By Walt Hickey

Successor

While the biggest movie around most of the world was Deadpool & Wolverine, in China that movie opened to No. 2 behind local hit comedy drama Successor, about an escape from poverty, which made 364 million yuan ($51.3 million) and has a cumulative total of $317 million. Deadpool still managed to get the second-biggest opening for a Hollywood film in China of the year, behind Godzilla x Kong, but in total the Chinese market has been a bit softer compared to last year, with the $4.07 billion running figure off 15 percent from the total at this point last year.

Patrick Frater, Variety

Gymnastics

The U.S. men’s gymnastics team secured a long-hoped-for medal in the all-around competition, and the quest to get on that podium illustrates some of the pipeline issues for men’s gymnastics in the country. In the 2023-24 season, 12,000 boys competed in USA Gymnastics-affiliated artistic gymnastics programs in the U.S., compared to 138,000 girls. Those numbers are down for boys compared to 2014, when 15,000 competed, but considerably higher for girls, when 90,000 competed.

Laurel Wamsley, NPR

PJs

Private aviation is disproportionately popular in the United States, which saw 3.1 million business jet flight departures in 2023, by far leading the world. Private jets from companies like Vista might carry between eight and 14 people, but the average number of passengers aboard any one of their flights is just 2.3 passengers. The U.S. Transportation Department is targeting net-zero carbon emissions in the aviation sector by 2050, but private jets are a troublesome part of that puzzle. Some in the industry are trying out alternative fuels, but it’s not entirely clear that a private jet can ever be anything other than a massive emitter of carbon dioxide for the benefit of just a handful of individuals.

Jeff Wise, Sherwood News

Inflatable Amusements

Hiring a large, inflatable bounce house is a staple of carnivals and kids’ birthday parties, even if the industry itself is a bit of an enigma. The invention of the inflatable amusement is generally attributed to John Scurlock in the 1950s, whose family continues to manufacture and rent amusements — some 35,000 rentals per year — to this day, though now thousands of companies rent them out. Given that start-up costs are basically $20,000 and a truck, it’s a good option, and the industry itself is estimated to generate about $100 million annually, give or take. It’s interesting tech in its own right: inflatables are designed to leak though the seams when someone jumps, and they’re constantly refilled by a blower outputting 40 cubic meters of air per minute. Their safety is governed by ASTM International, the international standards organization, which has a 35-page set of standards covering their design, manufacture and operation.

James Coleman, Scope of Work

Pollinate

A study found that plants in the vicinity of air pollution were visited by 70 percent fewer insect pollinators, and their flowers overall got 90 percent fewer visits compared to flowers in unpolluted areas. This was certainly the direction that the researchers anticipated, but the magnitude of the abandonment of the bugs was way higher than they had originally believed. As 75 percent of wild flowering plants — not to mention 35 percent of crops — need animals to pollinate them, that’s a sign that air pollution may be a more serious problem than originally understood. Part of it is that the scents the flowers produce to draw pollinators in can be overwhelmed by air pollution and, in some cases, chemically degraded as ozone eats away at them.

Katarina Zimmer, Knowable Magazine

Wheat

Washington state, after decades of debate gridlock, is moving toward dismantling several dams on the Snake River that impede salmon. One side effect is that grain is transported to markets by barge on the river, and would have to be shipped by rail or truck following the dams’ removal, an effort that $3.6 billion will be thrown at in the coming years. It’s not a trivial problem: Every year about 2.4 million tons of freight travels down the river, 90 percent of which is wheat being barged to international ports, which is about 10 percent of American wheat exports. One advantage for Washington is that it’s already got a state-owned short-line rail system that moves 25 percent of the wheat grown in the state, though for the Idaho crowd they’d likely need to rely on the BNSF railway connecting Lewiston to the Tri-Cities.

Kim Cross, High Country News

Cement

Since China’s real estate bubble popped in 2021, national demand for cement has slumped. In the first half of the year, output was down 10.8 percent year over year, and the overall projection for cement produced in 2024 is projected to be about 1.85 billion metric tons, down 20 percent compared to the 2011-21 average. That shortfall is massive on a climate scale: For every 100 tons of cement produced, 57 tons of carbon are emitted, and cement worldwide is responsible for 8 percent of emissions, with China responsible for half of all global cement production. Run the numbers and you’re looking at the 20 percent decline in Chinese cement production causing a decline in annual global carbon emissions of 1 percent.

David Fickling, Bloomberg

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