You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
2-1
The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 Thursday to begin the process of eliminating protections and rules ensuring net neutrality. If you’ve got beef with this, the FCC is accepting comment until Aug. 16. [Ars Technica]
18
Reuters has reported that there were at least 18 previously undisclosed calls and emails between Michael Flynn and other Donald Trump campaign advisers and Russian officials or their affiliates in the final seven months of the 2016 presidential campaign. [Reuters]
18 months
Emojis represented on Google or Android devices look very different from their Microsoft or Apple counterparts, and over the past 18 months Google has undertaken a top-to-bottom redesign of its digital pictorial language. [Co. Design]
21 years
In what is officially my favorite story of 2017, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands told a newspaper that he has been moonlighting as an airline pilot for KLM for more than 21 years. He initially took the job as a hobby, flying twice a month for the commercial airliner to chill out from his royal duties. [CNN]
2.7 million
Viewers of “The Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon. Recent data reveals that the show is taking a hit — or at least that its rivals, like “The Late Show” on CBS with Stephen Colbert, are getting a bump — possibly because of the program’s reluctance to get political and its early cozy handling of then-candidate Donald Trump. [The New York Times]
$1 billion
The Zhejiang Jinke Peroxide Co., a Chinese chemical company, paid $1 billion for a company behind a talking internet cat app and franchise. Several Chinese industrials have scooped up the rights to oddball Western entertainment properties. [Bloomberg]
If you see a significant digit in the wild, send it to @WaltHickey.