Numlock News: June 5, 2023 • Jersey Shore, Nori, Panama Canal

Jun 5

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By Walt Hickey

Welcome back!

The Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse starring Shameik Moore as the voice behind Miles Morales opened to a jaw-dropping $120.5 million in North America, smashing expectations for the film by about half and continuing a massive rebound for animation at the box office. That’s the third-biggest animated opening ever, and it’s got excellent reviews to boot. Worldwide it brought in $208.6 million in its opening, proving that pretty much the only two people capable of reliably selling a movie ticket since the pandemic are Tom Cruise and Spider-Man. The increasingly crowded box office is only heating up, with The Little Mermaid dropping 58 percent week over week to $40.6 million, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Fast X still appearing in the top five.

Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter

Inflategate

The boardwalks of the Jersey Shore are home to all kinds of games of skill — claw games, hoop tosses, basketball throws, and of course my personal favorites, the frog flippers — that many have often questioned, yo, is this rigged? Well, the state of New Jersey has your back in the Legalized Games of Chance Control Commission, or the “LG-Triple-C,” which conducted over 7,000 inspections last year alone. Earlier this year they slammed an operator with a $15,500 fine and a 10-year ban for overinflating basketballs to make it harder to score baskets. They’re not messing around. An NJ Advance Media analysis of five years’ worth of LG-Triple-C enforcement data found 63 violations on the boardwalk over five years accounting for $66,650 in fines. That may sound like a lot, but over half of the violations were for the operator that got the decade-long ban, so most of the games are on the level. Setting aside that particular syndicate, the sketchiest boardwalk is in Seaside Heights, which logged 18 violations, beating out Atlantic City’s 12.

S.P. Sullivan and Amira Sweilem, NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Panama

The eyes of the global economy turn to a lake in Central America that will define global trade this summer: Gatun Lake, which feeds the locks of the Panama Canal. A serious drought has caused water levels to decrease so much that the canal authority has reduced the allowable size and load of a ship attempting to traverse it. The water level as of July 31 is projected to be 78.2 feet, which would beat the previous all-time low of 78.3 feet and drop significantly lower than the five-year July average of 84.9 feet. That’s prompting some carriers to charge per-box container fees in response to the limits, driving up the cost of shipping across the canal. The draft limit for a Neo-Panamax ship, normally 50 feet, will drop to 44 feet on June 13, which could result in a 40 percent reduction of cargo. If things get very bad, the number of ships transiting per day could drop to 28, down from 36 now.

Laura Curtis, Ruth Liao and Michael D. McDonald, Bloomberg

Energy Star

The EPA is considering removing central A/C units and residential gas furnaces entirely from the Energy Star program, instead focusing certification on the heat pumps that many see as the future of energy efficient heating, ventilation and air conditioning. The carbon math is pretty clear: If every homeowner that sought to replace their central air unit over the next 10 years instead switched to a heat pump, direct carbon emissions from American homes would decrease 50 million tons every year by 2032, with the average home seeing a 39 percent reduction in fossil fuel consumption, and the aggregate energy bill savings hitting $27 billion. Modern heat pumps can be as much as four times as efficient as even the most efficient gas furnaces.

Emily Pontecorvo, Heat Map

Nori

The Japanese seaweed harvest was a disaster in the harvest year running November 2022 to May 15, with production of nori down to 4.8 billion sheets of nori, the lowest level in 51 years. That’s 2.7 billion sheets short of the 7.5 billion sheet demand in Japan. According to the national average, the price per 19-by-21-centimeter sheet of nori — which is essential for all sorts of Japanese cuisine, including onigiri rice balls — is 17.24 yen ($0.12), up 46 percent compared to the previous harvest. It’s the first time a sheet went for more than 17 yen in 40 years. The decline in output is largely due to red tides in the Ariake Sea, which shattered production in the Kyushu region that produces 60 percent of the seaweed in Japan.

Nikkei Asia

Cameroon

A new report based on two years of research and support from curators at 45 museums found that German museums hold 40,000 objects from Cameroon, a country once held as a colony for 30 years. That’s more than the entire African collection of the British Museum, long considered the standard bearer of the “hey that’s a cool collection, where’d you get it?” line of questioning. That doesn’t even include items from Cameroon held in German private collections, natural history museums or archaeological finds. Indeed, the amount of Cameroonian heritage in Germany’s museums is more than even the number of items in the state collections of Cameroon in Yaoundé, where 6,000 artifacts reside. Most of the items held by German museums aren’t even on display, with the bulk being held in depots for storage.

Catherine Hickley, The Art Newspaper

Uninsurable

Allstate, one of the largest property insurers in California, announced it has stopped taking on new business in the state, following a similar announcement from State Farm insurance amid rising risks to wildfires. Last year, 362,000 acres of the state burned, which followed a devastating 2021 in which 2.5 million acres burned and an even more devastating 2020 when 4 million acres were burned by 10,431 wildfires. The California Department of Insurance is not allowing insurers to increase premiums related to costs of wildfire damage, and is the only state where insurers are required to set premiums based on how much they’ve paid out in claims over the past 20 years rather than the rates they think they’ll need to compensate for risks of today. As it stands, there are still 115 insurance companies writing residential policies in the state.

Mimansa Verma, Quartz

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