By Walt Hickey

Arcades

Round One, one of the largest arcade businesses in Japan, has set its sights on the United States. The company has already made progress with its hybrid bowling alleys in the U.S., and aims to double the number of bowling alleys in the country to 100 by 2032. Its first arcade-only Round1 branch opened in Vegas this April, and it’s opening two more this year with an eye to 100 by 2032 as well. Overall the company made 59.5 billion yen ($379 million) in the U.S. and 97.9 billion yen in Japan over the previous fiscal year on the strength of its bowling operation, and as its arcade rival Genda attempts to make inroads in the U.S. by buying 8,000 mini locations, it’s looking to form an answer.

Katsuyuki Tanimoto, Nikkei Asia

Mall King

One outcome for a brand that hit its stride in the era of the mall is innovation, improvisation, and an ability to find new business in other environments by adapting to emerging digital and real estate trends. For everything else, there’s Authentic Brands, which has bought up the names of Brooks Brothers, Aeropostale, Forever 21, Nine West, Reebok, Champion, Sports Illustrated and more. They then turn these deteriorating filets of the mall into a new, sellable gumbo by chopping them up and overhauling them, using whatever value is left in the name. This business is worth $17 billion as of this year, owning 50 brands, and is the third-largest licensor of intellectual property behind only Walt Disney and Meredith Corp. It often works very well: Juicy Couture sales are up 60 percent since 2021, Nine West retail sales are up 42 percent since acquisition, and Reebok sales are up to $5 billion from $3.7 billion at purchase.

Eliza Ronalds-Hannon and Kim Bhasin, Bloomberg

Zero ICE

Ethiopia made the audacious decision in February to ban the import of gas and diesel vehicles into the country. Even fans of EV think that was a bit sudden and probably too early, given the existing infrastructure. The motivation of the government had less to do with a fundamental belief in electrification but rather an attempt to reduce the amount of money the country sends overseas to pay for fuel imports, which came to $7.6 billion in 2023. The issue is, there was little prep ahead of the decision: The country has 70,000 EVs but only around 50 charging stations, according to an expert at the Ministry of Transport and Logistics.

Sarah Assefa and Damilare Dosunmu, Rest of World

Second Base

For the first time ever, a second baseman was drafted No. 1 in the MLB draft, with Travis Bazzana setting a new milestone for a position that hasn’t received the respect allocated to other positions. Previously, the highest-drafted second baseman was Rickie Weeks in 2003, drafted second overall. While there have been plenty of great second-base players, the position rarely gets the accolades of its peers. There have been just 16 second-base players who have received a Most Valuable Player award, the lowest of any on-field position and well under the 38 MVPs on first base. In the Hall of Fame stand just 20 players of second base, below shortstop and first base in the infield and below right and left field in the outfield.

Neil Paine, Neil’s Substack

True Crime

A new survey about the true crime genre of podcasts, television and cinema has found that the genre’s taken a bit of a step back in perception among the general public, and hesitancy about the adaptations of actual crimes is on the rise. Overall, 51 percent of respondents said that true crime content increases empathy with victims of crime, which is down 10 percentage points compared to when the question was asked in 2022. While most still hold the genre at some level of esteem, the hit in reputation is real: 54 percent said that it improves the understanding of the criminal justice system (down 9 points over the period) and 50 percent said it solves crimes that couldn’t otherwise be solved (down 8 percent).

Bryn Healy, YouGov

Shipwrecks

The seabed of the Pacific Ocean is home to an estimated 3,000 wrecked vessels, about 1,000 of them in the waters of the Micronesia and Melanesia regions. Lots of them are wrecks from WWII, and given the destruction of Japan’s fleet, a whole lot of them are Japanese. The issue is that time has deteriorated many of them, and that corrosion is causing the release of the oil onboard the ships when they went under, polluting areas of habitation where the fighting was most fierce. For instance, Chuuk Lagoon in the Federated States of Micronesia is arguably the largest ship graveyard in the world, as American forces sank hundreds of warships, merchant ships and aircraft over the course of three days in 1944. Of all the wrecks, an analysis of historical information about their states when sinking found that 60 of them are critical and in need of urgent attention.

Sophie Mak, Nikkei Asia

Microbes

A new study estimates that healthy wood is an outstanding habitat for microbes, and that the planet’s 10 trillion trees are home to all manner of microscopic organisms. The researchers looked at the abundance of microbes in a 1-gram piece of wood, and then after getting an estimated figure were able to multiply that by the weight of a 5-ton tree, arriving at the value of 1 trillion prokaryotes per tree. That doesn’t include fungi, just simply bacteria and archaea. This sounds like a whole lot, but I really don’t want to scare anyone off tree-hugging; for perspective, your digestive tract has 38 times as many prokaryotic guests as a tree trunk.

Erik Stokstad, Science

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