Numlock News: April 19, 2023 • Archery, Curses, Cognac

Apr 19

By Walt Hickey

Popcorn

Hershey has diversified beyond chocolate and into salty snacks, which now is a $1.2 billion business for the company and accounts for 10 percent of sales. Hershey wants to get up to 20 percent of sales, and to that end bought Amplify for $1.6 billion in 2017, bringing SkinnyPop popcorn into the company. Sales are way up since, with the $200 million a year brand in 2017 now close to a $550 million a year business, and Hershey is pivoting even further into the salty snack businesses by buying up two popcorn factories off a co-manufacturer to produce SkinnyPop full time.

Christopher Doering, FoodDive

Cognac

According to the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac, 212.5 million bottles of cognac were sold in 2022. While many iconic foods and beverages from different parts of the world are consumed in great amounts in their countries of origin, weirdly cognac is an exception. Only 5.95 million of those bottles of cognac — 2.8 percent of overall production — were actually sold in France, while the other 97.2 percent was exported. That’s a really remarkable ratio, and one not seen for other classic and iconic French products like Champagne or cheese. The reason is that cognac was, in fact, always for export, and traditionally made by foreigners who moved to France for the explicit goal of exporting something shelf stable back home. Originally it was the Dutch, who found that brandy was less bulky than wine and imported the idea of distilling white wines grown around Cognac into a brandy that would eventually take that name. The earliest days were foreigners innovating cognac — John Hennessy was an Irish guy — and so a local taste never really developed.

Jake Emen, Vine Pair

Podcasts

As podcasts grow more established and nestle into a proper niche within the broader context of media, a few things that they are good at have begun to emerge. They haven’t replaced radio by any stretch, but a new Pew Research Center survey has figured out exactly how podcasts have changed the lives of the people who listen to them. The biggest way was media recommendations, as 60 percent of listeners said they have watched a movie, read a book, or listened to music as a result of a recommendation on a podcast, you know, like how Letterboxed is all about Danny Boyle movies right now. Next up was 52 percent who followed the social media account of a host, 36 percent made some kind of lifestyle change like a diet or workout, and 28 percent bought something from a podcast, presumably a mail order mattress or relationship with some kind of postage reseller or sketchy mail-order Tonic To Repair A Faltering or Diminishing Manhood.

Elisa Shearer, Jacob Liedke, Katerina Eva Matsa, Michael Lipka and Mark Jurkowitz, Pew Research Center

Not Cool

A new survey of IT managers at companies found that 48 percent said the company doesn’t tell employees that they’re being monitored or how they’re being monitored, 73 percent said that they were uncomfortable telling their team to install keystroke-monitoring surveillance software, and 8 percent said they would refuse to deploy that software to begin with. This is a big split between workers and managers outside of IT: 85 percent of managers worry that they can’t tell if an employee is actually getting enough done, while 87 percent of workers say their productivity is fine. Rather than discuss this or do any work to discern reality, spyware it is.

Matthew Boyle, Bloomberg

What Goes Up

Rhessi, a 660-pound satellite that captured images of over 100,000 solar events, is careening towards Earth. The Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager — again, “Rhessi” — entered orbit in 2002, and was shut down in 2018 due to a communication problem. While its reentry location isn’t being disclosed, it’s believed to largely burn up upon reentry with just a few parts expected to survive. The probability that anyone on Earth will be harmed by the careening satellite is 1-in-2,467, which NASA assures us is low.

Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press

Teer

Teer is an archery game popular in Meghalaya, India. It’s also easy to bet on, with bettors selecting a two-digit number and if the last two digits of an archer’s score is that number, they win, sort of like Super Bowl squares but for Hawkeye. There’s a vibrant betting scene with about 5,000 licensed bookies, who until recently only took over-the-counter bets. With gambling largely illegal in India outside of some exceptions in Meghalaya, ever since the games began being streamed on YouTube, this has become a big business with bets from neighboring states and even other countries coming in by text. The Khasi Hills Archery Sports Institute has racked up over 163,000 subscribers on YouTube, and 75 percent of the viewership is from outside the state. Now, betting employs 10,000 to 15,000 people and brings in big revenue for the state.

Sanghamitra Kar P, Rest of World

Curses!

The NHL playoffs are on, and the good news is that the Boston Bruins are, in fact, cursed, having won the President’s Trophy for the team that had the best record in the year. A notoriously superstitious lot, hockey players consider that bad luck, and there’s a perception that those recipients tend to flop in the playoffs. Indeed, the top regular-season team won the Stanley Cup in just eight of the past 36 years, a measly 22.2 percent of the time, since the creation of the President’s Cup in the late 1980s. However, the “curse” isn’t entirely realistic; by an Elo rating metric, the average probability that a team with the best record would have gone on to win the Stanley Cup was just 23 percent over the same period, so it’s not like the observed probability is much worse. However, the curse has been on a hot streak: 17 of the last 19 President’s Cup winners didn’t win the Stanley Cup.

Neil Paine

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: Working · Cable · Ringmaster · Hard Seltzer · Enhanced Geothermal · Hoop Muses · Subsea Cables · Wrestling · Tabletop Renaissance · BTS · Baby Boom · Levees · Misdirection · Public Domain