Kickstart: From video game to TV to the Hall of Fame?

You may have heard a few things in pop culture recently about a little video game and TV series called The Last of Us. This isn't about HBO's adaptation — and the awards it and its creators may receive — but instead is all about an honor for the game itself.

The Last of Us was named March 15 as a finalist for The Strong Museum of Play's Video Game Hall of Fame.

The museum in Rochester, N.Y., launched the video game hall in 2015 as a companion to the Toy Hall of Fame. While the competition focuses on the digital content within those games — past Hall of Fame honorees include Madden Football, The Oregon Trail, Minecraft, Tetris and Dance Dance Revolution — the games also rely on plastics for the discs that content is housed on as well as the consoles and controllers used by gamers. There is a permanent exhibition at the Strong featuring the history and growth of the video game industry.

This year's finalists also include a gaming system that changed the way gamers play: Nintendo's Wii, with its motion-sensitive remote controller. The Last of Us and Wii will be up against 10 other games for a Hall of Fame spot. Those who survive and endure voting to enter the hall will be named May 4.

We all get a lot of email to our work accounts, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who clicks "delete" without opening — or closely reading — each one of them. But when you get one with the subject line "Plastics News is asking," please open it.

Our data guru, Hollee Keller, is taking advantage of some new capabilities in our systems here at PN to collect more information that will help us fine tune our editorial coverage.

Or as Hollee puts it in her latest blog: "I wanted to check in more frequently with timely questions about the industry or business in general."

The PN database covers 9,000 companies, including processors, recyclers, compounders and mold makers.

These occasional emails from Hollee and PN will provide us with more details about what is affecting those 9,000 businesses far more rapidly than our annual data collections for North American rankings would ever allow.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has sued Norfolk Southern Corp. in federal court seeking to hold the rail company financially responsible for the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that led to the release of vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) to avoid an explosion.

In a March 14 news release, Yost said incident resulted in "recklessly endangering both the health of area residents and Ohio's natural resources."

While NS CEO Alan Shaw has said it "will not walk away" from the community, Yost said the lawsuit will ensure the company keeps its word.

Early investigation of the derailment points to overheated wheel bearings as the likely cause of the accident, but the lawsuit says it was "entirely avoidable and the direct result of Norfolk Southern's practice of putting its own profits above the health, safety and welfare of the communities in which Norfolk Southern operates."