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Numlock News: January 22, 2024 • Ingenuity, Independence, Bigfoot

Jan 22

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By Walt Hickey

Welcome back!

New York readers: extremely exciting event you should come to! I’m doing an event at NeueHouse with Jeff Yang called “How Movies Make Us” this Thursday, January 25. It’s free, but you need to RSVP. You might remember Jeff from this fall when I interviewed him about his excellent book, The Golden Screen: The Movies That Made Asian America. It will be a lot of fun; doors open at 6 p.m., so RSVP today and come!

Ingenuity

Ingenuity is the charming helicopter on Mars accompanying the Perseverance rover, and it’s been a real standout success of this mission, vastly exceeding the wildest hopes of what an aircraft can accomplish on Mars. There was a moment of fear late last week, though, when after the 72nd liftoff of Ingenuity on Mars — a 40-foot altitude test flight — communications were suddenly lost. Eventually, after a few days, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was able to reestablish contact with the helicopter, announcing on Saturday night that communications with the aircraft had been restored. All told, it’s covered 10 miles of distance on Mars and has reached altitudes of up to 79 feet.

Agence France-Presse

Independents

The Sundance Film Festival is happening, and the event has people considering the state of independently produced movies at the cinema. In 2018, there were 17 independently released movies made outside the major studios that grossed over $20 million domestically, and in 2019 there were 21 such films. The pandemic sent that crashing down, and it’s not really recovered, in no small part because streaming is eating up some of the pie that otherwise would have gone to those theatrically released indies. In 2023, there were just 13 indie films that made over $20 million at the box office. The streaming competition is no joke: In 2019, there were 131 films released wide in theaters, a figure which stood at 130 films released wide in 2023. Meanwhile, the number of new movies that hit streaming over the same period rose from 129 to 490.

Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg Screentime

Bigfoot

A new analysis published in the Journal of Zoology found that there is a strong correlation between purported sightings of the cryptozoological phenomenon known as Bigfoot and the prevalence of black bears within a region. They found that for every 1,000 bears in an area, the frequency of sightings of Bigfoot — or, depending on your area, Sasquatch or your standard deciduous North American yeti — increased by roughly 4 percent. This may encourage one to consider that perhaps one large, hairy, somewhat humanoid creature may be confused for the proposed, unproven and otherwise mythological beastie of the woods. Within forested areas studied, there is about one Bigfoot sighting for every 5,000 black bears. I intend to conduct my own study attempting to correlate sightings of the Mothman with the overall prevalence of cool guys use their glowing red eyes to identify structural failures in local civil engineering projects.

John Timmer, Ars Technica

Chicken

Chicken has become increasingly popular on restaurant menus, with chicken items up 6.4 percent on menus in the past five years, outpacing the 4.7 percent growth for beef-based items. Restaurants are emptying their archives to get all manner of chicken-related meals back on their menus, with Popeyes permanently adding wings, KFC and Burger King adding crispy tenders in a tortilla, and McDonald’s hastily reinstating the Snack Wraps it pulled off its menus during a pandemic-era cull. Cost is a big part: Burger prices are up 10 percent year over year, while chicken sandwich prices are up just 5 percent, and cost-conscious consumers may be skipping beef for sufficiently compelling poultry offerings.

Heather Haddon and Patrick Thomas, The Wall Street Journal

Dynamite Fishing

The practice of blast fishing — also known as bomb fishing or dynamite fishing — involves dropping an explosive into the water and scooping up whatever is killed in the ensuing blast. It’s had popularity in many places, and remains an issue in Malaysia, Indonesia, Tanzania and the Philippines, where it’s an extremely efficient process for anglers. It’s obviously ridiculously destructive to reefs and can do irreversible damage to ecosystems, but there are plenty of places where explosives bought secondhand from mining operations are cheap, and government oversight is lax. Tanzania is trying to rein in its blast fishing problem, which is believed to have peaked in the 2010s when some 50,000 to 70,000 blasts per year wreaked devastation on its reefs.

Scarlett Buckley, Hakai Magazine

Cicadas

This coming April, two different broods of cicadas — Brood XIII, which emerges every 17 years in northern Illinois, and Brood XIX, which emerges every 13 years and is called the Great Southern Brood — will for the first time since 1803 be emerging simultaneously. It will be another 221 years until we have the pleasure of the company of both broods simultaneously again, so do try to act as if you’re enjoying this special moment in entomology history. Approximately a trillion cicadas will appear in the 16-state area that is directly affected, and they’ll be buzzing around and loudly seducing one another for around six weeks, after which they will die and smell terrible for some time longer. Enjoy! This is a magical experience rarer than Halley’s Comet! You will need a shovel!

Aimee Ortiz, The New York Times

It’s January

January continues to maintain its reputation as a dead zone for the box office, but at least it’s not February, where all the movies that aren’t good enough to get a fall release and aren’t commercial enough to get a summer release are exiled to. The only new movie at the box office — I.S.S. starring Ariana DeBose — opened to seventh place with $3 million, as two musicals (Mean Girls and Wonka) and Jason Statham action flick The Beekeeper maintained their hold on the top three slots. Of interest was Anyone but You, the romantic comedy that managed to buck the trends and actually build momentum over the past several weeks, which has finally surpassed $100.2 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing romantic comedy since 2016.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

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