Welcome to Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
No. 1 pick
With the number one pick in the NFL draft … the Los Angeles Rams selected Cal quarterback Jared Goff. But enough about that, let’s get to the real story of the night: A photo was shared on Laremy Tunsil’s Twitter account that appeared to show Tunsil smoking out of a gas-mask bong. This likely led to Tunsil, a highly touted offensive lineman, dropping to the 13th pick. [Sports Illustrated]
1 minute, 13 seconds
If you’re on the West Coast and missed NPR’s “Morning Edition” for a bit Thursday morning, the culprit has been found: A child visiting NPR headquarters as part of one of those bring-your-child-to-work days accidentally pressed enough buttons in a control room to take NPR off the air for 1 minute, 13 seconds in some areas. [Gawker]
6/17/2006
From June 17, 2006, to June 17, 2007, HBO had its best run of television in the network’s history, based on IMDb user ratings of aired episodes. As it stands, HBO is doing rather well at the moment, but with the eventual end of “Game of Thrones” on the horizon, the cable network is in desperate need of another big hit. [FiveThirtyEight]
93.2 out of 100 on the America scale
Suck it, John Mellencamp: If you wanted to pinpoint “normal America” on a map, it turns out the metropolitan area most similar to the United States is not somewhere in flyover country and not somewhere that has farms or horses or a Tastee Freez or stuff like that. It is, in fact, New Haven, Connecticut. That’s right, an analysis of the areas most resembling the U.S. as a whole found that the metropolitan areas most resembling the country were those around New Haven, Tampa and Hartford. [FiveThirtyEight]
$1.6 billion
Companies that specialize in subscription-based commerce — namely getting your credit card number and charging you monthly for a good or service you may or may not use — have garnered about $1.6 billion in venture capitalist money since 2011. Many of these services, though, can be really bad for consumers, signing them on to a subscription without their knowledge. [Bloomberg]
$3.8 billion
Comcast plans to buy DreamWorks Animation SKG for $3.8 billion. Comcast is hoping the purchase will help it diversify its holdings and take on Disney, whose portfolio includes Pixar, Marvel and, yes, FiveThirtyEight. [Reuters]
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