Sunday, January 7th, 2024

This week’s core story is about: State gun laws.

Update: The Bagel will return to a daily format on Monday, February 5th! 

Details:

• The Bagel will return to a daily 5-minute read highlighting the research discoveries behind today’s most important issues.

• The newsletter will look and feel similar to today’s, particularly in terms of brevity and personality (get ready to have some fun!).

• Additional details to come next week!

Why?

• At its heart, The Bagel is better suited as a daily newsletter and, personally, I miss writing it each day. So many interesting findings happen that I want to tell all of you about!

That’s it for now. I’ll have more information next week!

KNEAD TO KNOW

Stricter Gun Laws Could Save Nearly 300,000 Lives Over the Next Decade

Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun violence prevention nonprofit, released its 2024 Gun Law Rankings, scoring each state on the strength of its gun laws compared with its rate of gun violence. 

What to know:

California topped the gun law strength rankings, followed by New York, Illinois, Connecticut, and Hawaii in the top five. Arkansas, Mississippi, Idaho, Montana, and Georgia ranked lowest on gun strength.

• Unsurprisingly, Everytown found states that scored higher on gun law strength tended to score lower on rates of gun violence. 

• Still, the rankings show states with strong gun laws are vulnerable to their weaker neighbors, with several strong-law states plagued by high gun violence partly because of porous borders with weak-law states targeted by traffickers.  

Several states improved or worsened over the past year, like Michigan, which climbed four spots after passing legislation strengthening background checks, and Florida, which fell three spots after enacting permitless carry.

• In all, Everytown classified 14 states as “National Failures,” meaning they’re missing even the most basic gun safety measures (e.g., requiring background checks or permits).

Why it matters:

Everytown compared states’ gun laws on 50 key gun safety policies (e.g., secure storage laws), finding 298,000 U.S. lives could be saved over the next decade if every state had the same gun violence rates as the nation's leading eight states on gun strength.

QUICK BITES

The U.S. Is in Another COVID Surge

New wastewater data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests the U.S. is experiencing its worst COVID surge since the omicron wave in 2022, with every state that reports data currently seeing very high or high levels of viral activity in wastewater.

• Hospitalizations (+20.4%) and emergency room visits (+12.8%) for COVID are also up compared to the past week, as are COVID-related deaths (+12.5%), as the highly mutated JN.1 variant now dominates the globe. 

Cities on the East Coast Are Sinking

A new study by researchers at Virginia Tech and the U.S. Geological Survey found several major cities on the East Coast are sinking, with some areas falling at a rate of more than 5 millimeters per year, outpacing global sea level rise (roughly 4 mm per year). 

• New York City, Long Island, Baltimore, Virginia Beach (pictured above), and Norfolk are experiencing particularly rapid subsidence, alongside more slowly sinking or relatively stable land, increasing the risk to infrastructure like roads, buildings, and railways.

Listen Up: Hearing Aids May Help You Live Longer

A new study by researchers at the University of Southern California found adults with hearing loss who regularly used hearing aids had a 24% lower risk of early death than those who needed hearing aids but never used them.

• The findings can impact millions of Americans, as around 15% of U.S. adults (37.5 million) are affected by hearing loss, but only about 16% of those aged 20 to 69 who need hearing aids use them.

OUTSIDE THE LOX

How Much Fruit Can You Take from a Store Display Before It Collapses?

Like sugary products and shopping carts with a single dysfunctional wheel, sloped displays of stackable fruits are a staple of American grocery stores. 

• Apples, oranges, grapefruit, you name it; if humankind can stack it, you bet your ass your local grocer will too. 

Another staple of the grocery store experience is the brief moment of anxiety we all feel when we remove our chosen fruit from its place among the choreographed pile.

• Why? Because no one wants to be the jabroni that chooses wrongly and sends two dozen limes rolling across the produce section.

• It’s an understandable fear, really, since it’s hard to know exactly how much fruit you can take before triggering an avalanche and giving yourself one of the world’s most unique forms of PTSD.

Well, researchers at the University of Antofagasta in Chile ran computer simulations of stacked fruit to test just that, finding about 10% of the fruit in a given display can be removed before it comes tumbling down. 

• Thus, rest assured, it’s unlikely you’ll trigger an avalanche by removing one or two fruits from a pile unless multiple shoppers before you also took fruit from the same location.

OVEN-FRESH STATS

• 216,000 - The number of jobs added by employers in December, according to the latest jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate held steady at 3.7% on the month, with both figures beating respective estimates of 170,000 and 3.8%. 

• -55.6% - The year-on-year decline in Russian natural gas exported to Europe in 2023, according to a new analysis by Reuters. Exports to Europe, once Russia’s primary export market, have fallen sharply since the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

• 75% - The percentage of industrial fishing boats around the world that are so-called “dark vessels,” according to a new study by researchers at Global Fishing Watch and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The vessels are known to disable their transponders to hide their location, often when illegally fishing in protected waters.  

• 693 days - How long it’s been since New York City’s Central Park has received more than one inch of snow in a single day, beating the previous record of 383 days that ended on March 21, 1998. The snow drought could end this weekend when a significant storm hits the Northeast.

EXTRA SCHMEAR

Long Video. Learn about the $140 billion race to build America’s first high-speed railway. (13 min) 

Short Video. Here’s how stretching literally changes your muscles. (5 min)

Fun Video. Why is Australia the only place with road-trains? (7 min)

Good Read. The American Psychological Association on how fighting misinformation is both messier and more important than ever. (1,641 words; 7 min)

Neat List. Check out 25 stunning images from this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest.

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Written by Ryan Wittler