Numlock News: June 19, 2024 • Nova, Aces, Ganges

Jun 19, 2024

WNBA

Twenty-eight years in, the WNBA’s 12 franchises are now valued at a collective $1.16 billion, and some owners have seen massive returns on their investments. For instance, Mark Davis, owner of the Las Vegas NFL team, bought the Las Vegas Aces from MGM International for $2 million in 2021. Today, after two championships, that team is now worth $140 million, the most valuable franchise in the league, which has surged in popularity. The average team is now worth $96 million and the top three franchises are rounded out by the Seattle Storm ($135 million) and the New York Liberty ($130 million).

Kurt Badenhausen, Sportico

Nonprofits

A new analysis of the tax documents of a network of nonprofits found that the practice of spending inordinate amounts of money on fundraising — money that is often directly turned back around and reinvested into fundraising — is alive and well. For instance, the National Coalition for Disabled Veterans stated that a minimum of 90 cents out of a donated dollar goes to pay for fundraising, with actual programming getting just a sliver. While the American Breast Cancer Coalition has raised $9 million from donors since 2019, less than 0.5 percent of that has been spent on voter advocacy and outreach, and millions raised in the name of these organizations are instead routed toward for-profit companies that raise that money. At least one of the groups — the National Police & Sheriffs Coalition PAC — is the target of a lawsuit seeking class-action status. Collectively, of $33 million spent by the groups, $30.1 million went to fundraising, $2.6 million to consulting and admin, and just $580,000 to media and outreach.

Ellis Simani, ProPublica

Longer

American consumers are holding on to their largest purchases for longer. In 2015, just 6 percent of iOS and Android users had owned their previous phone for three or more years. Today, that’s up to 31 percent of iOS users and 22 percent of Android users. The average age of a passenger car on the road has increased from 11 years in 2014 to 14 years today, and people are living in their homes for an average of 11.9 years, up from 6.5 years in 2005. Part of this is higher up-front costs, and better durability of the assets in question means less of an incentive to buy new as often as one once did.

Rani Molla, Sherwood News

Assigned

As companies try to coax workers back into the office and mollify unhappy employees, an old habit has returned: We get desks now. Permanent desks, not the hot desking trends of the past several years. As of 2019, 95 percent of workplace seating was assigned, and just 5 percent was unassigned seating. When companies tried to make the most of their spaces and meet employees where they were, that fell somewhat substantially to 81 percent of workplace seating assigned, 19 percent unassigned as of 2022. This year, though, the assigned seat has bounced back in popularity slightly, with 83 percent of seating now assigned, a sign that companies are pulling back on the Hobbesian nightmare that is full hot desking.

Matthew Boyle, Bloomberg

Derailed

A new study published in Risk Analysis found that the odds of a train derailing get higher the longer the train is, a trend which many railroad companies have encouraged in order to cut back on operational costs. The aggregate odds of a derailment increased by 11 percent when two 50-car trains were replaced with one 100-car train, even after accounting for the reduction in the number of trains that are operating independently. A 200-car train has a 24 percent increase in derailment risk compared to four 50-car trains, and a 250-car train has 28 percent higher odds of derailing than five separate 50-car trains.

Ben Guarino, Scientific American

River

The Ganges River is one of the single most important waterways in the world, and a new study found that while the central channel of the Ganges delta hasn’t shifted in centuries, 2,500 years ago a huge earthquake permanently altered the course of the river in a single event, a catastrophe that triggered decades’ worth of avulsion in a single geological incident. The discovery of light-colored sand protruding through the surface of the ground in a remnant channel was the telltale evidence of a shift, and according to the researchers it’s likely that event 2,500 years ago was the most recent shift in the channel of the Ganges.

Eli Kintisch, Science

Nova

This year, astronomers expect that the T Coronae Borealis system will go nova, as it does roughly every 80 years, with the small star becoming exceptionally bright for a period of time. It’s 3,000 light-years from Earth and is a binary star system of a white dwarf and a red giant, and every 80 years enough stuff is ejected from the red giant and into the white dwarf that the latter explodes, brightening itself hundreds of times over, an event known as a nova. The system could go from +10 magnitude, which isn’t visible to the naked eye, to as bright as the North Star. It’ll be visible for several days. It was last seen in 1946, was first scientifically spotted in 1866, and may have been seen by a German monk in 1217. This will be the first time we have instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope with which to see it.

Joe Hernandez, NPR

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