Digits: Plasma, funerals, and Hallmark

Plus: Funeral homes and AI surveillance art.

1) A US judge overturned a policy barring Mexicans from crossing the border to sell plasma. The US accounts for 60% of global plasma collection, being the only country allowing donations up to 104x a year, and Mexican citizens account for 10% of it.

Digits: Plasma, funerals, and Hallmark

2) Death is a good business — in the US, ~19k funeral homes comprise the $23B industry. Increasingly, private equity firms are rolling up the homes and raising prices.

3) With winter, so come the holiday movies. This year, Hallmark is dropping 40 originals. Female leads can make up to $300k. Male leads, $200k.

4) Universities partnering with LinkedIn released findings from a five-year study on 20m users that expands on our understanding of how weak ties to others positively affect job mobility more than strong ties.

5) Belgium-based artist Dries Depoorter’s latest project, “The Follower,” with 10k+ likes on Twitter, uses AI and public livestreams to identify videos of Instagrammers posing for a photo they later post on social media.

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