Hello! The mugshot to launch a thousand clicks was released yesterday: by now, we’ve all scrutinized and shared Donald Trump’s close-up at the sheriff’s office. The iconic image is already being emblazoned on an array of merch — even by the Trumps themselves, with proceeds going towards the former president’s Legal Defense Fund. Today we're exploring:
Summer fever
In case you missed it — or were just OOO — yesterday was the nation’s top day for calling in sick.
August 24th beats out more cold-and-flu-struck winter dates, being named as the day when US workers most often take sick leave, according to research by Flamingo. Of over 10,000 employees surveyed, an average of 0.9% of workers were out sick on August 24th, beating February 13th in 2nd place, which often aligns — by coincidence of course — with the date of the Super Bowl.
The study also found that 54% of absences due to sickness were the result of stomach bugs, with suspected or diagnosed Covid being the next most common reason (25%), followed by stress/anxiety (9%) — or at least that’s what bosses were told.
Ill will
Even with time on their side, it's the younger workers that seem more inclined to call in sick. According to a 2022 YouGov survey, 60% of 18-29 year-olds in the US believed that people should be allowed to use all of the sick days provided to them, regardless of whether they're actually unwell — a 12% greater proportion than the national average who held that opinion.
However, there was a pretty sharp disagreement across generations, with just 36% of the 65 and over demographic feeling the same way. Indeed, seniors were a little more old school when it came to playing hooky: 55% of those aged 65+ believed that sick days should only be used if someone is actually sick.
Just browsing... for features
Google Chrome is testing a new feature that will make it look a little more like it's Apple rival Safari: switching the browser’s address bar to the bottom, moving it closer to the thumb — great news for speed searchers seeking to fact-check their friends or find “food near me” as quickly as possible.
The move comes almost 2 years after Apple made the bottom-of-the-screen-based address bar its default, a decision that wasn’t a roaring success at the time. But, while Chrome has lagged in this change-up, the platform has been dominating the browser world for over a decade now.
First launched in 2008, when Internet Explorer was at the height of its powers, Google's PR team was keen to make a splash with Chrome — going so far as to create a comic book to explain its "streamlined" features. Marketed as a "fresh take on the browser", Chrome offered faster loading times, fewer crashes, third-party extensions and, perhaps most importantly, the resources of a tech giant.
Free real estate
Those resources also meant plugging into the Google ecosystem — Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Android — giving Chrome an enormous leg up, just as its primary competition, Internet Explorer, and the free and open-source Firefox, were struggling for users. By the end of 2009, in the first full year of its existence, Google Chrome captured just 5% of the browser market. However, things shifted quickly: Chrome became the most popular browser in 2012, a position it’s held ever since.
Since it's free to use, Chrome may not initially seem like a core part of Google's business, but it actually saves the company billions every year. When people use the Chrome search bar, the default search engine is, of course, Google itself — had Google never built a browser, it would have to split that ad revenue with someone else.
No more games
On Monday, we previewed the Nvidia results, modestly skeptical as to whether the best-performing stock in the entire S&P 500 Index would be able to live up to the lofty forecasts investors had for the company's upcoming quarterly results.
The report ended up blowing all expectations out of the water, reporting $13.5bn in revenue — double what the company had notched a year earlier, and 123% more than it had managed in the final 3 months of last year. That single quarter of revenue, driven by rampant demand for GPUs involved in large-language machine learning models, is more than the company had managed in all of 2020.
Right place, right time
It's hard to think of parallels for Nvidia's crazy year to put it into context, but Google sprung to mind (perhaps because we were just writing about it). However, even Google's stunning growth in the early 2000s hasn't matched Nvidia's pace. Indeed, on a relative basis, Zoom's lockdown-induced boom was the only revenue surge that we found more impressive than Nvidia's recent growth, with the video-conferencing company seeing a 253% jump in revenue in just 6 months.
Accounting for sheer size, Pfizer's boost from the development of its Covid-19 vaccine was comparable. The pharma company grew 66% in two quarters, adding $9.5bn in revenue. That said, demand for Covid vaccines ended up being (somewhat) temporary — AI looks like it's here to stay.
• Just 1% of Americans identify as vegan in 2023, down from 3% 5 years ago, according to a new Gallup poll.
• Barbie is gearing up for a limited Imax release in September, having just dethroned Super Mario Bros to become the highest-grossing film of the year in America.
• Featured in 3000+ scientific publications, experts are calling Akkermansia the keystone strain for gut health. Pendulum patented the strain as a once-daily probiotic capsule, which you can try now with 20% off (code CHARTR20).**
• Juul is cutting roughly 30% of its workforce, as the vaping giant, which was once valued at ~$38 billion, still waits to find out whether it can sell its products in the US.
• Pumpkin Spice season is officially upon us: the Starbucks drink landed yesterday — earlier than ever — as the fall favorite turns 20 this year.
**This is sponsored content.
• Charting America’s two very divergent housing markets.
• Mapping the expansion of the BRICS block to include Saudi Arabia, Argentina, and 4 other countries.
Off the charts: Which chain that shut down more stores than any other in 2022 is being sold to private equity giant Roark for ~$9.6 billion? [Answer below].
