You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
2 cities
With Budapest, Hungary pulling out of the competition to host the 2024 Olympic Games, there are now only two cities that actually want the infrastructural nightmare that is the Olympics: Los Angeles and Paris. This is a problem for the Olympics, as it requires a new batch of suckers every four years to take on this flaming money pit. [Bloomberg]
12 hours
Twitter, a site beloved by white supremacists, is cracking down on people who say naughty words at elected officials by making it so that only their own followers can see their tweets for 12-hour periods. Good to see that the social network has its priorities in order. [CNBC]
88 in-person town halls
According to Legistorm, that’s how many town halls the 292 congressional Republicans have scheduled in the first two months of their term, with Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner accounting for 35 of those. In the same period of the previous Congress, the GOP congressional delegation held 222 such events. [Vice]
400 hours
Number of hours of content being uploaded to YouTube every minute. The aggregate amount of time the human race spends watching web videos is still below the time spent watching television, but the gap is closing very fast. [The Wall Street Journal]
506 tons
Expected weight of luggage that Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdul Aziz will bring on a nine-day trip to Indonesia. [The Washington Post]
69,000 women
Sterling Jewelers, which owns the Kay Jewelers and Jared brands, is fighting a class-action lawsuit regarding alleged widespread sexual harassment of women working for the company throughout the late 1990s and 2000s. Sterling Jewelers disputes the allegations, and the lawsuit includes 69,000 current and former female employees. [The Washington Post]
If you see a significant digit in the wild, send it to @WaltHickey.