Hello! Here is what I learned in July.
Things I Learned
The Jell-O shot was invented by Tom Lehrer. (source)
From 1868 until 1913, 90% of all federal revenue in the US came from taxes on liquor, beer, wine, and tobacco (source
Paid toilets are illegal in the state of New York (source)
There is no technical definition of a “weed.” (h/t)
In 1950, Spain was poorer on a GDP-per-capita basis than Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, and was roughly equal to Colombia, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Panama. (h/t, source)
Rats exist on every continent except Antarctica (source)
47% of U.S. grandchildren live within 10 miles of a grandparent. (source)
You are permitted to bring a live lobster through TSA, so long as (a) it is in a clear plastic container (b) it is visually inspected by a TSA agent. (source)
The average South African woman weighs more than the average South African man (h/t, source).
Among English town names, anything ending in -caster, -cester or -chester was a Roman fort; -bury and -borough are Saxon forts; if it ends in -by it was settled by vikings; -ford is a river crossing. (source)
The serving size of Pam cooking spray is a unit of time (1/4 second spray) (source)
Europe has more heat deaths per year than the United States loses to gun deaths (source)
Recorded music was invented by Thomas Edison in 1877. (source)
In 2008, the largest bank in the world was Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). (source)
Ministers in the Singaporean government — i.e. the equivalent of cabinet secretaries — earn an average salary of $1.1 million per year, as their salary is computed by taking the average income of the top 1000 highest income earners in the country. (source)
In all marriages with a 14-year age disparity, the younger party is a woman 85% of the time. (source)
Tennis balls have only been yellow since 1972, changed (in part) at the request of David Attenborough who had trouble seeing white balls. Before then, tennis balls were either black or white depending on the surface. (source)
Articles I Liked
What if you could search every visible word on New York City’s streets?
Or, if you don’t want to read the article, and just want to search the density of various words, use this link. But I promise the article is cool.
What was it like to live in 1776?
Very dark (literally)
Why are young adults in the English-speaking world so unhappy?
If GLP-1 Drugs Are Good For Everything, Should We All Be On Them?
Our Favorite Pools (NY Times)
Articles I Wrote
Some articles I wrote include1:
How To Escape Taxes on Your Stocks
ft. this graph (+ more graphs in the article)
The Deeper Reason for Banking’s Retreat
ft. this graph (+ more graphs in the article)
Market Beating Stock Strategies Don’t Last
Technically not an article I wrote this month, but thanks to the Chicago Booth Review for their writeup / coverage this month of my paper with Stefan Nagel on real-time forecasting of return-based anomalies (I promise it’s a lot more interesting than it sounds, as the writeup makes clear!):
ft. this graph
3 Things I Enjoyed at Airports in India
I recently returned from an enjoyable trip to Udaipur, India. I have lots of observations from my trip there but I wanted to highlight three interesting things I saw at airports there.
First, at both Delhi and Udaipur Airport there were dedicated Yoga areas. I was not aware that Yoga was a thing one did at airports, and it was cool to see. (Of course, too much yoga crossed with aviation can be a bad thing)
Left: Dedicated Yoga space at Delhi Airport. Right: Suggested Yoga poses at Udaipur airport. Second, as an avid chess player, I was very excited to see a giant chessboard at the Udaipur airport (so much so that I asked a then-confused onlooker to take photograph of me in front of it). What I particularly enjoyed was the national chess-patriotism/pride evident in the sign behind it, where they congratulate Vishy Anand and Gukesh for their chess world championships. I felt a little bit bad for the omission of Praggnanandhaa, who is also an extremely gifted chess player but has not won a world championship. I was trying to think of what the equivalent would be in other countries; I guess we did put a basketball court in Indianapolis airport around the NBA all star game?
Third, this sign announcing “best security screener of terminal 1” raised a lot more questions for me than it answered: how do they measure the best security screener (most people processed? most people pulled aside? most successful catches?); how autocorrelated is performance across months? (does the same person tend to win?); How does it differ across terminals (why is the award terminal 1 specific)? etc etc. Anyway I tried asking a security official some of these questions, and I’m not sure he understood my question due to the language barrier — his answer was (I think) that they have a separate dry-run where they evaluate people on simulated bags/screens. I’m not sure I believe this — seems very inefficient. I tried emailing Delhi airport, who referred me to the Indian police force, who have not gotten back to me.
Congrats Mr. Kumar
That’s all from me this month. I hope everyone has an excellent August!
As usual, let me know if you need a gift link.
Eric Adams: “People are saying New York is the Antarctica of America.”