Numlock News: September 18, 2018
By Walt Hickey
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MoviePass
MoviePass, a cautionary tale that sells monthly passes to unlimited movie screenings, is embarking on yet another reverse stock split now that owner Helios & Matheson Inc. has dipped below 2 cents per share on the Nasdaq. The company — whose sacrifice will not be forgotten by we, the humble people who got to see Incredibles 2 for the equivalent of $1.33 — has seen its stock price evaporate, but its legend will go on forever. Without the previous July 24 stock split, MoviePass would be trading at roughly $0.00007 a share.
Botox
Allergan’s aesthetic medicine business — Botox and Juvederm — made the company $2.4 billion in 2017, and the company wants to double that by 2025. In order to pull that off, the pharmaceutical company is attempting to appeal to the vanity of the aging millennial generation. The average botox customer is 44 years old, and Allergan is about to mount a P.R. push to get young folks game for anti-wrinkle treatments. I suppose the alternative is, you know, waiting for the inexorable march of time to take its toll on my face. That or pay Tom Brady to keep talking about the crackpot theory about how water is sunscreen, which it is not.
Lydia Ramsey, Business Insider
Madden
With a modest 72 overall rating (okay, maybe I’m not one to talk about modest Madden ratings) Seahawks rookie Shaquem Griffin has formally entered the ranks of Madden, an annual ritual that tells a generation of players raised on the game that they’ve truly made it to the NFL. Griffin’s inclusion in the game is actually a pretty big deal: while the linebacker lost his left hand at the age of 4, his dominance at the combine led to his drafting in the fifth round. In order to encapsulate Griffin in-game, designers pulled out the stops to keep fidelity with reality.
Thread Count
Calamity in the linen aisle: a Texas Agriculture investigation of Sunham Home Fashions sheets found that the Macy’s supplier’s 1,400-thread count sheets in fact only had a thread count of 505, “a materially false, misleading or deceptive act or practice.” Thread count is the number of threads in each square inch of material, for those who like me are only gradually figuring out how to buy home goods like an adult. One day I may learn what a carat is.
Hema Parmar and Matthew Campbell, Bloomberg
Garments
The average American buys about 68 garments every year, up from 20 in the pre-fast fashion era. When retailers don’t want to underprice their unsold wares, they will often simply shred or destroy perfectly good clothes: Burberry destroyed $36.8 million worth of merch last year, H&M reportedly burned some 60 tons of new and unsold clothes from 2013 to last year, and the owner of Cartier, Piaget, and Baum & Mercier destroyed roughly $563 million worth of watches in two years.
1950s Town Centers
The George G. Glenner Alzheimer’s Family Centers is working on a new conceptual retirement community for people with age-related cognitive issues. For $95 per day — more than the average $61 per day for adult day care centers — seniors can inhabit a replica of a 1950s downtown, a familiarity which may aid in comfort for those suffering from dementia. These Colonial-Williamsburg-But-For-The-Eisenhower-Crowd spaces cost approximately $1 million to $1.5 million to construct, and several are in production.
Amanda Kolson Hurley, The Atlantic
Work From Home
New data from the census shows that 5.2 percent of workers worked from home in 2017, up from 5 percent in 2016 and 3.3 percent in 2000. That’s 8 million people, none of whom are wearing pants right now. I absolutely guarantee it.
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