Stellar Recap | Sep 1-7
8 SEPTEMBER 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 73 bullets.
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📊 Business, Economics & Personal Finance
~57% of US households said they experienced some level of difficulty in paying their usual household expenses over the past 7 days, according to survey data collected by the Census Bureau in Jul.
LinkedIn data showed that the share of Boomers who applied to a job in Jul. increased 13% year-to-date, which was the most among all generations.
10K+ unionized workers at 24 hotels in the US went on strike for 3 days starting last Sun. (9/1) (🔒NYT) after negotiations failed. A group of 700 union members in San Diego will stay on strike until a negotiation is reached. There’s a similar situation in the SF Bay Area. View a map of hotels that are affected here.
X has lost 72% of its value since Elon Musk acquired the company in 2022 which was then Twitter. The top 8 investors have collectively lost $24B since the takeover.
A drink that consists of vodka, lemonade and raspberry liqueur, and melon balls, aka the Honey Duece, is expected to bring in $10M+ in sales during the US Open.
The 3-mo. old startup that was co-founded by OpenAI's former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, Safe Superintelligence (SSI), has raised $1B (🔒Reuters) in a round of investment that valued the company at $5B. The company has 10 employees.
A Northwestern Mutual survey found that only 32% of Americans with $1M+ in investable assets consider themselves “wealthy” but this group reported a greater sense of financial clarity and preparedness than the general population.
The average annual cost of owning and operating a new car rose to ~$12.3K, up from ~$12.2K from last year and ~$9.3K in 2019.
48% of Americans plan to start their holiday shopping in Aug.-Oct. 43% expect to spend the same as last year while 33% expect to spend less. A greater share of older generations fall in the latter category.
The average American eats ~42 lbs of cheese per year (🔒Bloomberg). That’s ~2x more than in 1975 when the data were first collected.
🧘 Health, Healthcare & Safety
An analysis by The Economist found that the fatality rate of a collision with a heavy pickup truck is ~7x higher than one with compact car (🔒). The heaviest vehicles in the study were responsible for 37 “partner-car deaths” per 10K crashes, on average, vs 5.7 for median-weight cars and 2.6 for the lightest cars.
New research showed that White women who donated their eggs for use in infertility treatments were compensated up to 8x more than Black donors —$100K/donation vs $12K/donation, respectively.
A new study found that daily emergency visits to pediatric hospitals for asthma complications in the SF Bay area increased 27% after the 2018 Camp Fire (🔒Forbes). Rates increased by 95% among Hispanic children, 75% for Asian American and Pacific Islander children, 63% for Black children, and 55% for white children.
The updated Covid vaccine costs up to $200 for people who are uninsured (🔒WP), now that the federal Bridge Access Program has run out of funding.
A NYT investigation found that Acadia Healthcare is holding some patients against their will in its psychiatric hospitals to max insurance payouts. Acadia charges up to $2.2K/day. Acadia is valued at ~$7B.
Researchers at UT Austin believe they’ve discovered an antibody that’s able to neutralize all known variants of SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus that causes Covid.
The US is projected to be short ~100K healthcare workers by 2028. NY is expected to have the greatest shortage with a shortfall of ~4.1% while ND is expected have the greatest surplus of ~4.9%.
After growing from $6.5B in 2019 to $42.7B in 2022, the value of the traveling nurse market in the US shrank to $25.6B in 2023.
Journalist Evan Ratliff created an AI voice clone and shared fascinating clips from conversations with a therapist and other parts of his life (54 min. podcast).
New data showed the rate of new breast cancer diagnoses in Asian American and Pacific Islander women is rising faster than that of many other racial and ethnic groups. Death rates declined for women of all race-ethnic groups except for AAPI which increased slightly from 2022 to 2023.
A new study suggests that people with clinical depression have larger brain circuits called salience networks, which shape what they pay attention to. These circuits were found in children as young as 9 who then developed depression as teens which suggests that the trait could increase the risk of depression rather than being a result of it.
New data showed that <6% of middle and high schoolers said they vaped in the past year, down from 7.7% in 2023 and marking a 10-yr low.
🎓 Lifelong Learning
What to know before giving your kid a phone (41 min. podcast), plus NYT’s Wirecutter-tested trackers, smartwatches, and phones to consider.
Trischa Zorn-Hudson is the most decorated Paralympian, with 55 medals, including 41 golds, in swimming.
Parts of the US lose 3+ hrs of daylight between Jun. 20 and Sept. 22.
🌴 Lifestyle & Travel
Starting on Oct. 1, New Zealand will increase the entry tax for foreign tourists from NZ$35 to NZ$100 or from US$22 to US$62.
Macallan is offering a new product (🔒Bloomberg), the Time:Space Collection, which consists of a rare 84-yr-old single-malt Scotch and a 5-yr-old flask. The retail price for the collection is $190K.
The World Travel and Tourism Council estimated that $1 out of every $10 spent globally in 2024 will be on travel (🔒Reuters). That amounts to ~$11T in global GDP.
SmokyMountains.com released its 2024 fall foliage prediction map.
Mountain Dew is offering to reimburse up to $10K in relocation costs to 5 people who move anywhere within the Mountain time zone (and register their geolocation data as proof). Selected movers will also receive a 1-yr supply of Mountain Dew and a “welcome package” of outdoor gear.
🗳️ Politics, Security & International Affairs
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employs 20K+ people in over 400 global offices. Its annual budget is ~$8B. It has 105 holding centers in the US, with 31.4% in states along the Mexico border.
A former top aide to NY Gov. Kathy Hochul and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo was arrested for allegedly acting as an agent for the Chinese government.
Transgender Texans can no longer update the sex that’s listed on their birth certificates, after Texas DPS quietly rolled out changes to its policy.
The father of the suspected Apalachee High School shooter was charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder, and cruelty to children (🔒WP) because he “knowingly allowed him to possess the weapon.”
The AG of New Mexico filed a lawsuit against social media company Snap for allegedly facilitating sexual abuse and failing to protect minors from predation.
China ended its international adoption program for non-relatives (🔒WSJ). US families have adopted 82K children from China between 1999 and 2023.
Right-wing YouTube influences were allegedly compensated ~$10M by Russia’s state-controlled broadcaster RT in exchange for posting political content that the Kremlin wanted amplified in the US. One influencer, Benny Johnson, was allegedly given a $400K/week and a $100k signing bonus to make videos for RT.
A new report ranked Harvard University as the worst college for free speech for the 2nd straight year. The University of Virginia was the top school for free speech.
Historian Allan Lichtman predicted Kamala Harris will win in Nov. Lichtman has accurately predicted 9 out of the last 10 presidential elections.
China’s shipbuilding capacity is ~232x greater than the US’. The US hasn’t accounted for more than 5% of global new ship tonnage since 1960.
⏩ Pop Culture, Art, Sports & Entertainment
According to a YouGov poll from Feb., 36% of Americans said that Christmas is their favorite day of the year.
The California Senate passed a law that requires consent to replicate a dead performers’ likeness with AI.
Since the Billboard Hot 100 launched in 1958, over 75 songs have landed in the top of the chart 5+ yrs after their initial debut (excluding holiday songs). Reasons include album re-releases, features in TV shows and films, and social media.
Olympic distance runner, Rebecca Cheptegei, died after being set on fire by a man she was formerly in a relationship with.
Federal prosecutors are charging a man in North Carolina for allegedly using AI to create hundreds of thousands of fake songs by fake bands and then program ~10K bot accounts to stream them. In 2019, he made ~$110K/mo. from the scheme.
Illustration of Mad Max: Fury Road by Andrew Degraff
🏡 Real Estate
~10% of single-family homes in the US are rentals and 80% of those rental properties are owned by individuals while institutional investors own 3%-10%.
Michael Jordan has been trying to sell his 56K sq ft estate in the Chicago area since 2012 (🔒WSJ). The starting list price was $29M and its current list price of $14.855M has held firm since 2015. He’s paid ~$1M in taxes since it was listed in 2012.
A 9.2K sq ft Italian style mansion in Sarasota, FL just hit the market with a sale price of $28.35M. It’s the most expensive residential listing in Sarasota County, according to Sotheby's.
The share of people in OECD countries who say they're satisfied with the availability of good, affordable housing fell to 45% in 2023 (🔒FT) from 51% in 2019, according to the Gallup World Poll.
🌎 Society
A new app called Timeleft enables people in the US to schedule dinner with 5 strangers (in a limited number of cities). Dinners take place on Wednesday at 7pm and cost $16 to book.
40% K12 students in the US West are behind grade level.
Solo dinner reservations are up 29% in the US over the last 2 yrs, according to OpenTable. They’re up 18% this year in Germany and 14% in the UK.
Denmark is the best country for women while Afghanistan is the worst, according to the Women, Peace and Security Index.
A new study found that anti-Asian bias increased during the Covid pandemic and has not improved despite growing attention toward these negative attitudes.
44M Americans are food insecure and 23.5M live in food desserts, according to an analysis by the Association of American Medical Colleges and USDA.
A new INRIX report found that car trips taken between 10am and 3pm in the US have risen by 23% since 2019 to 72M.
Since 1970 when it accepted its 1st female undergraduates, Caltech admitted its 1st undergraduate class where women make up at least 50% of all incoming students.
The share of women ages 18-49 who reported at least occasional concern about being a victim of sexual assault rose by an average of 12 pts after #MeToo, according to survey data from Gallup. The author points to other possible reasons for rising concerns such as violent crime rates and the population of single women.
A survey by the BabyCenter found that 9% of moms regret the name they chose for their baby.
🧪 Science, Climate, Environment & Technology
A recent study estimated that as many as 5x more fish species are nearing extinction. Species that were predicted to be threatened tended to have a small geographic range, large body size, and low growth rate.
A new randomized control trial found that Turkish high school students with access to ChatGPT solved more math problems correctly but performed worse on math tests compared to their peers without access to ChatGPT.
A new study suggests that earthquakes are responsible for 75% of the gold that’s ever been mined (🔒Science).
There are ~1.5M tonnes of munitions from the World Wars in the Batic and North Seas and they’re breaking down and releasing carcinogens.
~1% of the 21M US students who ride a bus to school now do so in an electric bus. An electric school bus costs ~$370K which is more than 3x the price of a typical diesel bus. The lifetime savings on fuel and maintenance averages to ~$100K.
Data centers in nothern Virginia process ~70% of global digital traffic. Water consumption in the area rose from 1.13B gal, in 2019 to 1.85B+ gal. in 2023.
The average high temperature in Phoenix from Jun.-Aug. was 98.9F, beating the record of 97F last year. Last Wed. (9/4), the city logged its 101st straight day of 100F+ weather. The previous record was 76 straight days set in 1993. The city also logged 56 days of 110F+ temps this summer, setting a new record.
North America’s added 515 MW of new data capacity in the first 6 mo. of 2024, which is more than the total capacity of Silicon Valley which stands at 459 MW. The US saw its total capacity increase 10% to ~5,700 MW.
A new study estimated that humans produce 57M tons of plastic each year. Lagos, Nigeria, emitted the most plastic pollution of any city.
Tampa, FL saw 4.67” of precipitation on Sep. 3, which was ~0.2” more than the previous record set in 1985. The rain also fell at a record 3.8”/hr, shattering the previous record of 3”/hr.
New data showed that Texas surpassed California as the state with the most power-generating capacity from solar projects. California remains #1 if rooftop systems are included.
Data from Copernicus showed that the global average temps. from Jun.-Aug. were the hottest on record. 13 of the past 14 mo. have seen global average surface temperatures that exceeded 1.5C > preindustrial levels.
Scientists found that a dye that helps make Doritos orange can also be used to turn mouse tissues transparent. This discovery could offer a less-invasive method of monitoring live animals used in medical research.
Wishing you a good week
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