Numlock News: March 3, 2023 • Projection, Lunchables, MRIs

Mar 3

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By Walt Hickey

Have an excellent weekend!

Cinema

With many movie theater chains on the ropes financially, one potential reason people are seeing fewer movies in cinemas is that movie theaters slashed the investment in personnel and technology when it comes to actually correctly projecting movies. Many of the digital projectors first entered service when Avatar hit the cinemas in 2009, and haven’t been updated since. Sony, which made them in the first place, got out of the business in 2020 and ended support on many of the models, and the imaging devices actually need to be fixed once or twice per year and usually aren’t. Indeed, the recommendation from Digital Cinema Initiatives is to project films at a minimum brightness of 14 footlamberts, but some places are running old projectors that are coming in at as low as six footlamberts. Furthermore, projector bulbs need to be changed every 1,000 to 5,000 hours, but at a cost of $1,500 a pop many theaters are pushing them well beyond their intended mileage. The result is a cinematic experience that is darker, less vivid, and not what filmmakers actually intended.

Lane Brown, Vulture

Dangers

The Governors Highway Safety Association released preliminary estimates for pedestrian traffic fatalities in 2022, and found that in the first half of last year pedestrian deaths as a result of being struck and killed by drivers was up 5 percent year over year. Compared to 2019, pedestrian deaths as a result of drivers are up 18 percent, with the national rate hitting 1.04 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 people. The most dangerous state for pedestrians is Florida, where the rate 1.99 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 is nearly double the national level.

Elizabeth Petraglia, GHSA

It’s Just Linux For Cars, There, I Said It.

There’s been a mild resurgence in interest in manual vehicles, which made up 1.7 percent of new vehicle sales in the U.S. this year, up from a low of 0.9 percent in 2021. Stick shifts have been going out of style as more and more Americans just get automatics, particularly as the automatics cost less and tend to get better mileage. The appeal, interestingly, is pronounced among younger buyers, not just the traditionalists: Half of people buying manual Acura Integras are aged 18 to 46, and a quarter of people buying manual Mazda Miatas were 18 to 35. If anything, it’s a pretty great way to ensure you never get carjacked.

Rachel Wolfe, The Wall Street Journal

Lunchables

Kraft Heinz has announced that they have cut deals with K-12 schools across the country to serve Lunchables as school lunches, with two new types of the pre-packaged processed food meal kits with improved nutrition launching this fall. First introduced in 1988, Lunchables come in the forms of a make-your-own pizza disc or a crackers, ham, and processed cheese product, as well as a drink and a dessert, and they’re one of the most profitable brands for Kraft Heinz and come in 39 varieties. Business is pretty great: Lunchables sales increased 21 percent in the back-to-school period of 2022 year over year.

Rachel Premack, FreightWaves

MRI

The earthquakes that devastated parts of Turkey and Syria have exacerbated a dire situation in the latter country, where the medical establishment was already barely getting by. Northwest Syria has no unified government, and 60 percent of its 4.7 million people have been internally displaced. For all those millions there are just 66 functional hospitals, just 1,245 beds intended for short stays, just 86 orthopedic surgeons, 73 dialysis machines, 64 X-ray machines, seven CT scanners and only one MRI machine. Besides the lack of routine medical tech, the supply of antibiotics in the region ran out three days after the earthquake.

Miryam Naddaf, Nature

Fungus

“Whiskey fungus” grows in the vicinity of distilleries and storage facilities where liquor is aged, consuming the alcohol that evaporates over the course of the aging process, an amount of alcohol known in the industry as the “angel’s share.” It’s been known to exist since at least the 1870s, when it was all over the place in Cognac, France. It’s right now all over the place in Lincoln County, Tennessee, which is home to six barrelhouses operated by Jack Daniel’s. The distillery plans to build a seventh on the existing property, and has asked the county to rezone another property for another six warehouses. This has aroused the ire of neighbors, who complain about the unsightly fungus, and has also provoked a lawsuit.

Michael Levenson, The New York Times

Insulin

Eli Lilly announced this week it will make significant cuts to the price of the insulin it sells, wherein 10 milliliters of Humalog currently has a list price of $275. Insulin generally costs $10 per dose to produce, and has seen 1,000 percent price inflation over the past 20 years. As part of the Inflation Reduction Act, out-of-pocket costs for an insulin prescription for people on Medicare was capped at $35 per month, and rising scrutiny of the insulin producers and allegations of price gouging seem to have done a thorough job of pressure: Eli Lilly will reduce the price of its non-branded insulin to $25 per month, cut the list price of Humalog by 70 percent by the end of this year, and cap out-of-pocket costs for most customers at $35 per month.

Dylan Scott, Vox

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