Numlock News: April 26, 2024 • Finches, IndyCar, Swift Books

Apr 26, 2024

By Walt Hickey

Have a great weekend!

Push-to-Pass

In IndyCar racing, drivers get a budgeted amount of time where they can use extra power called “push-to-pass,” which is activated through a button on their steering wheel and helps drivers overtake cars at key moments, making things much more exciting. Lately, the IndyCar series has been gripped in scandal over push-to-pass. In road and street courses, the push-to-pass systems are disabled before starts and restarts, but the series found three cars that had bypassed that restriction and allowed their drivers to use push-to-pass at any time. Those three cars — all from Team Penske, discovered during a warm-up before the Acura Grand Prix in Long Beach — have each been fined $25,000, and have forfeited their prize money and positions from the opening St. Petersburg race. Penske blames a software bug, but I mean come on, in this situation you’ve always got to float the possibility that it’s Dick Dastardly just to see if they buy it.

Marshall Pruett, Racer

Vets

Private equity has plowed into the pet medical business to the tune of $51.6 billion from 2017 to 2023, and the pace is only picking up: So far this year, $9.3 billion has been thrown into the veterinary sector, as investors see an uptick in spending on pets and want in. Mars Inc. — yes, the one that owns Skittles — owns and operates 2,000 veterinary practices under the Banfield, VCA and BluePearl brands, and JAB Holding Company (the Panera people) owns over 1,000 practices under the National Veterinary Associates umbrella. Anywhere from 25 to 30 percent of practices in the U.S. have been rolled up into a larger firm, up from 8 percent a decade ago.

Helaine Olen, The Atlantic

Draft

Last night was the first round of the 2024 NFL draft. The draft historically involves prospects actually going to the event, which makes for great television not only when the prospect is picked and can accept team gear on stage, but also has the cynical but nevertheless telegenic moments of people frustrated when they are not picked. Well, that downside risk has spooked more and more prospects every year, and last night only 13 players went to Detroit, down from 17 players last year and 22 players two years ago. Depending on who you root for, let me be the first to [congratulate/console] your franchise on a [brilliant/stupid] choice; I think your team [will be better/will be better positioned for the 2025 draft] and I think we can all agree that [screw the Eagles/screw the Eagles], am I right?

Larry Lage, The Associated Press

Books

The book business has found a new hit genre, and it’s children’s books just about Taylor Swift. The first to market was Taylor Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography, which was released in May 2023. The initial printing — 300,000 books — was not enough, not by a long shot, and they’ve returned to press 16 times and currently have 2.3 million copies in print. Those are eye-popping numbers, so naturally a suite of Swift stories for children are seeing publication, including the September 2024 YA book Poems for Tortured Souls with a 50,000-copy first printing, a picture book The 13 Days of Swiftness: A Christmas Celebration for Fans (500,000 copies), and Taylor Swift: Wildest Dreams, a Biography, out in December (50,000 copies). I can’t help but feel that these are iterating, but not innovating, which is why I’m pitching publishers on a downright rude biography of Matty Healy to see if that plays.

Shannon Maughan, Publishers Weekly

Infrared

Pavement is dark-colored, which absorbs heat and contributes to urban areas being considerably warmer than areas with fewer blacktops. It stands to reason that if you want to fix this, you could potentially just paint the pavement a different color to reflect some of that light upward. Experiments have taken place to add white pigment to pavement, which certainly does the job, but then the issue is that pedestrians are getting hit with sun from both above as well as below, and so it can make people feel even hotter. A pilot project in Pacoima, California, in the San Fernando Valley installed 700,000 square feet of its version of pavement coating, which is an acrylic-based seal coat that reflects the near-infrared wavelengths of light. After a year of testing, the data is in, and on average ambient air temperatures were 3.5 degrees cooler during extreme heat events, the surface temperature was up to 10 degrees cooler, and Pacoima saw a 20 percent to 50 percent decrease in the urban heat island effect.

Kaitlyn Levinson, Route Fifty

Markups

Many brands that ordinarily sell most of their product through department stores or big box stores have caught the direct-to-consumer bug, and have tried to stand up digital stores as well as company stores so they can soak up more of the value of the sale price. That said, some brands are finding out that it’s actually pretty hard to deal directly with consumers, the logistics involved do take a little bit of investment, and that the middlemen are in fact hustling pretty hard. Levi Strauss mostly sells through retailers, but has pushed the direct-to-consumer sales to the point that it’s already 48 percent of company revenue, and they want that to get to 55 percent by 2027. Canada Goose has hit 84 percent of its business as direct-to-consumer, up from 78 percent last year.

Liz Young, The Wall Street Journal

Noise

Noise from traffic has been found to directly harm young birds, based on new research out of Melbourne, Australia. The researchers removed eggs from finch nests for five nights in a row, and played either 65 decibels of road noise or the same volume of zebra finch songs, while other eggs in a control group just got silence. When they hatched, they got the same treatment for another nine nights. Among average-sized eggs, the eggs exposed to traffic noise were 12 percent less likely to hatch, and the ones exposed to noise grew slower, had signs of cellular stress, and when they grew up had half as many offspring as the birds who heard birdsong.

Erik Stokstad, Science

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: The Internationalists · Video Game Funding · BYD · Disney Channel Original Movie · Talon Mine · Our Moon · Rock Salt · Wind Techs ·