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

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.

---

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

Numlock News: May 13, 2024 • Apes, Arts, Automation

By Walt Hickey

Welcome back!

It’s the Numlock sixth anniversary this month! Get a steeply discounted subscription today:

Apes

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, the 10th installment in a 56-year-old film franchise, made $129 million in its opening weekend, of which $72.5 million was made internationally. The rebooted franchise — it’s the fourth film in the new apes era — has done particularly well overseas, making the bulk of their money outside North America. Premium, larger formats have continued to drive box office, with those screens making up 41 percent of revenues and Imax alone accounting for $13.2 million of the gross. If there’s a lesson, it’s that this obviously means that audiences just want politics out of their movies, as the Planet of the Apes franchise is just about a bunch of monkeys with absolutely no subtext whatsoever, that’s right, nothing going on there.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Not Exactly Rocket Science

Scientists have just published the highest resolution image ever of a small piece of the human brain just 1 cubic millimeter in size. The dataset this single square millimeter of mind produced is 1,400 terabytes in size, and if the full human brain were to be reconstructed in a similar fashion, the resulting dataset would be a zettabyte, a billion terabytes, or about a year’s worth of all digital content produced. The rendered image shows a vast and interconnected web of neurons, colored by size and ranging from 15 to 30 micrometers across. A human brain has 86 billion of those neurons, with some 100 trillion connections. It’s kind of crazy that most of them are used to replay embarrassing events from your life right as you’re trying to fall asleep, but them’s the breaks.

Cassandra Willyard, MIT Technology Review

Tractors

According to a 2023 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, over 50 percent of corn, cotton, rice, sorghum, soybeans and winter wheat is planted using farm equipment with automated guidance, tech that essentially steers itself with only oversight from a farmer in the cab. However, weather has thrown a wrench into that technology over the past week, specifically space weather, which thanks to a solar storm has severely compromised a number of navigation systems used by farm equipment, interrupting the very peak of planting season. One chain of John Deere dealerships warned customers that some of their tractor systems may be malfunctioning as a result of the solar storm.

Jason Koebler, 404 Media

Sweetgreen

Sweetgreen, the largest purveyor of sad desk salads in the country, posted revenues of $157.9 million, up 26 percent year over year, mostly thanks to hiked prices. One of the more interesting numbers was the per-store margins of 18.1 percent, which is remarkably good for food service. There are two particular units of interest, the two “Infinite Kitchens,” which are the test locations for an automated bowl creation system that uses robots to mix up the items. In that pair of locations, the profit margin was 28 percent, 10 points higher than the typical store.

Danny Klein, QSR Magazine

Wings

Amid rising beef prices, Americans are eating more chicken, with sales up 3 percent in the year ending April 21 compared to the previous 52 weeks. Lots of that spending is happening in other parts of the bird beyond the breast, with Wingstop reporting a 21.6 percent increase last quarter in same-store sales. Tyson is adding 16 new products in 2024, and seven of those are chicken, with it selling 20 billion chicken nuggets and 5.5 billion chicken wings a year.

Patrick Thomas, The Wall Street Journal

GLP-1s

Goldman Sachs projects that 15 million people, or 13 percent of the U.S. population, could be taking GLP-1s like Ozempic and Wegovy by 2030, a substantial enough chunk of the population that food manufacturers are getting keen to the fact that they’ll probably have to get used to lots of people changing what and how much they want to eat. Early studies are small, but find that those on GLP-1s drink more water and less soda and alcohol, with the vast majority saying they eat less, and lots more eating fewer snacks.

Jennifer Lawinski, Food Dive

Drop the Hammer

Today kicks off the spring auction season, and this week over 1,700 works of modern and contemporary art will be sold at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips. Those works are expected to generate somewhere between $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion in sales. That is quite bad: In 2022, the same season generated $2.8 billion in sales, so this is a serious retreat from the especially heady days of the immediate ripple of pandemic-era art buying.

Zachary Small and Julia Halperin, The New York Times

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.

---

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

Numlock News: May 10, 2024 • Giants, Harbor, Brass

By Walt Hickey

Giant Slayer

B&G Foods, one of the massive food conglomerates you’re only vaguely aware of, is kicking the tires on a sale of its Green Giant brand of frozen vegetables, just six months after it sold off the Green Giant canned business to Seneca Foods. Known for brands like Crisco, Ortega and Cream of Wheat, the issue with Green Giant is that it’s their only non-shelf-stable business and essentially has an entirely separate packing and shipping process that makes it impossible to totally align with all the other stuff they sell. It’s a pretty good business to be in, though the company’s sales of frozen vegetables was down 16.9 percent compared to the same quarter of last year.

Christopher Doering, Food Dive

Podcasting

Last year saw slowed growth in the podcast world, with overall spending on ads increasing just 5 percent to $1.93 billion. The industry had been comfortably growing by double digits, and there’s room for optimism as this year the podcast ad market in the U.S. is nevertheless projected to increase 12 percent to $2.16 billion. The mix of what’s succeeding in podcasting is shifting a bit, with comedy podcasts now taking in 17 percent of the revenue, up from 14 percent in 2022, seemingly at the expense of sports, which fell two percentage points to 13 percent.

Todd Spangler, Variety

The Brass

The world of business is beset by CEOs who simply won’t quit, extending their tenures as they continue to deliver familiar and reliable management even if that means not actually being the best fit for the job. An analysis of 356 businesses from 2000 to 2010 found that the ideal tenure for a chief executive is 4.8 years, while other analysts put the figure closer to a decade at the helm, or perhaps in their 11th through 15th years. The risk is that they can become complacent, lose touch with the company, and potentially worst of all become risk averse and gun-shy, too fixated on short-term stock prices and extending the tenure.

Emma Goldberg, The New York Times

Satisfaction

A new survey of American workers found that 63 percent reported being satisfied with their jobs, the highest rating on record. Digging a little deeper, though, the numbers reveal that while people are more satisfied with their overall job in 2023 compared to 2022 (by a factor of 0.4 percent), on every single incremental factor they’re actually less satisfied. Year-over-year declines in satisfaction existed in each and every category, including bonus plan (down 7.6 percent), wages (down 5 percent), workload (down 3.8 percent), vacation policy (down 2.8 percent), quality of leadership (down 1.7 percent) and their supervisor (down 0.8 percent). Yes, people are slightly happier in their jobs despite hating each and every one of the 26 individual parts of it just a bit more, nevertheless.

Millie Giles and David Crowther, Sherwood News

Games

A survey of 1,423 U.S. teens aged 13 to 17 found that 41 percent said they play video games at least once per day, with most teens who play them (72 percent) saying that a reason they play them is to spend time with others. There are some issues — 41 percent said it’s hurt their sleep, and 80 percent of them think harassment is a problem for people their age — but on balance a majority of the teenagers reported spending the right amount of time playing games. Overall, 40 percent of all teens said they had made a friend online because of a video game. Obviously, though, there are issues with this; after all, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight in no small part because conditions are perfect for a disastrous return of a wave of gamer-oriented webcomics, an apocalyptic aberration we endured for so long and we worked so hard to confine to the dustbin of history.

Jeffrey Gottfried and Olivia Sidoti, Pew Research Center

Harbor

Soon the remaining steel trusses of the Francis Scott Key Bridge will be removed from the Dali, the ship that collided with the structure. All told, the steel truss on the deck of the Dali weighs 8 million to 12 million pounds, is 500 feet long and is about 80 feet wide. It’s a lot of weight to deal with — every 12-by-12-by-1-inch square is 40 pounds — and explosives, about half of which have been installed, should be able to break up the bridge span and give the Dali room to refloat at high tide two days after the explosion.

Tolly Taylor, WBAL

Royalty

Spotify has changed the way that it calculates royalties, and it’s become clear what that means for income for the music business. Based on projections for 2024, Spotify will pay $100 million less in royalties over the next 12 months. If royalty value is kept to a conservative estimate, the losses would be $80 million, though other estimates put the lost royalty level closer to $140 million to $150 million, or, at the lower end, $120 million to $130 million.

Kristin Robinson, Billboard

Assessment

In New York, your tax assessment is based on what the property is worth, and that in turn is based on what you can make from it. For commercial real estate companies, the ascent of work from home means that their properties are declining in value, potentially so much so that they can make a compelling case that for taxation purposes, they ought to be worth less then they are currently valued. This can have huge implications for city tax revenue; in Atlanta, from 2011 to 2022, owners appealing their tax assessment were successful 62 percent of the time, which led to $654 million in lost tax revenue. If this catches on, it could put a major fiscal dent in municipal finances all over the country.

Patrick Sisson, Commercial Observer

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.

---

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

Numlock News: May 9, 2024 • Oroville, Pizzerias, NoVa

By Walt Hickey

Remember, we’ve kicked off the Numlock Sixth Anniversary event early because we’ll have guest writers in while I’m on my honeymoon later this month, so jump on the promotion while you can!

Pizza

The Cleveland Browns have achieved what had long been considered impossible for the franchise: a solid win the week of the NFL Draft. This win took place in the Court of Appeals of Ohio, which held that a pizzeria must in fact pay for a sponsorship agreement with the Browns that it never authorized. The situation in and of itself is somewhat hilarious, and hinges on two brothers who own separate pizzerias, both of which are known as Antonio’s. In 2019, the Browns and Antonio’s cut a deal allowing Antonio’s to use the Browns’ sponsorship for $156,560 per year. The issue comes in the contract: According to Vincent LoSchiavo of La Famiglia Management & Distribution Inc., owner of Antonio’s Pizza, he meant to sign for that restaurant. Instead, the contract was signed for Antonio’s, which is owned by Antonio’s Pizza Inc., and incidentally owned by his brother, Joe. The Browns seemed to pull the business from the Ohio Secretary of State and didn’t verify, but the contract is a contract, and the mandatory arbitration clause ordered Antonio’s to pay $104,153 to the Browns, which after a bunch of court work was upheld. I know this is confusing, but still the biggest mystery of all is unaddressed — namely, why would anyone want the Browns to sponsor anything?

Michael McCann, Sportico

Donors

There’s a lot of money piling up in donor-advised funds, a somewhat recent trend in charity that has become popular among the ultra wealthy as a way to enjoy an immediate tax benefit on a yet-unmade donation to an eventual recipient. The IRS is kicking off a plan to regulate donor-advised funds, sensing room for abuse and a current lack of enforcement measures. Among the proposed rules would be a 20 percent excise tax on donations that provide significant benefit to the donor, a persistent worry. There’s about $230 billion in DAFs across 2 million accounts.

Stephanie Beasley, The Chronicle of Philanthropy

A City of Marvels

Come one, come all, for the latest accomplishment to grace here fair Gotham, the hemispheric metropolis of New York, the greatest of cities, jewel of municipalities, the great Empire City! Gaze upon the newest marvel of engineering to beguile our streets, the bleeding edge of technology and infrastructure that makes this place — this pearl of cosmopolitan life, this city of tomorrow — what it is. The city fathers have cried a momentous announcement that will shake this city to its very schist and granitic firmament, a feat of engineering that will make the Tower of Babel itself feel ashamed: Yes, after eight years of effort, we are just one year away from the successful installation of a new water pipe along East 61st and 63rd streets. After a decade of construction, they assure us, we will have successfully installed 500 feet of sewer and water lines on two whole city blocks! And at a cost of just $22.3 million on an original budget of $8.5 million. Your move, Ozymandias!

Rosemary Misdary, Gothamist

NoVa

Northern Virginia is a hotbed of data centers, with over 300 facilities processing about 70 percent of the world’s digital information. Amazon Web Services alone claims 85 data centers in the region. That has an impact on the region’s water supply: Data centers serviced by the Loudoun water utility increased usage of drinking water by 250 percent between 2019 and 2023 to feed into the cooling systems of the facilities. Google and Amazon are continuing to plow money into northern Virginia to build new facilities, and given that large data centers could use as much as 5 million gallons of water per day, that does start to add up.

Sachi Kitajima Mulkey, Grist

War. War Never Changes.

As the battle drags on and skirmishes between the combatants continue, the ongoing beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake nearing its seventh week of hostilities, we are beginning to see one side gain the upper hand. Even setting aside the diss tracks that have galvanized the nation (and also Canada), Kendrick Lamar’s catalog earned 50.62 million streams from May 3-6, up 49 percent compared to the previous period, while Drake’s catalog listens were in fact down 4.9 percent week over week, from 105.86 million to 100.69 million over the period. We’re seeing the momentum shift happen in real time, and while Drake was more popular than Kendrick, that momentum will be one to watch.

Jason Lipshutz, Billboard

Water

California’s water supply is back to doing just fine. This year the snowpack in the northern Sierra was 123 percent of what’s typical at its peak, and we’re seeing that reflected in the reservoir levels. Lake Oroville, the second-largest reservoir in California, is filled to 899 feet of elevation, containing 3.52 million acre-feet of water, and has 28 percent more water than it historically does on this date. Shasta Lake, which is the federally-managed largest reservoir in California, was 97 percent full on Monday, which is 15 percent higher than average.

Kurtis Alexander, San Francisco Chronicle

House Always Wins

The combat sport and “combat” “sport” business is a good one, as TKO Group Holdings reported that it projects to make $2.68 billion in revenue this year. Even despite a $335 million UFC fighter pay settlement, the company that controls both the UFC and the WWE is doing splendidly well, reporting higher than anticipated revenue of $629.7 million. Of that, WWE was responsible for $316.7 million and UFC was responsible for $313 million.

Alex Weprin, The Hollywood Reporter

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.

---

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