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6 penguins
When you hear “Australia” and “animal” in the same sentence, you’re probably dealing with something dangerous, venomous, weird, horrifying, or some combination of the four. It’s the evolutionary Thunderdome down there. However, there’s a rare heartwarming story coming out of Australia’s animal kingdom: the resurgence of what’s called the little penguin. On Middle Island, the population had crashed from 800 little penguins to six thanks to invasive foxes decimating the colony. After locals introduced highly territorial sheepdogs to protect the colony, the population is back in the triple digits. The strategy will be applied elsewhere following the success. [The New York Times]
16 percent
According to a FiveThirtyEight model, the probability that Ohio State University wins the national title in college football this year, the highest chance of any team. They’re closely tailed by Clemson, Alabama and TCU. [FiveThirtyEight]
20 percent
Percentage of fathers who say that parenting made their career advancement harder, compared to 41 percent of mothers. [Pew Research Center]
41 cents
Cost per year per American citizen for NASA’s entire Curiosity program, which put a robot on Mars. While NASA projects have a generally large budget (tossing stuff into space isn’t easy), from an annualized and normalized point of view it’s actually rather cheap. [Popular Science]
54.4 percent
Percentage of black millennials who reported that they or someone they knew had been harassed or the subject of violence from police, according to a new University of Chicago report. Compare that to a third of whites and a quarter of Latinos. [PBS]
$5,000
A Hispanic advocacy group will give $5,000 to anyone who successfully calls Donald Trump a racist on Saturday Night Live when it’s on the air. This may get weird. [The Hill]
800,000
While crowd estimation can be inexact, reports claim 800,000 fans of the Kansas City Royals showed up to a victory celebration for the World Series winners. Kansas City proper has a population of 467,000. [The Kansas City Star]
$879,000
How much the Atlanta Falcons were paid by the Department of Defense for salutes to U.S. armed forces over the past 4 years, the highest figure in a league that received an aggregate $8 million for the sponsored content. [Deadspin]
$3.9 billion
Travel booking site Expedia will buy HomeAway, a vacation rental site that was eclipsed by AirBnB, for $3.9 billion. [The New York Times]
8 billion views
Daily views of Facebook videos, according to the company. Keep in mind that Facebook counts three seconds of viewing as a “view,” so that may sound higher than it is, however it’s double the number of views Facebook videos were getting in April. [Reuters]
Check this out: FiveThirtyEight is doing some research into James Bond and we would love your help! If you’ve got some time, help us figure out the best Bond gadget, the best Bond villain, the best Bond villain henchman, the best MI-6 employee, the sexiest Bond, and Bond’s best act of spy craft.
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