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Significant Digits For Friday, Feb. 27, 2015

You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news. To receive this newsletter in your inbox, subscribe.

1 hour

Two escaped llamas evaded capture in a Phoenix-area retirement community for about an hour yesterday. One was lassoed from a truck. America is great. [Associated Press]

3-2

The FCC voted 3-2 to prevent telecom companies from prioritizing web traffic to content providers who are willing to pay for faster speeds. Long story short, that person you know with opinions about “net neutrality” is probably pretty giddy right now. [Ars Technica]


5 miles

A test track for the Hyperloop — a high-speed train that’s the brainchild of billionaire industrialist and potential creator of Ultron Elon Musk — is planned for Quay Valley in California. [Wired]


6 months

The Huffington Post is out with an in-depth look at what really went on behind the scenes at “Pimp My Ride,” the hit MTV show from the 2000s. As it turns out, life wasn’t awesome for guests on the show. For instance, while it may have seemed like the eponymous rides were in the shop for a weekend at most, some cars were worked on for 6 to 7 months. [Huffington Post]


7 percent

The breakfast battlefield — which apparently is a thing — is in flux. Sales of eggs were up 7 percent last year, which hurt cereal sales. Kellogg spends more than $1 billion on advertising, but 19 of its top 25 cereals saw drops in sales last year. Carbs are bad, folks. [Bloomberg Business]


15 percent

Percentage of people who, in a survey conducted for the 92nd Street Y, said they, themselves, might be a genius. Dubious. [Fast Company]


18 weed vending machines

The future has arrived: Seattle just got its first cannabis vending machine, joining Arizona, California and Colorado, which have similar devices. [Good Magazine]


39 percent

Almost 40 percent of the men’s underwear market is boxer briefs, a class of shorts that has eclipsed both boxers and briefs. [Bloomberg Business]


67 percent

According to a new study out of Australia, 67 percent of smokers will die from a smoking-derived illness. [Washington Post]


14,000 workers

A labor dispute between 14,000 longshoremen and shipping companies ended recently, following months of slowdowns at west coast ports. About 90 percent of consumer goods in the U.S. were at one point transported on a container ship. [The Atlantic]


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And, as always, if you see a significant digit in the wild, tweet it to me @WaltHickey.

Walt Hickey was FiveThirtyEight’s chief culture writer.

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