Happy December (huh?),

Life-hack: Just hide your scale and don’t bother finding out what the damage was. Your post-Thanksgiving weight can be like Schrödinger's cat.

We’re on the home stretch before the holidays and the implied mercy of the year 2021, so we may as well kill some time and get to this week’s links—

listed the

for venture capital in the wake of COVID-19’s much-publicized acceleration of contech adoption. The list is accumulated from

, “Rise of the platform era: The next chapter in construction technology.”

From a

press release, Windover Construction

(Innovations for Design, Engineering and Automation), a consulting platform that combines leading-edge technology solutions including BIM, drones, and robotics to build faster, safer and more sustainably while providing real-time solutions for project challenges.

Congruent with our story last week that Texas was the largest state with the least COVID-affected construction industry,

revealing a 6.5% increase from last year and a slightly better Q4 than in 2019. Jacobs additionally plans to transform 30% of its current workforce into a WFH-force.

From

,

with Jim Donaghy of STO (No. 7 on ENR’s Top 400 GC list) regarding the best-case scenarios for a Biden administration’s effect on STO and the industry at large. Topics include Donaghy’s opinions on the administration’s most impactful priorities, Biden’s abilities in light of a potentially divided Congress, and reversals of the Trump administration’s executive orders.

From

, Raiders owner Mark Davis

to treat all 12,000+ Allegiant Stadium workers (aka

cast-members) to a steak dinner. Rather than the logistical nightmare of a scene akin to the Grinch carving the roast beast at the head of a 12,000+ seat table, Davis instead opted to give $100 gift cards to everyone. Any guesses as to how much of that $1.2MM ultimately goes toward steak?

examined numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to find the

in America with the highest percentage of women in construction (spoiler: the top 3 are Minneapolis, Seattle, and San Francisco). Women comprise just 10.3% of the construction industry as a whole, a figure that has remained about the same for the last 30 years and metaphorically a party you walk into and Grandpa Simpson GIF your way immediately out of. Kudos to these 20 cities for helping to change that narrative.

From

, German general contractor PERI is working on

structure, an apartment building in Wallenhausen, Bavaria. We’ve come a long way from when 3D printers were used exclusively to make

of action figures out of sheer boredom.

From

, check out a video of the new world record for

. The record-setting implosion occurred in Abu Dhabi. We haven’t featured a controlled demolition video in quite a while. This is us trying to step our game up.

From

, learn what 3 of the most important construction economists, including Buildr Newsletter regular Anirban Basu of ABC,

. As far as optimism goes, let’s just say if these folks were psychics you'd debate tipping them.

From

, here's a video on

are changing construction. Excavators accelerating unmanned may be cause for alarm and an audible “Did I leave that in drive?” at the moment, but will be commonplace sooner than you think.

That’s all for this week. If you'd like some news and notes in your inbox every other Wednesday morning,

.

See you next time.

PS We'll leave you with this piece of wisdom: