Numlock News: December 17, 2024 • Fjords, Car Chases, Hess Trucks

Dec 17, 2024

By Walt Hickey

Hess

Hess is a massive producer of oil and gas and mostly spends its days jamming colossal drills into the ground and extracting what comes out, whether it’s in the Gulf of Mexico or Malaysia. It also has a solid little toy business producing Hess Trucks for the holidays, which have become such a tradition that whether it’s spinning off its gas station business or getting bought by Chevron, the company has taken strenuous pains to ensure its continuity. With about a million trucks sold per year at a retail price of $45.99, they’re actually doing a pretty solid bit of business here.

John Kell, Sherwood News

Starlink

The European Union has lined up its Starlink competitor and signed a deal to launch a constellation of 290 communications satellites called IRIS² in low and medium Earth orbit. The deal is valued at €10.6 billion ($11 billion) and will come online by 2030, overseen by a consortium of European satellite operators. A Starlink competitor might actually be boon for all consumers, as the 7,000-satellite Starlink constellation is one of the only games in town and new competition could go a long way in pushing for higher levels of coverage and cheaper rates.

Thomas Ricker, The Verge

Pining for the Fjords

Researchers managed to observe in Greenland what is at least among the three largest glacial lake outbursts ever documented, when from September 23 to October 11, 3,000 billion liters (3.4 cubic kilometers) of meltwater burst out of Catalina Lake in East Greenland and into the Scoresby Sound fjord. This dropped the level of the lake by 154 meters, and was followed in real time using satellites from the Niels Bohr Institute. This carved a 25-kilometer-long tunnel underneath the ice as 20 years of accumulated meltwater burst under the Edward Bailey Glacier, which typically corks up this bottle. The flood caused no harm due to the sparse population of Greenland.

University of Copenhagen

Lock and Key

Stores that lock up their wares are causing issues and tedium for customers who simply want to buy deodorant. New data from RDSolutions found that on average, shoppers have to wait 7.7 minutes for locked up items to be unlocked, based on on-the-ground research conducted this fall at 626 drug, grocery, and mass-market retailers in North America. Drugstores took 6.9 minutes to open up the cases, grocery stores took 7.5 minutes and mass retailers took 8.6 minutes on average. All of the 203 drugstores stuffed some items behind locked glass, 88 percent of the mass-market researchers did, and 72 percent of the grocery stores did.

Andrew Adam Newman, Retail Brew

Chases

Under the most recent mayoral administration and NYPD leadership, there have been way more dangerous police chases in New York City, to the point that former NYPD officials are questioning the point of the policy decision given the carnage left behind. There were 1,523 chases from January to September of 2024, up 47 percent compared to last year, and one in four of them — 345 incidents — ended in a collision of one kind or another, with 315 people including 19 pedestrians and a cyclist injured in chases through November. Indeed, every single police chase crash in the Bronx resulted in at least an injury this year.

Haidee Chu and Yoav Gonen, The City

Geothermal

A new report from the International Energy Agency says that geothermal energy might meet 15 percent of global electricity demand growth from now to 2050. Geothermal now accounts for under 1 percent of global energy generation, but it’s got some particularly exciting potential given that it can run 24 hours a day, seven days a week irrespective of weather or sunlight. The report pegs the number at 800 gigawatts of geothermal deployed over the next 25 years, with the United States alone looking at something like 70 terawatts of production.

Jason Plautz, E&E News

Box Office

Estimates are coming in, and according to the early projections from Wedbush Securities, the 2025 box office will increase 7 percent over the 2024 box office and will hit $9.1 billion, while the 2026 box office will come in 9 percent higher than that, reaching $9.9 billion. For those doing the math at home, that’s still a slight disappointment and a real challenging recovery from the prepandemic trends; in 2019, the box office hit just above $11.1 billion, so it looks like the $8.5 billion we’re gliding toward in 2024 will be only about 80 percent of that.

Erik Gruenwedel, Media Play News

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: MCU · Fanfiction · User Magazine · Reentry · Panda Dunks · Net Zero · Spiraled · On The Edge · Luggage · The Editors · Can’t Get Much Higher · Solitaire ·