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The Friday Focus — Null Island, Wealth Waves, and Pomplamoose

Hey friends,

Happy Friday!

I hope you’ve had a great week! As I predicted on Tuesday, the Vice Presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz was pretty much a nothingburger. I think you can argue that Vance “won” the debate by overperforming expectations, but he likely didn’t do enough to move polls given the minuscule impact VP debates have in the grand scheme of things. If you haven’t read it yet, feel free to check it out here!

Anyway, here’s everything else I wanted to share this week:

The Many Lives of Null Island (22 minutes): The Prime Meridian meets the Equator at 0° latitude, 0° longitude. That’s also the location of “Null Island,” a place that does not exist. Rather than housing any flora or fauna, Null Island is the home of bad, messy, or corrupted data. Read for a fascinating story about data quality, mapmaking, and how a fake island is mysteriously growing.

The great wealth wave (18 minutes): Inequality has increased in the United States, but capitalism isn’t to blame. Additionally, it doesn’t necessarily seem that said inequality is inherently bad. Some counter-intuitive fact-slinging about the state of western economies, what it means for our future, and the risks that do exist on the horizon.

 

But wait, there’s more!

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