitals in Jan. 2024, down from 71.5% in Apr. 2020.
🎓 Lifelong Learning
Which Olympic sport should you play, based on your height and weight?
Illustrated explainers of the Olympic sports in the Paris 2024 games by Reuters.
Can Claude AI make a data-driven visual story? The authors gave it a C+.
🌴 Lifestyle & Travel
The latest Expat Insider survey showed that Panama is the best country to live and work abroad. 74% of expats in Panama said they were satisfied with their financial situation compared to the global average of 54%.
Raleigh, NC is the most renter-friendly city in America, according to ApartmentAdvisor.
24.1M people have ridden an Amtrak train since Oct. 2023 (🔒WSJ), which is 18% more than the year before.
UNESCO added 24 new sites to the World Heritage List, bringing the total number of sites to 1,223. A majority of the cultural sites are in Europe and North America.
A record 36.1M travelers visited Greece in 2023, up from 14M in 2005. Some places have too many visitors. For example, 11K cruise ship tourists recently crowded onto the Greek island of Santorini and there was such little standing room that people were elbow to elbow. Santorini will reinstate a cap of 8K tourists per day starting in 2025 while reducing the number of days where visitors top 10K-11K from 63 last year to 48 this year.
Travelers gathering to watch the sunset at Oia on the island of Santorini, 30 June 2024. Photo: XAVIER DUVOT/Hans Lucas/AFP (Getty Images) cited by Quartz. The Biden administration proposed new rules to prevent airlines from charging parents to sit next to their kids, which could save up to $200 per round trip.
🗳️ Politics, Security & International Affairs
Kamala Harris raised $200M (🔒Bloomberg) within the 1st week of Biden dropping out of the election. One of her virtual rallying events called “White Women: Answer the Call” had ~200K attendees, making it reportedly the largest Zoom meeting in history. Overall, Harris raised $310M in Jul. vs Donald Trump’s $138.7M haul. Harris has also secured enough votes from party delegates to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
US authorities have encountered 55K+ Chinese migrants crossing illegally from Mexico during the past 18 mo. (🔒WP), up from ~3.8K in 2022.
Thousands of people in Venezuela began protesting after incumbent President Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of a hotly contested election last week. 9 Latin American nations issued a joint statement that demanded an audit of the results. US Secretary Antony Blinken said “it is clear” that Maduro lost the popular vote in Venezuela’s election.
Heavy rains caused several landslides in the southern Indian state of Kerala (🔒WP), killing at least 109 people and injuring at least 176 as of the evening of Jul. 30.
Since the Jun. 27 presidential debate, web traffic to US news sites spiked to the highest level since early 2023. Fox saw the biggest jump with an average of 5M+ total prime-time viewers during the RNC.
The DOJ and the FTC sued TikTok and its parent company ByteDance, claiming that the app unlawfully collected data from users under the age of 13.
⏩ Pop Culture, Art, Sports & Entertainment
Disney’s 1st R-rated film Deadpool & Wolverine made $205M at US box offices, which is the biggest opening for any movie this year and the most ever for an R-rated flick. It’s also the biggest opening in Jul. Internationally, the film secured $233.3M, bringing its estimated global haul to $438.3M for the full weekend.
US rapper Flavor Flav signed a 5-yr sponsorship deal to support the US women’s water polo team after its captain, Maggie Steffens, asked for support on social media.
At age 61, Ni Xia Lian is the oldest table tennis player to win a match at the Olympics after defeating her 31-yr-old Turkish rival. She is just one of several 60-yr-olds competing in the Olympics.
In the 2023-24 season, 12K boys competed in USA Gymnastics-affiliated artistic gymnastics programs vs 138K girls. That’s down from 15K in 2014. The number of girls who competed in 2014 was ~90K.
Thousands of former college athletes will be eligible for payments, ranging from a few dollars to $1M+, under the $2.78B antitrust settlement agreed to by the NCAA and 5 power conferences.
With 8 medals including 5 gold, Simone Biles became the most decorated US gymnast last week after Team USA took 1st place in the Olympics. Italy nabbed the silver medal, which was its 1st Olympic team medal in 96 yrs, while Brazil won the bronze, its 1st team medal in history. At age 27, Biles won the all-around title at the Paris Games (🔒NYT), becoming the oldest all-around champion since 1952 and the 3rd woman to win 2 Olympic all-around titles.
For Team USA, Katie Ledecky earned her 13th Olympic medal in women’s swimming (🔒NYT). No other US woman has ever won more than 12 medals and no other female swimmer of any nationality has won more than 12, either.
The secret succession fight that will determine the future of Fox News. (28 min. podcast)
🏡 Real Estate
Per Realtor.com, 7 affordable countries where Americans can easily buy real estate include Panama, Spain, Hungary, France, Belize, Thailand, and the Philippines.
Fort Wayne, IN is the hottest housing market in the US, according to Realtor.com. The median list price was $335K in Jun. compared with the national median of $445K.
Sales of $100M homes are on track to double in the US this year. As of Jul. 15, 6 homes have sold for $100M+. The current record, which was set in 2021, is 9.
In Jun., fractional shares for beach houses in North Carolina sold for $500K-$926K in top destinations like Bluffton, Sullivan's Island, and Isle of Palms, according to data from Pacaso. For those who are unfamiliar, Pacaso is kind of like a real estate syndicator and timeshare company combined.
In Q1, 45% of people who purchased a US home that cost >$1M paid with cash, which is the largest share in at least 10 yrs, according to data from Redfin.
Signaling that commercial real estate is still struggling, a 23-story midtown Manhattan office building sold for $8.5M last week (🔒NYT). The same building sold for $332M in 2006.
🌎 Society
In 2022, ~653.1K experienced homelessness (🔒WP), up 12% from 2021. The homeless population has been rising since 2016 after ~8 yrs of declines. Many people who are homeless have a job if not multiple but rent has become unaffordable.
🧪 Science, Climate, Environment & Technology
27.4K+ wildfires have consumed 3.7M acres of the US, as of Jul. 27 (🔒NYT), which is fewer fires than in 2023 but ~4x the affected area.
Outdoor apparel maker ArcTeryx and tech startup Skip teamed up to make the MO/GO hiking pants, which ease walks uphill and absorb impact on the way down. The pants weigh 7 lbs and cost $4.5K for pre-orders and $5K for general retail.
Meta agreed to pay $1.4B to settle a lawsuit in Texas (🔒Reuters) over allegations that it used facial recognition tech to collect data on Texans without their consent.
Tesla recalled 1.8M+ vehicles due to faulty latches that can result in “unintended hood opening events.” This is the 9th recall this year.
The Army Corps of Engineers has been rebuilding beaches since 1923, with the 1st being Coney Island. The 5 longest-running beach restoration projects have been replenished 57x since the 1960s and have required 30M cubic yards of sand.
An extreme heat wave placed ~180M Americans under warnings and advisories last week. Hot temperatures are expected to last until at least the middle of this week.
Just 86 young swans were counted during the UK’s annual census of its swan populations in the River Thames. That’s down 45% over the past 2 yrs.
Larry Richardson is the world’s most highly cited cat. Larry racked up these citations because his owner conducted an experiment that employs the tactics used by a citation-boosting service advertised on Facebook.
Wishing you a good week
Thanks for tuning in! Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter, if you haven’t already.