Links: Week of 12 Jul 2025
Terrified Girls, Helicopters and a Harrowing Scene: A Rescuer’s Account at Camp Mystic (NYT):
Scott Ruskan, a Coast Guard swimmer, is credited with saving 165 people at the all-girls’ camp from deadly floods in Central Texas.
Mr. Ruskan realized that staying on scene would free up two extra spots on his helicopter for the evacuees, he said, so he told his unit, “I’d love to stay, I could do a lot more good on the ground.”
He became the main person on scene to both triage and provide emotional support to the survivors.
Hero.
- DT
New newsletter: The death of partying in the USA
The latest American Time Use Survey came out last month. I wanted to follow up on @elcush's declaration that Americans need to party more. The new data confirms: America's social crisis is dire.
- Between 2003 and 2024, the amount of time that Americans spent attending or hosting a social event declined by 50 percent.
- Young people aged 15-to-24 spent 70 percent less time attending or hosting parties in 2024 than they did in 2003.
More charts and analysis on the 50-year collapse of the social calendar in the link below.
The forests are coming back: 36 countries, including India and China, gained more tress than they lost, between 2000-2020.
For a few days this summer, your days will be just a smidge shorter (WaPo)
During the summer, the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, which minimizes the difference in temperature between the equator and Earth’s poles. This smaller temperature variation slows down the jet stream — a narrow band of strong winds around 30,000 feet above us — and moves it northward.