Numlock News: April 29, 2022 • Dogs, Iron Age, Meatball Marinara
By Walt Hickey
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Shoes
Archaeologists in Norway have published their findings about a shoe that was found in 2019 in a melting mountain trail that was believed to be lost between 200 and 500 CE. According to the archaeologists behind this shoe reveal, the design similarity to the shoes of the Roman Empire is “striking” and it was likely discarded along the person’s journey and replaced. According to the sneakerheads following this exclusive quickstrike drop, these are fire B-grade lows with a gum shoe and busted toebox that, following the LC, definitely aren’t fugazi or wookie, we’re talking bona fide retro Iron Age Red October LEs.
Grimace
McDonald’s temporarily pulled out of Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine, and now the price of that decision has finally landed: $127 million in costs last quarter. Russia and Ukraine accounted for 9 percent of McDonald’s revenue last year. The cost of continuing to pay staff wages in Russia and leases and supplies set them back $27 million, but a full $100 million of that was just food that was inventory in its Russian supply chain that it will not have to dispose of, and as a result they’ll have to just write it off as a loss. That, or the Hamburglar pulled off the heist of the century, and this is just a clever cover story.
Recruits
The U.S. military is weighing a massive spend attempting to recruit college athletes, as the services face difficulties recruiting candidates of the desired physical specifications. They certainly have the money for it, even if the immediate reaction from college athletic officials has been surprise and shock. The 100 or so public FBS schools spent $653 million in scholarship costs outside of football and basketball in 2020–21. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s $773 billion budget for 2023 has a $1.32 billion earmarked in recruitment and advertising costs. The NCAA caps the number of athletes on a given team that can be on scholarship per sport: For instance, the average D-I lacrosse team has 49 athletes, but the NCAA caps the teams at 12.6 scholarships, giving the military plenty of other possible takers.
Eben Novy-Williams and Daniel Libit, Sportico
Salty
Fast food can be saltier in the United States than it is in other countries, which should be the kind of thing the Food and Drug Administration takes a look at. A McDonald’s four-piece McNugget has 330 milligrams of salt in the United States compared to 152 mg in the U.K., a Burger King kids hamburger has 60 mg more salt in the U.S. than the U.K., and Subway’s meatball marinara sandwich has 1080 mg of salt in the U.S. and just 680 mg in the U.K. For decades, health groups have wanted the FDA to get serious about cutting sodium. That said, the inside joke at the FDA is that the “F” is silent, and advocacy groups argue the agency isn’t fulfilling its mission when it comes to regulating food.
Helena Bottemiller Evich, Politico
Temperature
Temperatures in India during March were the highest in 122 years, with an average maximum temperature of 91.6 degrees. A hot weather pattern continues to hit southern Asia, with India, Pakistan, Nepal and other neighbors all logging serious and debilitating heat. This past Monday, multiple cities had highs over 109 degrees Fahrenheit, with the city of Wardha hitting 113 degrees. Temperatures are projected to jump another 10 to 15 degrees.
Matthew Cappucci, The Washington Post
New York Review of Books
A classic knock on the New York Review of Books is that it is the “New York Review of Each Other’s Books,” that the publication draws from a preestablished pool of writers to write reviews and then reviews the books that those writers put out. This turns out to not be entirely off base: An analysis of 59 years of the NYRB, of 1,228 issues of 17,268 articles covering 31,579 books, found that of the 2,489 people who have contributed to the magazine, 60 percent have had their own books reviewed, a figure that jumps to 71 percent when specifically looking at the 1,240 authors who wrote more than one review, with 40 percent of reviews coming from people who had their own book reviewed within two years.
Who Is A Good Dog?
A new study found that the different breeds of dogs don’t really have a major influence over individual traits, according to a new survey published in Science of the owners of 18,385 dogs and then 2,155 genome sequences of those dogs. The breed does not have an effect on the dogs’ reactions to new and strange things, which is related to aggression; breed alone accounted for only 9 percent of the variation in a dog’s behavior in things like howling. And while certain breeds may have reputations, the kind of temperament and attributes are either more nurture than nature or vary dog to dog.
James Gorman, The New York Times
This week in the unlocked Sunday edition we were joined by Wellesley College historian Kellie Carter Jackson, host of the brand new podcast Oprahdemics. Very few people have had a more substantial, direct impact on American life than Oprah Winfrey, the subject of this new podcast. We talked about Oprah’s impact on the arts, the wellness industry that launched in her wake, how influencers learned from Oprah’s playbook and how American society would be unrecognizable without this person. Oprahdemics can be found wherever you get your podcasts.
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