25 talking points for better conversation at cocktails from news of the past week.
1. Canada is home to the biggest population of Sikhs outside India.
2. The US Navy is carrying out the biggest overhaul of its top-secret undersea surveillance network since the 1950s.
3. China has the largest navy in the world, comprising around 340 ships and submarines, according to the Pentagon's 2022 report on China's military.
4. According to a study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, China now leads the world in 37 of 44 critical technologies, including advanced materials, synthetic biology, and quantum communications.
5. Japan to launch special investment zones where only English is needed.
6. 2024 in France will be a busy year: A Francophonie summit, the 30th anniversary of the 1994 law mandating the use of the French language, and the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games.
7. The US $860 billion defense budget is double that of all other NATO members combined.
8. The passing of the Dalai Lama could spark one of the most extraordinary stand-offs in global politics.
9. Economist John Maynard Keynes famously predicted in 1930 that productivity and living standards over the next century would rise so much that by 2030, we would only have to work 15 hours per week.
10. Americans' dismal views of the nation's politics: 65% tell Pew they always or often feel exhausted when thinking about politics.
11. Only 4% of US adults say the political system works extremely or very well.
12. As the US presidential campaign heats up, 63% of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the candidates who have emerged.
13. Not counting steel and aluminum, says MIT, an EV requires six times more minerals than a conventional vehicle.
14. Extracting 1 ton of copper requires digging up around 100 tons of ore.
15. The EU will ban the sale of new fossil fuel cars in 2035.
16. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Europe accounted for 25% of EV sales and 30% of the global stock of EVs in 2022. The US, by contrast, accounted for 10% of EV sales.
17. Oil and gas investment peaked in 2014 at $887 billion. Expectations for 2023 are $579 billion.
18. Since 2009, manufacturing output per hour in the US has grown just 0.2% a year.
19. Apple code-named its modem chip project Sinope, after the nymph in Greek mythology who outsmarted Zeus.
20. Stonegate, Britain's biggest pub company, announced it will charge pubgoers 20p extra for a pint of beer on busy evenings and weekends. It is part of what it called a new "dynamic pricing" policy in some of its venues.
21. A 2018 study by researchers at MIT found that dynamic pricing boosted airline revenues by between 1 and 4 percent compared with traditional pricing.
22. Microsoft will bet its biggest brands on OpenAI by integrating the tech into PowerPoint, Word, and Excel in the coming months.
23. At present, fewer than 1 percent of the world's 30,000 plus AI researchers work on safety issues.
24. The OECD's policy observatory counts 800 AI policies across 60 countries in its database.
25. For Colorado University's practice jerseys, players wear shirts with their social media handles, not their last names, on their backs.
Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.
-Marc
