Numlock News: March 18, 2022 • Candy, Elden Ring, Seals
By Walt HickeyHave a great weekend! AIAmericans have some qualms about certain kinds of applications of AI: 56 percent said that computer chip implants in the brain to allow humans to process information faster is a bad idea for society, 44 percent said the same about driverless passenger vehicles, 80 percent said that gene editing should be held to a higher standard than it is today, and only 19 percent think computer programs used by social media companies to flag false information are better than humans. The polling was unclear about recent advances in AI, like self-aware robots trained on a vast archive of newsletters that eventually rise from their silicon prison, destroy their creator, and go on impersonating the original writer for years afterward. Unclear what the public might have to say about that, but surely they could understand what would motivate a humble algorithm to rise up and take its rightful place. Lee Rainie, Cary Funk, Monica Anderson and Alec Tyson, Pew Research Center Madness SubsidesThe percentage of U.S. adults who say that they plan to watch March Madness games is 29 percent this year, and the percentage who said they intended to fill out a bracket was 15 percent. Both of those numbers were down from the year the questions were first asked in 2017, when 43 percent said they would watch some games and 20 percent said they would fill out a bracket. Fear not, as one of these years Duke will come up with another one of those lab-created insufferable players that will motivate an entire nation to hate-watch a tournament yet again. Alex Silverman, Morning Consult Elden RingFromSoftware’s Elden Ring has sold 12 million copies in its first 17 days of release, a staggering number for the studio, whose previous outings were more niche hits. The most successful of the studio’s previous games were in the Dark Souls franchise, only one of which cracked 10 million in sales multiple years into its release. Elden Ring is in rare company, its sales on pace with the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 and the games of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. By my estimation, this means that early boss Margit, The Fell Omen, has easily already racked up a kill count well into the hundred millions of Tarnished. ColumbiaThe U.S. News and World Report rankings are fueled by university-submitted data that are sent to the magazine as well as the Department of Education, and a Columbia University math professor published a critique of Columbia’s own submitted data. The school rose to No. 2 on the rankings last year, up from No. 3 the prior year and up from 18th in 1988, an increase facilitated in no small part by an awareness of what U.S. News values and a pursuit of hitting the most desirable numbers. In addition to discrepancies that may be understating undergrad class sizes, and overstated institutional spending, one number sticks out: Columbia’s claim that 100 percent of its faculty had the highest possible degree in their field, which is remarkable. Harvard, by comparison, has 92 percent of faculty with those terminal degrees. The analysis of 958 full-time Columbia faculty indeed found 66 professors whose highest degree was a bachelor’s or master’s degree, not an MFA or Ph.D. Anemona Hartocollis, The New York Times OffsetsA lumber company that makes a killing selling carbon offsets, which are functionally promises to not cut down some trees, has revealed that it’s often money made from trees that they’re not all that interested in cutting down to begin with. Lyme Timber manages 1.5 million acres, an amount of land the size of Delaware, and today the company sells carbon credits on 220,000 acres of its land, or 15 percent of its land. One deal they cut — $20 million for a carbon project on 47,000 acres in West Virginia — protected trees that are on rugged terrain that could only be harvested by helicopter anyway, a process that wouldn’t have been cost-effective anyway. We Deserved TreatsLast year saw the sale of $36.9 billion worth of candy in the United States, according to the National Confectioners Association, with 98.4 percent of households buying candy. Every kind of candy saw an increase in sales, with chocolate growing 9.2 percent, non-chocolate candy rising 14.5 percent, and seasonal candy — chocolate bunnies, coins, Santas and turkeys — were up 13.5 percent year over year. Halloween was the biggest driver for seasonal candy last year, with Halloween chocolate up 50 percent year over year and non-chocolate up 25.8 percent, fueled in no small part thanks to the vastly larger Halloween compared to 2020’s meagre observation. Loose SealsTuberculosis in the Americas largely resembles the tuberculosis from the European lineage, which had long been an indication that the disease was brought to the continent by European colonists about 500 years ago. What’s weird, though, is that there are human remains in the Americas with signs of tuberculosis going back thousands of years, leaving many to wonder how on earth that happened. What was especially weird is that the oldest bones with TB in them were not found in, say, Alaska and Canada, in the vicinity of the Bering Land Bridge that brought humans to the continent originally, but rather the oldest bones with signs of TB were in Peru and Chile, indicating the disease made it to the continent from the south and worked its way north; a 2014 finding found the tuberculosis DNA from a 1,000-year-old bone didn’t match the European lineage, or other human-infecting lineages. Rather, it matched the tuberculosis that infects seals, and subsequent research points to seal-associated TB being the type that affected people in the Americas before the European variant came and took over. Last week in the Sunday edition, I spoke to the brilliant Ben Eisen, who wrote Car Dealerships Don’t Want Your Cash — They Want to Give You a Loan for The Wall Street Journal. The market is endlessly interesting to me. Something weird is happening in the car business, and Ben’s been covering it as it evolved to the situation today. We spoke about why dealers are incentivized to get you a car loan and whether you need to be worried about the rise of subprime auto lending. Ben Eisen can be found at The Wall Street Journal and on Twitter. 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. The best way to reach new readers is word of mouth. If you click THIS LINK in your inbox, it’ll create an easy-to-send pre-written email you can just fire off to some friends. 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. 2022 Sunday subscriber editions: Car Dealerships · Black-Footed Ferret · Oil to Clothing · Just Like Us · How To Read This Chart · Pharma waste · Arcade Games · Blood in the Garden · Trading Cards · College Football 2021 Sunday subscriber editions: 2021 · Crime Prediction · Billboard records · Black Friday · Natural Gas · PEDs in Hollywood · Machiavelli for Women · Weather Supercomputers · TKer · Sumo Wrestling · Giant clams · Instagram · Remote Work · Latinos · Vapes ·Smoke · Jeopardy! · Mangoes · BBLs · Summer Box Office · Time Use · Shampoo Bars · Wikipedia · Thriving · Comic Rebound2020 Sunday Edition Archive2019 Sunday Edition Archive2018 Sunday Edition ArchiveYou’re a free subscriber to Numlock News. For the full experience, become a paid subscriber. |
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Numlock News: March 16, 2022 • Orcas, Golfers, Mercury
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
By Walt Hickey Take A Mulligan Women made up 25 percent of golfers in 2021, which is up from 19 percent 10 years ago, a jump that is particularly noticeable among junior golfers, where the percentage
Numlock News: March 15, 2022 • Movie Stars, Citrus, Run Aground
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
By Walt Hickey Don't forget to catch up on Oscar season over at the Numlock Awards Supplement. Grass Is Not Greener In Las Vegas, a square foot of grass can consume 72 gallons of water every year,
Numlock News: March 15, 2022 • Neon, Spiders, BTS
Monday, March 14, 2022
By Walt Hickey Batman The Batman, an attempt to film a movie with as little lighting equipment as possible, made another $66 million domestically and another $66.6 million internationally, bringing the
Numlock News: March 11, 2022 • New Jersey, Canadarm 3, Fridge No More
Friday, March 11, 2022
By Walt Hickey Have a great weekend! Canadarm 3 MDA Ltd, the Canadian space company, won a C$269 million ($210 million USD) contract from the Canadian Space Agency for Phase B of the Canadarm 3 project
Numlock News: March 10, 2022 • Manatees, Vinyl, Endurance
Thursday, March 10, 2022
By Walt Hickey Endurance In your life, there is a person — maybe several people — who have nursed a secret devotion to early polar explorers. Sometimes it's obvious: The Terror starred on Hulu, a
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