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1st row
Front-row seating at the Republican National Convention has been given to a very weird and occasionally blue group of states: Alabama, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, California and Pennsylvania. At the same time, the host state, Ohio, was nowhere near the front, and two GOP stalwarts, Texas and Utah, were so far back they may as well be in Akron. It’s all part of a strange calculation that seems to have something to do with Trump’s primary margin in the state. [FiveThirtyEight]
Relevant weeklong sidebar: It’s the Republican National Convention! FiveThirtyEight has sent its crack political team — and also for some inexplicable reason me — to “the Cleve” (as it was called on “30 Rock” so I assume it’s true) to cover the events. FiveThirtyEight has its own show on ABC News Digital at 5 p.m. ET each evening of the convention, so tune in to that! I’ll be on the stream later on in the evening, so watch that too.
7 episodes
Saddening yet expected news from HBO regarding “Game of Thrones”: Season 7 won’t be back until next summer, and when it does come out it will only be made up of seven episodes. [EW]
46 months
Christopher Correa — the former scouting director for the Cardinals, who was convicted of hacking the Astro’s personnel database — has been sentenced to 46 months of incarceration. He also has to pay $279,038. [The Guardian]
501(c)(6)
Speed bump for the Democratic National Convention’s Philadelphia host committee: for unknown reasons the IRS declined the DNC’s application for 501(c)(3) status, which would have made it a not-for-profit charity. That designation would have the lovely effect of allowing donors to the charity to get a deduction on their taxes. The RNC’s convention committee is a 501(c)(3), so donors do get a tax write-off. The DNC planners are appealing the IRS’s decision, but have considered becoming a 501(c)(6) group, technically a trade association, if they can’t get their way. [The Center for Public Integrity]
1.68 million subscribers
Netflix missed its target of 2 million new subscribers in the second quarter, adding only 1.68 million subscribers. [Bloomberg]
$4.5 billion
Nintendo has had a monster week in the stock market in light of the success of Pokemon Go, but last Friday was record-setting: It’s now the most-traded Japanese company by value of shares on any one day in this century. About 476 billion yen, or $4.5 billion, worth of Nintendo stock was traded. I presume the stock will evolve into a Golem, Machamp, Gengar or Alakazam. [Polygon]
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