Numlock News: May 3, 2024 • Orangutans, Cocoa, Retinol

May 03, 2024

By Walt Hickey

Have a great weekend!

Orangutans

An ape in Indonesia has made headlines as it purportedly produced a poultice. In 2022, an orangutan named Rakus in his early 30s had picked up a gnarly gouge on his right cheek, likely as a result of a fight with one of the other 150 Sumatran orangutans living there. These creatures have been monitored extensively by researchers, resulting in 30,000 hours of observations. Following the fight, Rakus was spotted chewing a strange leaf, applying the pulp to the injury and covering the wound, which went on to close within eight days and healed within a month. That’s cool, sure, but should be worrisome. After herbal medicine, what’s next? Orangutans getting into crystals? Moving to the Southwest and trying to clock an aura? Doing a seance perhaps? Chimps asking your mom what time you were born so they can figure out your moon sign? Gorillas volunteering for fringe, third-party candidates based on name recognition alone?

Kermit Pattison, Science

Watercolor

The original watercolor illustration of the book cover for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is up for auction at Sotheby’s, and is projected to sell for $400,000 to $600,000. It’s an exciting work, as it’s the first illustration of Harry Potter and would introduce the character to the world. Painted by then 23-year-old artist Thomas Taylor, a graduate student at the time, it portrays the character as he’s about to board a rather fateful train. It’s one of several items in a big auction from a collection that includes manuscripts from Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. The first time the illustration was sold, in 2001, it was bought for £85,750 ($107,316).

Lauren Peacock, Penta

Chilly

There is at least 7.4 billion cubic feet of cold storage the world over, 3.7 billion in the United States. Growth in cold storage is projected to increase by 13 percent every year through 2030, and it’s expected that another 10 million square feet of new construction will hit every year for the next decade. Cold storage is crucial for the existence of modern life, and industrial freezers are arguably the most important liminal space in our society. It’s why we’re able to have bananas, grapes, and even fish in any reliable manner, and it’s overwhelmingly controlled by just two companies with 70 percent of the market.

Patrick Sisson, Sherwood News

Skin Care

A new survey tracked the skin care trends of the United States, and found that the most commonly used treatments are pore strips (used by 26 percent of women, 10 percent of men, and 18 percent of adults overall) and retinol (25 percent, 6 percent, and 16 percent overall, respectively), followed by facial rollers (12 percent overall), LED light therapy (7 percent), dermaplaning (6 percent), chemical peels (5 percent) and botox (4 percent). Overall, 25 percent of men used a cleanser on “most days,” compared to 58 percent of women. Most concerningly to me at least, just 9 percent of men and a somewhat shocking 19 percent of women said they used sunscreen at least once per day. Come on people, there is a radiation machine in the sky and we have designed a goop that intervenes; it’s time to defeat the sky venom.

Jamie Ballard, YouGov

Bridge

Chubb is the insurer of the former Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore harbor, which to some notoriety is really in Baltimore harbor these days. The insurer is preparing to make a $350 million payout to the state of Maryland, the first in what is all but certain to be a years-long legal fight for a $2 billion to $4 billion loss. The DALI cargo ship, chartered by Maersk, will probably be on the line for a lot of that, but Chubb’s payment will both hit the upper limit of Maryland’s coverage of the bridge, help tide the Port of Baltimore over given that it’s lost $88 million in tolls, and will also help Maryland in its suits against the owner of the DALI, Grace Ocean Private, and the ship’s operator, Synergy Marine Group.

William Gavin, Quartz

Cuckoo For Cocoa

The price of cocoa has crashed down from its peak nearing $12,000 a ton, and futures have since dropped to $8,115 per ton as of 11 a.m. on Thursday in New York. As it stands, the price of cocoa is down about 30 percent from that record high, but still higher than the longstanding price per ton of more than $2,000, less than $3,000. That’s a sign that many of the commercial firms are just going to wait until next season to buy up cocoa, as well as a sign that the supply situation might actually improve.

Mumbi Gitau, Bloomberg

Ports

Most of the containers originally bound for Baltimore have been redirected toward New York (41 percent of the containers), Norfolk (30 percent) and Newark-Elizabeth (10 percent), but the good news is that port dwell times have been overall pretty flat. Rerouted containers are facing additional days of waiting, but in general there has not been the feared cascading delays stemming from the reroutes. For instance, in New York, rerouted containers are posting a median dwell time of 4.1 days, compared to the otherwise flat dwell time of 2.75 days. In Norfolk, that’s a 5-day dwell time for rerouted containers, compared to a 2.7-day situation for typical containers.

Mike Schuler, gCaptain

Really great couple of weeks in the Sunday edition! I spoke to Kate Lindsay, who wrote “Why your small goods come in gigantic boxes” for the BBC. We spoke about challenges in the supply chain, packaging philosophy, and some of the latest advances in cardboard alternatives. Lindsay can be found at Embedded.

I also spoke to Christian Elliott, who wrote “Drilling on the Edge” for Science.This is such a cool story, and having had Christian on last year to talk about subsea cables, I was super excited to talk to Christian again about a fascinating bit of science being done at the extremes. Elliott can be found at his website and at the NASA podcast Curious Universe.

Thanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today.

Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.

Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement.

Previous Sunday subscriber editions: The Internationalists · Video Game Funding · BYD · Disney Channel Original Movie · Talon Mine · Our Moon · Rock Salt · Wind Techs ·