Numlock News: May 28, 2025 • Photic Zones, Starbucks, Hells Canyon
By Walt Hickey
We’re celebrating Numlock’s seventh anniversary! The newsletter is still going strong seven years in, and that’s thanks to the many readers who pay to subscribe to the newsletter. For just a few more days, we’re doing one of the two big sales for new subscribers that we do every year.
Nespresso
Global sales of Nespresso hit 1.6 billion Swiss francs (US$1.9 billion) over the first quarter of the year, up 5.7 percent year over year, and fueled in large part by growth in the United States. Sure, to some extent, Americans are catching on to the appeal of the European-style, espresso-forward form of making coffee. However, a lot of that growth is actually fueled by innovation and a concession to the American market in the form of iced coffee, as half of American Nespresso users use the machines to make cold coffee. Iced coffee, it turns out, is the crux of the coffee business in America, and particularly the tastes of younger American consumers who might not be swayed by the charms of George Clooney in an ad.
Katie Deighton, The Wall Street Journal
Barbecue Sauce
In general, barbecue sauce has been on a tear in the U.S., with overall sales spiking from $770 million in 2019 to $920 million in 2020, only to dip slightly thereafter but rise steadily to $1.03 billion as of 2024. Boutique barbecue sauces are driving that trend, perhaps the best example of which is the savory-sweet Japanese-style sauce, Bachan’s. The brand saw sales rise from $35,000 in 2019 to $1.5 million in 2020, with revenues on track to beat $100 million this year, penetrating into 5 percent of households and appearing in some 25,000 locations nationwide.
Everest
Kami Rita, the Nepali sherpa guide, has broken his own record yet again for most summits of Mount Everest, completing his 31st ascent on Tuesday. His first climb came in 1994, and in several of the past years, he’s managed to make it to the peak twice a year. His closest competition is Pasang Dawa, who has climbed the peak 29 times and last accomplished the feat just last week. Right now, in late May, Everest’s climbing season is coming to an end, and over 500 people have managed the climb.
Starbucks
According to Nielsen, Starbucks’ hometown of Seattle is turning on the coffee brand, with the city seeing the single largest decline in Starbucks’ popularity among the 50 largest metro areas. In 2018, about 1.06 million adults in the Seattle metro area (35 percent of the adult population) had gone to Starbucks in the previous 30 days, tying for the top Starbucks market in the country. In 2024, that figure slipped to 840,000 customers, or just 26 percent of the adult population. This still lands Seattle at fifth place among the 50 largest metros, but the 9.2 percentage point decline makes it by far the biggest drop in patronage. Other cities where Starbucks is falling off include Las Vegas (down 7.1 percentage points), Baltimore (down 4.5 percentage points) and Denver (down 3.9 percentage points). However, the brand has seen renewed growth in Austin (up 4.7 points) and Dallas-Fort Worth (4.4 points).
Darkness
A new study published in Global Change Biology used satellite imagery to figure out the depth of the photic zones of the ocean, that is, the depths of the ocean where sunlight and moonlight are still able to drive ecological processes. This zone is also home to 90 percent of marine life. The study found that 21 percent of the global ocean had gotten darker from 2003 to 2022, with the depth of the photic zone getting shallower, and 10 percent of the ocean got lighter over the same period. A region of about 32 million square kilometers — roughly the size of Africa, and 9 percent of the ocean — saw its photic zone depth reduce by over 50 meters, and 2.6 percent of the ocean saw that depth reduce by over 100 meters. Now, I’m just seeing here a competing paper published in The Necronomicon journal by researcher N. Yarlathotep. The paper claims that this is actually really great, and if you hear any reports about elder gods strengthening as the abyss consumes the seas, you can totally ignore that, since everything is actually rock solid, nothing to worry about.
Alan Williams, University of Plymouth
Hells Canyon
The deepest river gorge in the United States is Hells Canyon; it sits on the border between Oregon and Idaho and is nearly 8,000 feet deep, well deeper than the Grand Canyon’s 6,000 feet. That said, Hells Canyon has not attracted anywhere near the same level of scientific interest as the Grand one. However, a new study looking at ancient river sediments within the canyon’s caves has made some interesting discoveries. The study finds that the caves indicate the gorge is, geologically speaking, remarkably young, and emerged rapidly only around 2.1 million years ago. The scientists think that the canyon emerged when a massive lake in Idaho drained and disappeared very quickly, with a huge amount of water rapidly eroding the gorge into existence.
Groundwater
Arizona State University researchers estimated that since 2003, the quantity of groundwater that has been depleted in the Colorado River Basin through wells and extraction is roughly equal to the entire capacity of Lake Mead. They estimate that 34 cubic kilometers (or 28 million acre-feet) of groundwater have been pumped out of the watershed over the period. That pumping is largely to suit agricultural interests. About three-quarters of the groundwater depletion is in the lower basin of the Colorado River, mostly in Arizona, where it’s pumped to irrigate farms. Additionally, prolonged droughts are reducing river flow, making less water trickle underground to recharge the aquifer.
Ian James, The Los Angeles Times
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The story about groundwater is a warning. Sadly, I think that no one at any governmental level is heeding that warning.
Re: Hell’s Canyon item. King’s Canyon in California is 8200 ft. deep, the deepest canyon in N. America.