Numlock News: February 15, 2024 • Tooth Fairy, Megaliths, Beyoncé

Feb 15, 2024

Tooth Fairy Inflation

The amount of money that the Tooth Fairy — a fey beast that forged an ancient compact with humanity to trade coin for fang, provided the terms are upheld and the summoning ritual is complete — pays out has become a somewhat testy topic, as some kids get a pretty hefty chunk of change for their first or final tooth, and that can raise expectations from other kids and cause disruption in the neighborhood. The national average payout per lost tooth is already up, from $5.36 per tooth in 2022 up to $6.23 per tooth last year, according to an annual poll sponsored by Delta Dental. So when a kid gets $100 for a first tooth and $20 for subsequent teeth, one might understand the class animosity that can quickly emerge. Not to mention the moral hazard: Let’s be clear, the minute that a tooth out of the mouth is worth way more than a tooth in the mouth, kids are canny enough to spot a deal when one’s presented in front of them.

Serena Ng, The Wall Street Journal

Geothermal

The geothermal energy startup Fervo Energy announced that it’s managed to get the time to drill a new geothermal well down from 71 days in 2022 to 21 days as of last year, and has managed to get those wells 2,000 feet deeper. That’s cut drilling time by 70 percent, and has cut the cost from $9.4 million per well to $4.8 million per well, which adds up when the company is trying to dig dozens of wells. Rather than locate hot water or steam underground, Fervo’s tech can run on deep, hot rocks, pumping water down to be heated up rather than casting about to find it.

Matthew Zeitlin, Heatmap

I Like It, I Love It, I Want Some More Of It

Beyoncé has released two new country songs, “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages,” but they’ve been snubbed by country radio stations thus far. The first song has already racked up 4.5 million streams on Spotify and has been added to Spotify’s Hot Country playlist. That said, neither song has appeared on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, which tracks the top 60 songs spun on country radio stations. As it stands, only eight country stations that report plays to Billboard have played it, and just one — KBAY San Francisco — has played it twice.

Melinda Newman, Billboard

Africa

Netflix has slipped to second place in Africa, having lost enough market share to South Africa’s Showmax to make it No. 2 on the continent. Showmax is targeting 50 million subscribers and $1 billion in revenue over the next five years, an ambitious goal that contends with rivals attempting to hit a global audience. Showmax had 2.1 million subscribers in Africa as of November 2023, more than the 1.8 million for Netflix, and Showmax’s market share is up to 39 percent compared to Netflix’s 33.5 percent. The nearest competition isn’t even close: Amazon Prime Video claims 300,000 subscribers for third place, with the remaining 22.3 percent of the market belonging to a variety of other competitors.

Damilare Dosunmu, Rest of World

Hang Out

The average amount of time that American men spent socializing face to face has fallen 30 percent from 2003 to 2022, and among teenagers that’s fallen over 45 percent. That’s happened at the same time that people of all ages are citing increased levels of loneliness and other symptoms of anxiety and depression. Indeed, many have simply replaced face time with people with face time with animals: Over that same time period, the average woman who owned a pet went from spending more time socializing with people in 2003 to more time spent engaged with their pet by 2022.

Derek Thompson, The Atlantic

Rice

A group of scientists in South Korea has developed a type of rice that could see use in famine relief, military rations or space food, essentially as rice that has been packed with protein and fat from beef cells. It’s got 8 percent more protein and 7 percent more fat than typical rice, and a vastly smaller carbon footprint than actual beef. Most compellingly, it comes out to just $0.03 more per kilogram than ordinary rice wholesale. The cell-cultured protein rice is more a proof of concept than destined for shelves, and demonstrates that rice can be cultured with cells that may then be cultivated in a lab setting.

Christie Wilcox, Science and Michelle Roberts, BBC

Megaliths

An investigation into satellite imagery of the Baltic Sea found neat rows of stones as well as several large stones weighing several tonnes, all connected by 1,600 smaller stones. The 971-meter wall is thought to have been constructed deliberately and carefully made to zig and zag, and built over 10,000 years ago on a sheet of ice until it was eventually submerged. The thought is that it was used to channel reindeer as a hunting strategy. It’s been termed the Blinkerwall, and could very well be one of the oldest megastructures yet discovered.

Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica

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