You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
13 districts
That’s the number of congressional districts in the state of North Carolina, of which 10 seats are held by Republicans. This is a striking majority given the actual apparent lean of the state — President Trump took only 49.8 percent of the vote to Hillary Clinton’s 46.2 percent — and one empowered by what a “biting” 191-page opinion from Judge James A. Wynn Jr. describes as a massive partisan gerrymander. On Tuesday, the Judge ruled that the map violated the 14th Amendment and ordered the legislature redraw the map by January 24. [The New York Times]
20 days
MoviePass, which grants the subscriber the ability to see one film in cinemas per day, had an incredible December, jumping from 1 million paid subscriber to 1.5 million in just 20 days. With Oscar season ahead and the Northeast a frozen hellscape, it’s a pretty good time to hit the movie theater. [Business Insider]
30 arrests
A man who was arrested 30 times for stealing buses and trains while disguised as a transit worker will be sent to a mental health facility. Making this case more interesting, Darius McCollum drove the vehicles on their routes when he commandeered the vehicles. McCollum, who seems to have lived out the least ambitious homage to “Catch Me If You Can” possible, was in trouble this time for stealing a Greyhound bus in 2015. [The New York Times]
116 to 1
The sex of sea turtles is determined by the temperature of the sand that incubates their egg, and with the world getting warmer on the aggregate this evolutionary property has had a bit of a misfire for Pacific green sea turtles around Ingram Island. Researchers looking at the gender of the reptiles found female turtles outnumbered male turtles 116 to 1, according to a study published in Current Biology. [National Geographic]
$1.5 million
Amount Mark Wahlberg received as compensation for reshoots on “All The Money In The World,” compared to around $1,000 for his female costar, Academy Award nominee Michelle Williams. It’s an odd situation, sure, but jeez if that’s not a stark look at the gender pay disparity in the movie industry I really don’t know what is. [USA Today]
$400 million
Peloton sells a $4,000 treadmill and is doing just fine, apparently. The company sells pricey gym equipment with technology built in that allows the user to participate in real-time fitness classes. This service-plus-hardware model has been great for them: Peloton did nearly $400 million in sales in 2017 up from $170 million in 2016. [The New York Times]
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