PicoBlog

Thanks for joining me for the 18th issue of the Golden Stats Warrior, a newsletter for data-based insights about the Bay Area. If this is your first time reading, welcome! If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do that here. I am so grateful for your support. On July 1, the apartment rental site Zumper released their monthly report on the state of local rental market. The numbers they reported for the Bay Area were staggering.

About a week ago, an Athleta email showed up in my inbox. This is not remotely news because they arrive every hour of every day, of course. How do we know we’re even alive if we’re not “jumping into bold swim colors” at 7:55am? I usually delete without opening, but the subject of last Friday’s email was “9 travel-ready styles inside” and goddammit, I am traveling soon (family spring break trip), and want to feel travel-ready, so fine.

Glad to be here? Please tap the little ❤️ icon above. It releases a flood of oxytocin in all women 21 and up. Enjoy! Another way you might release a flood of oxytocin: Listen to my interview on the Everything is Fine podcast. The co-hosts Jennifer Romolini and Kim France were exceptionally fun to talk with—and they’re terrific listeners. (The podcast is … ncG1vNJzZmiukaGys7XEpqanqp%2Bae7TBwayrmpubY7CwuY6pZq2vn2LAqrnPpZxmrKKqwam%2FjJqZqK2kYsCstc2cmKud

Just when it felt as though we finally moved past the connection between millennials, housing, and avocado toast, that Business Insider article on groceries came out. The headline about millennials looking to “splurge” more at grocery stores has quickly made rounds on social media. While I’m ever wary of headlines as clickbait, this one drove me to investigate the numbers behind it further. And of course, the actual study looking at spending habits across generations quickly pointed to a more nuanced story around food and cost-anticipation than the headline itself.

Is it okay to use sea sponges for your period? -Via TikTok Short Take No.  Share The Vajenda Go On... Sea sponges are aquatic animals. As filter feeders, water circulates through their pores and channels allowing the sponge to extract oxygen, bacteria and small particles and also to remove waste. When dried for commercial use, sea sponges are very absorbent and unfortunately they are often marketed for menstrual use as a “natural” tampon.

In 2014, I took part in a tournament for the Good Judgment Project. The goal of this project was to figure out whether certain individuals have habits of mind that make them better at predicting future events than others. About once a week, I would go onto their website and be presented with a series of questions about potential future events. I’d assign a probability to each event, but could skip as many questions as I wanted if I felt like I couldn’t offer a reasonable prediction.

You’ve probably seen this pitch, which shows up regularly at your favorite social media hangouts and on some very well known, high-traffic tech websites. Get a lifetime license for Microsoft Office Professional 2021 - $49.95 Hurry - offer ends in 4 days! If you are a thrifty person who owns a PC or Mac, you might be tempted by this offer. But if you are experienced enough to know what a scam looks like, you are probably wondering: How can this offer possibly be legit?

Welcome to Techno Sapiens! Subscribe to join thousands of other readers and get research-backed tips for living and parenting in the digital age. We’ve got a deep dive on the research on violent video games today. If that’s your thing, please read on! If you’re just looking for a quick summary and tips, scroll to the bottom for What Parents Should Know. There is a lot of debate over the effects of violent video games.

I’d rather not have to write about it, and haven’t for awhile. More than four years in, we’re all sick of Covid stuff and hope it’s behind us. And recent months have been good with a steady drop in hospitalizations and wastewater SARS-CoV-2 to their lowest levels since the summer of 2023. That’s great. But we’ve got to keep an eye on the constantly evolving virus, by natural selection to bypass our immune response and/or potentiate its infectivity—anything to find more hosts or repeat hosts.