Numlock News: December 12, 2023 • Chuck E. Cheese, Sludge, Ice

Dec 12, 2023

By Walt Hickey

While my book is going to be 20 percent off at Hachette for just a little while more, the next day or two is going to be the last time they can confirm pre-Christmas delivery. Get in an order now, You Are What You Watch makes a great gift for any pop culture, data or movie fan.

Animatronics

Chuck E. Cheese is killing off the last of its animatronic band, citing evidence that kids aged 2 to 4 are terrified of these golems and that while some adults may be nostalgic for the band, it’s literally impossible for a kid in their target demo of 2 to 12 to feel nostalgia for them. As it stands, only about two dozen out of roughly 400 Chuck E. Cheeses still have an animatronic band of larger-than-life vermin who play music during shows in the arcade. Not even the success of the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise was enough to goose even a bit of ironic interest in the dead-eyed band. The restaurant has doomed one facility — in Northridge, California — to have a so-called permanent residency for Munch’s Make Believe Band.

Emma Bowman, NPR

Bridge

A new bridge in New Jersey is poised to have a devastating impact on that state’s economically critical sludge industry. A $2.1 billion rail bridge across the Hackensack River will open in 2026, but the 50-foot-tall span presents a massive problem for the barges that transport 1.2 million gallons of sewage, sludge and human waste that traverse the section of river, as the span will be too low for the barges to get under. The current system — the Portal Bridge, which is just 23 feet above the water but swings to allow the sludge vessels through — sees 450 trains per day, but malfunctions frequently. A sludge transport moved by a 49-foot barge won’t be able to clear the new bridge, which will force the sewage to move to its destination over the roads of New Jersey rather than its waterways. Or, you know, a slightly smaller boat, that too.

Paul Berger, The Wall Street Journal

Ice

As more and more bars aim for the high-end space, supplying them with ice has become a highly demanded business. If bars are regularly pouring servings of high-end liquor that can sell for lots of money per glass, they’re often also investing in that kind of crystal clear ice that can take days to produce, and oftentimes outsourcing the production of it to a facility that operates at scale and delivers it hundreds of pounds at a time. King Cube in Atlanta, for instance, supplies 60 different bars in the area with high-end, clear ice cubes, spheres and other shapes, and in a given week produces over 9,000 pounds of ice to supply those bars. This is good news, because as we all know the single most inconsistent device in any restaurant is usually the ice machine, a contraption generally believed to be haunted, cursed or to possess a mind of its own, and whose dark task is best left to a professional anyway.

Zach Geballe, Vine Pair

Titles

A combined Disney+ and Hulu library would contain 9,578 content pieces, according to a new analysis from Ampere Analytics, just behind Amazon Prime Video’s 10,892 titles and slightly more than Netflix’s 8,391 titles. Hulu is bringing 7,250 titles and Disney+ 2,525, but there is some overlap there. All told, the combination of Hulu and Disney+ is good for 33 out of the top 100 performing streaming video on-demand titles as of the third quarter of this year, which would give the combined library a plurality. That beats out the 29 titles in the top 100 from Netflix and the 18 titles in the top 100 on Max.

Georg Szalai, The Hollywood Reporter

Taxes

Two prominent New York City landlords have successfully skirted $327 million in property taxes this year, and a new bill in the assembly would seek to address that. Both are among the top 10 landowners in the entire city and have been on massive splurges buying up properties up and down the island of Manhattan. The tax break arrangement is nearly 200 years old, and exists because these incredibly lucrative real estate investment groups also incidentally operate a pair of schools, institutions that go by “Columbia” and “New York University.” Because of the funds’ side hustle in education, the landlords get cushy tax breaks, and the proposal would set a threshold of $100 million for the real estate tax exemption, with the proceeds going to the 25 campuses of the CUNY system, which serves 225,000 students.

Matthew Haag and Meredith Kolodner, The New York Times

Thanks to everyone reviewing my book!

Basalt

The mineral basalt, when added to farm land, can make soil less acidic. Crushed basalt is also being considered for its potential climate advantages, as basalt dust reacts with carbon dioxide in the air to form bicarbonate, a mineral that locks carbon away and eventually makes its way into the ocean where it’s sequestered long-term. A company called Lithos Carbon just scored $57.1 million in financing from investors who are interested in whether or not its crushed basalt strategy can actually sustainably remove carbon from the atmosphere. Lithos aims to remove 154,000 tons of CO2 using crushed basalt by 2028, and to ensure that the ledger makes sense, they’ll use the money to closely monitor thousands of acres of farmland to confirm the basalt strategy is working out.

Gregory Barber, Ars Technica

Spiritual

All told, 58 percent of Americans consider themselves “religious,” and 70 percent of Americans consider themselves “spiritual,” and because there’s a pretty large but not total overlap there, a new survey found that 22 percent of Americans consider themselves “spiritual, but not religious.” This is an interesting slice of the American population: They’re more likely to say that animals other than humans have a soul compared to those who are both religious and spiritual (78 percent versus 56 percent) as well as more likely to say that parts of nature, places like graveyards, and objects like jewels or stones can have spirits or spiritual energies. They’re much less likely to believe in the God of the Bible (just 20 percent do) and much more likely to back a more ambiguous higher power or force in the universe (73 percent), and often have a more negative view of organized religion.

Becka A. Alper, Michael Rotolo, Patricia Tevington, Justin Nortey and Asta Kallo, Pew Research Center

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