You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
4 days
Skinny jeans sent an Australian woman to the hospital for four days after cutting off blood supply to her lower legs. Book deal ahoy. [NBC News]
7-for-1
Netflix announced plans for a 7-for-1 stock split effective July 14, a move designed to make the stock — trading at a whopping $702.80 in after-hours trading — more accessible to investors. The stock value skyrocketed this year, and I take full credit because I canceled so many plans to watch “Daredevil.” [Bloomberg]
11 percent
A Suffolk University poll of New Hampshire Republicans found that Donald Trump would take 11 percent of the vote in a primary, putting him at second place overall. A Suffolk University poll of New Hampshire Republicans found that Donald Trump would take 11 percent of the vote in a primary, putting him at second place overall.A Suffolk University poll of New Hampshire Republicans found that Donald Trump would take 11 percent of the vote in a primary, putting him at second place overall. [The Washington Post]
19 percentage points
Among white Americans, 67 percent agree that when Americans protest treatment from the government it makes the country better. However, when white Americans were asked about black Americans protesting treatment from the government, only 48 percent said it made the country better, a difference of 19 percentage points. [Public Religion Research Institute, via @bwitkovsky]
$55
A new study out of the Harvard School of Public Health found that a national tax on sweetened beverages would cost $51 million in its first year, but over time would result in an estimated $55 saved for every dollar spent because of obesity-related health costs. [Harvard School of Public Health]
More than 29,000
The number of items bearing the Confederate flag that were available on Amazon, before the retailer began removing them from its website Tuesday. It joins Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, and Sears, which just yesterday I learned still existed, in banning the items. [CNN]
220,000 shares
Columbia University will be the first U.S. college to stop investing its endowment in private prison corporations, announcing plans to sell 220,000 shares in private-security firm G4S, as well as its shares in the Corrections Corporation of America. [CNN]
$500,000
Los Angeles paid Wells Fargo more than $500,000 to print checks the city was actually printing on its own. The city controller wants the money returned. [Los Angeles Times]
$9.1 million
From NASA to DARPA, the United States government prides itself on being on the bleeding edge of technology. At every possible opportunity, our military and government pursues — if not leads — the very state of the art, putting tax dollars to work. In related news, the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command agreed to pay Microsoft $9.1 million to maintain Windows XP for them because they can’t upgrade to a vaguely modern operating system, and Microsoft stopped maintaining the OS for free a year ago. [Business Insider]
$3 trillion
Mergers and acquisitions are back, people. This year global merger and acquisition volume is projected to be above $3 trillion, and long story short that means we’re back to pre-recession levels. [Bloomberg]
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Walt Hickey was FiveThirtyEight’s chief culture writer. @WaltHickey
