👋 Hello there,
Happy St. Patrick’s Day 🍀 to those who celebrate! 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 63 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
Data from the National Retail Federation suggests that US consumers will spend $7.2B celebrating St. Patrick’s Day this year, with the average person spending $44.40.
In 2023, ~29M full-time US employees ages 18-64 worked from home at least part-time (🔒NYT). College-educated workers were more likely to work from home all or some of the time than those with a high school diploma.
There are ~3M vending machines in the US (🔒WSJ) and, on average, each make ~$525/mo.
NYC officials said that drivers who obscured their license plate to avoid paying tolls cost them $21M in 2023 (🔒WSJ), up 137% over 2020. Agencies in Dallas and San Francisco reported a loss of ~$33M combined.
Starting today, Target stores in the US will limit the number of items that shoppers can buy at self-checkout to 10 or fewer.
A global study by UKG found that 86% of managers are experiencing job burnout (i.e., work-related stress associated with physical and emotional exhaustion). 49% of managers said they would accept a pay cut to reduce their workload.
Sr. execs at 35 of America’s largest firms received compensation worth more than what their companies paid in federal taxes between 2018-2022.
N. American harvesters sold baby eels (aka elvers) for ~$2K/lb. last year, predominantly to Japanese markets.
An analysis of ~30K mobile apps found that the median monthly revenue for an app that’s 1+ yrs old is $50. The top 5% of apps generate 200x more revenue than the bottom 25% 1 yr after launch. ~17% ever exceed $1K/mo. Of those that do, ~35% grow to $5K/mo and 3.5% hit $10K/mo.
Per the National Retail Federation, return fraud accounted for $101B in losses for retailers last year. For every $100 in returned merchandise, shops lose ~$14 to return fraud.
Lyft and Uber said they’re ceasing operations in Minneapolis after the city’s council voted to require that the companies increase driver wages to the equivalent of the local min. wage of $15.57/hr. The law takes effect on May 1.
A new report estimated that there will be a shortage of 550K plumbers in the US by 2027. The labor shortage cost the US economy $33B in 2022.
Amazon is hosting its first “Big Spring Sale,” which is open to all shoppers (not just Prime members), from Mar. 20-25. Prices for products across beauty, home, sports, outdoor, and electronics may be discounted by up to 40%–50%.
A new study estimated that 71.5M private-sector US workers had access to 401(k) retirement plans in 2023, a 6.35% YoY increase. The average workers added ~$5.2K (or ~7.1% of pretax income) to their accounts, which was up 0.4% from the previous year. The average balance was ~$90K, up ~8% YoY.
🧘 Health, Healthcare & Safety
Disruptions from the Change Healthcare cyberattack are costing health providers as much as $100M/day. Change is a 3rd-party payment system for ~50% of US healthcare systems. Providers that use Change have seen portions — and in some cases all — of their revenue vanish since Feb. 21.
Wichita, KS, is the top most challenging place to live with seasonal allergies, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
The FDA approved Rezdiffra, the 1st medicine for a common liver disease in adults called metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH). The approval is specifically for people with the disease and moderate to advanced liver fibrosis.
🎓 Lifelong Learning
Physicist Larry Shaw is thought to be the inventor of Pi Day (🔒NYT). He threw the 1st known celebration at the San Francisco Exploratorium on Mar. 14, 1988. at 1:59pm.
As a ratio, pi has been around since Babylonian times (🔒NYT), but it was Archimedes who first showed how to rigorously estimate the value of pi ~2.3K yrs ago.
🌴 Lifestyle & Travel
Bluebonnets, primroses, and winecups — where to catch Texas’s wildflower season at its best.
Airbnb will ban the use of indoor security cameras in all listings starting Apr. 30. Outdoor cameras must be disclosed and cannot point at amenities such as saunas. The decision came ~1 week after Saturday Night Live aired a skit about cameras in the toilet of an Airbnb listing.
Ray-Ban is beta testing a new AI feature in its Meta sunglasses that turns them into a tour guide that narrates info about landmarks as you view them.
Virgin Voyages is testing a cruise subscription for remote workers starting at $9.9K for a 2-guest cabin for 4-mo. trips from Jun.-Sep.
What’s the cloud outlook for Eclipse Day (Apr. 8)? (🔒NYT) See if history is on your side.
The 30 coolest streets in the world, according to TimeOut.
4 main US airlines currently have Boeing 737s in their fleet, with Southwest having the most at 228.
🗳️ Politics, Security & International Affairs
A former forensic scientist intentionally manipulated DNA evidence during her 29-yr career at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, casting doubt on at least 652 criminal cases she handled.
UNESCO estimated that it would cost $1.26B to restore Ukraine’s public scientific infrastructure that has been destroyed or stolen because of the Russian invasion.
Americans lost >$12.5 to cybercriminals in 2023. ~$1.3B was lost to scammers pretending to be from the government or tech support, which was 7x more than in 2019.
Oklahoma is home to ~3K illegal weed grows linked to foreign mafias, particularly from China. Somewhere between $18B-$44B worth of weed grown illegally there annually.
A UK court ruled that Australian computer scientist Craig Wright is not the Bitcoin creator “Satoshi Nakamoto.”
Italy fined TikTok ~$11M (🔒Reuters) for endangering minors by spreading harmful content.
Legislators in Florida, Alabama, and Arizona are trying to outlaw the sale of lab-grown proteins, arguing that cell-cultured meat products pose health risks and could threaten the ranching industry. People who sell lab-grown meat could face fines or prison.
⏩ Pop Culture, Art, Sports & Entertainment
Oppenheimer won 7 Oscar awards: best picture, actor, supporting actor, director, editing, cinematography, and score. The film was nominated for 13 in total. Oppenheimer and Barbie represented 88% of the total box office revenue ($963.1M) generated by the 10 best-picture Oscar nominees prior to their nomination. See a full list of the winners here.
Oscar attendees received a gift bag with items worth ~$178K (🔒WSJ), including a wine fridge and stays at resorts in Switzerland and St. Barts.
Iowa’s match against Nebraska in the Big Ten Women’s Basketball Tournament final averaged 3.02M viewers on CBS, making it the most-watched women’s basketball game on CBS since 1999. The game is now the 2nd-most watched women’s college basketball game this season behind the Iowa v. Ohio State game the week before, which drew 3.39M viewers.
The NFL’s Dallas Cowboys is the most valuable sports team in the world at a value of $9B.
Girls’ wrestling has become the fastest-growing high school sport in the US. In 1990, ~100 girls were on high rosters and before 2018, just 6 states sanctioned girl’s wrestling.
~1 in 3 US adults think that they might be the result of an alien spacecraft visiting Earth. Overall, 69% say they haven’t seen anything they thought was a UFO, while 18% say they have.
At age 57, Bert Janssen set a Guinness world record for being the longest-surviving heart transplant patient (🔒Reuters). Janssen was given 6 mo. to live at age 17 when he received the transplant. Today, he’s married with 2 sons.
🏡 Real Estate
As part of a wider settlement agreement to end a series of lawsuits from home sellers, the National Association of Realtors agreed to end its rule that essentially guarantees realtors a 5%-6% commission on US home sales. By some estimates, real estate commissions are expected to fall 25%-50%.
The median size of a new home was 2,179 sq ft in 2023 (🔒WP), down from 2,269 sq ft in 2022.
Data from CoreLogic showed that the number of US homes with underwater mortgages fell 15% YoY in Q4 2023. Texas was the only state where borrowers experienced a YoY loss in equity (an average of -$6K). The average US borrower saw YoY equity increase by ~$24K. Among major metro areas, Miami led the nation in equity gains, with the average borrower netting $63.2K.
🌎 Society
9.5% of the US population reported Irish ancestry as of 2022.
The number of people incarcerated in the US rose 2.1% between 2021 and 2022, marking "the first increase in the combined state and federal prison population in almost a decade.” Based on total numbers, Texas’s prison population grew the most at 5.9K (4.4%). ~139.6K people were in state or federal prisons in Texas in 2022.
Bloomberg journalists ranked job resumes using OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 and found that the model tended to rank applicants differently based on gender and race.
Only 1% of married, heterosexual couples include a wife who is 10 yrs or older than her husband compared with 7% of couples where the husband is 10+ yrs older than their wife.
~60% (~1.9K) of US counties gained population from 2022 to 2023, an increase from the 52% of counties that experienced pop. growth between 2021 and 2022. Polk County, FL, saw the most growth from domestic migration while Los Angeles County saw the biggest loss.
A new study found that, when asked who is an expert in their field, male psychology researchers name significantly fewer women than their women colleagues do, suggesting that men’s implicit bias may help explain why women are less likely than men to receive citations to their work or to be invited to speak at meetings and apply for jobs—even as more than 70% of PhDs in the field were awarded to women in recent years.
38% of US parents and teens said they sometimes argue with each other about how much time that the teen spends on their phone. This includes 10% in each group who say this happens often.
In 2022, Feb. had the fewest births (275K) while Aug. had the most (335K).
🧪 Science, Climate, Environment & Technology
New data from NOAA showed that the average temp. in the Lower 48 states was 5.4°F above average in Dec.-Feb. Parts of the Upper Midwest had temp. anomalies that topped the 20th-century average by >10°F.
Drone deliveries topped 1M worldwide last year (🔒WSJ). ~157.5K were completed in N. America, up from 87.5K in 2022 and 23.8K in 2020.
A NYT investigation showed that some car manufacturers share drivers' data with insurance companies without the driver’s knowledge or consent. Data include instances of speeding, hard braking, and sudden accelerations which can raise insurance rates by 2x in some cases.
2%-10% of flights are responsible for 80% of contrails (🔒MIT Tech Review) and new research suggests that rerouting these flights can reduce the warming effect that contrails have on the planet by 73% while increasing fuel costs by just 0.11% and costs by 0.08%.
An analysis of 400 mammal species found that males are larger than females for 45% of species. 39% showed no difference in size by gender. The results challenge Charles Darwin’s assertion that most males are larger than females.
A new NSF report showed that, in 2021, ~19% of the US STEM workforce was born in another country, including 43% of those with a doctorate degree. There were 36.8M people in STEM occupations in the US in 2021, which was ~24% of workers.
Google prepares 240K+ meals per day (🔒Bloomberg) across 386 cafes, 1.5K microkitchens, and 49 food trucks across its tech campuses. Slight adjustments such as the timing in which the kitchens prepare eggs can cut food waste by 44%.
The Great Barrier Reef is facing its 5th coral bleaching event in 8 yrs. This is the worst bleaching event in 20 yrs for the southern zone of the reef.
A forecast by NOAA showed that there’s a 45% chance that 2024 will be the warmest year in its 175 yrs of record-keeping, a 99.9% chance of ranking in the top 5, and a 100% chance of being in the top 10.
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.