By Walt Hickey
Welcome back!
Dog Man
DreamWorks Animation’s adaptation of the Dog Man book series was a hit at the domestic box office, bringing in $36 million in North America and, with outstanding word of mouth, looks set to keep the momentum up. With another $4.2 million at the international box office, the film has made back its $40 million production budget. Family movies can really leg out — months after its release, Moana 2 is still the sixth-highest grossing movie at the box office this past weekend, and Mufasa: The Lion King has managed to bring its total to $653 million globally.
Grammy
Jimmy Carter posthumously won his fourth Grammy award for an audiobook he narrated called Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration. The award follows wins for Faith- A Journey For All in 2018, A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety in 2015 and Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis in 2005, as well as 9 other Grammy nominations in his lifetime. This breaks the three-win tie that Carter — who apparently held some sort of position in government before his long career as an author— had long held with Maya Angelou for most wins in the audiobook category. Carter beat out Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton and George Clinton in the category, commemorating those with incredible accomplishments in name recognition.
Zoe G. Phillips, The Hollywood Reporter
Van Gogh
Since 1958, 50 different Vincent Van Gogh paintings, drawings and prints have been stolen in 24 different incidents. The biggest incident took place in 1991 when 20 paintings were stolen by armed robbers at the Van Gogh Museum. Heists of several paintings also occurred in 1965, 1988, 1990, 1998 and 2002. This is not to mention plenty of individual thefts scattered over the years. Two paintings bear the unique distinction of having been stolen on two separate occasions, including Breton Women in the Meadow (after Emile Bernard) and Vase with Flowers. As it stands, three remain unrecovered after the century of heists.
Martin Bailey, The Art Newspaper
Mango
Climate change has made it possible to grow mangoes in new areas like Italy, adding new cultivation regions to the 120 countries where they are produced. Global production is poised to hit 65 million metric tons next year, and more of that is coming to Italy. In 2004, just 24 acres of Italy were devoted to growing mangoes; in 2019, it rose to 1,235 acres and as of 2023, hit 3,000 acres. Growers in Sicily are making way more from the mangoes than they’re making from lemons, getting €5.50 a kilogram rather than the €1.22 per kilogram for lemons.
IndyPass
There are two companies that control a big chunk of the ski industry, Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain Co, and each of them sells a system-wide pass. Vail sells the Epic Pass (granting access to 86 destinations for $600 to $982) and Alterra sells the Ikon Pass (59 destinations for $549 to $1,449). That said, there are lots of mountains that are not in the Ikon or the Epic system, and they too would like one of these fancy nationwide passes without having to join one of the empires. That’s where the Indy pass comes in, which for $279 gets an adult into 234 ski resorts around the world. This pass kicks back 85 percent of revenue to the participating resorts on variable levels depending on the number of Indy Pass visits they get per month. Sales have increased about 20 percent a year since 2019. This pass helps keep the lights on for some resorts: for instance, one participating resort, Bolton Valley Ski Area in Vermont, gets 9 percent of its revenue from the Indy Pass.
Aji Amarillo
The Aji Amarillo pepper has been named by spice-monger McCormick & Co. as the flavor of the year. It’s a fruity, tropical pepper native to South America, and it’s projected to see usage grow 59 percent over the next four years on menus. Given the pepper’s moderate heat level — coming in at 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville Heat Units — it’s a versatile ingredient and is poised to see a boost from increased demand for spicy foods.
Christopher Doering, Food Dive
1-in-77
The ATLAS survey telescope spotted a small asteroid moving away from Earth at the end of December. Upon further examination the asteroid — 2024 YR4 — is probably going to pull off a flyby of Earth on December 22, 2032, with a 76-in-77 chance of doing so. The rest of that probability — the pesky 1-in-77 chance — is that it will fail to fly by Earth because it will, in fact, slam into Earth. We’ve been studying it for a month, and in April it’s going to be too dim to detect with even the best we’ve got. However, it will make a close approach with Earth in December 2028 which will give us another chance at sizing this thing up and — depending on how things are going down here — hearing it out on the whole “smash into us” pitch. As it stands, it’s estimated to be 40 to 100 meters across, which means the material it’s made out of will be somewhat important.
Jonti Horner, The Conversation
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You have until December 2028 to read the Last Policeman trilogy by Ben H. Winter. It's...fairly grim.
Wait... in 2032, I will be 77. There is a 1-77 chance the pesky thing will hit Earth. WHERE on earth will it potentially hit? Wherever I am, you can be sure.
O.o