26k+: The number of complaints customers filed against US airlines in the first five months of 2023, up 100%+ YoY. Airlines and air traffic control centers continue to face staffing shortages, an issue that arose amid the pandemic. For those of you traveling for the holidays, good luck.
$270m+: The estimated cost of Mark Zuckerberg’s Hawaii compound. Despite strict NDAs binding those working on it, Wired sussed out that the ~1.4k-acre “techno-Xanadu” contains 12+ buildings with 30 bedrooms, 30 bathrooms, offices, conference rooms, an industrial-sized kitchen, a gym, spa, and tennis court, plus several tree houses and, most importantly, a 5k-square-foot underground bunker.
28: The number of books (out of ~300k titles) that sold 500k+ copies in the US in 2022. Notably, eight of those books were by romance/YA author Colleen Hoover, whose novel It Ends with Us sold 2.7m+ copies.
19%: The percentage of Americans who think AI will have a major impact on their job over the next 20 years, per Pew Research Center. But when it comes to careers in journalism, graphic design, and software engineering, over half of respondents thought AI would have a major impact. Gulp.
