TikTok’s tunnel girl should sell her rocks

Those building stones are worth big bucks. [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a suburban mining project of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - The rock [mining biz]( is a boon. - [Your office]( is now a cocoon. - Biden [says](, “Xi you [real soon](!” - Wind farms? Bats and birds are [not immune](. Tunnel Girl Might Be Onto Something Tunnel vision. Source: @[engineer.everything]( on [TikTok]( You’ve heard of [eel pit guy](. But have you heard of [tunnel girl?]( Let me fill you in. A [young woman on TikTok]( — affectionately known as “[tunnel girl](” — has been digging [a labyrinth]( underneath her home for over a year. Why is she doing this? It’s unclear. She says her DIY “suburban mining project,” located somewhere in America, is an engineering hobby. Some suspect she’s in it for the building stones. Others say she’s preparing for nuclear catastrophe. Is she qualified to build an underground lair? Probably [not](. She has a [9-to-5 desk job]( at a corporate office. But that didn’t stop her from drilling straight into the wall of her subbasement last August. Since then, she has: - Purchased an electric “[mining cart](” to carry the materials. - Built an [elevator system]( to lift the rocks, 1,000 pounds at a time. - Installed a sump pump to control the [groundwater](. - Set up rebar latticework and a [steel form]( to pour concrete. - Extinguished some flames after her [welding]( caused a fire. - Ran into [some structural integrity issues]( with her walls. There’s a lot to unpack here!!! The entrance to her tunnel is 30 feet long, the main chamber is 22 feet below ground and the antechamber is 19 feet wide. At any moment, the ceiling could collapse! Or she could be hospitalized from carbon monoxide poisoning. Or silica dust. Or [radiation](. If she somehow survives all that, she says she wants to use [the building stones]( to turn the facade of her house into a castle (as one does). Obvious health and legal risks aside, dare I say that she might be onto something?? Just look at the price of essential building materials and you’ll understand why: Chris Bryant [says]( that actual professionals who mine rocks and then turn them into asphalt and concrete for roads, bridges and buildings are bringing home the big bucks: “Martin Marietta has gained 34% so far this year and trades at 25 times estimated earnings; Vulcan is valued at more than 30 times this year’s earnings,” he writes. It’s an industry that “should be fairly recession resistant,” he notes. More than 80% of US cement capacity is foreign owned, but US building materials firms fetch a sizable premium compared to their European rivals. CRH — a Dublin-based firm — generated $19 billion of sales in the US last year, or 58% of the total. And yet its shares trade at just 14 times estimated earnings. If tunnel girl were to sell her stones for cash, she’d have a very lucrative business on her hands: Chris argues that these European firms are getting the short end of the concrete-mixing stick, so to speak. Besides cheap exposure to the US, he says they are rushing to decarbonize by creating [lower-carbon concrete](. Let’s just hope that tunnel girl doesn’t [get]( [there]( first. Your Office Is Shrinking You can’t skip lunch. You just can’t. Source: I Think You Should Leave on Netflix I want you to close your eyes and think about all the offices you’ve ever worked in. Try and do this chronologically. Picture each space: What size is it? Are there four walls, or is it just a cubicle? Or not even a cubicle, just a desk (my editor’s is No. 9A-145) in a dreaded [open office?]( As you work through your lifetime of setups, are you noticing any patterns? Is your office space growing smaller, despite you getting further and further into your career? That’s what Justin Fox [says is happening](. Our offices are shrinking, and not in a fun [Tiny-Desk-Concert]( kind of way: “In the decade before the pandemic, the amount of office space per worker in the US shrank steadily — a trend [given]( the charming name ‘densification,’” he writes. You’d think that Covid would have changed things, given “[ghost town” business districts]( often mourned in the media. But incredulously, no: Although more than a billion square feet of office space sits empty in the US, “the densification appears to be accelerating,” he writes. He has a few theories as to why this is the case: - A lot of the vacant space is in older, dingier buildings. - Hybrid work creates underutilized office space. - Offices are now seen as spaces for in-person interaction. - Employers are fine with cramming workers into less space. Although that last one makes me instantly claustrophobic, I can’t help but agree with Justin’s assessment. Offices should exist for IRL activities! You want to go to work to talk shop with your colleagues — preferably over some triple-decker Italian clubs you ordered on the company card — not sit through some three-hour Zoom meeting that you could have easily watched at home. Sadly, not everyone concurs. Most bosses are [confident]( that workers will be back in the office five days a week within three years. This [RTO tug-of-war]( not only hurts [recruiting](, it also causes workers to stress out about future job opportunities. “While the odds of getting laid off remain very low, for the small — but growing — percentage of people who are either unemployed or looking to change jobs, conditions are arguably worse now than they’ve been in more than five years, outside of the pandemic,” Conor Sen writes. If the majority of workers become concerned about holding onto their job, “consumers might finally start to rein in their spending levels, creating the kind of recessionary risk the US economy has so far avoided,” he notes. Clearly, our physical office space isn’t the only thing shrinking these days — our job prospects are, too. Read [the whole thing](. Crash Course “In the same way that media organizations have a kind of journalistic set of ethics, social media platforms should also be thinking about what their ethical responsibilities are.” Jameel Jaffer Attorney and director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University On the latest episode of [Crash Course](, Tim O’Brien learns more about the digital revolution that has upended our [understanding of free speech](. Telltale Charts In less than 24 hours, President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping will [sit down]( for a glorified staring contest [in San Francisco](. They’ll ruminate on plenty of things: [Taiwan](, [fentanyl](, maybe [panda diplomacy](. But what doesn’t end up getting discussed will also be key. For decades, Xi has done the same-old anti-American [song-and-dance](, pointing out alllll the flaws of the US economy and arguing that China offers the world a better alternative. But this time he might end up staying quiet on all that. As John Authers [notes](, “China’s consumer recovery is already running out of steam,” and it didn’t have much to begin with. “Beijing’s policymakers must learn from American exceptionalism in order to draw their own economy out of its slump,” Shuli Ren [argues](. Ugh remember when former President [Donald Trump]( went around boohooing the death of “ALL THE BIRDS” killed by wind power? Yeah, about that: “The truth is that the [number of avian deaths]( from colliding with turbines pales in comparison to the 2.4 BILLION murdered every year by domestic cats,” Lara Williams [says](. Even so, there’s a simple solution to stop wind turbines from killing bats and birds: Rodrigo Medellin, an ecologist known as “the bat man of Mexico,” [says]( that increasing the speed of the turbines can reduce fatalities significantly. “If all turbines operated in that way, the annual energy losses would be just 1%. That feels worth it to save [some vital pollinators]( and pest controllers,” she writes. Further Reading Free read: India’s going to need [faster trains]( to keep up with China’s high-speed rail. — Andy Mukherjee Free read: Rishi Sunak’s bet on David Cameron smells like desperation. — Martin Ivens Your retirement savings might be in [a shadow bank](. — Bloomberg’s editorial board Can [Flip]( combine the best elements of Amazon and TikTok? — Dave Lee Somehow, Goldman Sachs continues to get [more boring](. — Matt Levine Japan’s “[sauna boom](” has the nation getting sweaty. — Gearoid Reidy British retailers are [struggling]( to understand the vibe this holiday season. — Andrea Felsted The Supreme Court’s new [code of conduct]( isn’t going to change a thing. — Noah Feldman The broken Senate confirmation process means [too many vacancies]( and too little oversight. — Max Stier ICYMI Officials [protest]( Biden’s Israel policy. Bernie Sanders stopped [a fist fight](. Karlie Kloss bought [a magazine](. Prince Harry plans [to call]( his dad. Kickers On Running built [a sneaker empire](. Robot-run restaurants are [infiltrating]( NYC. Area teen is a benevolent [vegetable queen](. Kim Kardashian [eating Cheetos]( on the cover of GQ is my love language. Numbered [subways]( beat lettered ones. (h/t Bobby Ghosh) Treasury secretaries, they're [just like us](: Notes: Please send [animal-style]( cheeseburgers, fries and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Threads](, [TikTok](, [Twitter](, [Instagram]( and [Facebook](. Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. Want to sponsor this newsletter? [Get in touch here](. 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