Numlock News: April 30, 2026 • Toto, Meryl, Eurovision

Apr 30, 2026

By Walt Hickey

The Devil

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is expecting a $75 million to $80 million opening weekend in North America, with some analysts expecting ticket sales to come in closer to $90 million to $100 million. With another $100 million internationally, that would be a solid global opening for a movie that cost $100 million to make, and would put it on pace to out-gross the original’s already pretty impressive theatrical run in just a few weeks. Clearly, the world is clamoring for one thing: cash-grabbing sequels to movies that scored Academy Award nominations for Meryl Streep. All your lingering questions will be answered in Doubt: Part Two. Mark you calendar for Silkwood: Half-Life and One True Thing Two: A Second True Thing. Audiences would line up around the block for a lega-sequel of Out of Africa that ignores all the problematic elements of the first film. Whoever wins, we lose in Kramer vs. Kramer: Requiem. The Iron Lady is about to get a visit from Nick Fury if you catch my drift. And speaking of drifting if you loved Julie & Julia, well you better buckle up for 2 Julie 2 Julia, Julie & Julia: Tokyo Drift, The Julie and the Julia, Jules 5, Julie & Julia 6, Julia 7, The Fate of the Julia, J9: The Julia Saga, Julie & Julia Presents: Jacques & Pépin, Julia X and of course Julia: Forever.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Toto

Japanese manufacturer Toto is best known as the producer of toilets and bathtubs, but decades in the ceramics business have teed it up perfectly for a moment in which ceramics have become critical components in semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Yes, welcome to another edition of the best business story of 2026, where the entire global supply chain for AI chips is dependent on a Japanese company that got into the manufacturing of a critical ingredient basically accidentally. Toto expects profits from its advanced ceramic division to jump 32 percent to 27 billion yen (US$169 million) in the fiscal year ending March, which means that the advanced ceramics business is now responsible for 55 percent of its operating profits, outstripping its toilets and tubs.

Rika Kimura, Nikkei Asia

Visionary

Since 1956, peace in Europe has been largely sustained by productive forms of great power competition that can let the people of the continent blow off their nationalistic steam in a productive or at least peaceful manner — like inter-league soccer, Formula 1 racing and of course the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Still, one international competition stands well above the rest: the Eurovision Song Contest, which since 1956 has attracted millions of fans while also simultaneously diverting the continent’s imagination away from developing innovations like “phosgene gas” and towards pursuits such as “inventing ABBA.” A new analysis of the 1,763 songs submitted across 51 countries from 1956 through 2024 found distinct evolutions in the themes and attributes of the submissions. The study found that the music has been getting steadily less nostalgic, more rebellious, less acoustic and more decisively in the genre of pop rather than rock.

Luis A. Nunes Amaral, Arthur Capozzi, and Dirk Helbing, Royal Society Open Science

Penguins

A new study published in The Anatomical Record purports to have found the muscle that causes penguins to waddle. The research looked at the m. flexor cruris medialis, which was known to be involved in bending the knee but has been otherwise debated for over 100 years. The study is based on an autopsy of one male (16 years old, 4.48 kg) and one female (36 years old, 3.16 kg) macaroni penguin donated from SeaWorld San Diego. Researchers found a part of the m. flexor cruris medialis that was actually attached to a different section of the tibiotarsus than previously thought, and while previous research suggested it was just part of the larger muscle, the new study finds it to be anatomically distinct, suggesting the name m. adductor tibialis.

Taylor Mitchell Brown, Science

Oligarchs

Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has had one incidental positive impact for Kyiv: the state that once struggled mightily with corruption as a result of enormously wealthy oligarchs has now shed some of those tycoons. It is a somewhat circuitous path towards a 2019 promise from then-candidate Volodymyr Zelensky who took office opposing the “oligarchization” of politics. The domestic political rivalries that fueled oligarch-controlled media companies gave way to an external fight, and several of the more pro-Kremlin oligarchs — Viktor Medvedchuk, Igot Abramovich and Vadym Stolar — have either left for Russia or the French Riviera. Those that remained loyal have either rebranded as pro-Western philanthropists or began to play ball with the government. The very structural assets and heavy industries that fueled the oligarch’s wealth and gave them outsized power came under attack from the Russians; Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine, saw his fortune cut in half to $7 billion after the invasion.

Paul Hockenos, Foreign Policy

Canada

Canadian liquor brands have enjoyed a boom in local consumption after several provincial liquor authorities cut the sales of American imports after repeated persistent insults from the highest levels of power in charge of their ally and neighbor. The Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation reported that sales of spirits from the province are up 14.5 percent over the past year, with Cape Breton’s Blue Lobster Vodka being a particular breakout hit. When the Liquor Control Board of Ontario — one of the biggest purchasers of alcoholic beverages in the world, supplying booze to 16 million people in the same province where the Toronto Maple Leafs play — removed U.S. products from sale, that cut off $705 million annual sales in U.S. spirits. The LCBO has since reported a 52 percent increase in sales of wine from Ontario-grown grapes and 94 percent increase for sales of deluxe Canadian whisky.

Evan Rail, VinePair

Tech

While American technology giants boast about shrinking their workforces, Chinese tech giants are doing the same, but are keeping it quiet. Last year, Alibaba cut headcount by 34 percent, Baidu’s employee count dropped seven percent and BYD cut 10 percent of their workforce, information only known because the companies disclosed it in annual reports at the end of March. While Silicon Valley talks about their layoffs loud enough for Wall Street to hear, China’s tech plays it close to the vest, in no small part because the layoffs run counter to a Beijing policy of keeping the urban unemployment rate below 5.5 percent through 2030, and adding 12 million urban jobs in the process.

Kinling Lo, Rest of World

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