Significant Digits For Wednesday, January 8, 2020

$46 million settlement A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Significant Digits]( Wednesday, January 8, 2020 By [Karen K. Ho]( You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news. Today’s number is [$10 million]( the cost of each of President Trump and Mike Bloomberg’s 60-second Super Bowl advertisements, according to the New York Times. $46 million settlement IKEA, the popular Swedish furniture company, will pay $46 million to a California couple whose two-year-old son died from his injuries from a Malm dresser that tipped over and crushed him. In a statement, the couple’s lawyers said the financial amount from IKEA “is the largest wrongful death settlement related to one child in U.S. history.” In 2016, IKEA settled with families of three other children who were killed by the same line of dressers for a total of $50 million. [[CNN Business]( 32 people killed At least 32 people are dead and dozens more have been wounded during a stampede at the funeral for Qassem Soleimani, one of Iran’s most powerful military leaders, who was killed last week in a targeted airstrike attack by the U.S. Iranian television said the stampede happened in Soleimani’s hometown, where he is to be buried. [[National Public Radio]( 52 points You’re not supposed to get better with age as a defenseman in pro hockey, but John Carlson is proving to be a great exception to the rule. Even though the Washington Capitals player is turning 30 this week, Carlson is currently his team’s leader in scoring with 52 points (13 goals, 39 assists). FiveThirtyEight’s Terrence Doyle and Neil Payne also note that Carlson is so good, he’s “currently enjoying the ninth-best defenseman scoring season since 1943.” [[FiveThirtyEight]( 1 million fake images If you’ve ever wondered if the woman or nonwhite person you saw in an advertisement or on a dating app was real, artificial intelligence start-ups might make it much harder to figure that out. The Washington Post reports companies like the design firm Icons8 are now selling digital images of computer-generated faces that “look like the real thing” to marketing companies and dating apps. The sales pitch of the AI software is how it can quickly generate 1 million images in a single day, allowing companies to “increase diversity” without the costly process of finding real people. [[Washington Post]( 0 actors of color There were a lot of great movies that highlighted a female perspective or represented the diverse demographics of the United States, but you wouldn’t know it looking at who is nominated in the 2020 BAFTA film awards. This year, all of the 20 main acting nominations went to white actors and no women were nominated for best director. Marc Samuelson, chair of BAFTA’s film committee, told Variety, “It’s just a frustration that the industry is not moving as fast as certainly the whole BAFTA team would like it to be.” [[TIME]( 50 Seke speakers Many rare languages are at risk of disappearing, and Seke, which is spoken in just five villages in Nepal has only approximately 700 speakers left in the world, according to a recent study by the Endangered Language Alliance. The organization estimates there are roughly 100 Seke-speakers living in New York, and 50 of them live in one building in Flatbush, Brooklyn. One of the youngest residents there, Rasmina Gurung, has several relatives in the building, and is helping the Endangered Language Alliance compile a Seke-English dictionary. “I feel so much pressure,” she told the New York Times. “I need to get as much knowledge as possible. And fast.” [[New York Times]( --------------------------------------------------------------- The Morning Story [SlackChat-0108-4×3]( [How Might Iran Change The 2020 Race?]( [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Share [Facebook]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 147 Columbus Avenue, New York, NY 10023.