By Walt Hickey

Salt Lake

The International Olympic Committee has approved by an 83-6 vote that Salt Lake City, Utah, will host the 2034 Winter Olympics and the French Alps will host the 2030 Winter Games. The Salt Lake City nod will bring the games back to the 2002 host city, best known as the crucible from which Mitt Romney emerged triumphant, and will save organizers a bunch of money, too. Right now the organizers have proposed a $2.83 billion operating budget for the games. Thanks to the Utah state legislature committing $94 million in public money to maintain the 2002 Olympic facilities over the past several years rather than allow them to deteriorate as many other host cities have, lots of them will likely see reuse in the upcoming games. The Alps have a similar draw, with the region previously having hosted the ‘92 games.

Jason Clinkscales, Sportico

Food

The old foods aren’t working anymore; we need to make new foods. A report from market research firm Mintel analyzed new products released in the food industry compared to other industries, and argues that the food and beverage industry is stuck in a creative rut. According to the report, just 26 percent of new food and beverage products released from January to May 2024 were in fact genuinely new products, down from 50 percent in 2007. Across all consumer packaged goods, 65 percent of all so-called “launches” were just reformulations, relaunches, new packaging or extensions of an existing line, evidence of reboot reliance permeating the culture at large and a bona fide loss of genuine innovation. What, you mean such audacious innovations as “the normal stuff, but we added caffeine to it,” or “the normal stuff, except it’s got Stevia in it now,” or “the normal stuff, but the original color is banned in California,” or “the normal stuff, but we discreetly shrunk the serving size,” doesn’t constitute inspiration these days?

Christopher Doering, Food Dive

Marriage

A new study looked at Europeans who wanted to work in the United States on an HB1 visa, which is for those with advanced degrees and specialized skills, and specifically the conditions of their origin country from 2000 to 2019. The study, published in AEA Papers and Proceedings, found that there was a decrease averaging 21 percent of visas to people from the 13 countries that, over the course of the period, legalized same-sex marriage. It essentially argues that the countries that legalized same-sex marriage were more attractive to their own high-skill workers, who otherwise might have tried to go abroad to work.

Sara Zaske, Washington State University

Superheavy

Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory’s superheavy element team is back at it, smooshing large atoms together in a quest to forge some of the theoretical but nevertheless as-yet nonexistent superheavy elements. From 1936 to 1976, LBNL smashed atoms to discover 16 elements, including such hits as technetium (element 43) and seaborgium (element 106). After that, though, research in Germany, Japan and Russia seized the initiative and discovered the other 12 elements forged in labs. The superheavy elements 114 through 118 were most recently discovered by shooting beams of calcium-48 at a target, but attempts to find element 120 proved elusive. A lab in Germany tried using a titanium beam to get it, but that didn’t work, so they’ve called off the search. The LNBL is picking up where they left off with a titanium beam that generates 6 trillion ions per second by vaporizing titanium, speeding the ions up to 11 percent of the speed of light, and then firing them at a plutonium disk that spins 30 times per second. After just 22 days they’ve managed to register atoms of the (already discovered) element 116, livermorium, which is a good sign, but given the probabilities it could take a year of beam time to find 120.

Robert F. Service, Science

Fraud

The Hugo Awards, considered to be the top prize in science-fiction writing, have been the target of a number of campaigns trying to prop up certain kinds of books preferred by one voting bloc or another. This year, the Hugo Administration Subcommittee for Worldcon 2024 is reporting on a transparently bogus attempt to stuff ballot boxes by paying for registrations for invented voters who all happened to back a similar slate. According to a statement, the Hugos got at least 377 votes that appear to be arranged by an individual who reimbursed people to buy up multiple memberships under fake names. That’s out of 3,813 ballots, and the bogus votes were disqualified. Given that membership costs £45 ($58) for remote members, that’s something like $21,000 for the fake memberships.

Tasha Robinson, Polygon

Krusatodon

Two fossils found on the Isle of Skye in Scotland — which was once a swampy lagoon 166 million years ago — are excellent specimens of Krusatodon kirtlingtonensis, one of the species of early mammals that lived during the Jurassic alongside dinosaurs. The larger of the mouse-like species was discovered in the 1970s, the smaller in 2016, and the news here is that they’re now thought to be the same species, and the smaller one a juvenile. High-resolution CT scans also allowed the researchers to figure out how old each one was, with the smaller coming in at between 7 months and 2 years and the larger 7 years old, which is a remarkably old age for something of its size compared to the mammals of its size that live today.

Jack Tamisiea, The New York Times

Deadpool & Wolverine

This weekend is the big one, a major test of Hollywood’s mettle, with the sole theatrical event of 2024 from the tailspinning Marvel Cinematic Universe and one of the most hotly anticipated films of the summer blockbuster season: Deadpool & Wolverine, which attempts to hurl the characters from the doomed 20th Century Fox universe into the now-hegemonic MCU. It’s projected to earn between $160 million and $170 million in North America over the weekend, but given the buzz, some prognosticators are guessing it might even come in at the $190 million to $200 million range. Needless to say, the record for highest-opening R-rated film — now $132 million, and held by the searing drama Deadpool — is theirs for the taking.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

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