By Walt Hickey

A Bandit, You Say?

Australian police have recovered 40,061 limited-edition Bluey coins that were produced by the Australian Mint, believed to be a portion of 63,000 of the coins that were stolen from a warehouse in Sydney two months before they were destined to enter circulation. Each coin, produced to specially commemorate Bluey, the most significant Antipodean cultural export since Paul Hogan, is worth $1 (Australian dollars, or about US$0.65). Following the raid, a third person has been arrested in connection with the crime. The Australian Police named the investigation into the looted currency Strike Force Bandit, after Bluey’s father.

Simon Atkinson, BBC News

Des Moines

There are still a bunch of weird, Footloose-esque laws on the books and cultural customs in the god-fearing parts of America that ban weird things because of how it impacts The Children. One such custom is a Des Moines, Iowa, tradition to not trick-or-treat on Halloween, but rather to invent a day on the day before Halloween called “Beggar’s Night” where people trick-or-treat, sort of a real-life Cinco de Cuatro. Heavy thunderstorms this year, though, forced the city to delay the celebration by a day, meaning that for the first time since 1938, the children of Des Moines will get to trick-or-treat on Halloween. At press time, a delegation of missionaries from the great state of New Jersey was en route to Iowa to inform them about Mischief Night and presumably blow their minds.

Scott McFetridge, The Associated Press

Buzzing Light-Years

Our solar system orbits in the Milky Way galaxy at a speed of 230 kilometers per second, a pretty impressive clip but nevertheless one that generally abides the overall motion of the neighborhood. A new study has found one incredibly fast star — with a planet, no less — that moves at an impressive speed of 541 kilometers per second, the fastest known planetary system out there. It’s 1,000 light-years away from the galactic center, so pretty close to the action, and the thought is that the system may have been slingshotted by the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

Jonathan O’Callaghan, Scientific American

Continents

As we all know, there are seven continents: Asia, Australia, Africa, Europe, North America, and South America. This makes sense, because to be a continent you need high elevation off the ocean floor, a wide range of rocks, a crust thicker than oceanic crust, and of course well-defined limits around a large enough area. But wait just a minute — that would mean Europe and Asia probably aren’t unique contintents, but Eurasia is? And maybe North America and Asia, separated by the once-dry Bering Strait, are one continent? Turns out there’s a lot of continental debate among experts, with some saying seven, some six, and then some five, but then again, even those might be wrong. Some say there are two: Antarctica, and everything else. Some say there are eight, because New Zealand sits on a 4.9 million-square-kilometer underwater — but nevertheless continental — mass called Zealandia, and just you wait, it’s time is coming. Others hear that and begin eyeing Iceland nervously, as it sure looks like it’s pretty damn continental by most definitions.

Matt Kaplan, The New York Times

Spatula

Black plastic has become a persistent subject of study, given that they’re disproportionately likely to contain recycled electronic waste. This is an issue, because lots of e-waste contains flame-retardant chemicals, which is great when the plastic is encasing bot copper but actually bad when it’s in, say, cooking equipment. Flame-retardant chemicals tend to be the ones that cause people to throw around words like “forever chemicals” and “carcinogens,” so their presence in cooking equipment is generally considered to be a bad thing. One study of plastic in cooking goods found a sushi tray with 11,900 ppm of BDE-209, which is a chemical banned from commerce in the U.S. and which likely got there by way of recycling. Black plastic products were found to contain flame retardants at random, and of 200 bought at retail stores for the study, most weren’t touted as being made from recycled goods at all.

Zoë Schlanger, The Atlantic

Brazilian Butt Lift Default Swaps

The companies that specialize in bundling up “buy now, pay later” debt for health care needs are making a killing on bundling up the debt from people undergoing cosmetic surgeries and selling it to investors. Cherry Technologies wanted to package up $250 million worth of loans for cosmetic procedures into a bond, and got so much interest that eventually they upped it to a $400 million bundle of tummy tucks and botox. Overall, liposuctions and buccal fat removals were up 7 percent in 2023 and Botox was up 9 percent, so it’s an appealing growth business where often affluent customers are looking to pay off a higher up-front cost over a few months. Prices are also going up: A breast augmentation costs 13 percent more in 2023 than it did in 2022, a Brazilian butt lift costs 19 percent more, and a facelift is 22 percent more expensive, averaging $11,395.

Charlie Wells, Claire Ballentine, and Carmen Arroyo, Bloomberg

Sunbelt

The NHL has been doing great, with big sales at the top of the league — a $1.8 billion price for the Tampa Bay Lightning — and increasingly solvable problems at the bottom of the league, like exiling the Arizona Coyotes to Utah. As a result, and thanks as well to high expectations for an especially lucrative Canadian television deal, valuations for NHL teams are way up, hitting $1.79 billion according to Sportico, up 37 percent compared to 2023 and up 92 percent since 2021.

Kurt Badenhausen, Sportico

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