Numlock News: February 13, 2023 • Titanic, Kimonos, Maple Syrup
By Walt Hickey
Box Office
This weekend at the box office, Magic Mike’s Last Dance came out on top with $8.2 million, but the real action was going on lower in the rankings, with James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) competing with a rerelease of James Cameron’s Titanic (1997), which has been put back in theaters in time for the 25th Anniversary of the film. Avatar 2 made $25.3 million over the weekend and Titanic made $22.3 million. That’s particularly funny because right now Avatar: The Way of Water is just $3 million behind Titanic when it comes to lifetime worldwide gross, and would have overtaken the 1997 if not for the re-release. Either way, that should happen sometime later this week.
Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter
Parking
The Parking Consultants Council every couple years analyzes the current makeup of vehicles on America’s roads, and then uses that data to come up with a “design vehicle” that is essentially the car that the country’s parking lot and garage designers will use to make spaces. It’s essentially a theoretical vehicle that is in the 85th percentile of cars, and right now it’s a car that is 6 feet, 7 inches wide and 16 feet, 10 inches long. This ensures that parking spaces are pretty much good for most of the cars on the road, and leaves enough give that on balance the other 15 percent of vehicles will find a way to make it work. The problem has become that cars in America are getting much bigger, and that’s causing problems in lots because it means fewer spaces. The best-selling car in 1987 — the Ford Escort — was 13 inches narrower than the best-selling car in 2022, the Ford F-150.
East Palestine
A train wreck of Norfolk Southern’s Train 32N set off a deadly plume following the spill of vinyl chloride in the area. Following the chaos, evacuations and animal deaths ensuing from the 50-car derailment, there have already been four negligence suits seeking class-action status filed by residents and businesses, three of which are before federal judges and the fourth of which is in Columbiana County. The National Transportation Safety Board has said a mechanical failure caused the derailment in which 20 cars containing the carcinogen vinyl chloride were derailed. Norfolk Southern, clearly reading the room, offered a $25,000 donation to the 5,000 residents they affected, enough perhaps for a few slices of pizza or a couple of gatorades, extremely classy.
Mike Gauntner, WFMJ, Alec Sapolin, Cleveland 19, and Julia Malleck, Quartz
Atlantic Forest
The Atlantic Forest is a region of rainforests in Argentina (3 percent), Brazil (90 percent) and Paraguay (7 percent), running along the Atlantic coast. It’s a region home to 150 million people, as well as 7 percent of the plant species and 5 percent of vertebrate species on the planet. Over the course of the past 40 years, the forest area has been substantially slashed, with just 20 percent of the original forest remaining and the other 80 percent experiencing some kind of deforestation. Over the past 37 years, in Argentina some 20 percent of the forests that existed in 1985 are now gone, mostly to agriculture, forestry and pasture.
Alejandro Manrique, Ars Technica
Lithium
The government of India announced the discovery that 5.9 million tons of lithium have been found in Jammu and Kashmir provinces, the first major discovery of lithium in the country. The country had been reliant on imports from Chile, Argentina and Australia to fulfill demand for lithium in batteries, and the discovery is seen as a major boon to the country’s internal supply chain. This means that India has the fifth-largest reserves of lithium on the planet, but developing and expanding the capacity to refine it and make batteries from that refined ore is likely to take several years.
Maples
The maple syrup business is a $1.5 billion industry, but warming temperatures are changing the fundamentals of when and where to tap trees. The loser may be the U.S. industry, as warming temperatures make more and more of Canada viable for large maple sap hauls while simultaneously reducing yields in the southern range. Sap is triggered when daytime temperatures flip from freezing and thawing in a narrow window of late winter. Warmer winters have meant that the start of the productive season can move back from mid-March to February. Some forecasts have sap collection tapping out in Virginia and Indiana by the end of the century, and yields in Massachusetts and New Hampshire halved.
Kimonos
The market for kimonos in Japan has been shrinking since its peak in the 1980s when it was worth 1.8 trillion yen ($14 billion). Today it’s estimated to be worth only around 250 billion yen. Some of that is because of all the value that has already accumulated in closets and could be revitalized again and sold secondhand; there are an estimated 30 million kimonos and obi sashes worth 8 trillion yen in Japan’s closets. Several fashion brands have cropped up to innovate in the space, either by revitalizing, repurposing or taking inspiration from classical styles or trying to tap into potential rising interest in the garment among younger consumers.
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The NS offer was ham-handed at best, but I guess it’s a shot at breaking the class action. That said, feels like there should be some sort of delay between the accident and the lawsuit.
On the Lithium, expect to see some exciting new Tara EVs real soon now.