Numlock News: January 26, 2024 • Seahorses, Ingenuity, Heisler
By Walt Hickey
Thank you to everyone who came out last night to NeueHouse, it was a delight to meet so many of you, I really enjoyed that.
Have a great weekend!
Ingenuity
The Ingenuity helicopter that has been operating on Mars for the past three years has had its mission end and has taken its final flight following damage to one of the blades. It’s been a staggering success and shattered expectations. The 4-pound Martian aircraft completed 72 flights, spending 128.3 minutes in the air, flying 11 miles and scouting the areas around and ahead of the Perseverance rover. Beyond the major contributions to the mission, it remains incredibly cool that for a while NASA was remotely operating a helicopter on Mars; like for me arguably it’s in the top five coolest scientific accomplishments of the century so far.
Protest
A new survey asked Americans how they felt about protest tactics, with most people finding things like handing out flyers, long-distance marches, picketing and boycotts acceptable, and most not supporting rioting, blocking traffic or defacing property. Now, the really interesting bit comes in when the survey asked about causes that they supported and opposed, and then asked how they felt about the use of those tactics by their political friends and their political enemies. Americans were twice as likely to consider long-distance marches unacceptable when the protest was for their main opposed cause (22 percent unacceptable) compared to their main favored cause (10 percent unacceptable).
Kids
A new survey of parents of young adults extracted a significant concession from the parents. The survey found that 51 percent of parents said they rarely or never listened to their own parents when they themselves were in their 20s and 30s when it came to finances, work or relationships. Only 16 percent of parents of young adults said that they went to their own parents for advice extremely or very often when they themselves were young adults.
Rachel Minkin, Kim Parker, Juliana Menasce Horowitz and Carolina Aragão, Pew Research Center
Restaurants
Yelp tracked 53,793 restaurant openings in 2023, up 10 percent over 2022, with food businesses in general up 16 percent compared to 2022. Some of the most promising restaurants in the set were dessert-oriented restaurants (openings up 66 percent), creperies (up 63 percent) and hot pot (up 53 percent), as well as pasta shops (48 percent) and pop-up restaurants (up 66 percent). This seems like a clear indication that we are on the cusp of a fondue renaissance, because what is fondue if not splitting the difference between a dessert restaurant and a hot pot restaurant.
Heisler
Heisler Beer is one of the most popular beers in the world, if your world is television. It’s produced by Independent Studio Services, a prop supplier, was created in the mid-’90s and is used in film and television whenever a character needs to crack into a beer and a major supplier doesn’t want their beer in the scene, like when they perhaps are getting the kind of drunk that doesn’t really scream Drink Responsibly. The show New Girl purchased it by the pallet, buying approximately 1,000 cans and bottles over the course of the run. Heisler had its original Heisler Gold Ale, then rolled out Heisler Lite, and then introduced an exciting vintage Heisler for television and movies that take place before 1980. It’s been featured in over 80 movies and television shows.
Seahorses
About 3,700 bottom trawlers operate off the southern coast of Brazil, seeking fish and shrimp but very often catching thousands of the protected Patagonian seahorses. What happens to these seahorses caught in bycatch is an actual mystery. A new study estimates that something like 2.3 million seahorses are pulled from the water every year, some 10,000 tonnes of seahorses. It’s believed they go to the black market, where they’re used in folk remedies and sold as souvenirs. Worldwide, demand for seahorses is mostly fueled by traditional Chinese medicine, which fuels industries in Thailand, Vietnam and India.
Mine
A single nickel mine in Minnesota has the potential to unlock an enormous amount of electrification, and with that will come billions of dollars in subsidies bundled into the Inflation Reduction Act. This includes $55.1 million in credits for processing the ore, $126.5 million for the nickel that ends up in battery cathodes, another $8.5 billion for the manufacture of batteries and then $17.7 billion for consumers that buy one of the 2.4 million vehicles that can be produced with the nickel from the one Talon Mine.
James Temple, MIT Technology Review
It has been a great month in the Sunday Edition so far. This past week, Rebecca Boyle joined me for a free-to-listen podcast edition talking about her amazing new book, Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are.
Previously, I was joined by Christopher Ingraham, who talked about the vast amount of salt dumped on American roads in winter, and Matthew Boyle, a Bloomberg columnist whose work I love who joined me to talk about the fastest-growing job in America. We’re off to a great start, support Numlock and join in by becoming a paid subscriber:
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Gosh, I hate to do this, but it leaped out at me like a flaming arrow! "The show New Girl purchased it by the palette..." That's "pallet," not "palette." :( I own a shop where we use many pallets, but absolutely no palettes.