Monday morning news drop
24 charts that show we’re (mostly) living better than our parents Ignore the haters: living standards have improved a lot since the 1980s. (Full Stack Economics)
Predicting the Next Recession: I Am Not On Recession Watch: The recession callers are back, and some like ARK’s Cathie Wood and Home Depot’s Ken Langone claim the US is already in a recession. I disagree. We did see negative real GDP growth in Q1, and we might see negative real GDP growth in Q2 – but this doesn’t mean the US economy is in a recession. (Calculated Risk)
Tesla is killing off coal and gas plants with its giant battery projects. Megapacks are utility-scale batteries, meaning a power company can use them as a backup to store electricity for hundreds or thousands of customers. Each Megapack battery can store three megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity, enough to power about 100 US homes for a day. Tesla’s biggest battery installation involves 256 Megapack battery units with a combined storage capacity of 730 MWh, enough to power about 25,000 US homes for a day or nearly 600,000 homes for an hour. (Quartz)
Icons of Italian Automotive Style Struggle to Go Electric Ferrari and Lamborghini are trying to design battery-powered cars that inspire the same devotion as their costly internal combustion models. (New York Times)
Meat, monopolies, mega farms: how the US food system fuels climate crisis From a beef-heavy diet to growing crops that don’t feed people – the biggest challenges facing the agriculture industry. (The Guardian)
China has a PR problem — and it’s not just over Hong Kong. Here’s why in three charts. A new survey shows more and more people in advanced economies hold unfavorable views of China. (Grid)
America is in the grip of a right-wing minority We are now at a stage where the minority is taking over. Worse, it’s an extremist minority that has exploited imperfections in our system of government to impose retrograde policies on the rest of the country. (Los Angeles Times)
Moneyball at 20: 20 years later, you will not be able to recognize the game. Catchers will be on one knee and will not even attempt to block pitches as runs score on gift wild pitches. There will be so many relievers in a game your head will spin. Batters will try to lift the ball to such a degree and at all costs that batting average will sink to new lows and strikeouts will rise to record highs. Scouts will be replaced by video. (Ball Nine)
Modern Art and the Esteem Machine Picasso was a joke. Then he was a god. How did his art finally take off in America? (New Yorker)