Marijuana

The price of a pound of marijuana in Colorado has dropped to $846, based on data from Feb. 1 to April 30. It's the first time the price has fallen below $1,000 per pound since legalization; in January 2015, marijuana cost $2,007 per pound, which fell to $1,265 by the beginning of 2018, and now this new low. Part of this is that retail marijuana is a new market and particularly susceptible to over-production and supply inefficiencies.
Jacob Laxen, Fort Collins Coloradoan

Comedy Box Office

Comedies in aggregate are doing worse and worse each year as the genre endures stiffer competition from genre films and new opportunities for comedy writers on the small screen. The five highest-grossing adult comedies took in an average of $141 million in 2013, which fell to $109 million in 2015 and then $85 million in 2017. This year doesn't look much better, as the highest-grossing adult comedy so far only pulled in $69 million.
Ben Fritz, The Wall Street Journal

Instagram

A new projection from Bloomberg Intelligence would make Instagram worth over $100 billion if it were a standalone company, over 100 times what it was bought for in 2012. According to eMarketer, Instagram may be 16 percent of Facebook's revenue this year, up from 10.6 percent last year. No word yet on how much blood Facebook will try to squeeze out of this stone, nor do we know how the company plans to ruin the user experience or make it unpleasant to have ever been a member of the service. But they'll find a way. They always do.
Emily McCormick, Bloomberg

Welcome, Newest Elites

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is behind the Oscars, has extended invitations to a record-setting 928 new members, and if all accept, that would bring total membership north of 9,200. This could have a huge impact on the future of the organization. Since 2013, the Academy has invited 2,296 new people to join its ranks, and anywhere from 19 percent to 32 percent of last year's Oscar voters had joined in the past five years. The Academy would also be 31 percent women in 2018 (up from 25 percent in 2015) and 16 percent people of color (up from 8 percent in 2015).
Maane Khatchatourian, Variety

Voters

A new report analyzing a mail-vote-only program in some Utah counties found that turnout increased by 5 to 7 percentage points in counties with vote-by-mail compared to counties with traditional polling place voting. Low-propensity voters, particularly younger people, saw the biggest boost in turnout.
David Atkins, Washington Monthly

Students

In the wake of Hurricane Maria, 135,000 Puerto Rico residents moved to the mainland, which had a massive impact on kids in school. The Puerto Rican Department of Education saw enrollment drop 38,700 students since last May, with many evacuees heading to school districts in Florida, Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts. Florida alone saw 12,822 such enrollments, which actually increased the total number of Florida students by 0.45 percent. 
Maria Amante and Maryellen Tighe, Debtwire

People Who Definitely Saw A Wrinkle In Time

Disney's "A Wrinkle In Time" hit $100 million domestic at the box office this weekend, but how it pulled that off was weird indeed. The film's weekend take jumped 1,551 percent last weekend compared to the previous weekend, which is weird in its fifteenth week of release. What went down is "Wrinkle" expanded to 88 new locations as it was paired with "Incredibles 2" as a double feature at drive-in theaters, giving it an extra boost since the films split the take.
Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Numlock News

Numlock News: June 26, 2018

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