Numlock News: May 17, 2024 • Heifers, Cave Bears, Salt Lake

By Walt Hickey

Have a great weekend! Over the next two weeks, I’ll be on my honeymoon, so we’ve lined up some brilliant guest writers to fill in while I’m gone. For now, this is the end of the Numlock Sixth anniversary sale:

Man or Bear?

A new report published in Quaternary Science Reviews compiled the results of two decades of research on the bones of cave bears, finding that going back to 300,000 years ago evidence that humans hunted and killed these things could be still found. The bears, Ursus spelaeus, which weighed north of 750 kilograms, were first known to be prey of early humans when in 2001 a researcher found a spear tip embedded in a 29,000-year-old cave bear vertebra, which in archaeology is pretty much nailing the suspect dead to rights. The new data found that starting 40,000 years ago, almost all the cave bear bones found had been in some way modified by early man, indicating that hunting the bears became more systematic and common rather than opportunistic and dicey. Anyway, they completely disappear 10,000 years ago, and let’s just say we’re all trying to find who’s responsible for that.

Andrew Curry, Science

Debut

Caitlin Clark, the college basketball phenomenon who was just drafted into the WNBA, opened up the season for the Indiana Fever against the Connecticut Sun. The game averaged 2.12 million viewers on ESPN2, the most-watched game since 2001, which was a Memorial Day game between Los Angeles and Houston. The all-time viewership record for the WNBA remains the 5.04 million viewers who tuned in to the first-ever WNBA game when the New York Liberty faced the Los Angeles Sparks in June of 1997. Still, it was more watched than the 1.99 million who tuned in to the Bruins-Panthers NHL playoff game on the main channel ESPN.

Jason Clinkscales, Sportico

Salt Lake

In 2022, the Great Salt Lake fell to 4,188.5 feet, the lowest level ever recorded following two decades of consistent drought. The winters of 2023 and 2024 were very wet, though, and the snowmelt has rejuvenated the lake, raising the overall water level by 6 feet and increasing the amount of land covered by the lake by 150 square miles. At 4,195 feet, it’s still below the minimum healthy level, but it’s an outstanding comeback from a highly concerning low. That said, the Great Salt Lake is still well below the record highs of the mid-‘80s, when the lake’s level stood at 4,212 feet above sea level.

Jim Carlton, The Wall Street Journal

Cows

The U.S. has less cattle than it ordinarily does, and it sure doesn’t look like ranchers are trying to build back their herds given rising input costs and higher rates. Over the past several years, ranchers have been steadily selling off cattle rather than attempting to build up bigger herds. The number of calves is down 2 percent compared to last year and is the lowest on record going back to 1948. Rather than breeding heifers to make calves, producers are sending them off to slaughter; normally when ranchers are expanding herds, only about 35 percent to 37 percent of the animals they’re selling off are heifers. As it stands, now that’s around 40 percent.

Nathan Owens, Food Dive

Mannered

A new survey looked at how well Americans stick to their table manners when dining at a restaurant in a group, finding that most, but not all, try to stick to the basic etiquette. According to the survey, 73 percent said they always or usually ask to be passed food rather than reach for it, 69 percent wait to eat until everyone has their food, 60 percent silence their phone, and 58 percent keep their elbows off the table. Just 55 percent put their napkin in their lap while eating, and only 38 percent use the cutlery from the outside toward their plate over several courses, proving that we’re still a coarse and uncultured people ready to pop the monocle out of any visiting aristocrat.

Taylor Orth, YouGov

Cinemas

A single company from Belgium makes most of the projectors used in the world’s movie theaters, with Barco responsible for a 55 percent market share of cinema screens the world over. The company goes all the way back to 1934 and was originally named the Belgian American Radio Corporation (get it, “Barco”) and only moved into the video side of the business in the ‘70s, focusing on in-flight movie systems. It wasn’t until 1999, when George Lucas released The Phantom Menace, that the company saw there was a future in digital projection eventually replacing film projection. The big inflection point for them came with Avatar, and since 2008 they’ve sold 100,000 digital projectors.

Ben Croll, Variety

iQiyi

One of the largest streaming sites in China, iQiyi, reported bringing in 7.9 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) in revenue in the first quarter, down 5 percent year over year. Subscriber revenue took a 13 percent dive, which was not offset by an increase in advertising sales, and the company has severely pared back transparency on key metrics including where its viewers are, making it somewhat difficult to gauge what the issue is. We do know that paid memberships are down: This time last year, iQiyi claimed 128.1 million average daily subscribing members, a figure that fell to 99.5 million by the final quarter of last year at which point it stopped disclosing the information.

Patrick Frater, Variety

This week, I spoke to Sophie Alexander, who wrote “A Billionaire Wanted to Save 1 Trillion Trees by 2030. It’s Not Going Great.” for Bloomberg. We spoke about the logistics behind the movement, the market for carbon offsets, and what role corporations should play in the climate crisis. Alexander can be found at Bloomberg and on Twitter.

Thanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today.

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Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.

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Previous Sunday subscriber editions: The Internationalists · Video Game Funding · BYD · Disney Channel Original Movie · Talon Mine · Our Moon · Rock Salt · Wind Techs ·

Yeezys · Armed Forces · Christmas Music · The Golden Screen · New York Hotels · A City on Mars · Personality Change · Graphics · You Are What You Watch ·

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Numlock News: May 16, 2024 • Toto, Dog Man, Coke

By Walt Hickey

Coke

McDonald’s announced a $5 meal bundle for this summer in an attempt to woo back consumers who got kind of mad that they have to pay over $10 for a burger from McDonald’s. The deal will involve a small soft drink, small fries, four-piece McNugget, and either a McDouble or a McChicken sandwich for five bucks. This came as a bit of news to franchisees, who set most menu prices and cause the inconsistent pricing seen between territories, and furthermore sparked curiosity among those franchisees as to whether it’ll actually drive enough traffic to be worth it. Most interestingly, Coca-Cola is itself kicking in $4.6 million to subsidize the costs of the promotion.

Heather Haddon, The Wall Street Journal

Books

The top-selling book in the United States in the month of April was Dog Man: The Scarlett Shredder by Dav Pilkey, which sold 201,000 copies over the course of the month. The book was released in mid-March. Among titles for adult readers, the top-selling book was Funny Story, which sold by comparison 167,000 copies, and overall unit sales of print books were down 4 percent year over year, partially because of an earlier Easter. The ongoing trend that backlist books — that is, books that were released over a year ago — consume more and more overall market share has continued. Where once frontlist and backlist essentially split the market evenly, as of the first four months of the year, new books accounted for just 30 percent of total unit sales.

Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly

Solar Storm

The visible auroras at lower-than-typical latitudes were thanks to at least five coronal mass ejections from the sun, thanks to a cluster of sunspots 15 times as wide as Earth called Active Region 3664 (AR3664). It may not be over; sunspot clusters can last months, and in two weeks it’ll rotate back into view of Earth again. The powerful solar storm also had the effect of increasing atmospheric density at higher altitudes, which made satellites orbiting the Earth feel more drag and move to lower orbits. No satellites were taken out, it seems, but plenty saw their lifespans reduced. The Hubble Telescope, for instance, descended 85 meters per day from May 11 to 13, which is twice the average daily rate of descent for the 510-kilometer-high instrument.

Michael Greshko, Science

Religion

One of the best-performing categories in books is religious-themed literature, which was up 7.8 percent in 2023 compared to the prior year, 9 percent to 10 percent above the rest of the trade publishing market. What’s really driving the numbers is, in fact, Bibles, which have been in strikingly high demand and tend to pop in sales whenever things get a bit weird geopolitically. HarperCollins Christian Publishing has a 42 percent market share in the Bible business, which is sort of the ideal industry to be in from a media standpoint, given the widespread fandom for the franchise and the extremely generous intellectual property situation given the disinterest from the estates of the original authors.

Cathy Lynn Grossman, Publishers Weekly

Toto

Toto, the Japanese toilet manufacturer, has set its eyes on the United States and hopes to double sales of its Washlet bidet seats and toilets by 2026. They think America has high potential to fall for the bidet, much like the rest of the world has, and are hoping to find a new market as the Chinese new construction market goes through a few hiccups. As of 2023, Toto does less than ¥58.9 billion ($382 million) in business in the U.S., but that’s already triple the level of 2018, and the company is targeting ¥99 billion ($642 million) in U.S. sales by 2026. With a plan to invest in 63 hubs in major U.S. cities, this company’s goal is to do what nobody yet has accomplished, not even the French, which is to finally get the American butt down with the bidet.

Osami Kinoshita, Nikkei Asia

Superhighway

The port of Antwerp in Belgium has become a major shipping hub for cocaine in Europe, fueling the continent’s $33 billion drug market. Belgian customs estimates that it’s only managing to capture 10 percent to 40 percent of the coke coming into the port, and in 2023 it managed to seize 120 metric tons of cocaine, so it’s a lot of blow blowing through. At issue is the sheer scope of what Antwerp handles — 12 million containers annually, 271 million metric tons handled per year — so it’s not feasible to catch it all. Currently, only 40,000 containers can be scanned per year, but Belgian authorities are aiming to double that.

Max Ramsay, Lyubov Pronina and Cagan Koc, Bloomberg

Paper

For a century, people have tried to make a reliable, durable, but nevertheless recyclable paper bottle, especially lately because of a desire to reduce the use of plastics. One company, Paboco, has managed to make a bottle where the plastic liner is just 15 percent of the weight of the bottle, which is down from the previous level of 40 percent of the weight. The aim is to get that down to 5 percent, at which point it’s sufficiently thin as to not cause problems during paper recycling.

Saabira Chaudhuri, The Wall Street Journal

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Numlock News: May 15, 2024 • Cheerleading, Wiley, Taco Bell

By Walt Hickey

Cheerleaders

Bain Capital, which owns the cheerleading company Varsity Brands, as well as the previous owners of the company agreed to pay $82.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that the companies intentionally monopolized cheer competitions, camps and apparel markets. Varsity is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to competitive cheerleading, and the lawsuit follows another $43.5 million antitrust settlement from October that had been lodged by a rival cheerleading gym. One key element of the settlement was the elimination of the requirement that cheerleaders attend Varsity-run cheer camps in order to obtain eligibility to compete in Varsity’s championship, the requirement that people competing in Varsity events stay at Varsity-approved hotels, as well as information sharing between Varsity and the cheer sanctioning body U.S. All-Star Federation, which by the way was also founded and seeded by Varsity.

Daniel Libit, Sportico

Vision

We don’t really cover international elections here at Numlock, but Europe recently had their most important nights at the polls: voting on the Eurovision competition. The event, where most of Europe and a few other countries that inexplicably sneak into the party compete in contests of song, was most recently held in Malmö, Sweden, with winning country Switzerland’s act Nemo winning 591 points, edging out Croatia’s act with 547 points, and Ukraine coming in third with 453 points. Winners are decided by a combination of jury votes as well as the public vote, which can make for some deeply strange outcomes, such as the United Kingdom’s act getting 13th place among the jury but last place with zero points among the public, or Finland’s act getting the second-worst jury vote but the 15th place among the public.

Lily Ford, The Hollywood Reporter

Energy

Last year the energy drinks segment was up 10 percent at chain retailers, with sales hitting $21 billion. One of the roots of the trend was the simple increase in the amount of caffeine in beverages over time, as well as the reality that “energy drinks” are not an actual category of beverage in the eyes of the FDA, hence a lack of strict requirements reining in what goes into them. As of 2006, the top five energy drinks had an average caffeine concentration of 9.9 milligrams per ounce, a figure that as of 2023 was up to 13 mg per ounce. For perspective, soda has been held at 5.91 mg per ounce since 1980 by the FDA.

Dave Infante, Sherwood News

Real ID

The Department of Homeland Security has the current acceptance rate of Real ID cars in the U.S. at just 44 percent. The 2005 Real ID law set out to increase the documentation standards for driver’s licenses that could get someone onto an aircraft in the U.S., and set 2008 as the year when finally it would not be possible to use a standard driver’s license in order to get through TSA. This was a delightful fantasy! Like clockwork, over the ensuing decade-plus, the DHS continued to push the date back, and back, and back. They now claim that this time next year, finally in 2025, that’s when the Real ID deadline will actually happen, for realsies. The issue at hand is that the Real ID is, essentially, a half-measure. It’s clearly not necessary to avoid an attack similar to 9/11, given that we haven’t had to use it and have nevertheless deftly avoided an attack similar to 9/11 in the ensuing time. It’s also not stringent enough to actually be useful as, say, a national ID, which could be used for things like immigration enforcement and anti-identity theft measures, because it does nothing like that.

Jim Harper, The Atlantic

Bell Labs

When we think of innovation, of scientific progress, of an institution that has single-handedly advanced its field forward into the future, one company comes to mind in the modern history of industry: Taco Bell. Many of the things that made it unique back when fast food was all burgers and fries are things that the rest of the industry has since adapted. It was the first major fast-food player to make an app and it was one of the first to commit to social media advertising, anticipating a world where 45 percent of U.S. diners have tried a restaurant for the first time because of a social media post made by the restaurant. Even within the kitchen, everyone else wants to be more like Taco Bell. For instance, a given Taco Bell cannot really be said to have a “kitchen,” as pretty much all the cooking is done off-site, and a Taco Bell facility is simply where cooked ingredients are assembled and distributed. Taco Bell was also a pioneer in electrification, being one of the first companies to use sous vide as a way to bring prepared ingredients up to temperature (now used downright everywhere), and also to reject most of the gas-based equipment other kitchens needed, which allowed them to eliminate lots of pans and avoid volatile and expensive gas systems.

Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn, QSR Magazine

Wiley

Fake studies being pumped into the $30 billion academic publishing industry are threatening the existence of a number of the companies that have served as crucial gatekeepers to the publications that define good research. Over the past two years, Wiley has retracted 11,300 papers and closed four journals over the issues, and on Tuesday announced the closure of another 19 research journals, some of which it said had been compromised by large-scale research fraud. The problem became clear after Wiley acquired Hindawi, which published 250 journals, in a $300 million purchase. In 2022, scientists called out dozens of studies published in those journals, and in 2023, 19 Hindawi journals were delisted from Web of Science and four were folded by Wiley.

Nidhi Subbaraman, The Wall Street Journal

Turf Wars

A county in Utah is offering to pay residents to rip out thirsty grass lawns and replace them with less water-dependent plants. Overall 70 percent of residential culinary water is used on lawns, and your conventional lawn is poised to suck up 37 gallons of water per square foot annually, compared to just 9 gallons per square foot of more adapted vegetation. Washington County is paying $2 per square foot of converted turf up to 5,000 square feet, after which the rate drops to $1 per square foot. It’s funded by an $8 million fund from the Utah Legislature, with $3 million recurring annually, and it’s such a hit that advocates want another $12 million from the legislature to keep it going. There have been 2,044 applications submitted and 918 completed, and collectively by the end of 2024 they’re projecting that 100 million gallons in water will be saved per year, every year.

Morgan Sjogren, Route Fifty

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Thanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today.

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Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.

Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement.

Previous Sunday subscriber editions: The Internationalists · Video Game Funding · BYD · Disney Channel Original Movie · Talon Mine · Our Moon · Rock Salt · Wind Techs ·

Yeezys · Armed Forces · Christmas Music · The Golden Screen · New York Hotels · A City on Mars · Personality Change · Graphics · You Are What You Watch ·

Comics Data · Extremely Online · Kevin Perjurer · Kia Theft Spree · Right to Repair · Chicken Sandwich Wars

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Numlock News: May 14, 2024 • Everest, Quebec, Seabirds

By Walt Hickey

Unlimited

A new settlement involving 49 out of 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia has the three major telecom carriers forking over $10.2 million — $4.1 million each from T-Mobile and Verizon and $2 million from AT&T — to settle allegations that the carriers engaged in false advertising when they threw around words like “unlimited” wireless plans and “free” phones. It also sets up five years of advertising restrictions around the specific vocabulary of those words, and concluded a nine-year-long investigation.

Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica

Everest

Sunday saw two new records posted, with Nepali guide Kami Rita Sherpa scaling the mountain for a record 29th time at the age of 54, the highest-ever number of summits, while on the very same day Kenton Cool, also a guide, summited the peak for the 18th time, marking the most ascents made by a foreigner. This is the very beginning of the climbing season on Mount Everest, which was once a recognizable and impressive achievement in mountaineering but recently was converted into a facility that grants about 800 sporty rich people an ego boost in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars.

Frances Mao, BBC

It Follows

The theory that humans are natural pursuit hunters, using our endurance and persistence to chase down and exhaust targeted beasties, is controversial, but recently got more evidence in its favor. A new study published yesterday in Nature Human Behavior documented 391 historical reports of endurance pursuits among indigenous peoples from around the globe between the 16th and 21st centuries. This involved poring over 8,000 texts produced over 500 years to find the reports.

Kermit Pattison, Science

Security

Coaching is never the easiest or most secure job, but one league in particular has a permanent hot seat for coaches. Across the 124 teams of the MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL, 45 percent of the current coaches have been in their current job for at least two full seasons. In the NFL, that’s 60 percent of coaches in their gig for two years, and in the MLB and NBA it’s an above average 53 percent of managers and coaches, but in the National Hockey League it’s a paltry 16 percent, as just five coaches out of all 32 teams have been in their current job for at least two years, following the summary dismissal of Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe last week.

Tim Reynolds and Stephen Whyno, The Associated Press

Maple Syrup

The Quebec Global Maple Syrup Reserve, the local cartel’s way of maintaining prices, is alive and well with high-security warehouses with a capacity of 221,000 barrels of maple syrup, drawing comparisons as the Saudi Arabia of syrup. The 595,000-square-mile province has 50 million syrup-producing trees, which gives Quebec control over 72 percent of the world’s supply. Quebec’s tech is also bleeding-edge, with reverse osmosis machines that can more efficiently separate water from sugar in sap than the traditional slow-boil method, increasing yield by 200 percent.

Vipal Monga, The Wall Street Journal

Bounce Back

Tromelin Island is a 1-square-kilometer uninhabited island in the western Indian Ocean that was first infested with rats sometime in the late 1700s. Before then it was probably home to eight different species of seabirds, but the rats were voracious and decimated the birds, with just two bird species left: masked and red-footed boobies. In 2005, the French made the effort and killed off the rats with a rodenticide campaign. The fun part, though, is that after the ensuing 20 years, the birds are back in town; thousands of breeding pairs are back, from at least seven different species, and it didn’t really even take a ton of coaxing.

Ethan Freedman, Hakai Magazine

Bedrooms

It’s become more and more common in recent decades for kids growing up in the United States to have their own room and not have to share a room with a sibling. This was the result of a couple of trends, including bigger houses and fewer kids per family. As a result, the average number of bedrooms per child in the U.S. from 1960 to 2000 increased from 0.7 bedrooms per kid to 1.1 bedrooms per kid. That said, there isn’t a ton of evidence that either setup — independent rooms or bunking with a sibling — has any particularly positive or negative long-term impacts.

Annie Midori Atherton, The Atlantic

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Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.

Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement.

Previous Sunday subscriber editions: The Internationalists · Video Game Funding · BYD · Disney Channel Original Movie · Talon Mine · Our Moon · Rock Salt · Wind Techs ·

Yeezys · Armed Forces · Christmas Music · The Golden Screen · New York Hotels · A City on Mars · Personality Change · Graphics · You Are What You Watch ·

Comics Data · Extremely Online · Kevin Perjurer · Kia Theft Spree · Right to Repair · Chicken Sandwich Wars

Sunday Edition Archives: 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018