Numlock News: May 18, 2023 • Ozone, Yachts, Taco Tuesday

May 18

By Walt Hickey

If you’re in New York, I’m giving a talk at the Data Visualization Society meetup tonight, it’s free and should be a great time.

Alfa Nero

The luxury super yacht Alfa Nero was seized by authorities in Antigua in March 2022, when the U.K. hit its owner Andrey Guryev with sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine, one of $4 billion worth of yachts that have been seized since. The U.S. followed with a search warrant in August, and since then Antigua just wants the damn thing off its books and off its docks. It’s an expensive hazard that costs them $112,000 a month in crew expenses, and now the island nation has asked the Americans to lift sanctions on it so they can just sell the damn money pit to one of over 20 bidders willing to take it off their hands. As long as it’s blocked property, Antigua is worried that the proceeds may be frozen, and 25 members of the crew are suing to recover $2.1 million in unpaid wages.

Anna Jean Kaiser and Stephanie Baker, Bloomberg

Taco Tuesday™

Taco Bell is suing to cancel two trademarks over the phrase “Taco Tuesday,” which the restaurant argues is a common term and not identified with the brand that owns it and thus no longer a trademark. In 1982, Greg Gregory of Gregory’s Restaurant and Bar in New Jersey got a trademark for “Taco Tuesday” and then the owner of Minnesota restaurant Taco John’s got the copyright in the other 49 states in 1989. Taco John’s has been aggressive in defending their trademark, sending cease and desists around the country for restaurants that dared consecrate Tuesdays with tacos. Taco Bell, with its 15,638 eateries that sell food that occasionally resembles tacos, is hoping to free the phrase up from Taco John’s, which has around 400 locations.

Ananya Bhattacharya, Quartz

Rupees

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom sold 10 million copies worldwide in just the first three days of release, making the game an instant hit. That’s an impressive feat for a game that’s running at 30 frames per second on a 6-year-old console. Its predecessor, Breath of the Wild, sold 30 million copies in its entire lifetime, so Tears of the Kingdom is off to a banner start and is the fastest-selling game in the history of the franchise. It’s even got a chance, if sales hold, of potentially threatening Mario Kart 8 as the bestselling Switch game, which moved 53 million copies.

Ash Parrish, The Verge

Sun Belt

The final four teams in the NHL playoffs are from Las Vegas, Raleigh, Dallas and Sunrise in Florida, locales that generally lack ice in their climate. Looking at final fours in the modern playoff era, those teams have the lowest average latitude (32.8 degrees) ever, as well as the four with the southernmost northernmost team, which is the Las Vegas Knights which sit at 36.2 degrees latitude. It’s a combination of the decades-long push from the league to invest in southern locales without a history of hockey, as well as a consistent, reliable and dedicated push from the Canadian teams to not win the Stanley Cup.

Neil Paine, Neil’s Substack

Arizona

While the rest of the Sun Belt enjoys their hockey, the Arizona Coyotes botched an attempt to get the public to pay for some of a new arena, with voters of Tempe resoundingly rejecting three ballot initiatives that would have handed over land, a property tax abatement, new taxes and financing over to the team to develop a new ice hockey arena in Tempe. The team, which has been playing in a small college hockey arena since leaving their previous home in Glendale, will not be going to Tempe and may very well not even stay in Arizona. “No” won 57 percent to 43 percent on two of the proposals, and 56 percent to 44 percent on the third.

Barry M. Bloom, Sportico

Ozone

The 1987 Montreal Protocol was already one of the most successful international agreements ever, which began the process of eliminating ozone-depleting substances. As a direct result of this climate action, the ozone layer has been steadily recovering, and the hole in the ozone layer has gotten smaller. It turns out that, unbeknownst to the architects of the agreement, it also took out a major batch of chemicals that trap heat and accelerate climate change; the ozone-depleting substances were responsible for 30 percent of the warming from 1955 to 2005. A new study estimated that if the concentration of ozone-depleting substances had remained at the level in 1955, the Arctic would be 55 percent cooler and there would be 45 percent more sea ice every September. The world has phased out 99 percent of the substances since 1987.

J. Besl, Hakai Magazine

Air Conditioning

The world will add 1 billion air conditioners before 2030, many in places in the developing world, and a whole lot in India in particular. Economists observe that a country tends to add air conditioners en masse when household incomes cross $10,000, and when adjusted for purchasing power India’s at $9,000 this year. At Daikin Industries, the largest AC manufacturer in the world, sales are up 15 times what they were. It’s a state priority: A study of thousands of Indian factories found productivity dropped 2 percent for every degree of Celsius increase in the temperature of the factories.

Kai Schultz, Adrija Chatterjee and Sheryl Tian Tong Lee, Bloomberg

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