Gasoline Demand -- Just Barely Ahead Of Last Year -- December 20, 2017; Another Endangered Species?

Link here:

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Let The Celebrations Begin -- Just In Time For Christmas

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Global Warming? Another Endangered Species

From Axios: it looks like cashiers are soon to be an endangered species.

Walmart's NYC-based innovation center is experimenting with a cashier-less store concept called Project Kepler, which "aims to reimagine the in-store shopping experience with the help of technologies like computer vision.

Project Kepler is in part aimed at creating a store that would feature no checkout lines or cashiers, but use computer vision to detect which products customers leave the store with and then charge their accounts accordingly.

Amazon is also experimenting without cashiers, while roughly 3.5 million Americans operate cash registers for a living.

Walmart's new start-up subsidiary, called Code 8, is experimenting with "high personalised, one-to-one shopping experiences," that will be marketed to "busy NYC moms."

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The Katie Ledecky Page

Is Katie Ledecky beatable in her domain events? -- Swimming World, December 11, 2017.

In a report recently from The Straits Times, Chinese rising star Li Bingjie said she had her eyes set on catching American superstar Katie Ledecky in the 400 and 800 freestyle events.

She has been dubbed the “female Sun Yang” and has already won a silver (800 free) and a bronze medal (400 free) at the World Championship level, and yet she is still only 15.

Her rapid rise to the top has many people reminiscing Ledecky’s rise to the top when she won the 800 at the London Olympics in 2012 when she too was only 15.

Li’s times are not far off of Ledecky’s either, as she swam an 8:15.46 and a 4:03.25 in the finals in Budapest while Ledecky was a 4:04.34 and an 8:14.63 in her events at the London Olympics at the same age. So Li is not far off at this point. But is it possible we could see a similar four year run from Li that Ledecky had from London to the Rio Olympics in 2016?

In the history of women’s swimming, there have been three women (Mary T. Meagher, Janet Evans and Krisztina Egerszegi) that were generations ahead of their time during their careers. Meagher held her 200 fly record from 1981-2000. Evans held her 800 free world record from 1989-2008 and Egerszegi held her 200 back world record from 1991-2008, averaging about 18 years to hold a world record.

By the time Ledecky’s career is done, she may have surpassed all three of them. Heck, she may have passed them already. But one thing that Krisztina, Janet and Mary T. have in common is that they were all beaten in their third Olympics. Mary T finished third in the 200 fly in 1988, some five seconds off her world record from seven years prior. (Yes, she only swam in two Olympics, but her time from the Olympic Trials in 1980 would have won the Moscow final by four seconds).

Much more at the link.