In April, 34 percent of all NBA games were decided by at least 20 points, the highest rate of any month in the history of the NBA. The second-highest month for such blowouts was March 2026, when 28 percent of games were decided by 20 points or more, and February saw the fifth-highest month on record. The end of the reg...

The average weight of a running shoe is 8.8 ounces for a men's size nine, but footwear companies are in an arms race (a legs race?) to get that weight as light as possible. A recent study found that an elite runner who is able to shed 3.5 ounces off their shoe might run a marathon about 57 seconds faster. This has led ...

The massive sales of new vinyl records has been an ongoing story in the music business, with 48 million new vinyl records sold in 2025, a $1 billion business for a music industry that has all but switched over to streaming. That said, used vinyl is a force to be reckoned with in its own right. The statistics around the...

As of 2024 there were 16,681,383 households renting a self-storage unit, up from 10,032,740 in 2005, and constituting a $60 billion industry. One recent phenomenon is that as the self-storage facilities become more common and communities begin to oppose the existence of the large, boxy facilities - places in 15 states ...

After spending $5 billion on the upstart rival to the Professional Golfers' Association Tour, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund is getting skittish and is reportedly thinking about ending funding for the rivals. Overall, the existence of the rival promotion has been pretty good for golfers, even if they didn't take...

The collectible trading card games market saw a huge uptick in 2025 after three steady years where the business made about $1.5 billion in sales. That revenue jumped from $1.49 billion in 2024 to $2.485 billion in 2025, thanks to product flying off the shelves, a renaissance of the in-store play scene and speculation-f...

The demand for higher education is expected to decline due to a broader demographic shift, as well as shifts in preferences around the need for a college education. The percentage of American teenagers who enroll in college after high school dropped from 70 percent in 2016 to 62 percent in 2022, and in general, the num...

....yes.... A pound of lean ground beef costs $8.20 in the United States as of March, up from $7.48 in March 2025 and up from $5.68 in 2016. Herd sizes are down to their lowest levels since 1951, and droughts and crop failures have driven up the price of raising cattle. That eye-popping figure came before any of the po...

Severe El Niño drought conditions from 2023 to 2024 forced the Panama Canal to cut daily transits down to 24 vessels per day, and it was only a shift to La Niña conditions that facilitated the increase back to 36 daily transits in 2025, with the critical Lake Gatun reaching near maximum capacity in early ...

Project Hail Mary is such a hit that the songs featured within the film have received a solid and measurable bump in the March 19 streaming week, following the film's release. "Two of Us," a Beatles song featured in the film, saw a 234 percent week-over-week gain on streaming, hitting 461,000 streams. Other s...

While a solid proportion of respondents to a new survey indeed said the amount they pay in federal taxes bothered them - 41 percent said it bothers them a lot, and 34 percent said it bothers them some - those figures are dwarfed by significant majorities who think that rich people and corporations don't pay their fair ...

A new survey found that 51 percent of Americans reported being in a relationship with an age gap of five years or more. That was a considerably easier gap to overcome than other dissimilarities that a couple may have; 39 percent said they had been in a relationship with someone of a different religion, and 39 percent s...

The FBI is out with their annual analysis of the scams taking advantage of Americans, with the report indicating that cyberscams looted $21 billion. Across a total of 1,008,597 complaints, 181,585 involved crypto, which accounted for $11 billion of the lost funds. The number of complaints involving a scammer posing as ...

While hotel loyalty points that customers accumulate are seen as a nice perk to be cashed in for travel down the line, in the aggregate, they're a massive piece of the balance sheet of major hotel chains. The companies have to literally account for the fact that they technically owe their customers money. This adds up:...

The median home in the United States is at a record 44 years old, as new unit construction is still well shy of what it had been in the past. One ramification of this is that it's getting more expensive to maintain those homes. The average homeowner in the United States spent $9,030 on replacement projects in 2023, up ...

A new analysis of the walk-out songs of Major League Baseball players found that MLB players prefer hip-hop and Latin music compared to your typical music streamer, with 51.6 percent of walk-out songs coming from those two genres. A total of 78 percent of walk-out songs came from after 2000. All told, 10 players walk o...

At Red Lobster Restaurant Headquarters, one must imagine there is a button, inviting and pressable and in the exact color you would imagine. Pressing this button will make you incredibly popular, lead to a legion of reporters setting up cameras outside of your restaurants and delight your otherwise dwindling customer b...

As studios drastically dial back the volume of film and television produced in the Los Angeles area, Hollywood workers have been under conditions that resemble a recession: there was a 30 percent drop in employment off the late 2022 peak for people who work in motion pictures and television, as the number of newly star...

Nike's Converse brand of skate shoes has been declining, as sales approach a 15-year low. Converse sales appear to be coming in at an estimated $1.27 billion this year, the lowest since 2012 when Converse posted $1.32 billion in sales, and well under the recent peak of $2.43 billion notched as recently as 2023. Nike ma...

Ever wonder why Easter is not "set"? Christmas is Dec 25. Never have to wonder when Christmas will land, but the other side of it is that Christmas lining up with a weekend is always sliding. The nice thing about Easter is, "it's on Sunday this year" and every year for that matter. We've had Easters...