Numlock News: June 28, 2024 • Scribes, Soccer, Webtoon

Jun 28, 2024

By Walt Hickey

Have a great weekend!

Scribes

The Czech Institute of Egyptology has 221 Old Kingdom skeletons from almost 200 tombs in storage, of which 102 are male. The institute has been studying the skeletons as a group since 2009, trying to figure out environmental and lifestyle facts about the ancient deceased. One analysis of 69 adult male skeletons was able to identify scribes compared to the overall reference group, and found differences in under 4 percent of the various skeletal traits. Their specific skeletal scars were unique to their social class: degenerative joint issues in the joint connecting the jaw to the skull, in the right collar bone, in the right thumb, and all along the spine, particularly at the top, a suite of musculoskeletal problems that many white-collar workers of today will recognize from bad ergonomics. And to think, the Egyptian scribes of old may very well have also suffered from common modern strain injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome, median nerve compression, repetitive strain disorder, poster’s elbow, clicky bones, blogger’s bane, tumblr thumb, Twitch twitch, reply guy’s spine, troll knuckle, mod neck, or even commenter’s apoplexy.

Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica

Sunday Ticket

In a huge decision that could have league-wide ramifications when it comes to broadcasting deals, a jury in Los Angeles ruled that the NFL is liable in a class-action lawsuit related to Sunday Ticket, the package that allows subscribers to watch all games. The class action was brought on behalf of 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 restaurants and bars that purchase Sunday Ticket, and argued that Sunday Ticket violated antitrust law. The 48,000 commercial establishments were awarded $96 million, while the 2.4 million residential subscribers were awarded $4.7 billion. The ruling may open up the possibility that individual teams could cut deals to broadcast games in out-of-town markets.

Michael McCann, Sportico

Delivery Fees

Washington state is weighing a fee on doorstep deliveries, as the long-term future of the gas tax in a state with somewhat rapid electric vehicle adoption becomes an open question. By 2035, Washington will require all new vehicles to be zero-emission, and gas tax revenues are projected to decline by $300 million to less than $1 billion per year. To make up that shortfall, they’re looking to states that have rolled out delivery taxes, such as Colorado, where a 27-cent fee per order raised $78 million in its first year, or Minnesota, where a 50-cent fee per delivery goes into effect this year. A 30-cent fee under consideration would generate between $45 million and $112 million in 2026.

Adam Aton, E&E News

Webtoon

South Korean web comic and web novel company Webtoon Entertainment went public yesterday in an IPO that generated $315 million for the online comics and stories behemoth. The company had revenues of $1.28 billion in 2023, and has swiftly rolled up much of the web comic and web novel space, emerging as both a central conduit for digital distribution as well as a burgeoning adaptations space that facilitates the television and movie adaptations of works hosted there. It’s got 170 million monthly active users.

Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly

Soccer

A new study published in the International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching looked at 200 players aged 13 to 18 who had participated in the teen academies of two LaLiga soccer teams in Madrid in the 2009-2011 cohort, and then tracked their progress in the ensuing years to see how many elite young players can actually make it big. The answer is not many, with 6 percent of them making it to the lower leagues of professional soccer and just 4 percent making it to the top tier, and this is drawing from the already talented youth to begin with. More interesting, though, is what the whole process reveals about biases among coaches: 44 percent of the academy players were born in January, February or March, indicating that perhaps coaches have a bias against younger, smaller players in an age cohort regardless of their technical talents.

University of Essex

Teeth

A new survey of parents of adult children found that 95 percent of them said they still have photos of them as a child somewhere at home. This is extremely normal, and in fact the opposite is quite rare. But working one’s way down the list, we can figure out what is and isn’t kept. For instance, 74 percent said they still had some of their kid’s art, 48 percent said they still had yearbooks, and 70 percent said they still held on to awards or certificates, proving once again that all the participation trophies were mainly for the benefit of parents anyway. All told, 57 percent said they still had report cards, meaning that permanent records are indeed real, just not in the way they implied. Less commonly, 29 percent reported holding on to their baby teeth, which is really weird, because the whole point is that you give those to the Fae for money as part of the ancient compact between mankind and the fair folk.

Jamie Ballard, YouGov

Office

A new report projects that U.S. office vacancy rates could peak at 24 percent in 2026 as remote work settles in to a steady state and enough leases come up that companies bail on an expensive physical presence. Last quarter, office vacancies hit a high of 19.8 percent, a new record, and remote office work is reducing the need for office space by an estimated 14 percent.

Rocio Fabbro, Quartz

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