Stellar Recap | Jul 30 - Aug 5
Stellar Recap | Jul 30 - Aug 5
Aug 6, 2023
👋 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 66 bullets.
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📊 Business, Economics & Personal Finance
Between 2020 and 2021, of all states, Florida saw the largest influx of high-earning residents (households earning $200K/yr or more, which represents ~12% of US households), with a net migration of ~27.6K.
The number of internships offered by US semiconductor companies increased by 40.5% YoY between Sep. and Mar. of the 2022-23 school year.
The Dept. of Ed announced a new income-based repayment plan for federal student loan borrowers called SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education). The thresholds for min. payments will increase from 150% to 225% of federal poverty guidelines, which varies by state but roughly translates to an annual income of $32.8K for a single borrower or $67.5K for a family of 4, which means 1M+ additional borrowers may qualify for $0 payments. Undergraduate loan payments will be capped at 5% of borrowers’ discretionary funds (instead of 10% under current programs). Loans of $12K or less will be canceled after 10 yrs of payments starting Jul 2024 and $22K in debt will be canceled after 20 yrs of payments. Importantly under this plan, unpaid interest will not accrue if a borrower makes their full monthly payments, which is how debt loads can grow despite borrowers making consistent payments. (More on this in the policy section)
Fitch Ratings downgraded the US government’s credit rating from the highest AAA rating to AA+, citing "the expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years, a high and growing general government debt burden, and the erosion of governance." The odd thing is that the resolution of the debt ceiling standoff in Jun. was a surprisingly orderly affair.
Job openings declined by 34K MoM to a seasonally adjusted 9.6M in Jun. (🔒WSJ), the lowest level since Apr. 2021. Layoffs held nearly steady at 1.5M.
The film and TV industry pays $186B+ in wages annually and as much as $250K can be injected into local economies per day. But none of this is happening this summer because of the ongoing strike, which has impacted tens of thousands of local businesses. The hollywood strike, which includes 160K actors, is the biggest single work stoppage in over 25 yrs (🔒WP).
Mattel is seeking a chief Uno player. The person who gets the job must be located in NYC and will be paid $4,444/wk for 4 wks.
Alaska is the worst state to retire in the US, according to a study by Bankrate.
The multi-national grocery chain Aldi is seeking a professional beer taster.
The global destination wedding market grew from $21.31B in 2022 to $28.31B in 2023 — and it's expected to grow to $78.89B in 2027.
🧘 Health
A new study suggests that half of kids in the developing world have elevated lead levels in their blood (🔒FT) and this explains ~20% of the test score gap between rich and poor countries.
>160M Americans live in areas that lack mental health professionals. Part of the issue is that ~half of practicing mental health providers don't accept insurance. Another issue is a shortage of psychiatrists, which is estimated to fall short by 31K next year.
The CDC estimated that 500K Americans could be sickened each year by Valley fever, the disease caused by breathing in the fungus Coccidioides. The incidence of Valley Fever is concentrated in the Southwest.
The FDA approved the first pill (Zurzuvae) for postpartum depression, a condition which affects 1 in 8 moms after giving birth.
🎓 Lifelong Learning
The IBM mainframe: How it runs and why it survives. There are ~10K mainframes in use today by two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, 45 of the world’s top 50 banks, 8 of the top 10 insurers, 7 of the top 10 global retailers, and 8 of the top 10 telecom companies. Most of those mainframes are made by IBM.
Advances, limitations, and implications of using neuro-imaging and language models to decode thoughts.
A visual explanation of how some materials can make heatwaves dangerous.
🌴 Lifestyle & Travel
Hickory, NC, is the most affordable place to live in the US, according to US News and World Report.
The number of foreign travelers going to Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai in the first half of 2023 (🔒WSJ) totaled less than a quarter of comparable figures in 2019, before the Covid pandemic.
Davidson College (north of Charlotte) in North Carolina is the most beautiful college campus, according to College Rover.
Actress and founder of Goop, Gwenyth Paltrow, listed her Montecito guesthouse on Airbnb.
🗳️ Politics, Security & International Affairs
Just 40% of the American public now approves of the Supreme Court, a sharp decline from the 51% average since data was first collected in 2000. The division in approval by party is the widest it has ever been.
A military takeover of the West African country of Niger has resulted in a 3.5K mile stretch of African countries, known as the Sahel, where military juntas are now in charge of the government. The US said it stands with Niger’s deposed president and that there remains a “narrow opportunity” to reverse the coup.
Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network is influencing global politics (🔒NYT). Musk has the power to shut countries off from this network, as he did in Ukraine last year, causing countries to ask US officials to mediate in issues involving the company.
Public faith in the US military hit a 25-yr low, with only 60% of those surveyed having more than “some confidence” in the institution. Independents have the lowest confidence.
A ban on incandescent light bulbs went into effect in the US. Incandescent light bulbs accounted for ~30% of light bulbs sold in the US in 2020.
The Cyberspace Administration of China announced that children under age 18 will be limited to 2 hrs or less of smartphone use per day (🔒NIKKEI Asia). Providers of smart devices are also required to include a mode that prevents young users from accessing the internet from 10pm-6 am.
A new NYT/Sienna College poll showed that Biden and Trump are tied at 43% among registered voters (🔒NYT). Biden leads Trump by 2% if you restrict the sample to only those who voted in 2020 or 2022.
AP Psychology courses have been “effectively banned” in Florida due to their LGBTQ content.
Canadian users will no longer be allowed to access news sites through Meta’s platforms (🔒Reuters) after the country passed a law that requires large tech companies such as Google or Meta to pay news publishers for circulating their content.
Unused Covid medication for humans will be made available to treat cats in Cyprus, where ~10K cats have died from the disease. One Cyprus veterinary association reported that up to 300K cats have died (which is likely an exaggeration).
Two conservative groups, the Cato Institute and Mackinac Center for Public Policy, filed a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s plan to cancel $39B in federal student loans (🔒WP) held by more than 804K borrowers who have been in repayment for more than 20 yrs. Their issue is the Ed Dept.’s decision to count time in forbearance toward student loan forgiveness.
52% of US voters approve of Trump’s indictment on charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, compared with 40% who disapprove.
⏩ Pop Culture, Art, Sports & Entertainment
The top TV shows and movies in the US over the past 25 yrs., according to Rotten Tomatoes’ critics.
Oppenheimer became the first R-rated film to gross $10M+ for 7 straight days.
26-yr-old American swimmer Katie Ledecky won her 16th title at the World Aquatic Championships, breaking Michael Phelps’ record for the most individual titles.
People are using AI to break into the song demo business. A demo singer can make $250-$500 per recording but this is usually only a side gig.
Music producer Bosko Kante filed a copyright suit against Dua Lipa, marking the 3rd lawsuit over Lipa's hit song 'Levitating.'
The Big Ten Conference will swell to 18 teams next year as part of the ongoing shake-up in college football.
Barbie is <$100M away from topping $1B at the global box office and it’s expected to hit the benchmark before Mon. If it does, Greta Gerwig will be the first solo female director to achieve that feat.
🏡 Real Estate
Since the start of the last year, double-digit rate increases for home insurance policies have been approved in 31 states (🔒WSJ), with Arizona, Texas, Oregon, Illinois, and Utah leading with the biggest approved increases, ranging from 20% to 30%.
A first-time homebuyer must earn roughly $64.5K/yr to afford the typical US “starter” home (5th-35th percentile of homes sold, by sale price), which is 13% ($7.2K) more than the saler needed last year. SF, Austin, and Phoenix are the only major metros where the income needed to buy a starter home dropped. It has risen >20% in Fort Lauderdale and Miami, more than anywhere else in the country.
The US homeowner vacancy rate (% of homes that are vacant and for sale) fell in Q2 to 0.7%, the lowest level in Commerce Dept. records reaching back to 1956.
A new study found that a 30-yr-old, non-college-educated Boomer was 2x as likely to own a home than a millennial at that same age (49% vs. 24%). The ownership gap is partly driven by the differences in wages that are commanded by a college degree, which has become increasingly more important for earnings in the past 20 years.
Copper Beech Farm, a roughly 50-acre estate in Greenwich, sold for $138.83M (🔒WSJ), setting a record for the most expensive home ever sold in Connecticut. The estate dates to the 1890s and includes ~mile of private frontage on Long Island Sound.
Issuing title insurance, which is often required when a person purchases a home in the US, is a lucrative business. There are 5 companies that control 80% of the market, which is worth ~$20B. The cost of title insurance for the median home $1.4K-$2.7K but only 3%-4% of homeowners ever file a claim.
🌎 Society
69% of Americans believe in heaven and 72% of Americans believe in the power of prayer. 42% think that energy can be rooted in things like crystals, plants, or rivers and 34% believe in astrology.
Miami-Dade County lost ~79.5K people (🔒WSJ) through net migration to other parts of Florida or other states between 2020 and 2022 - its first population loss over a multiyear period since at least 1970. The city risks following the same path as NYC and SF.
🧪 Science, Climate, Environment & Technology
The biggest wind turbine in the world was unveiled at an offshore wind farm near China’s Fujian province. It’s 500’ tall and each of its 403’ blades weighs 54 tons.
Antarctic sea ice has fallen to unprecedently low levels and its currently missing an rea the size of Argentina or the combined areas of Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado.
55K hectares have burned from wildfires so far this year in Greece, approaching the 2007 record of 62K hectares. This is bad news because the wildfire season tends to pick up in Aug.
Due to ongoing drought, the Panama Canal Authority (PCA) announced a new limit of 44’ on the drafts for vessels transitioning through the waterway and upped its cap on the number of transits each day at 32, a ~10% cut in the usual traffic for the canal.
Jul. was the hottest month on record for 24+ US cities, including Phoenix which became the 1st US city to have an average monthly temp >100F for 31 days straight. Death Valley also recorded a midnight temperature of 120F, which is the warmest midnight temp. ever recorded if confirmed. Countless heat records were broken across the world as well. China registered its highest temp. in recorded history at 126F. In Iran, the heat index reached 152F, which is near the limits of human survival. Tunis, Tunisia, hit 120.2F, its highest temp. in recorded history.
Meta released a new open-source AI music generator called AudioCraft, which allows users to create music and sounds, like barking dogs or footsteps, with a text prompt.
Water temps. crossed the bleaching threshold for coral in the Florida Keys on Jun. 14, and have since remained above it. There’s a 70%-100% chance that the extreme heat in the North Atlantic will persist through Sep.-Oct. The coral reef at Cheeca Rocks has already completely bleached.
Torrential rain in areas around China’s capital, Beijing, killed at least 20 people and left 27 missing last week. Storms dumped up to 29.3” of rain over 5 days.
A new study showed that ChatGPT has become worse at certain basic math operations (🔒WSJ) like identifying prime numbers and generating functional code to solve math problems. In some of the tests, GPT-3.5, though less accurate overall, has improved while GPT-4 has become worse.
Corn earworms have infested 30%-40% of the sweet corn crop between Montrose and Delta in Colorado, causing harvests to fall by 3x compared with last season for the largest producer.
Over the past year, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured images of ~10x more faint black holes than expected.
Scientists discovered a new isopod species in the Florida Keys. The small crustaceans represent the first discovery of a new gnathiid isopod in the FL ecoregion in a century, and they’ve been named in honor of the singer-songwriter, Jimmy Buffett.
A new global survey by McKinsey found that 1 in 4 C-suite executives said they personally use generative AI tools for work and 40% said their orgs will increase investment in AI.
Plastic straw bans have largely become a greenwashing tactic (an environmental “solution” that appears eco-friendly rather than actually being so) but the movement to ban plastic straws also made consumers more aware of the harms of single use plastic products on the environment.
Torrential rain and flash floods caused catastrophic damage and killed at least 3 people in Slovenia last Fri. The country’s Prime Minister Robert Golob said the floods could be the biggest since Slovenia became independent in 1991.
Wishing you a good week
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