🏘️ Welcome To Smallville

Image: WSJ

Billings, MT, topped the second edition of the WSJ/Realtor.com's Emerging Housing Markets Index.

• The index analyzes a slate of housing market data, economic vitality, and lifestyle metrics to rank which housing markets are expected to provide both a strong return on investment and a high quality of life.

The second edition built upon the first release by adding consideration of local property taxes – filtering out places where it might be inexpensive to buy, but expensive to live.

📸 The big picture... "In the latest index rankings published on Tuesday, smaller cities dominate," reported the WSJ, saying people are drawn to smaller locales for their "affordability and appeal to remote workers" in the midst of a housing boom and a pandemic.

👁 Looking ahead...... Will this trend continue?

🎁 DONUT Headline: A former schoolteacher and union activist was declared president-elect of Peru after last month's hotly-contested election – though he may have some difficulties attracting enough public support for his ambitious agenda.

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Active wildfires in the U.S. as of July 20; Source: U.S. Forest Service

Over 80 wildfires are currently burning across a dozen Western states, covering roughly 1.1M acres (an area larger than Rhode Island).

• Nearly 20k firefighters were working to contain the blazes, most of which are burning in Montana, Idaho, California, and Oregon.
• The Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon is the largest currently burning in the U.S., covering more than 388k acres as of Tuesday evening.
• The fire is also generating its own weather, including unpredictable winds, fire clouds that spawn lightning, and rare fire tornadoes.

The Bootleg Fire; Source: John Hendricks/Oregon Office Of State Fire Marshall

📸 The big picture... Many climatologists attribute the widespread fires to extremely dry conditions and record heat waves tied to climate change. 

• From the AP: "Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive."

Scientists are also predicting another over-active hurricane season, with many identifying climate change as the root cause.

• While 2021 isn't forecasted to exceed the record 30 named storms in 2020, the season will likely produce more than the 14-storm average. Five have already spun up in the Atlantic this season, which runs from June-November.

✋  Yes, but... Others have blamed the Western wildfires on factors besides climate change, including federal forest mismanagement, poor public water conservation, and environmental regulation limiting preventive tools like prescribed burns.

• Seattle-based meteorologist Cliff Mass, in a blog post, wrote that "human-caused global warming played a very small role in the extreme heat event that we just experienced here in the Pacific Northwest."

👁️ Looking ahead... "Multiple weather hazards are affecting the West and these threats will likely continue much of this week," according to the National Weather Service.

🚦 Disrupting Traffic

Image: Art. Lebedev Studio

The modern traffic light was created in 1923 and has changed very little over the past ~100 years.

• Like any century-old technology, the traffic light has its flaws. For example, drivers who are color blind can have a difficult time distinguishing between red and green signals.

Looking to bring the traffic light into the 21st century, Moscow-based design firm Art. Lebedev Studio condensed the three-tier stoplight into one digital panel providing easily understood traffic information.

• 🔴 When it’s time to stop, the entire screen glows red and features an ‘X’ to warn color-blind drivers.
• 🟢 When it’s time to go, the screen glows green and projects an arrow to indicate it’s okay to proceed.

The new stoplight is equipped with a 5G connection, and can be programmed remotely to respond to new traffic and detour information.

Keep reading.

Images: Ocean Reef Group

There's been a lot of recent talk about space travel – and not enough about food growing in the depths of the sea.

🌱 Emerging from the depths... Nemo’s Garden is a fully operational greenhouse system that grows plants like basil, cucumbers, tomatoes, and peas. Submerged eight meters below sea level, the farm is slightly different than your mom’s backyard planters.

• Created by the Ocean Reef Group in 2012 as a means to research agricultural diversity, the self-sufficient biospheres are able to healthy grow plants using solar energy and evaporated sea water.

After COVID-19 lockdowns forced development on the project to pause for over a year, the garden is finally back open for business.

Keep reading.

Which country produces the most coffee in the world?

A) Indonesia
B) Brazil
C) Vietnam
D) Colombia

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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B) Brazil

Brazil became the world's largest coffee producer in the 1840s and has been ever since. About 300k coffee farms can be found in the country, accounting for more than one-third of the world's total production.