Numlock News: July 27, 2018
By Walt Hickey
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Scooter Users
A new survey found that 38 percent of U.S. adults are enormous doofuses who are fine with looking like total dorks in public for a mild convenience. The survey phrased the question as “would you be likely to use a dockless electric scooter if your city adopted it” but we all know what it’s really asking. Among those aged 18 to 29, 42 percent would be likely to use a scooter if available compared to 49 percent who would be likely to use a dockless bike. As such we can definitively conclude that at least 7 percent of millennials have developed literally any shame.
Grizzly Bears
Wyoming Game and Fish has allocated hunting licenses for the first-ever grizzly bear hunting season since the creature was listed as threatened in 1975. Only 22 grizzlies of the 700 estimated to live in Wyoming will be allowed to be hunted from Sept. 15 to Nov. 15. I’m just gonna go on record and say this, I strongly believe anyone who hunts a grizzly bear with a weapon more sophisticated than a rudimentary spear is a total coward.
Stores Full Of Random Crap In Airports
Brookstone, a retailer I am literally unable to describe due to product line that is somehow both eclectic and banal, is expected to file for bankruptcy by the end of the month and close most of its locations. The company — essentially “what if Skymall got into a better college” — has 140 U.S. stores, 36 of which are in airports and five of which are in the Atlanta airport alone. It’s unclear where America’s uncles will get their misunderstood teen nieces and nephews’ Christmas presents moving forward.
Lauren Coleman-Lochner and Eliza Ronalds-Hannon, Bloomberg
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Monumentally Epic Market Cap Wipeout
Congratulations to Facebook, which entered the record books yesterday! They lost more market cap in a single day than any other publicly-traded U.S. company in history, with their 20 percent share decline translating to $124 billion in market cap eliminated. Other companies have endured similar pain, like a $91 billion one-day gut punch to Intel in September of 2000 and a $53 billion hit to Exxon Mobil’s market cap in October 2008.
Adam Haigh and Garfield Clinton Reynolds, Bloomberg
Overwatch League Spots
This weekend is the championship for the one-season-old Overwatch League, a nascent esports league that is also my favorite thing. The London Spitfire will play the Philadelphia Fusion for the inaugural prize, but they’ll also be showing off for potential new investors in new teams. The initial twelve teams each commanded a $20 million buy-in, which after the more than $200 million the league booked in sponsorship and broadcasting sales is poised to rise for new franchises to somewhere from $30 million to $60 million. ESPN is reporting that two new cities — Paris and Guangzhou — are expected to get teams in Season 2.
GPS
An enormous amount of consumer and business technology runs on GPS, from the clock in your phone to payment processors to television broadcasting to electric utilities to airplanes and more. Today there are 2 billion GPS receivers in use on earth, and that’s forecasted to rise to 7 billion by 2022. The Department of Homeland Security lists 16 infrastructure sectors as critical, and 14 of those rely on GPS. Naturally, we have no backup and if even the slightest thing goes wrong we’re all deeply screwed.
Toronto City Council Seats
In a deeply disruptive move ahead of elections in October, Ontario Premier Doug Ford is planning to cancel two regional chair elections in Peel and York and plans to slash the size of the Toronto city council from 47 to 25 Councillors. The deadline to file for the October 22 municipal election is literally 2 p.m. this afternoon. A city clerk previously said that boundary changes would need to be in by January to prepare for the October election.
Robert Benzie, The Toronto Star
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If you get your jollies out of shooting grizzly bears, or of killing any any animal like this for no other reason than you just like to shoot things, you have something fundamentally wrong with you. This comment will probably expose me to a whole bunch of online abuse, but oh, well, that is honestly the way I feel.