Assorted Links Monday

A gallery of shipping container architecture.

Research studies indicate that consumers of eggs in different parts of the world prefer different yolk colors. This coloring comes from plant pigments called carotenoids present in a chicken’s diet. BASF distributes a feed additive called Lucantin which can be used to precisely set this color. There’s even a color swatch set. As someone who's raised free-range chickens, their natural orange yolk colors really messed up the look Mrs. Carlson's baked goods.

In 1945, the US Navy spent $1 million to retrofit a barge into a portable ice cream factory and parlor. It was capable of storing 2,000 gallons of ice cream and could produce around 10 gallons every 7 minutes.

Stein Mart’s closing added 10 million square feet of vacancy in 2020: Retail Specialists took a deep dive into which retailers have been backfilling these locations.

Woah. Could drug abuse be a huge part of the labor problem, post-COVID?

The labor-force participation rates of prime-age U.S. workers dropped in March 2020 — the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and have still not fully recovered. At the same time, substance-abuse deaths were elevated during the pandemic relative to trend indicating an increase in the number of substance abusers, and abusers of opioids and crystal methamphetamine have lower labor-force participation rates than non-abusers. Could increased substance abuse during the pandemic be a factor contributing to the fall in labor-force participation? Estimates of the number of additional substance abusers during the pandemic presented here suggest that increased substance abuse accounts for between 9 and 26 percent of the decline in prime-age labor-force participation between February 2020 and June 2021.

A 4-year degree isn’t quite the job requirement it used to be: New research finds companies are starting to rely less on the college filter in hiring.

The donut effect: How the pandemic hollowed out America’s biggest cities: Thanks to remote work, fewer people are living in downtowns and urban cores.