Numlock News: March 7, 2023 • Vapes, Snakes, Steaks

Mar 7

By Walt Hickey

Tobacco

Altria, the tobacco giant, has gotten out of the Juul business and into the NJOY business. Last week the company reached a deal with Juul to swap its $250 million minority stake in Juul labs for a license to use some of Juul’s intellectual property when it comes to heated tobacco. It was a disappointing exit for Altria, which bought into Juul for a stake once worth $13 billion. Still, this vape business has proven to be an addictive one for the cigarette titan, and Altria announced a $2.75 billion investment in rival electronic cigarette company NJOY, plus another $500 million in cash payments if NJOY can obtain regulatory approval on some products.

Michelle Chapman, The Associated Press

sudo rm -r python

The python invasion of Florida has continued its northern expansion, as non-native Burmese pythons adapt exceedingly well to the swamps of the Everglades and outcompete native predators, according to a new paper from the U.S. Geological Survey. Twenty years ago, the population was a couple snakes at the southern tip of the Everglades, but now they’re all the way to Fort Myers and encompass the southern third of Florida. The snakes spend 86.1 percent of their time resting, and when they’re resting people can’t see them: one study sent people looking for snakes put in an enclosure the size of two basketball courts and less than 1 percent found them, which is a terrifying statistic and also a horrifying study to participate in if we’re being honest. The pythons lay 11 to 84 eggs per clutch and average 34 eggs per clutch in Florida.

Bill Kearney, South Florida Sun Sentinel

Dubs

Large YouTube personalities are making bank by getting their videos professionally dubbed in other languages through services like Unilingo, which said it’s generated $10 million in revenue for creators by dubbing them into languages with large global markets. YouTube says that for your typical creator about two-thirds of all watch time is from outside their home region, so a little localization can crack open large new markets. MrBeast, the popular creator, started getting Spanish translations dubbed into a second channel in late 2021, MrBeast en Español, which now has 23 million subscribers and videos with upwards of 100 million views. A service like Unilingo will typically get a translation fee and then 10 percent of future ad revenue from the dubbed channel.

Nilesh Christopher and Andrew Deck, Rest of World

Comeback

This year has seen a number of movies outperform expectations, including M3GAN, A Man Called Otto, 80 for Brady and Creed III, and it’s encouraging to cinemas and their fans. All told, overall ticket sales are up 37 percent over the same point in 2022, and while Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania appears that it will miss expectation, March has a few movies that could pop, including Shazam 2 and Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. One hope is that the volume issue is close to being resolved, as last year there were simply 36 percent fewer releases than in 2019, which both thinned out the calendar as well as made each individual tentpole an all-or-nothing proposition.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Product of the USA

About 12 percent of all meat, poultry and egg products sold in the United States claim U.S. origin on their labels, but until now that label also could have encompassed beef and pork and more that was actually born and raised in other countries. The “Product of the USA” label simply meant that the beef and pork was at least repackaged in the United States, which transparency advocates and American ranchers despised. A USDA survey found that over half of shoppers thought that “Product of the USA” meant the product was from the USA, the fools, and given the miscommunication the label will now be limited to animals born, raised, and killed in the U.S.

Mike Dorning, Bloomberg

Office

Companies that have swankier offices are having more success in dragging employees back to the office in Manhattan, according to visitation data at 250 office buildings analyzed by the Real Estate Board of New York. Last year, offices in Class A+ buildings saw visits increase to 66.3 percent of the level logged in 2019, offices in Class A buildings saw visits return to 59.9 percent of 2019 levels, and offices in Class B buildings were at 53.6 percent of 2019’s levels. There’s potentially a chicken-and-egg thing here: If the boss spent a fortune on the building they might be a little more insistent on workers showing back up to it.

Emily Peck, Axios

Nuclear Power

Right now 69 percent of France’s energy comes from nuclear power, which doesn’t emit carbon dioxide. In 2015, the French thought their nuclear sector was so successful it was choking demand for solar and wind products, so they passed a law that would limit nuclear energy to 50 percent of its energy mix by 2035. Given the European energy crisis and the carbon neutrality of cracking atoms, attitudes have changed. Lawmakers in the legislature’s Committee for Economic Affairs voted Thursday to do away with those arbitrary restrictions and also give the go-ahead to six new nuclear reactors in the country, the first of which will be operational in 2035.

Théo Bourgery-Gonse, Euractiv

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