BUSINESS
In 2018, the American e-cigarette market will grow to $5.5 billion, an increase of more than twenty-five per cent from 2017. 60% of the vaping market belongs to Juul. The traditional U.S. cigarette market is worth $120 billion.
Tesla is currently burning about $10M per day.
$1.6B was invested in 727 seed companies in Q1 of 2018. The median deal size for seed companies is now $2.2M, with a median post money valuation of $10.7M.
A peek inside the weird world of restaurant marketing consultants.
US
Kansas is losing 25- to 29-year-olds faster than any other state. 55 counties in Kansas have less than 10 people per square mile. In 2016, Kansas grew 467 million bushels of wheat across 8.2 million acres, which accounts for about 20% of the total US crop.
Unionized flight attendants get to work the most desirable trips based on seniority. Some senior American Airlines flight attendants sell prime trip assignments to junior flight attendants for an average for $200 per trip.
Wyoming only has 2 sets of escalators.
Over the course of the Iraq and Afgan wars, the Army has been forced to compensate for declining enlistment numbers by admitting a higher percentage of less intelligent “Category IV” recruits. This creates a conundrum because it has been shown that lower scores on the Army’s aptitude test result in worse the performance in the field.
The 400 richest Americans control more wealth than the poorest 80 million households. Here’s how 12 experts would end inequality if they ran America. Answers range from ‘more regulations and more entitlements’’ to ‘less regulations and less entitlements.’
The California secession movement (“Calexit”) has been given the go-ahead to gather signatures for its effort after the ballot proposal was approved.
ARTS
On New Year’s Day 2019, hundreds of thousands of books, musical scores, and films first published in the United States during 1923 will enter the public domain as modern copyright extensions expire. For several decades from 2019 onward, each New Year’s Day will unleash a full year’s worth of works published 95 years earlier.
I made the @ShowdownBot twitter bot using Glitch and Tracery. Here’s how you can make your own.
Cudjo Lewis, the last known survivor of the Middle passage Slave trade, died in 1935., Zora Neale Hurston conducted extensive interviews with Lewis and sought to publish a novel based on his life, but the manuscript was ultimately shelved due to tepid interest from publishers and criticism from other African American intellectuals. After nine decades, the book, Barracoon, will be published later this year.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
An illegal number is a number that represents information which is illegal to possess, utter, propagate, or otherwise transmit in some legal jurisdiction. For example, a number may represent some type of classified information or trade secret, such as an encryption key.
Nouns are less emotive than verbs.
University of Washington scientists have developed a system for DNA-based information storage — or NAM (nucleic acid memory) — which can accurately write and read 400 megabytes of data with no bit errors. The possibilities for DNA storage are large considering it is ultra-compact and long-lasting. At its theoretical limit, you can fit 215 million gigabytes of data in a single gram of DNA.
Viruses are unlike other types of organisms in many ways including their parasitic dependence on cellular hosts for replication, small size, and tiny genomes — even to the point of straddling the definitions of life and non-life. Several families of giant viruses have recently been discovered that shed new light on the origin and nature of viruses.
Flush a toilet on the Upper West Side at 7am, and by 3pm the water is back in the New York water supply. Everyday New York, produces a half-million gallons of concentrated waste known as “sludge” that must be disposed of by other means.
Microsoft is the only major platform still using a realistic handgun emoji. Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, and Twitter have all switched to a water pistol.
Bill Gates is bullish the potential for gene editing to solve world’s current and future food crises. Other scientists urge far more caution in use of gene editing for agricultural and other ecologies.
Adolfo Cambiaso, widely considered the world’s best polo player, rode six different horses to lead his team to victory in the prestigious Palermo match in Buenos Aires. All six horses were clones of the same mare—they’re named Cuartetera 01 through 06. Cloning aside, 95% of modern racehorses can trace their lineage to a single Arabian stallion.
Methane is about 25-times more potent than carbon dioxide in a 100-year time span, and a single cow releases between 70 and 120 kilograms of methane per year. Scientists have been able to reduce the methane production of cows in the lab by 99 percent in by supplementing their normal diet with 2% of a from of red algae called Asparagopsis taxiformis. Getting enough seaweed to feed to millions of cows is the biggest challenge to widespread adoption.
HEALTH
Studies show that 13 percent to 18 percent of distressed teens physically injure themselves via cutting, burning or other forms of self-harm as a way to cope with their pain. Recent research and clinical psychologists now suggest that 6% of adolescents are engaging in a form of digital self-harm — anonymously posting mean and derogatory comments about themselves on social media.
A large(ish) but indeterminate segment of population reports hearing voices in their head. Many psychiatric scientists now believe hearing voices is a relatively normal experience in psychotic continuum.
This post Old News: Handgun Emojis originally appeared on williamwickey.com.