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Numlock News: January 19, 2024 • Sand, Helium, Counterfeit Games

Jan 19

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By Walt Hickey

Have a great weekend!

Picture Day

The government of the United Kingdom is spending £8 million to print and distribute copies of the official portrait of King Charles III to local authorities, schools, rescue services, councils and cadet forces around the country. The photograph was taken last year, when the king was playing dress-up as an admiral. It’s considered a bit of overkill anyway, as eventually those 8 million notes are going to have the very portrait on them anyway.

Gareth Harris, The Art Newspaper

Board Games

Counterfeiters have discovered that board games can be a lucrative target, and it’s causing major headaches for game designers of all sizes. In one case, with the board game Kelp, counterfeit listings of the game were already appearing a year before launch, with 12 listings on Amazon. One of them already had 400 sales, which upon removal from the store immediately became 36 illegal listings that soon spread to Google Shopping and eBay, too. It’s not just scammers swooping in to steal a sale, as they were pumping out dysfunctional versions of the games as well, prompting a legion of dissatisfied players spreading bad word of mouth for a game they had not, in fact, actually played.

Charlie Hall, Polygon

College

Cam McCormick, a college student at the University of Miami, has announced he intends to play for a record ninth season of college football. Already the longest-tenured player in the history of the University of Oregon — where he played tight end, earned a bachelor’s degree, and subsequently earned a master’s degree before transferring — he is now going for a run of nine years playing a college sport, a record. How he got to nine meant a season redshirting as a true freshman while recovering from injury in 2016, then a broken left ankle that caused him to miss seasons from 2018 to 2021, prompting an additional two years of eligibility. Across 36 games, he’s got 26 catches for 231 yards.

James Crepea, The Oregonian

Helium

Helium gas is a nonrenewable resource at this point, obtained as a byproduct of natural gas extraction from pockets underground. The United States uses about 40 million cubic meters of helium per year, about 30 percent of it going into MRI machines, 20 percent of it going toward other scientific and engineering needs, 9 percent used in welding and 9 percent going to fiber optics and semiconductors. Other than those primary industrial purposes, only 17 percent of helium is actually used in balloons and blimps.

Nicholas Fitzkee, The Conversation

Spirits

A survey found that 41 percent of Americans reported that they’ve become “more spiritual” over the course of their lives, compared to 13 percent who said they have become less spiritual in general. That’s a different thing than being religious, in fact; only 24 percent of respondents claim they have become more religious over the course of their lives, while 33 percent said they’d become less religious.

Asta Kallo, Pew Research Center

Oil

Don’t look now, but the United States is producing more oil than any country has ever produced in the history of the world, 13 million barrels per day. It’s been economically punishing for the stalwarts of the oil trade, OPEC+, which has seen its global market share drop to 48 percent, the lowest it’s been since it added 10 members to grow from OPEC to OPEC+.

Melvin Backman, Quartz

Sand

The global market for sand was estimated to be worth about $100 billion per year, while estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey Mineral Commodity Summaries put the value as high as $785 billion. It’s a crucial component in construction and concrete, and it’s in high demand the world over, with the world using up to 50 billion metric tons of sand per year. The rate at which we are using sand vastly exceeds the rate at which the natural environment is capable of producing it, and the world is projected to simply run out of construction-grade sand by 2050. It’s fueling an underworld of illegal sand trade projected to be worth $200 billion to $350 billion per year.

David A. Taylor, Scientific American

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