You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
811 candidates
As of Aug. 7, 811 people had appeared this year on ballots in open Democratic primaries. My colleagues, in partnership with ABC News and Ballotpedia, gathered data on every single one of them, to see what was making these Democratic races — and Democratic primary voters — tick. Among many other findings: Women won 65 percent of the races that featured at least one man and one woman. [FiveThirtyEight]
100s of counter-protesters
“Fewer than 20” white nationalists showed up for the second “Unite the Right” rally, in Lafayette Park outside the White House, a year after the chaotic and tragic event in Charlottesville, Virginia. Meanwhile, hundreds of counter-protesters turned out in Lafayette Park, and thousands more overall. [NBC News]
$141.5 million
“The Meg,” an expensive Hollywood killer-shark flick with a confusing name and 48-percent green splat on Rotten Tomatoes, was a surprise hit at the box office, earning $141.5 million in its opening weekend (domestically and abroad). Issues of accounting for taste and whether or not it can be done aside, that is already enough to put “The Meg” eighth on the all-time “Shark” genre list, according to Box Office Mojo — right below “Jaws 3-D” and right above “47 Meters Down.” [The New York Times]
264 strokes
Brooks Koepka — 28, from Florida — held off a resurgent Tiger Woods to win the PGA Championship, the final major of the golf season. It was Koepka’s second major win of the year, and his 264 shot total over 72 holes at the Bellerive Country Club outside St. Louis tied the all-time major record. [CBS Sports]
25 centimeters a year
Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia and home to 10 million people, is the fastest sinking city in the world. Its land is swampy, it abuts a sea, and 13 different rivers snake through it. Parts of the city are sinking as fast as 25 centimeters a year. According to scientific models, 95 percent of Jakarta will be submerged by 2050. [BBC]
2,000 Facebook employees
Facebook’s 430,000 square foot main campus in Menlo Park, California, offers many late capitalism employee perks including, of course, free food. But at its planned new office, in Mountain View, California, where 2,000 employees are slated to work, free food won’t be offered. This is thanks (or I guess no thanks, depending on where you work) to a city requirement banning the practice after restaurants there complained that Google workers, also in Mountain View, never came out of the office to eat. [NPR]
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