Numlock News: December 5, 2023 • Hockey, Fluffy, Chips

Dec 05, 2023

By Walt Hickey

If you liked my book, it would be amazing if you could leave a review for it on Amazon. Right before the holidays is when the volume of reviews gets really important for the visibility of books, so if you enjoyed You Are What You Watch, please say so, word of mouth is really important right now. It doesn’t take that long, and means a ton to me. That also goes for Barnes & Noble too.

Fluffy

Toy sales overall are down 8 percent year over year, but the sector of plush toys is poised to finish up 4 percent year over year, a soft spot in an otherwise hard market. Plush toy sales rose to $1.7 billion in October, up from $846 million in the same month of 2020. This has led to a scientific and manufacturing arms race, as plush toy producers strive to produce the fluffiest, plushiest possible toys. Your typical plush toy is looking at 300 to 400 threads per inch, but the bleeding edge of the squish industry is pushing 1,000 threads per inch, if not more, though at a substantial cost premium of perhaps $10 per yard compared to the more typical $2 per yard.

Chavie Lieber, The Wall Street Journal

Rockin’

A ploy to get Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” ahead of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” on the Billboard charts has succeeded, and for the first time in 65 years since the song’s release it is now No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song, like most holiday music, has only recently become a threat on the top music charts, as charts that previously only considered sales and radio spins gave way to charts that valued primarily streaming, where holiday music tends to accrue a disproportionate amount of market share compared to, say, CD sales. Case in point: 1958’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” has 34.9 million streams and 20.7 million radio airplay impressions, while selling a mere 3,000 digital downloads in the reporting period. The success of the song means that all sorts of records have been broken: It’s the third-ever holiday song to hit No. 1, following “The Chipmunk Song” in December 1958 and Carey’s song in 2019; at 65 years, it’s the longest-ever wait between a song’s release to the song hitting No. 1, beating out the 25-year gap for Carey’s song; and Lee is now the oldest person to ever hit No. 1, beating out Louis Armstrong, who was 62 when “Hello, Dolly!” topped the charts in 1964.

Gary Trust, Billboard

Brothers

The National Hockey League now contains 20 sets of brothers competing on the ice across the leagye. Yes, hockey is full of iconic brothers, including Brent Gretzky and his brother Wayne, who combined for a fraternal 2,861 NHL points over the course of their careers, although Wayne to some notoriety only contributed 2,857 of them. Yes, from Maurice and Henri Richard to Mark and Marty Howe, hockey is a sport that produces an unexpectedly high rate of talented siblings, although some cases — take Matthew and Brady Tkachuk — have had to swear to their mother that they will not fight on the ice.

Stephen Whyno, The Associated Press

Chips

Regional and exotic flavors for potato chips have become a major business for the companies that make them, with chips experimenting with fun and peculiar blasts of flavor the world over to better compete in local snack aisles. Pringles alone has 34 active flavors in Europe across seven different can sizes. The prawn cocktail Pringles only sell well in the U.K. and Ireland, salt and vinegar Pringles do great everywhere that isn’t Norway or Italy, and bacon-flavored chips are inconsistent across the continent depending on the local preferences for vegetarianism. In Asia, the company conducts market research through a swipe-left-or-right app, and attempt to compete with locally adventurous tastes in snacking.

Amelia Tait, The Guardian

Japanese Food

Over the past several years, Japanese food has become increasingly popular in regional neighbor Thailand. As of 2007, there were just 745 Japanese restaurants in Thailand, while by 2022 that level rose to 5,325 Japanese restaurants. Increasingly, it’s the second favorite cuisine in the country, and that’s made Thailand a promising export market for Japan’s fisheries and marine products. As of 2022, Japan’s marine product exports to Thailand rose 14.6 percent year over year to 23.5 billion yen ($158 million), bringing exports to the country up to 27 percent of Japan’s marine product exports to the far, far larger China. This interest in Japanese cuisine comes at an important time for Japan, as the domestic population begins shrinking and domestic demand declines.

Sakurako Yoshioka, Nikkei Asia

Coal

Right now West Virginia’s fund for restoring land blighted by coal extraction stands at just $15 million, and a bankruptcy of a major coal company would be enough to completely exhaust it. Legislators have been hoping the federal government will step in and bail them out, but that hasn’t happened. The funds date to a 1977 law that required coal companies to clean up damage to the landscape and restore hills and creeks, and to fund that reclamation through bonds that could cover those costs in the event that mines went bankrupt. As an alternative, mines can just pay a production tax into the state-run fund and pay a lower bond. That works in theory, but West Virginia’s program has been underfunded from the start, and the bankruptcies of 60 coal companies since 2012 has sent this into a crisis, as currently the reclamation bonds will cover just 10 percent of cleanup costs.

Ken Ward Jr., Mountain State Spotlight

Bloodsuckers

Samples of amber found in what is now Lebanon that date to approximately 125 million years ago have been found to contain male mosquitos that, somewhat surprisingly, appear to possess the necessary mouth parts to consume blood. This is weird because male mosquitos don’t consume blood, living off nectar and plant juice, while it’s the female mosquitos that eat blood when they need more protein to make eggs. Eating blood is considerably more annoying than not having to do that, as nobody ever got swatted attempting to eat plant juice, but for bloodsuckers that’s a standard risk. It’s possible the elaborate, bloodsucking mouthparts are not there for drinking blood but, come on, I’ve seen enough vampire movies in my time that it’s just not worth the risk.

Kate Golembiewski, The New York Times

Again, if you liked my book, now is a particularly great time to leave a review for it on Amazon. It only takes a moment, and more reviews mean a ton for the visibility of books. If you enjoyed You Are What You Watch, please say so. That also goes for Barnes & Noble too.

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