Numlock News: September 28, 2023 • Stolen Bases, Elephant Trunk, Chaebol

Sep 28, 2023

Bank

A crypto scam felled an entire bank in Kansas, after the CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank sought a $12 million loan from a client to get him out of what was described as a crypto investment, promising a 10-day return period with an offer of $1 million in interest. This was, in retrospect, an obvious scam, and so the bank was pretty screwed. A tip of the transaction made its way to the state bank commissioner, which immediately shut the bank down and declared it insolvent, and it expects that the insurance fund will have to take a loss of $54 million to protect depositors, which is wild, because it had $139 million in assets.

Amanda Albright, Bloomberg

Manilow

Barry Manilow has played his 637th show in Las Vegas this weekend, surpassing Elvis Presley’s 636 shows performed in a residency at the International Hotel. Vegas has changed a lot over the decades, and residencies — once thought to be chances for aging stars to cash in on the long term — have evolved ever since the Britney Spears residency demonstrated that younger pop stars could make use of the residency format to great effect, since then seeing Adele, Lady Gaga, and as of this weekend U2 start a residency. The longest-ever residency still belongs to Donny and Marie Osmond, who logged 1,730 shows.

Manuela López Restrepo, NPR

Song

Every year, Disney selects just one of its songs from its animated musicals to be eligible for consideration for Best Original Song at the Oscars. It’s a strategic move: films like Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King had multiple songs compete, and while that did work out and all of them had a song win the category, the fear is that multiple songs from a single film might compete against one another and split the vote. This strategy has pitfalls, too, like last year when “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Encanto became a smash hit song, topping the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks, and Disney wasn’t able to capitalize on that because they only nominated “Dos Oruguitas” from Encanto, which would go on to lose. This is relevant now because the Disney Animation film Wish is out November 22, which is several weeks after the November 1 deadline to submit songs to the Oscars. Four songs from the film have been demoed to the press — the opening number, an “I want” song, a big ensemble number and the villain song — and three more are as yet unreleased.

Carolyn Giardina, The Hollywood Reporter

Stolen

Following a number of rule changes ahead of the 2023 Major League Baseball season, stealing bases is back in the ball game. Stolen bases per game is up to 0.72, the highest level since 1997, and the success rate of steals is up to 80 percent, the highest level since 1920 when such data first began being recorded. In general, the steal rate tends to increase during the playoffs — last year the steals per game jumped from 0.51 to 0.85 in the playoffs — so it’s likely that the playoffs will be even more vibrant. The 80 percent number is particularly compelling, because baseball research quantifying the value of a steal led players to believe that a success rate of 70 percent is the threshold at which stealing has a positive effect, and so since the late 1990s teams had dialed back the stolen base attempts.

Neil Paine, The Messenger

Chaebol

South Korea’s economy is defined by the dominance and importance of large industrial and business conglomerates that are controlled by powerful and wealthy families, organizational structures that are called chaebol. The second-largest conglomerate in the country is SK Group, which controls the largest telecom and second-largest memory chip maker, and has a combined market value of 153.6 trillion won ($113 billion) across its affiliates. At its helm is a couple, Chey Tae-won, who inherited control of the company in 1998, and his wife Roh Soh-yeong, whose father served as the president of South Korea. The issue is, they’re getting divorced, and when a divorce can have massive ramifications for the Korean economy, the judiciary is encouraged to not break up large shareholdings because doing so could destabilize the entire industrial sector. That’s one reason Roh is furious, as she was awarded 66.5 billion won ($50.2 million) and no shares in SK Inc. in the divorce despite seeking half of Chey’s 17.5 percent stake. While it’s the largest divorce settlement in the history of the country, many, particularly women who feel slighted by the decision to deprive one spouse what’s owed to her, are mad about it.

Kim Jaewon, Nikkei Asia

Elephant

A new analysis of the trunk of an elephant looked at the muscle bundles in a baby elephant’s trunk in an X-ray CT scanner in an attempt to finally settle how many muscle fiber groups called fascicles exist in the dextrous appendage. In the past, estimates have ranged between 30,000 and 150,000 fascicles in an elephant’s trunk, which was a bit too ballpark for comfort. Based on the examination of four sites in the trunk and subsequent extrapolation, the researchers estimate that an elephant’s trunk has over 89,000 fascicles, with a high density — 8,000 fascicles — at the tip of the trunk. This data will help illuminate more about the trunks, which are incredibly complex and can do all sorts of neat stuff that other animals can’t.

Erik Stokstad, Science

Cop Drama

This weekend will see a number of new releases try their hand at winning the box office. Saw X, the 10th film in the horror franchise, is projected to come in somewhere between $15 million and $18 million, but some see more upside for the slasher flick and think it might even get up to $25 million. Meanwhile, the Gareth Edwards-directed and John David Washington-starring new science fiction feature The Creator is projected to debut to $16 million to $19 million. But the big question mark, the one where its $18 million to $20 million projection really depends on whether the target demo can be coaxed into cinemas, is a law enforcement drama film made for $30 million starring Taraji P. Henson, which tells the story of a team trying to take down municipal corruption by any means necessary after arresting a disgraced politician. The latest in a franchise that has made $14 billion in retail sales, PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie will open this weekend in 43 international markets.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

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