By Walt Hickey

Welcome to Tell A Friend About Numlock Week. Word-of-mouth is the single biggest contributing factor to people finding out about this thing, especially as social media disintegrates. We try not to ask a lot here at Numlock, but this week we’re going to ask that if you like this thing, you tell a friend who might like it about the newsletter and encourage them to sign up! It really makes a huge difference.

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Modernization

In 2009, Tropicana orange juice changed its branding from an orange with a straw in it to a glass of juice. This turned out to be a colossal mistake, with sales declining by $33 million within a month, and the panicked team reverting the redesign soon enough. A new study published in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services sought to determine at what time a company should execute a packaging redesign. The study conducted a survey of nearly a thousand respondents looking at 48 redesigned packages. It concluded that the answer is to avoid redesigning a package unless it’s absolutely necessary and people actively dislike your existing packaging. Even then, companies should try to keep some of the previous design in the new one.

University of Adelaide

Trucks

In 2023, the European Union imported about 7,000 pickup trucks, a tiny fraction of the 10.5 million total vehicle sold in the bloc. The reality is that while large, wide and pricey pickup trucks have become an American infatuation, the European continent isn’t all that interested in them. This has frustrated made American automakers, and trade representatives for the U.S. have been pushing other countries to accept U.S. vehicle standards in order to make such trucks more available for purchase. Japan acquiesced, but the EU — where the road lanes are 8.2 to 10.6 feet wide, well under the typical 12-foot-wide U.S. road lane — has been resistant to accomadating its road for colossal vehicles.

Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica

Ratings

The NCAA basketball tournament is a wrap, with solid year-to-year ratings gains for the both the men’s final championship (which came in at 18.3 million viewers) and the women’s final championship tournament (9.88 million viewers). The Final Four for the men’s bracket averaged 14.2 million viewers, down about eight percent year over year. However, the Final Four of the women’s bracket was up 33 percent year over year to hit 5.2 million viewers.

Rick Porter, The Hollywood Reporter

Whiskey

Production of distilled spirits declined 28 percent within the first eight months of 2025, as the American whiskey market deals with a supply glut and excess inventory. MGP Ingredients is an alcohol companies that you might not have heard of but have likely consumed if you’re a drinker, whether you knew it or not. It is a spirits manufacturer that supplies the big brands like Diageo, doing the actual distilling on behalf of those large brands. MGP Ingredents has announced that it is halting distilling operations at two facilities in Kentucky after a reported 52 percent decline in “distilling solution sales” to those large brands.

Sarah Zimmerman, Food Dive

Sign of the Times

Project Hail Mary is such a hit that the songs featured within the film have received a solid and measurable bump in the March 19 streaming week, following the film’s release. “Two of Us,” a Beatles song featured in the film, saw a 234 percent week-over-week gain on streaming, hitting 461,000 streams. Other soundtrack songs like “Rainbows” by Dennis Wilson and “Pata Pata” by Miriam Makeba also saw a boost (up 4,230 percent to 78,000 streams and 197 percent to 89,000 streams, respectively). But the big winner is “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles, which appeared in both the trailer for the film as well as a big moment within the movie. Streams were up 87 percent within two weeks of the release, reaching 5.2 million streams in one week.

Andrew Unterberger, Billboard

AMOC

An analysis of old ocean temperatures reveals a disturbing slowing of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) current that is responsible for moderating the climate of Europe. The AMOC has weakened by about 15 percent since 1950. The latest data found that the flow of the AMOC is declining by about 90,000 cubic meters of water per second per year, which would be a delightful expression of the use of the third derivative if it weren’t so disturbing.

Alec Luhn, New Scientist

Stars

A new study published in Nature Astronomy describes the discovery of a fascinating celestial object, a star named SDSS J0715-7334. It is located near the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, and is the most metal-poor star ever observed. SDSS J0715-7334 is overwhelmingly made up of hydrogen and helium with less than 0.005 percent of our own sun’s metal content. The star may be helpful in understanding Population III stars, which have never been observed. Population III stars were the very first ones created, the initial stellar generation, formed from the hydrogen and helium of the early universe and producing other elements over time. This star, while not a Population III, is the closest we’ve found to those primordial celestial objects.

Johns Hopkins University

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