Numlock News: October 4, 2024 • Seance, Charizard, Dubrovnik

By Walt Hickey

Have a great weekend!

Ghosts

While many companies are jumping into autumn with the classics — perhaps adding a touch of pumpkin spice to a staple product, or alluding to a festive design — Boston Beer is going in a new direction, literally selling an “At-Home Séance Kit” to summon Sam Adams, available for $18.03 from their website. Naturally, selling customers the means with which to rip the very soul of Samuel Adams from the beyond, tearing the shade of the patriot from whatever chasm of perdition or field of Elysium which it has heretofore been bound, offering any fan of their middle-shelf lager the mechanism by which to summon the ghost of Adams, it is a bold strategy and you do have to give it to them for originality. It’s a rather prosaic convocation all things considered, including just a candle, two pint glasses, a vial of Boston dirt, and hops used to produce the beer. Obviously anyone considering an attempt to wrench the wraith of a founding father ought to have considerably more paranormal preparations in place, not the least of which should include a circle of salt, iron to bind, and of course a readily available pornographic magazine in case you accidentally summon Benjamin Franklin and want to rock his world.

Chris Casey, Food Dive

SS U.S.

The SS United States was launched in 1951, originally designed as a troop carrier during the Cold War that could move 14,000 troops 10,000 miles without needing a refuel. It holds the transatlantic speed record, though the top speed of the ship has historically been considered a military secret. It’s been languishing at Pier 82 in Philly since 1996, but recently the pier operator raised the rent for the ship and attempted to evict it, leading the nonprofit that owns it to try to come to an arrangement for a dignified future for a vessel that has a storied place in American maritime history. The solution has arrived, and it’s to be sunk and used to make an artificial reef in the Florida Panhandle, which will come at a cost of $10.1 million. After sinking, it’ll be a home for marine life as well as a diving destination off the coast of Destin-Fort Walton Beach, making the world’s fastest ship into the world’s largest artificial reef.

Mike Schuler, gCaptain

Oysters

A new analysis of centuries of documents reports that wild oysters used to be incredibly plentiful in Europe, and that centuries of harvesting and the emergence of powerful dredging equipment destroyed vast, vast areas of oysters. About 1.7 million hectares of seafloor around Europe were once covered in abundant quantities of oysters, based on an analysis of 1,600 records from 15 countries. Today they live in sparse clumps, rarely occurring at a rate of one per square meter.

Erik Stokstad, Science

Cans

The port strike subsided altogether quickly, but a key paradox of the United States port system remains — namely that the predominant export of the United States is empty containers. About 75 percent of inbound containers return to their origin empty, as the United States is overall a highly successful services economy that imports more finished goods than it exports. Lots of the U.S. exports filling containers are things you might not expect: The leading containerized export are paper products such as wood pulp, which made up 10 percent of the 12 million loaded containers exported.

Francisco Velasquez, Quartz

The Heart of the Cards

In 2022, eBay bought TCGplayer for $295 million, which at that point had authenticated and graded 115 million trading cards, of which 32 million had been handled in 2021 following the explosion of trading-card collecting as a hobby. In 2020 the company saw triple-digit growth as homebound people with disposable income bought up a bunch of holographic Charizard cards to appease an inner child. Now, the 280 people who work on sorting, researching, shipping and receiving all those valuable pieces of cardstock are unionizing, as 60 percent of them make less than $19 per hour while business is booming. I say give it to them, as the last time there was an unscrupulous trading-card company with little regard for working conditions we got KaibaCorp, and we all know how that turned out.

Nicole Carpenter, Polygon

Algae

Researchers have managed to use algae to track the historical record of seismic activity in the Adriatic Sea. We know that in 1667, an earthquake nearly destroyed the city of Dubrovnik, the main port city in the heart of Ragusa at the time and today in modern-day Croatia. Researchers out of the University of Zagreb looked at the algae Lithophyllum byssoides, which accumulates calcium carbonate and builds out a rocky substance called the algal rim, which layer by layer can be indicators of changes in sea level. This new study argues that algal rims can also identify historical earthquakes, and were able to not only confirm that 1667 earthquake but also strong earthquakes alluded to in literature in 1395 and 1520, as well as multiple earthquakes that hit between the fourth and sixth centuries.

Vedrana Simičević, Hakai Magazine

Color

The market for food coloring is projected to increase from $4.6 billion in 2023 to $6 billion in 2028, thanks to rising demand from home chefs, who want to make vibrant and visually catchy snacks and treats that pop on social media, and large food brands who want to do the same. As the saying goes, we eat first with our eyes, and the desire is to make food look more interesting and eye-catching. That’s also in spite of some measures from localities that are banning some of the more vibrant dyes, such as California.

Elizabeth Flood, Food Dive

This week in the (unlocked!) Sunday edition, I spoke to Eric Berger, author of the brand-new book Reentry and senior space editor at Ars Technica. Eric is a stellar writer and my go-to when it comes to hearing about space industry news. I was super excited about his book. We spoke about the major players of the space industry, the inspiration behind SpaceX and its impact on geopolitics, and how Elon Musk could risk it all. Berger can be found at Ars Technica, and the book can be found anywhere books are sold.

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 ·

Yeezys · Armed Forces · Christmas Music · The Golden Screen · New York Hotels · A City on Mars · Personality Change · Graphics · You Are What You Watch ·

Comics Data · Extremely Online · Kevin Perjurer · Kia Theft Spree · Right to Repair · Chicken Sandwich Wars

Sunday Edition Archives: 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018