You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
1 coach
That’s the number of female coaches in the NFL after Jen Welter was hired by the Arizona Cardinals as an assistant coaching intern. The NBA also has one female assistant coach, while MLB and MLS have no female coaches. As my colleague Leah Libresco tweeted: “We were going to graph the share of female coaches in men’s sports, but the bars were too small to see.” [FiveThirtyEight]
4 jokes
Conan O’Brien is being sued for stealing jokes from Twitter. A man who says he was a longtime writer for Jay Leno claims an airline joke (wow, I’m laughing already) as well as jokes about Tom Brady, Caitlyn Jenner and the Washington Monument were pilfered from his feed and used on O’Brien’s show. Conan’s production company believes the suit is without merit. Coco, I’m gonna do you a solid: I’m tweeting a joke right now, just for you. I waive all rights, please feel free to use it in tonight’s monologue. [The Hollywood Reporter]
8 farms
I’ve got my tent firmly pitched in the pro-cilantro camp, but my allegiance is being tested. The FDA has banned some cilantro imported from Mexico after investigators discovered “human feces and toilet paper in and around growing fields.” Eight of the 11 farms and packing houses investigated in the Mexican state of Puebla had “objectionable conditions” and five were linked to hundreds of outbreaks in the U.S. of cyclosporiasis. [CNN]
15 percent
63.5 percent
Homeownership in the U.S. is at a 48-year low. The seasonally adjusted homeownership rate is now 63.5 percent, down from pre-recession highs of above 69 percent. Both the homeowner and rental vacancy rates, however, have also fallen. This means a tight housing market — to which I can anecdotally attest, having recently hunted for an apartment — and a possible boon to the economy in ensuing construction. [The Wall Street Journal]
200 to 400 feet
Amazon has proposed that some prime (get it?) airspace, from 200 to 400 feet off the ground, be reserved for high-speed drones. The company has visions of one day delivering its packages by drone. [The Guardian]
10,000 texts
Tom Brady’s four-game “Deflate-gate” suspension has been upheld by the NFL. In a statement on the decision, the league said Brady had destroyed his cellphone, despite investigators’ requests to access it. The phone had been used to exchange 10,000 text messages over four months — or just more than 80 texts a day. Even still, Brady’s got nothing on the 18 to 24 set — those kids send and receive more than 125 texts a day! [The Washington Post]
$50,000 in bunny care
After 103 rabbits were seized from her home, a Brooklyn woman has been ordered to pay $50,000 for their care. The bunnies had become celebrities in their neighborhood. [New York Post]
$2 million a year
You have to pay about $1,500 to license the song “Happy Birthday.” Yeah, that “Happy Birthday.” Two filmmakers upset by that fact have uncovered evidence that they say negates Warner/Chappell Music’s 1935 copyright and puts the song in the public domain. The copyright has at some points netted its owners about $2 million a year. [Ars Technica]
304 million core users
Twitter’s stock price slumped more than 11 percent Tuesday, after slower than expected growth in its average monthly users. The company said it now has 304 million “core users.” That’s up from 302 million last quarter, but the growth was the slowest since the company went public. [Reuters]
Don’t worry, Walt Hickey’s return is nigh. But today, for those of you who a) use the Internet and b) are on Twitter, if the significance of a digit moves you, please tweet it to me @Ollie. And have a super Wednesday!
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