Numlock News: April 3, 2026 • Cardigan, Dice, Arctic Metagaz

Apr 03, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Have a great weekend!

Sweater

Hollywood remains a massive driver of fashion, and Project Hail Mary is no exception; a zip-up cardigan worn by Ryan Gosling in the film has become incredibly high in demand. The complication with obtaining the fox-emblazoned sweater — this is an Andy Weir story, you have to assume there would be a massive complication discovered almost immediately — is that it’s actually handmade, and there’s been a huge uptick in demand for the knitting pattern and kit. Mary Maxim is the fourth-generation knitting supply company behind the pattern, which has been available for 70 years, and has fielded over a thousand orders for the Project Hail Mary knitting kit. The kits sold out extremely quickly, and Maxim is now taking preorders (just $90, though granted, some assembly is required) for the kit and the needed yarn.

John Jurgensen, The Wall Street Journal

Words

A new study attempted to replicate a 2007 paper published in Science about gender differences in talkativeness, and found something else entirely. Namely, we’re speaking fewer and fewer words over the course of a day. Replicating the methodology of the 2007 paper with a new batch of 2,200 participants across 22 studies, the researchers determined that on average, people spoke about 12,700 words per day. In 2007, that number came in at 15,900. There was an observed consistent linear decline in the daily spoken word counts over the course of the analyzed studies (conducted between 2005 and 2019), coming out to about 338 words per year. Smartphones are certainly an element of the cause, the researchers reasoned, but also declining social interaction between strangers, automation in retail, banking and more. Granted, 2019 is an interesting year for the data to end, and future research will look into post-pandemic conversations.

Niranjana Rajalakshmi, University of Arizona

Oops

The Arctic Metagaz, a liquefied natural gas carrier — a Russian fuel transport in the Mediterranean that was damaged in what some describe as “a Ukrainian drone strike” — has become “completely out of control at sea.” The vessel was in Libyan waters when a salvage crew was brought in to handle the doomed ship and secure its volatile cargo. Libyan authorities describe the attempt as a failure, after the towing operation hit winds of 40 to 50 knots amid waves of five meters. The vessel was last reported at latitude 33°50’N and longitude 16°43’E, which puts it darn close to Malta’s search and rescue region. What a fascinating coincidence. The vessel is currently adrift and out of control.

Malte Humpert, gCaptain

Ball Game

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 out to Bad Bunny, nine players walk out to Travis Scott, seven players walk out to Daddy Yankee and five players apiece walk out to Lil Wayne or Morgan Wallen.

Chris Dalla Riva, Can’t Get Much Higher

Runtime

A new analysis found that widely released Hollywood movies have gotten significantly longer, averaging 106 minutes long in the early 2000s but rising to 114 minutes in the 2020s. This shift to longer movies has not manifested across all films — the average running time of a film on IMDb has hovered between 100 and 103 minutes long for years — but the biggest movies (based on budget) have gotten really big. In the 1980s, about 14 percent of worldwide releases were over two hours; in the 2020s, that was 32 percent.

Stephen Follows, StephenFollows.com

Energy

Large batteries are the saving grace of the power grid, as US battery storage installations increased 30 percent as of last year. All told, two-thirds of that growth was in “Red States,” as places with lots of sun strive to find out how to store the photons that drench their land. Tesla made $13 billion selling energy generation and storage last year. The US Energy Storage Monitor projects that the Community, Commercial and Industrial sector will see installations increase 39 percent between now and 2030, and 500 gigawatts will be installed from 2026 to 2031.

Patrick Sisson, Sherwood News

Dice

A new study published in American Antiquity describes the existence of dice on the Great Plains at sites dating between 12,800 and 12,200 years ago. The specimens are two-sided dice called “binary lots” and are meticulously created pieces of bone that are tossed as groups onto a playing surface. The items landed on one side or the other, and it’s believed that sets of dice were cast together.

Colorado State University

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