https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/candidates-made-history-firsts-midterms/

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Some candidates didn’t just win on Tuesday, they also broke barriers.

Those victories included the first female governors elected in Arkansas and Massachusetts; the first Black person to be elected governor of Maryland; and the first member of Gen Z to be elected to Congress.

In some ways, this election had already made history for the diversity of candidates running. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people ran for office in all 50 states for the first time, according to the LGBTQ Victory Fund. The number of such candidates on the ballot also increased 18 percent from 2020, it said, many of them galvanized by a wave of measures in Republican-led states attacking the community.

This cycle also set records for the number of women running for governor, said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. But the same was not true of the Senate and the House, where female candidates in the general election fell short of the highs reached in 2018 and 2020, respectively.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/08/tech/mastodon-twitter-explainer-trnd/index.html?utm_source=optzlynewmarketribbon

If you’ve heard the word “mastodon” a lot since Elon Musk took over Twitter in late October, here’s why: The extinct mammal is also the name of a relatively small, formerly little-known social network that has skyrocketed in popularity, as many Twitter users try it out as an alternative for connecting with others online.

Mastodon lets users join a slew of different servers run by various groups and individuals, rather than one central platform controlled by a single company like Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. While all of these social networks are free to use, Mastodon is also free of ads. It’s developed by a nonprofit run by Eugen Rochko, who created Mastodon in 2016, and is supported via crowdfunding, as well as by individuals and groups who operate servers.

Users have been fleeing Twitter for it in recent days or at least seeking out a second place to post their thoughts online as the much more well-known social network faces layoffs, controversial product changes, an expected shift in its approach to content moderation and a jump in hateful rhetoric.

In a Mastodon post late Sunday, Rochko said the social network gained 489,000 users in the less than two weeks, and now boasts over one million active monthly users. (For perspective, Twitter reported in July that it had nearly 238 million daily active monetizable users.)

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/07/cars/carvana-stock-drop/index.html

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Carvana’s fall indicates a wider trend in the used car sector, as car prices that have been elevated fall due to rising interest rates and talk of recession. This could mean that the cars Carvana purchased in the past few months could soon be worth less than what the company anticipated.

Trouble for the used car world started months ago, with car prices getting so high that many customers were priced out. Shares of CarMax (KMX), the nation’s largest used car dealer, are down 50% since the start of the year. After a poor performance in September, the company blamed “vehicle affordability challenges that stem from widespread inflationary pressures, as well as climbing interest rates and low consumer confidence.”

Car prices had been climbing steadily for the last two years, helping to fuel Carvana’s growth, as a shortage of parts, particularly computer chips, limited supply of new cars at a time when consumer demand for vehicles was particularly strong. Those higher prices play a major factor in overall inflationary pressures, as roughly 40% of US households buy a car each year.

The effort to curb prices has prompted the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at an historic pace in recent months as the central bank tries to ease consumer demand and slow the economy. Automotive sales are especially sensitive to a rise in interest rates, as many car purchases are financed by consumers.

The result has been that used car prices have declined 10.6% compared to a year ago, according to the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, which tracks average used car prices.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/04/mixed-race-neighborhoods/

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Deep in the bowels of the nation’s 2020 Census lurks a quiet milestone: For the first time in modern American history, most White people live in mixed-race neighborhoods.

This marks a tectonic shift from just a generation ago.

Back in 1990, 78 percent of White people lived in predominantly White neighborhoods, where at least 4 of every 5 people were also White. In the 2020 Census, that’s plunged to 44 percent.

Large pockets of segregation remain, but as America’s White population shrinks for the first time and Hispanic, Asian, Black and Native Americans fuel the nation’s growth, diverse neighborhoods have expanded from urban cores into suburbs that once were colored by a steady stream of White flight from inner cities.

Across the 9,700 neighborhoods that became mixed in 2020, White population dropped by almost 300,000. Meanwhile, the number of Hispanics jumped by 1.5 million, the largest part of a 4.3 million increase in non-Whites in those neighborhoods.

This demographic shift has scrambled the nation’s politics, introducing new groups of often left-leaning voters into typically conservative White-dominated enclaves, according to Chris Maggio, a sociologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Department of Criminology, Law and Justice.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/business/avocados-surplus-inflation-price-relief/index.html

There’s at least one item in the grocery store that is getting less expensive: avocados.

A significant supply glut of the buttery fruit has triggered a drop in wholesale prices, sending store prices lower as well.

With the overall cost of grocery items up a stunning 13% compared to last year, cheaper avocados couldn’t come at a better time for inflation-weary households desperate to catch a break on their shopping bills.

After surging in the first-half of 2022, the wholesale price for a carton of 48 mid-sized avocados has dropped 35% to under $30 year-over-year, down 67% from the peak reached in the last week of June, said David Magana, senior fresh produce analyst with Rabo AgriFinance.

At the store level, the average unit price for avocados also has reversed course, declining 2.6% in September from a year ago. That’s a big drop from the 31% year-over-year spike seen in July and August’s 13.9% bump, according to the latest numbers from market research firm NielsenIQ, which tracks point of sale data from retailers.

A confluence of multifaceted issues — including geopolitics — has led to an overabundance of the fruit, said Richard Kottmeyer, managing director of food, agriculture and beverage with FTI Consulting.

As prices cool off, so many avocados are floating around right now that in some instances they are being given away for free.