By Walt Hickey

Loans

In March of 2020, the federal government suspended payments on federal loans, a policy that is due to end soon. The effect that the pause had on borrowers as a whole was remarkable: The average credit score among the affected borrowers rose from 640 to 668 over the period, about half of borrowers managed to reduce their credit card reliance by an average of 23 percent, and the forbearance saved the 43 million Americans who owe a student loan approximately $37.8 billion in interest payments as of the end of last year. It gave borrowers — who collectively owe $1.6 trillion — a pause to address other obligations, as 85 percent of people with federal student loan debt also have other debt too.

Claire Ballentine, Bloomberg

Eggs

A new study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology studied the collection of 50,000 to 60,000 bird eggs held by Chicago’s Field Museum that were obtained and preserved from the 1870s to the 1920s, when collecting eggs from birds was inexplicably fashionable among hobbyists. Those eggs are inventories with some excellent record-keeping, though, and the researchers were able to see that some species of bird are nesting as much as 25 days earlier than they were in the early 1900s, which the authors say is consistent with one of the pervasive ecological changes associated with the warming climate.

Teresa Crawford, The Associated Press

Hertz

Hertz announced plans to buy 65,000 electric vehicles from Polestar, adding to their plans to purchase up to 100,000 electric vehicles from Tesla. Hertz has about 500,000 vehicles around the world, so this would be a pretty solid chunk of its available vehicles to be purchased over the next five years. Polestar is a sub-brand of Volvo and Geely, and is launching in Europe this spring and in North American this coming fall, and while Hertz didn’t disclose financial terms the Polestar 2 sedan retails for $49,000.

Andrew J. Hawkins, The Verge

Flagged

The number of Russian-flagged ships who are switching their flags to another country jumped in March to 18 ships, of which 11 were cargo vessels from a single fleet and three are oil tankers. Lots of Russian vessels have turned off identification and location tracking systems, going dark amid a global crackdown and sanctions on Russian goods. Most of the ships changed to Marshall Island-flagged vessels, while three became ships of Saint Kitts and Nevis. Ships switching flags isn’t abnormal — Singapore averaged 17 flag changes a month, and Japan averaged five a month — but they usually remain pretty consistent, while the March shift in flags was about triple the typical Russian rate.

K Oanh Ha, Bloomberg

Steel

Producing 1 metric ton of steel in 2020 emitted 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide across the industry, with steel responsible for 7 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, or 2.6 billion tons of CO2, in 2020. Swedish steel behemoth SSAB, which singlehandedly is responsible for 10 percent of Swedish CO2 emissions, is building a bleeding-edge pilot plant that will move from burning coal to burning hydrogen. The plant made its first delivery last year, with interest from Volvo and Volkswagen, which want to cut down on the material responsible for about 20 percent to 35 percent of the emissions produced in manufacturing a car. The Swedish steel business wants to hit fossil-free operations by 2045.

James Brooks, The Associated Press

Hanging Out

The art of “just going somewhere to hang out for a while” is dying in the United States, with last year’s American Community Life Survey finding that just 25 percent of people who live in areas with high amenities actually socialize with strangers once per week or more. The pandemic hammered so-called “third spaces,” with the two-thirds of Americans who said they have a favorite local place they go to regularly declining to about half of Americans. Part of this is offices and workplaces deliberately attempting to cultivate an in-house level of fraternization to get workers to hang out at the workplace more, some is people becoming homebodies, but now is a critical moment for the nation’s darts leagues, its karaoke nights, its trivia nights to strike back and reclaim the spontaneity that has been lost.

Allie Conti, The Atlantic

Anime

Despite only launching in Japan as recently as 2015, Netflix has become a massive force within the anime world. Since releasing its first feature-length anime film in 2017, today Netflix says half of its subscribers watched anime last year — a figure that is at 90 percent in Japan — and that globally they logged a 20 percent increase in the hours users spent watching anime in 2021 over 2020. Last week the company said they will launch some 40 new anime titles in 2022 alone. Thanks to the solid box office performance of anime titles, including the $30 million in U.S. revenue pulled in by Jujutsu Kaisen 0 since late March and the $454.7 million worldwide for Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train in 2020, Netflix is also attracting rival animation investments from rival streamers too.

Patrick Brzeski, The Hollywood Reporter

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