Numlock News: April 23, 2025 • The Matrix, Pinterest, Tour Bus

Apr 23, 2025

Bus

The New York Attorney General announced a $2.5 million settlement from 2 of New York City’s tour bus companies for allegations of anti-competitive behavior. As part of the settlement, neither operator had to agree or dispute the allegations, but subsequently, the companies have come out against the attorney general’s characterization of the situation. According to the AG, Big Bus Tours and its former largest competitor, Twin America, made a deal for Twin America to stop operating its buses in exchange for high commissions paid for reselling Big Bus tickets. The AG said this reduced competition while still allowing Twin America to retain its bus stop permits. The bus companies dispute that, but Big Bus will still pay $2 million in penalties, and Twin America will pay $500,000.

Greg Mocker, PIX11

Dispinterested

The social image site Pinterest has become awash in AI pictures, and many core fans worry this crowds out the design and creative works that were once the hallmark of the site. The top trends on the site have been lousy with AI imagery for months, with 12 out of the top 16 trends outlined in Pinterest’s April report consistently displaying AI imagery in their top 5 search results. All of them have a substantial amount of AI imagery in their top 20.

Ryan Broderick and Adam Bumas, Sherwood News

Conclave

People are brushing up on their papal election knowledge, with streams of the Oscar-winning drama Conclave up 283 percent in the U.S. between April 20 and April 21. The movie had 1.8 million minutes of viewing on Sunday, and then 6.9 million minutes of viewing on Monday after the news of Pope Francis’ death was announced. Furthermore, viewing of The Two Popes — a fictional dramatization of the relationship between Popes Benedict XVI and Francis starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce — was up 417 percent over the same period, with 1.5 million minutes streamed on Monday. Details were not made available for streaming figures for The Young Pope, in which a youthful cleric played by Jude Law ascends to the Chair of St. Peter. This, if you ask me, just reveals a dearth of imagination within the faithful.

John Latchem, Media Play News

Solar

The U.S. Department of Commerce announced that imports of solar cells from Southeast Asia will be hit with what can only be described as embargo-level tariff rates. Equipment from Vietnam is being hit with a 542.64 percent tariff, cells from Thailand are getting a 799.55 percent tariff and Cambodian solar cells are being hit with a 3,403.96 percent tariff. Southeast Asia is a key supplier of the U.S. solar industry, which has been able to fulfill robust demand across the Sun Belt for the equipment and provide cheap electricity in the process.

Pak Yu, Nikkei Asia

Misery

A new survey found that 48 percent of teenage respondents claim social media has a “mostly negative” effect on people their age, which was up 16 points from just 32 percent when the question was asked in 2022. The percentage of respondents who said that social media has a “mostly positive” effect on their fellow teens fell sharply from 24 percent in 2022 to just 11 percent in 2024. Overall, 45 percent of teens said they spent too much time on social media (up from 36 percent in 2022). That said, there is that classic effect happening here of “X is mostly bad for everyone, but to be honest, I am built different, and it’s fine for me.” While 48 percent said social media was generally negative for people their age, only 14 percent said it was negative for them personally, and 28 percent said it was mostly positive for them personally. The elephant in that room being, 58 percent of them said it was neither positive nor negative, which is about what you’d get when you poll fish about what water means for them, you know, “what’s water?”

Michelle Faverio, Monica Anderson, and Eugene Park, Pew Research Center

Pharmacy

Pharmacy benefit managers are companies that serve as the middlemen between health insurers, drug companies and pharmacies. They figure out what’s covered and how much pharmacies get reimbursed for it. The 3 largest PBMs — Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx — oversee 80 percent of drug claims, but incidentally, they’re all owned by large health care corporations. There are fears that this business model rewards their corporate siblings at the expense of independent pharmacies. In Arkansas, for instance, at least 25 pharmacies folded from January 2024 to February 2025. State lawmakers passed HB 1150, forbidding PBMs and their parent companies from owning pharmacies, which would make it impossible to get the kind of vertically integrated business model that can squeeze out the pharmacies that aren’t part of the corporate roll-up.

Pat Garofalo, Boondoggle

The Matrix

Village Roadshow, the Hollywood financier that is currently in the midst of bankruptcy litigation, has a collection of 108 films, the crown jewel of which is The Matrix. That film library — as well as a studio business and several copyrights — will go up for auction, with a bankruptcy court-set minimum sale price of $417.5 million, thanks to a stalking horse bid from Alcon Media Group, best known for Blade Runner 2049. Village Roadshow’s business was as a behind-the-scenes investor in movies, essentially fronting a portion of the capital for making the films without necessarily having to be responsible for actually shooting the things. In the process, it got stakes in The Matrix, Sherlock Holmes and the Oceans Eleven franchises. The company’s film assets reportedly produce about $50 million a year. If anything, this proves that the best way to make tens of millions of dollars in the movie business is to start with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Winston Cho, The Hollywood Reporter

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