Hello gang!
We’re very much in Q4 mode with the upcoming weeks stacked with projects, festive season across Asia and travel plans. I’ve also been working on revamping the newsletter, adding more to the publishing queue, a new platform (contemplating moving to ghost.io) and a new look for the company as well. In doing all this, I dug into the numbers. While this newsletter will go out every Friday, I noticed given y’all are coming from all over the world - a big chunk of you read this on Mondays!
So instead of FFF, we’re making it just Five Finds. Please share it with someone who might like these, irrespective of what day you’re reading this on 🤩
Here are the finds for the week:
- GLOBAL GENTRIFICATION The transnational mobility of lifestyle migrants and digital nomads has led to the globalization of rent gaps and the pricing out of locals in some cities. “When richer income people migrate, they’re rarely called immigrants. Instead, they’re expats, global nomads, or lifestyle retirees. It’s even rarer that they’re labeled an immigration problem, but what the authors call the “consumption of place” has definite costs.”
- JEVON’S PARADOX “The societal impact of self-driving cars looks even worse when considering second-order effects related to land use. Just as the ascent of car ownership fueled suburbanization in the 20th century, AVs could lead people to relocate to larger, less energy-efficient homes on the urban fringe, where car trips — now more tolerable — are longer.”
- NEW NAZCA Peru’s Nazca Pampa, a UNESCO World Heritage site once home to pre-Inca Indigenous peoples who were fond of etching gargantuan artworks into the earth’s surface. Archaeologists spent nearly a century uncovering 430 figurative glyphs depicting animals, people, and hybrid creatures. But thanks to a new A.I.-trained system, researchers have identified an additional 303 drawings in just six months!
- ACADEMIC BARS These are venues across China that blend the casual atmosphere of a bar with intellectually stimulating activities like lectures, discussions, and workshops. This concept has become a trending phenomenon. I’m into it!
- NOBEL NUMBERS Lovely visualization by Nature magazine. What subjects have past winners studied? What age were they when they won? Where do they live? Nature crunched the data on every science prizewinner to find out.