By Walt Hickey
GamerSeveral companies offer concierge services to the wealthy to sell them highly leveled accounts on MMOs, which are purchased so that buyers might be able to pretend they’re very good at video games, or just start a game the same way they start their life: on third base. One company, MetaMMO, handles over 500 transactions like that per month and sees high-leveled accounts selling for up to $8,000. It’s tough to get a handle on the overall size of the market besides “pretty dang big,” with one company — Overgear, located in Cyprus — generating $1.6 million in sales monthly. The industry doesn’t exactly love it, given that the techniques to score loot can get pretty bare-knuckle, with services paying anywhere from 10 to 20 players to surround and guard an in-game item to keep it for a paying client. Cecilia D’Anastasio, Bloomberg
ThemesA hit song can be great, but if you really want to make money in the music business, you’ve got to sell a television theme song. The Devo song “Uncontrollable Urge” never appeared in the Hot 100, but it does appear before every episode of Ridiculousness on MTV, which has 42 seasons, 1,545 episodes, and at one point in 2020 played for reruns of 113 hours out of a given 168-hour week. That was enough to make that particular song worth $1 million per year in performance royalties for front man Mark Mothersbaugh, a song that would have made a total of $150,000 in its time on Spotify. It’s a bit of an open secret; the Barenaked Ladies wrote the theme for The Big Bang Theory, and while they’re coy about revenue, they do say that the number has earned them more than the entire rest of their extensive catalog (including No. 1 single “One Week”) combined. The songwriter with a 15 percent cut of “I’ll Be There For You” makes about $700,000 per year from Friends these days.
BooksA new survey of Americans found that 20 percent of American adults were responsible for 75 percent of the books read in 2024, with 38 percent saying they read zero books, 28 percent saying they read one to four books, and 14 percent saying they read five to nine books. Then you have another 10 percent of the country reading 10 to 19 books, a solid 7 percent reading 20 to 49 books, and 4 percent really carrying the team and reading 50 or more books. At this point, I really think we should just give them the dang pizza. In general, the percentage of Americans who read at least one book increased from 54 percent in 2023 to 63 percent in 2024. David Montgomery and Carl Bialik, The Surveyor/YouGov and Andrew Van Dam, The Washington Post Champagne ProblemsShipments of Champagne were down for the second year in a row. According to Comite Champagne, shipments fell 9.2 percent year over year to 271.4 million bottles, the lowest level since 2001, excepting the 2020 pandemic year. One reason is, indeed, the French: Shipments within France fell to the lowest level since 1983 (excepting 2020), and France is responsible for 44 percent of total shipments. Private LabelsIt was a banner year for brandless food, with the store-brand versions of groceries reaping sales increases of 3.9 percent year over year, outpacing the growth in sales of national brands, which saw sales rise just 1 percent. Over the course of the past four years, private-label brands — your Kirkland Signatures and whatnots — have seen sales rise by about 25 percent, and this year’s growth was fueled by refrigerated items, up 7.5 percent. Catherine Douglas Moran, Food Dive
AntediluvianA new study has put a tidier date on the Zanclean Megaflood that happened once the Strait of Gibraltar was breached by the Atlantic Ocean and a torrent of water refilled the then dry Mediterranean basin, which had previously evaporated in an event known as the Messinian Salinity Crisis. The original theory — that the Mediterranean refilled gradually over the course of about 10,000 years — has been challenged by the 2009 discovery of an erosion channel that would seem to indicate things proceeded pretty quickly, an event known as the Zanclean Megaflood that pretty much speaks for itself, with the estimated discharge of 68 million to 100 million cubic meters per second entering the sea. New research puts the Messinian Salinity Crisis at lasting from 5.97 million years ago to 5.33 million years ago, at which point it concluded with a splash. University of Southampton, Phys.org Chemistry by way of GeologyAddis Energy is a company founded to commercialize a process scientists developed to produce ammonia from rocks located deep underground, essentially using the intense heat and pressure found only in the depths to expedite the chemistry needed to produce the valuable commodity. Basically, by carrying out the reaction underground where the hydrogen is anyway, you can get the heat and the pressure needed to make ammonia for free, with a scaled-up operation producing 40,000 kilograms of ammonia per day, the researchers estimate. Casey Crownhart, MIT Technology Review 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: MCU · Fanfiction · User Magazine · Reentry · Panda Dunks · Net Zero · Spiraled · On The Edge · Luggage · The Editors · Can’t Get Much Higher · Solitaire · Posting Nexus · Memorabilia · Drainage Tile · Desert Surfing · Music · Congestion Pricing · Underwater Sound · Hunts Point · Queer Olympics · Energy Drinks · Baseball Movies · Trillion Trees · Risk Aversion ·Packaging · Ice Cores · Stadium Names · Uncertain · Green Homes · Political Future · UFOs · Antarctica Comms · Rot Economy · The Internationalists · Video Game Funding · BYD · Disney Channel Original Movie · Talon Mine · Our Moon · Rock Salt · Wind TechsSunday Edition Archives: 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018
Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy Numlock News, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe.
|
