Numlock News: November 10, 2020 • Heat, Lobster, Restaurants

Nov 10, 2020

Lobster

An increasingly tense standoff in Canada between a First Nations tribe and commercial fishermen over the tribe’s right to fish out of season has come to an unexpected conclusion. Here was the issue: the Mi’kmaq tribe had treaty rights to derive income from the fishery, but the Department of Fisheries and Oceans continued to fine the tribe and confiscated equipment of members fishing out of season. The situation — particularly with non-Indigenous fishing industry employees, who said they thought the tribe should not be able to fish without some limitations as the stocks had been steadily declining — became more tense, leading to racially-charged standoffs between Indigenous and non-Indigenous fishermen. Well, yesterday things appear to have come to a decisive conclusion, as a coalition of Mi'kmaq First Nations and the Premium Brands of British Columbia decided to purchase Clearwater Seafoods, the largest producer of shellfish in North America, which owns exclusive licenses in Canada for a number of species. The tribes will put up 250 million Canadian dollars, paid for from a 30-year loan. The Mi’kmaq will own 50 percent of the company, and will own all the fishing licenses in a fully Mi’kmaq owned entity.

Marcy Nicholson, Bloomberg and Paul Withers, CBC News

Supreme

VF Corp, the company that owns the shoe and apparel maker Vans, will pay $2.1 billion to buy the brand Supreme, best known for its innovative strategy of adding a Supreme logo to apparel, and then basically being able to charge whatever the hell they want for it. According to Reuters, the brand is followed mostly by “hypebeasts,” which is one of those things that a large, established media brand writes about a trendy new youth culture that you just have to simply roll with. VF Corp estimated that the global market for streetwear is about $50 billion.

Aishwarya Venugopal and Melissa Fares, Reuters

Message

A message carried by a military carrier pigeon that failed to reach its destination has been found by hikers 110 years after it was sent in northeastern France. Before you have to do the mental math of “wait, what was going down in northeast France 110 years ago,” I will spare you the arithmetic — it was sent in 1910 when that part of France was in Germany. The message was related to German military exercises in the area, likely war games rather than the more consequential military maneuvers that would ensue in the region in less than a decade. The incredibly rare message will go on display at the Linge Memorial museum.

Jack Guy, CNN

Frank Gore

Frank Gore is a legend and a god, and honestly we don’t really talk about Frank Gore enough as a society even though what he’s doing is just really impressive. Gore has been in the NFL for 16 seasons and at the age of 37 became the third leading career rusher in the history of the NFL. That 16 seasons is an eon for a running back, a position where the average NFL career lasts 2.66 years. Gore’s specialty is the Power play, and it’s worked out pretty well for him: he’s got 15,687 yards, and most of those were gained after contact.

Tim Keown, ESPN

Oceans

Since the Industrial Revolution, the ocean has absorbed 39 percent of the carbon dioxide that humans have pumped into the atmosphere, soaking it up either by dissolving it out of the air or by the plants within it consuming it through photosynthesis. This has, on one hand, mitigated the impact that carbon in the atmosphere has had on terrestrial life, while also leading to marine side effects like acidification. A key variable that climate science is trying to determine is what happens when emissions go down, and the results of a recent study suggest that when emissions slow, so will the amount of carbon emissions pulled out of the atmosphere. This means that sometime down the line, the seas will no longer be on our side in the carbon fight, but if we’re lucky enough to actually get to that point it will be a problem for another generation entirely.

Drew Higgins, Hakai Magazine

Outdoors

Outdoor dining accounted for 44 percent of daily sales at full-service restaurants in August, according to the National Restaurant Association, the most recent period studied. August and November, though, are distinctly different and what worked in summer may not last in winter. Besides the obvious — it’s getting a little chillier out there — the biggest difference some restaurants are noting is that the end of Daylight Saving Time has made their clientele into big fans of early dinner, and that diners are hitting up restaurants earlier than usual to get in a bite while the sun still shines.

Lauren Mechling, The Wall Street Journal

Heat

As devices get smaller and more compact, the ability to dissipate heat efficiently becomes more important than ever, and a significant amount of money gets poured into engineering solutions for dissipating heat in smartphones, computers and more. As phones transition to 5G, this problem will become even more acute, as 5G-compatible devices may consume three times the electricity as 4G devices. Accordingly, the market for those modules that dissipate heat was projected to grow to $3.6 billion by 2020, rising 26.1 percent annually over the four years since 2016.

Liu Ruqing, 36Kr

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