Numlock News: September 16, 2024 • Syrup, Seiche, Speak No Evil

Sep 16, 2024

By Walt Hickey

Welcome back!

Speak No Evil

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a film about the second-worst thing that can happen when someone sees you two from across the bar and really likes your vibe, has beaten Speak No Evil, a film about the worst thing that can happen when someone sees you two from across the bar and really likes your vibe. The reboot sequel of the 1988 comedy made a pretty outstanding $51.6 million in its second weekend, while the remake of the 2022 Danish horror/comedy of manners starring James McAvoy made $11.5 million. Both numbers are pretty good for their respective budgets, though Beetle has a little less juice at the international box office and has brought in only $76.3 million abroad so far compared to $188 million in North America.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Maple Syrup

Quebec’s production of maple syrup this year has hit 239 million pounds as of this spring, well over the 124 million pounds of production in all of 2023, a strong rebound for one of the province’s most valuable exports. That’s thanks to favorable weather conditions as well as producers adapting to changes in the growing cycle. Overall, Canada is responsible for 75 percent of global maple syrup production, and Quebec is responsible for 90 percent of Canada’s production. The sugaring season generally runs in a four- to six-week period from March to April, but now starts earlier and ends sooner.

Leah Borts-Kuperman, Food Dive

Unidentified Seismic Object

Earthquake researchers the world over clocked a weird signal last September, and now we’ve finally narrowed down what caused it. It was traced to a landslide in Greenland in Dickson Fjord, when a massive amount of ice and rock fell into the fjord, in turn causing a 200-meter-high tsunami. Why didn’t you see it? Well, in a seiche phenomenon, it got kind of stuck as a wave going back and forth captive in a fjord, 10,000 times over nine days, and registering very weirdly on everyone’s seismographs.

Steven Hicks and Kristian Svennevig, The Conversation

Ph.D.

Postdocs who are in the United States on visas constitute 57 percent of the country’s STEM postdoc population, and a new study published in Research Policy found that those on temporary visas got less support and pay despite being more productive than citizens and permanent residents. As of data from a 2017 survey, postdocs who are temporary residents in the U.S. and got their Ph.D. abroad earned 6.8 percent less money compared to citizens and permanent residents, but produced 19 percent more journal articles and published 34 percent more papers in conference proceedings.

Katie Langin, Science

Nike, The Goddess of Defeat

Since 2020 and under the helm of a new CEO, Nike has stripped down the number of places it sells its shoes in an attempt to make its most devoted customers come to their preferred or in-house stores, and has embarked on a strategy of re-releasing updated classics. Besides just yanking the shoes from all sorts of retailers, Nike also dropped its offerings in Foot Locker, falling from 75 percent of Foot Locker’s purchases in 2020 to 60 percent by 2022. In turn, Nike’s direct-to-consumer sales did rise $9 billion in three years. This, however, has begun to backfire, as the shelf space they ceded at retailers has been eagerly snapped up by increasingly cool rivals, and their re-releases have flooded the market and undermined the very scarcity that made them cool to begin with. In 2022, there were 486,000 resales of Panda Dunks on StockX, and in 2023 there were 430,000; in 2024, as of August, that’s collapsed to 54,000. Meanwhile, the resale price of the once-desirable kicks slipped to 19 percent below retail price, well under the 65 percent above retail price in 2022.

Kim Bhasin and Lily Meier, Bloomberg

Bycatch

Commercial fishers tend to haul in lots more than just the fish they actually want to catch, a phenomenon called “bycatch.” Usually, this refers to endangered fish and marine mammals, but a new study dove into birds that are killed as bycatch, potentially trying to vulture a quick meal out of a net as it’s being hauled in. Looking only at Europe, the researchers estimated that 200,000 individual birds are caught and killed as bycatch annually, which included endangered species such as eiders, shearwaters and more. The most common species caught up in nets include common guillemots, northern fulmars and northern gannets.

Rebecca Heisman, Hakai Magazine

Speaking

Olympic athletes are able to make a living through speaking gigs, direct ways of turning their athletic prestige in sometimes niche and nonlucrative sports into actual cash. Motivational speaking is a pretty economically robust field, estimated to have generated $1.9 billion in revenues in 2019. Olympic athletes can do swift business on the corporate circuit after their time in the spotlight, with speaking gigs making up anywhere from 50 percent to 80 percent of an athlete’s revenue.

Jacob Feldman, Sportico

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 ·