By Walt Hickey

Grid

“The power grid” is actually several different grids that operate across the country, and two of them — the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) — this week gave green lights to massive investments in new high-voltage power lines. The SPP’s board overwhelmingly approved a $7.68 billion transmission plan in the Great Plains, and MISO’s board committee expressed significant support for a $30 billion transmission portfolio, with $21.8 billion of that going to 4,000 miles of long-range transmission projects, which it estimated will deliver returns about 1.8 to 3.5 times their cost, particularly through $14 billion in reliability benefits.

Jeffrey Tomich, E&E News

Uruguay

The South American nation of Uruguay is hungry for EVs, with a world-class charging infrastructure that by the end of the year will see at least one EV charger every 30 miles. EVs are 7 percent of the 55,000 to 60,000 cars sold in Uruguay every year, but what’s really interesting is how the country is resourcefully getting ahold of vehicles like Teslas even if the only official dealership in South America is in Chile. Throughout Uruguay, private car dealerships are simply importing them from China, to the tune of 6,500 imported EVs from 2020 to 2024.

Lucía Cholakian Herrera, Rest of World

Roblox

The video game Roblox is an immersive, expansive digital world and marketplace with 68.4 million daily users as of last year playing an average of 2.4 hours per day. The stated goal of the Roblox Corporation is to get to a billion users, but there is a little problem: Basically, over half of its users are under the age of 17, and the place has a reputation as being for kids, which means adults don’t want to bother with it and even young adults who played the game in their youth end up dropping it rather than sticking around. There’s actually a fascinating stat about how much of the game is dependent on kids: #Roblox was the single most enduringly popular TikTok hashtag in the United States from June to August, but the minute that September rolled around — when kids were back in school — the hashtag count collapsed calamitously from over a million monthly video views on TikTok to just 500,000.

Ryan Broderick and Adam Bumas, Sherwood News

The Mash

The canon of Christmas music is famously nostalgic, with 78 percent of the most well-known Christmas songs being composed prior to 1990. Halloween, however, is the holiday of youth, as only 35 percent of songs on the comparable flagship Spotify playlist are from prior to 1990. Yes, Bobby “Boris” Pickett of “The Monster Mash” was a man ahead of his time, with music specifically related to Halloween only recently coming into its own, not the least because any chance to write a song that gets played nonstop for one month of the year is a great way to enjoy music residuals forever. For instance, Billboard estimated that “The Monster Mash” pulls $1 million in revenue annually, which isn’t Mariah Carey numbers ($8.5 million a year for “All I Want For Christmas Is You”) but is not that far off all things considered.

Chris Dalla Riva, Can’t Get Much Higher

Glicked

November 22, both Wicked and Gladiator II hit cinemas, a bargain Barbenheimer that will set the terms of the box office for the rest of the year. The current projections have Wicked opening to $85 million and then $65 million for Gladiator II. The films tell the timeless stories of a misunderstood misfit from a provincial life who takes on the political hegemony of a largely dictatorial figurehead using the means that they have available, even if it means confronting a powerful former ally of the administration, while a well-trained legion of troops prevents their rise. There are probably a couple other minor differences.

Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter

Frauds

The American people lost $12.5 billion to online criminals and scammers in 2023, and according to the FBI, $652 million of that went to romance and confidence scams. Scammers are getting bolder and more ambitious, and bleeding older people — who may have diminished faculties, or are merely lonely and easy prey for a dedicated scammer — for hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. How to intervene is often an issue for their kids, who have to try to convince a parent or, barring that, a court that sending a life’s savings to a person pretending to be a professional wrestler ought to be intervened upon.

Tara Siegel Bernard, The New York Times

Trees

Researchers examined 47,282 species of trees around the world and determined that 16,425 of the known species are vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. That would mean that 34 percent of tree species are in trouble, but that’s actually a bit of an undercount, as there are species that missed being in that 47,282 by virtue of rarity and, thus, would also probably be counted as endangered if they had been part of the tabulation. As a result, the estimate is a bit higher: 38 percent of tree species are in fact endangered in some manner. At particular risk are island trees, which face extreme weather, deforestation and invasive species. Of the 13,668 tree species in South America, over 3,000 are at risk because of farming and ranching.

Nicole Norman, E&E News

Thanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today.

Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.

Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement.

Previous Sunday subscriber editions: MCU · Fanfiction · User Magazine · Reentry · Panda Dunks · Net Zero · Spiraled · On The Edge · Luggage · The Editors · Can’t Get Much Higher · Solitaire ·

Posting Nexus · Memorabilia · Drainage Tile · Desert Surfing · Music · Congestion Pricing · Underwater Sound · Hunts Point · Queer Olympics · Energy Drinks · Baseball Movies · Trillion Trees · Risk Aversion ·

Packaging · Ice Cores · Stadium Names · Uncertain · Green Homes · Political Future · UFOs · Antarctica Comms · Rot Economy · The Internationalists · Video Game Funding · BYD · Disney Channel Original Movie · Talon Mine · Our Moon · Rock Salt · Wind Techs

Sunday Edition Archives: 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018