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Numlock News: October 16, 2023 • Toys, Jets, Eras

Oct 16

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By Walt Hickey

Welcome back! We’re now just one week away from my book release. If you like this newsletter, you will love this book.

Also, while a whole lot of you have preordered it, not everyone has been claiming the free print they get by doing so! If you were one of the folks who preordered very early, you’ve only got a week to fill out the form and claim your print.

Swift

The concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour may have just secured the largest-ever opening for a film released in the month of October, making somewhere between $95 million and $97 million from 3,850 theaters in the U.S. Usually we have a much more specific number, as the studios tend to provide numbers on Sunday mornings, but this film is being released through AMC Theaters as a distributor, and they’re breaking norms to wait until Monday to release the official gross. It is by far the best opening for a concert film, with somewhere between $126 million and $130 million after factoring in international revenue, and the movie to beat domestically is Joker, which currently has the best-ever October opening at $96.2 million.

Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter

Jets

The New York Jets did not take out a temporary total disability insurance policy on their $75 million quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who was injured only several plays into the 2023 NFL season. The Jets were offered multiple policies, with premiums ranging from $1 million to $4 million, that at the upper end would have covered up to 60 percent of the $37 million that Rodgers is guaranteed this year, so about $22 million. The NBA and NHL have rules that require their teams to insure top players, while the NFL and MLB leave it to owners to decide based on their owner’s level of frugality. Across the league, about 65 star players have contracts with TTD policies. Rodgers, who is a 39-year-old man with 19 years of mileage in professional football, should have been a bit of a no-brainer to at least somewhat insure, but the Jets tend to not insure their players, just one reason for their decades of success within the NFL.

Daniel Libit and Eben Novy-Williams, Sportico

Hydrogen

On Friday, the Department of Energy announced the seven winners of a national bake-off of proposed sites for hydrogen hubs, sites that will receive $7 billion in federal funding and likely scare up on the order of $40 billion in private sector investment. Hydrogen is a clean-burning fuel that many see as an energy source that can replace the use of fossil fuels in situations where electrification isn’t a perfect fit, particularly things like aviation, steel and chemical production, and more. The seven hubs — which span 16 states — are projected to produce 3 million metric tons of hydrogen per year.

Brian Dabbs, E&E News

Toys

The toy industry has been hurting over the past several years, with a weak 2022 holiday season only getting worse this year, with toy sales down 8 percent in the period January through August. One reason was that the height of the pandemic featured a toy-buying boom, the effects of which are still being felt. One trend in the toy business is “MESH” toys — that is, toys that foster “mental, emotional and social health.” The hope in the industry is that the MESH toys can get a certification — similar to what happened with STEAM toys, or toys that teach skills in science, tech, engineering, arts and math — and can grow in sales by becoming a category parents specifically seek out. Existing examples of MESH toys are already quite popular, and include things like Pokémon trading games, Dungeons & Dragons, memory games, and basically the niche of toys that require kids to play with each other and navigate social systems.

Anne D’Innocenzio, The Associated Press

Preorder my book today at your local bookstore or wherever books are sold.

Cash

More and more places are offering discounts for paying in cash, particularly as the fees charged by credit cards and other forms of mobile and digital payment systems bite retailers a little harder. From 2015 to 2022, the portion of cash purchases that had an accompanying discount increased 66 percent, according to research from the Fed, rising from 1.76 percent of cash transactions to 2.93 percent of all cash transactions. Tighter margins for bars and restaurants in particular have been hit by payment transaction fees that are anywhere from 1.5 percent to 3.5 percent of each transaction. Still, the evidence is mounting that a 3 percent discount for customers to use cash isn’t moving the needle as much as some places would like.

Imani Moise, The Wall Street Journal

Crypto

The U.S. government happens to have a whole lot of bitcoin, but only because lots of crimes get done by people who happen to have a lot of bitcoin, and so when the government seizes it they need to HODL until they can sell the assets at an auction following the end of a prosecution. This adds up: Three recent asset seizures alone puts the government in possession of some 200,000 bitcoin, which is worth over $5 billion. The Marshals Service used to straight up auction off the government’s bitcoin, often making a pretty solid premium over market rates, but for the first time in January 2021 the Marshals Service unloaded digital currencies on crypto exchanges, selling them in batches so that any single large sale doesn’t have a tumultuous effect on the market.

Vicky Ge Huang, The Wall Street Journal

Book Fairs

Scholastic last week confirmed the existence of a new policy when it came to its book fairs, of which it holds about 120,000 annually. The company has taken to consolidating its books about people of color and those that touch on LGBT+ issues into a single shelf of 65 books called the Share Every Story case, which sounds nice, until you hear that this case exists specifically to give schools the option to ban entirely if they so choose. Librarians are being asked specifically if they want a case with diverse books at book fairs or not, essentially making censorship of books a single convenient checkable box for the Helen Lovejoy types.

Rachel Ulatowski, The Mary Sue

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Reminder to San Francisco readers I’m doing a cool event in your city tomorrow:

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Previous Sunday subscriber editions: Comics Data · Extremely Online · Kevin Perjurer · Kia Theft Spree · Right to Repair · Chicken Sandwich Wars · Industry of AI · Four-day Work Week ·