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Numlock News | Walter Hickey | SubstackThe best way to start your morning. Numlock celebrates great stories buried in the news that you won't find elsewhere. It's snappy, funny, and informative, plus it's ad-free. Try it out and see why thousands of people wake up to Numlock every single day. Click to read Numlock News, by Walter Hickey, a Substack publication.Numlock News | Walter Hickey | Substack Numlock NewsSubscribeSign inHomeArchiveAboutNumlock News: March 10, 2026 • Iditarod, Raccoons, SabresMar 10, 2026323ShareBy Walt HickeyAntediluvianGlacial lakes can form in a few locations — on the surface of glaciers, in valleys to the side of glaciers or at the toe of glaciers — but they become rather dangerous when a lake dammed by ice forms. When that happens, it only takes a shift here or a hot day there before the dam breaks, unleashing a torrent of water. This has been seen repeatedly with a small glacier-dammed lake five miles into the mountains behind the Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, Alaska. That little lake has caused so many flooding problems that the Army Corps of Engineers is considering a $613 million to $1 billion project to drain it permanently. Alaska’s glacial lakes are expanding 120 percent faster now than they did in the late 80s and 1990s, setting the stage for lots of floods. From 1985 to 2020, ice-dammed lakes in Alaska broke through barriers and drained over 1,150 times. Globally, 15 million people live in areas at risk of glacial lake outburst floods.Dan McGrath, The ConversationLook At What They Need To Mimic A Fraction Of Our PowerA new study published in Cell describes the painstaking efforts to simulate the life cycle of a minimal bacterial cell, a major accomplishment. The researchers simulated a living cell at nanoscale resolution, a process that took years of development and accounted for every gene, protein, RNA molecule and chemical reaction that occurred within the cell. The cell was a modified bacterium called Syn3A with under 500 genes in a single strand of DNA. Simulating the entire 105-minute cell cycle took six full days of compute time with multiple GPUs firing. University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignRattlingThe Buffalo Sabres have, after a wild comeback, become a hockey team that is essentially locked into making the playoffs. This would snap the longest-running playoff-less streak in the NHL, with Buffalo having not made the playoffs since the 2010-11 season — a 14-year drought. Since then, the team has sustained a -580 goal differential and seen an entire generation of players pass through. Current left wing, Zach Benson, wasn’t even six years old when the Sabres last made the playoffs. Neil Paine, Neil’s SubstackRaccoons A new study published in Animal Behavior found that raccoons solved puzzle boxes even when there wasn’t a food reward at stake, indicating that the animals might actually be curious and not just famously opportunistic. The study involved a multi-access puzzle box with nine possible entry points to food within, some of which were easy, some medium difficulty and others hard. The box featured obstacles like latches and knobs and sliding doors. Even after earning the food within, the raccoons continued to try to open new mechanisms. University of British ColumbiaDownward SlopesVail Resorts, one of the two companies that control a large chunk of American ski and snowboarding resorts, is reporting a rough winter. Thanks to low snowfall in the Mountain States where Vail’s footprint is disproportionate, business has been bad, with season-to-date skier visits down 11.9 percent season-over-season through March 1. Initial forecasts of $201 million to $276 million in net income were slashed to $144 million to $190 million for the year. Allison Pohle and Kelly Cloonan, The Wall Street JournalTruckingAmazon’s costs to ship its deliveries reached $102.7 billion in 2025, up from $95.8 billion the year before and well above the $83.5 billion notched in 2022. That said, efficiency has also increased considerably since then. In 2025, Amazon’s shipping costs were 17.5 percent of its North American and International sales, lower than the high of 19.2 percent notched in 2022. The company is well on its way to becoming the second-largest deliverer of packages. While the sprawling logistics operation currently exists only to support its own online e-commerce operation, it’s worth remembering that AWS originally existed entirely to support Amazon’s own online e-commerce operation before it started selling to everyone else. And AWS became a massive business in its own right.Thomas Black, BloombergIditarodThe 54th running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race kicked off Sunday, to be run along the 938-mile route connecting Seward to Nome. The field has averaged around 60 mushers over the past five decades, with the largest field assembled being 96 mushers in 2008. However, the field has shrunk considerably, down to a low of 33 in 2023 and 2025. This year will see 34 mushers competing, as well as three others who are not eligible for the championship because they’re rich cosplayers who were allowed outside help. The upside of that is the race purse was boosted by the participation trophy crowd, so the winner’s getting $80,000, up from the $57,000 paid to the top musher last year. Mark Thiessen, The Associated PressIf you subscribe, you get a Sunday edition! It’s fun, and supporters keep this thing ad-free. This is the best way to support something you like to read:SubscribeThanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today.Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement.Previous Sunday subscriber editions: Tough Cookie · Bigfoot · How To Read This Chart · Uncharted Territory · Fantasy High · Ghost Hunting · Theodora & Justinian · Across the Movie Aisle · Radioactive Shrimp · Bioluminescent · CaaStle · Everyone Knows · Buzzballz · Such Great Heights · NFL · Sea Ice · Second · Made in China · Dinosaurs · Tracking · ICE · Vera Rubin · Dasani · Uncharted · Dark Roofs · Geothermal · Stitch · Year of the Ring · Person Do Thing · Fun Factor · Low Culture · Sunday Edition Archives: 2024 · 2023 · 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018 323ShareNumlock News: March 9, 2026 • Trading Cards, Swig, FrankensteinsMar 09, 20262714ShareBy Walt HickeyWelcome back!HoppersPixar’s Hoppers brought in $46 million domestically and another $42 million overseas to win the weekend at the box office, the first slam-dunk original-hit win for Pixar since Coco. Pixar’s hits have come predominantly from sequels since Coco, and their original fare has performed inconsistently. The other big release of the weekend, The Bride!, the latest in a run of Frankenstein-inspired cinema that included Poor Things, Lisa Frankenstein and Netflix’s Frankenstein, whiffed at the cinema. The Bride! only brought in $7.3 million domestically on a $90 million budget, even though the studio was projecting an opening of $16 million to $18 million. Following a vampire trend cycle, a zombie cycle and what now appears to be the tail end of a Frankencycle, all eyes are on whether we’re up for a Mummy cycle or if we’re going to jump to a Creature of the Black Lagoon cycle. Rebecca Rubin, VarietyPlowsU.S. cities and states spend north of $4 billion every year on snow operations. And they’re actually getting much better at managing snow thanks to increasingly precise GPS tracking and new tech that facilitates the plow rollout. Municipalities are achieving new levels of response and saving money as a result; Syracuse, which averages 126 inches of snow per year, put GPS tracking and dashcams in its plows starting in 2021, which aids in mapping the response. New York City developed its own in-house system called BladeRunner to analyze its plow-based GPS data. Edison, New Jersey, cut spending on salt and brine by 35 percent and insurance payouts by 60 percent thanks to videos that can prove its plows aren’t usually at fault for collisions with motorists. Jeff McMurray, Insurance JournalTurf WarsIn the NFL, 15 teams play on natural grass while 17 play on artificial turf. New data from the NFL Players Association team-by-team scorecards reveal what’s already been generally known: the players love grass. The median grade for home fields was a B+ for grass teams and a D for turf teams. All nine of the teams that scored a B+ or higher in terms of home field game play were playingon grass. Meanwhile, 10 of the 12 teams that had a C- or lower were playing on turf. Interestingly, the Steelers — which had an F- on grass — are switching from a Kentucky bluegrass surface to Tahoma 31 bermudagrass this year. Lev Akabas, SporticoVictoryFor the past several years, as the brand leaned more into fashion, Nike had lost some of its grip on the sports world to upstarts like Under Armour and old foes like Adidas. Since swapping in a new CEO 15 months ago, sports are once again the focus for the retail titan. While Jordans remain a massive business — responsible for about $7 billion out of around $50 billion in revenue as of 2023 — soccer teams, Olympic athletes and the rising star of Caitlin Clark (whose signature shoe is set to debut sometime this year) are increasingly crucial areas that the athletic shoe brand needs to dominate.Kim Bhasin, The New York TimesSwigThe number of menus across the United States that offered “dirty sodas” increased by 933 percent from 2024 to 2025, according to Technomic. That’s interesting because, in general, full-sugar soda has been on the decline amid zero-calorie alternatives. Dirty sodas are beverages that start with a base of a standard soda beverage and then incorporate flavorings, creamers and even additional sugar. One restaurant boosting sales of the confection is Swig, a 16-year old company with 148 locations. The chain originated in Utah and now has locations all across the Mountain West. Rachel Sugar, BloombergNFLThe NFL made over $23 billion over the course of its most recent fiscal year, sending out $416 million to each team from the national pot. Some onlookers think that the NFL may be due for a reckoning as the league becomes too expensive for even the biggest sponsors. For instance, Verizon was one of the 54 official NFL sponsors of the season, and iSpot estimated they spent $108.4 million on commercials over the course of NFL games, good for the No. 3 spot. That said, Verizon brass recently revealed plans to cut costs across its businesses, which had some people fretting that the company may back out of those expensive sponsorships. The real money for the NFL, though, is the insurance business: insurance accounted for 15 percent of all in-game ad spend, coming in at $634 million over the regular season. The top five spenders were Geico (No. 1), Progressive (No. 2), Allstate (No. 4) and State Farm (No. 5). Anthony Crupi, SporticoHobby GamesThe total hobby game market came in at an estimated $3.66 billion last year, growing 32 percent year over year. Trading card games accounted for about two-thirds of that at $2.49 billion, followed by miniatures ($585 million), board and card games ($400 million) and roleplaying games ($190 million). About $1 billion of growth went to trading card games alone. Milton Griepp, ICv2If you subscribe, you get a Sunday edition! It’s fun, and supporters keep this thing ad-free. This is the best way to support something you like to read:SubscribeThanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today.Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement.Previous Sunday subscriber editions: Tough Cookie · Bigfoot · How To Read This Chart · Uncharted Territory · Fantasy High · Ghost Hunting · Theodora & Justinian · Across the Movie Aisle · Radioactive Shrimp · Bioluminescent · CaaStle · Everyone Knows · Buzzballz · Such Great Heights · NFL · Sea Ice · Second · Made in China · Dinosaurs · Tracking · ICE · Vera Rubin · Dasani · Uncharted · Dark Roofs · Geothermal · Stitch · Year of the Ring · Person Do Thing · Fun Factor · Low Culture · Sunday Edition Archives: 2024 · 2023 · 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018 2714ShareNumlock Sunday: Krista Langolis on the future of conservation without American supportMar 853Numlock News: March 6, 2026 • Electrons, Neutrinos, Four LokosMar 06, 20263514ShareBy Walt HickeyHave a great weekend!PhusionHey Sharks, thanks for hearing my pitch. Two iconic brands, coming together. One of them is a daily morning newsletter about fascinating numbers buried in the news called Numlock. The other one is a legendary and, dare I say, iconic beverage brand that both excites and relaxes — full of a substantial volume of liquor and stimulants while containing absolutely nothing of nutritional value. This merger, for which I require only $400 million, brings together two icons: the newsletter and, of course, the beverage that resulted in the newsletter’s writer one time getting so drunk he could not remember the outcome of Super Bowl XLV the following morning after chipping a tooth at his friend Kevin’s house. I, of course, refer to Four Loko, the beverage that was reformulated to a 24-ounce tallboy with 150 milligrams of caffeine and 14 percent ABV in 2008, delighting and scaring a generation. It is now owned by Phusion Projects and is being explored for sale to a lucky buyer for about $400 million. With your investment, that buyer could be me — a guy who actually thought that the Black Eyed Peas had an orderly and well-choreographed halftime show performance after drinking enough Four Loko, that’s what this liquid can do to a person.Olivia White, VinePairMarsupialsThe pygmy long-fingered possum (Dactylonax kambuayai) lived 300,000 years ago in what is now Queensland, Australia, only to vanish during the ice age. We can now only find it as fossils after last being known to exist in West Papua, Indonesia, about 6,000 years ago. Similarly, the ring-tailed glider (Tous ayamaruensis) was pieced together from fossil fragments in West Papua found in the last century. Anyway, someone found the two species, still living, the first new genus of New Guinean marsupial described since 1937. There have been reports of populations of both still living in lowland mountain forests in the Bird’s Head peninsula in the Indonesian-controlled portion of New Guinea. Adam Morton, The GuardianGol D. RogerThe manga franchise One Piece notched 600 million copies sold. To commemorate the milestone series, creator Eiichiro Oda wrote a core secret of the franchise — the nature of the eponymous One Piece treasure — on a piece of paper, sealed it in a container, and dropped it 651 meters to the floor of the Japanese sea. Well, the internet then struck, and figured out that the container is located in an area of Sagami Bay, just south of Kanagawa Prefecture. Within two days, streamers with large audiences and the kind of money to do something daring in the ocean (such as IShowSpeed) are already making plans to try to find the treasure. Francesco Cacciatore, PolygonAnalysisA new study found that when there is CEO turnover at a public company, the resulting uncertainty requires so much new attention from Wall Street analysts that they neglect the other companies in their portfolio. This leads to less-accurate forecasts for other firms these analysts cover. Overall, the study — which analyzed 876,385 forecasts — found that when analysts have to rebuild relationships with the affected company’s leadership, their forecasts get 1.15 percent less accurate, which is about equivalent to the analyst losing four years of general forecasting experience.Nina Collavo, Cornell UniversityVistaVisionIn the 1950s, the VistaVision large-scale film format emerged, and cinematographers applied it to films like Vertigo and The Ten Commandments, only to go dormant in the early 1960s when other film formats appeared. Though some uses of VistaVision still emerged — the visual effects of some obscure footnote of a movie called Star Wars were shot on VistaVision — the equipment languished in storage, only for a recent revival to crack those cameras out of the museum and into the field. Last year’s The Brutalist won best cinematography in no small part because a portion of the film was shot on the format. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another was shot about 80 percent in VistaVision because the director wanted it to feel like The French Connection, as was fellow nominee Bugonia. Jake Coyle, The Associated PressCharged UpThough electric vehicle sales are in a slump after the removal of federal incentives, it’s been getting easier for the 5.8 million EVs on the road to find chargers. Networks are expanding, getting more reliable and even faster. Charging networks added 11,300 ultra-fast cords last year, up 48 percent over 2024. One out of every four new chargers installed in the last quarter of 2025 were the kind that can pump at 250 kilowatts or more, which would add 100 miles of range in under 10 minutes. Chargers are bust 16 percent of the time, and in some states, utilization is coming up on 25 percent.Kyle Stock, BloombergNeutrinosA number of large and expensive instruments are all trying to find the mass of the neutrino, a subatomic particle that comes in three flavors and has beguiled scientists for years owing to its mysterious nature and the difficulty of study. The Standard Model says neutrinos have no mass, but observations have revealed that they actually do. In order to adjust the Standard Model accordingly, you’ve got to nail that mass down. The year 2030 is being floated as a viable year to figure out the order of neutrino masses. The Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment (KATRIN) is the sole experiment trying to pin down the absolute masses. Based on the data collected from 2019 to 2022, the researchers contend that the average neutrino weighs less than 0.8 electron volts. Based on 2025 data, researchers know that the mass is less than 0.45eV. It’s entirely possible that the mass is lower than 0.1eV, which would be an issue; if neutrinos are lighter than 0.3eV, KATRIN won’t be able to measure it. What comes next — whether PROJECT 8, one proposed approach, or KATRIN++, another — is still an open question.Nicola Jones, Knowable MagazineThis week in the Sunday edition I spoke to the brilliant Eben Novy-Williams of Sportico, who also writes the great newsletter Club Sportico. We spoke about the baseball team moving the walls of its stadium for advantage, the latest innovations in jersey advertisements, why the incentives have shifted for players to stay in college and what obscure sport’s time has come. Eben can be found at Sportico, at their fun newsletter Club Sportico, and on the Sporticast.If you subscribe, you get a Sunday edition! It’s fun, and supporters keep this thing ad-free. This is the best way to support a thing you like to read:SubscribeThanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today.Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement.Previous Sunday subscriber editions: Tough Cookie · Bigfoot · How To Read This Chart · Uncharted Territory · Fantasy High · Ghost Hunting · Theodora & Justinian · Across the Movie Aisle · Radioactive Shrimp · Bioluminescent · CaaStle · Everyone Knows · Buzzballz · Such Great Heights · NFL · Sea Ice · Second · Made in China · Dinosaurs · Tracking · ICE · Vera Rubin · Dasani · Uncharted · Dark Roofs · Geothermal · Stitch · Year of the Ring · Person Do Thing · Fun Factor · Low Culture · Sunday Edition Archives: 2024 · 2023 · 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018 3514ShareNumlock News: March 5, 2026 • Axes, Cockles, Jinko Mar 05, 2026272ShareBy Walt HickeyShellfishThe shellfish ordinarily used in sushi have been scarce, driving up prices. Wild populations have been experiencing changing oceanic conditions that threaten their survival, while the farmed aquaculture-sourced shellfish have had a spate of die-offs. Some 80 to 90 percent of oysters in the Seto Inland Sea died this winter, about 90 percent of the farmed scallops in Mutsu Bay died and Torigai cockles became scarcer and smaller in size when available. That’s translated to Torigai selling for 3,400 yen per kilogram, up 40 percent over the prices five years ago. Oyster prices are up 70 percent, and scallop prices are up 80 percent. Takumi Sasaki, Nikkei AsiaAxesCities have been experimenting with adding green axes, those thin stretches of park and tree-lined streets popping up over the past several years. Barcelona has enjoyed considerable success with them, and a new study found that, in addition to the known traffic calming effect (people drive slower on tree-lined streets than clear-cut wide boulevards), there’s a significant sound level decrease. One year after pedestrianizing several streets, the average daily sound level was down 3.1 decibels. Autonomous University of BarcelonaMinesA new report from the Interstate Mining Compact Commission and the National Association of Abandoned Mine Land Programs found that 750,000 of the 1.8 million former mining sites in the United States now pose an “immediate danger” to the general public. The report estimates that addressing the safety and environmental hazards of abandoned mines will cost over $60 billion. Mines that started by speculators but were later abandoned for safety reasons (or better seams of ore elsewhere) pockmark the country. They pose risks of underground mine collapses, pollution from runoff, as well as deep falling or suffocation risks if people wander into openings. Hanna Northey, E&E NewsFootballA new preliminary study (to be released at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology) examined 72,025 traumatic brain injuries sustained in youth sports and found football to be responsible for 19 percent of them. That was followed by soccer (11 percent of examined TBIs), basketball (10 percent) and cycling (seven percent). Football also has the most common repeat TBI. Among the kids who sustained a TBI playing football, they had a 23 percent higher risk of chronic headaches compared to football players who didn’t sustain a TBI. American Academy of NeurologyTake The Edge OffAn extensive new epidemiological study published in the British Medical Journal found that GLP-1 medications reduced risks of substance use disorders across a variety of drugs. Additionally, secondary effects of the GLP-1s beyond obesity and diabetes management include decreased rates of life-threatening events, as well as evidence of preventing some from developing addictions in the first place. The study followed 600,000 people with type 2 diabetes and found that GLP-1s were associated with a 14 percent reduction in risk across all substance use conditions in general, and in particular, a 25 percent reduction in risk of opioid use disorders. Lauren J. Young, Scientific AmericanSoaking Up The SunThe largest solar cell companies have begun to branch out into other industries, taking advantage of the proceeds from commoditized solar cells and low-margin tech. The companies have plowed those profits into other bets that may prove more profitable. Longi is the largest panel manufacturer in the world, cranking out 120 GW of capacity annually. It has also used that momentum to become one of the top five producers of the electrolyzers used in producing hydrogen from water. JinkoSolar, the second-largest, is moving into batteries, as is JASolar, the third-largest producer. The common theme is these companies investing in tech that can expand the window of solar energy production, which is currently limited to “daytime” (for obvious reasons). Using surplus to crack water molecules into hydrogen or charge up batteries that can be expended in twilight and nighttime means more value for the panels. David Fickling, BloombergHoppersThis weekend will see the release of the new Pixar movie Hoppers, which is currently projected to make between $35 million and $40 million at the box office. Given that it will become the main movie for children released for the next several weeks, it will comfortably sit at No. 3 or No. 4 at the box office for the next month or so (barring disaster), which is basically the Disney animated feature playbook by now. Rebecca Rubin, VarietyIf you subscribe, you get a Sunday edition! It’s fun, and supporters keep this thing ad-free. This is the best way to support something you like to read:SubscribeThanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today.Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement.Previous Sunday subscriber editions: Tough Cookie · Bigfoot · How To Read This Chart · Uncharted Territory · Fantasy High · Ghost Hunting · Theodora & Justinian · Across the Movie Aisle · Radioactive Shrimp · Bioluminescent · CaaStle · Everyone Knows · Buzzballz · Such Great Heights · NFL · Sea Ice · Second · Made in China · Dinosaurs · Tracking · ICE · Vera Rubin · Dasani · Uncharted · Dark Roofs · Geothermal · Stitch · Year of the Ring · Person Do Thing · Fun Factor · Low Culture · Sunday Edition Archives: 2024 · 2023 · 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018 272ShareLoading more posts…© 2026 Walt Hickey · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice Start your SubstackGet the appSubstack is the home for great culture This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scriptsenen1773208450https://numlock.com

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