Numlock News: December 12, 2025 • Sunscreen, Nostalgia, Dani California
By Walt Hickey
Have a great weekend!
SMS
A new study published in Science looked at a key chokepoint in the industrial production of fake accounts, specifically many social media accounts requiring users to add a phone number. As a work around, several companies buy up SIM cards in bulk and then sell the verification services. It’s a grey market for SMS verification that can make your bog-standard scammer appear to be bona fine. The study looked at four such companies and found that it’s remarkably cheap to get a verified number in many places. A verified Russian phone number goes for $0.08, a verified U.S. number goes for $0.26, but other countries have more complex registration rules or SIM card prices. It costs $3.24 to get an Australian number and $4.93 to get one from Japan, where proof of residency is required.
Sunscreen
The Food and Drug Administration announced a proposal to permit bemotrizinol in sunscreens, a chemical that is known to be effective and has been used in sunscreen brands across the world. Because sunscreen is treated like a drug in the U.S. rather than as a cosmetic, and because it’s comparatively expensive to get a medicine approved, lots of international brands simply don’t bother selling the good sunscreen here. Europe, for instance, has 30 approved UV filtering ingredients compared to just 16 in the U.S., the most recent of which was approved in 1999.
Lauren J. Young, Scientific American
Oil
Ukraine continued its attacks on the Russian oil industry, which began with a number of strikes on oil tankers in the Black Sea. On Thursday, Ukraine went ahead with a drone attack on a Russian oil platform in the Caspian sea, halting production. As pressure mounts on Ukraine, the country has begun to involve the sprawling Russian oil and gas operation that fund Russia’s war, which has ramifications for the maritime insurance and oil business worldwide. At least four drone strikes hit the platform on the Filanovsky rig, cutting off extraction at 20 wells. The field produces 120,000 barrels of oil per day. It is also over 700 kilometers away from the nearest border to Ukraine.
Classic Rock
An analysis of the New York’s flagship classic rock radio station Q104.3 and its annual and evolving list of the top 1,043 classic rock songs of all times reveals what a disturbing trend: songs released in the 1990s have gone from 6.3 percent of the list as of 2005 to fully 11.2 percent of the list. That is now within striking distance of the 14.9 percent of the list that is derived from the 1960s. Furthermore, there are now six songs released since the year 2000 on the list of the greatest classic rock songs, including “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi, “Dani California” by Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down and fully three Green Day songs: “Holiday,” “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” at No. 293 on the list.
Chris Dalla Riva, Can’t Get Much Higher
What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us
A new study of 646 ancient skeletons from 24 Iron Age and Romano-British sites across England found that the Roman Empire’s occupation of Britain caused a decline in the health of the populations following the conquest in 43 AD. After the Romans left, the populations’ health improved. Negative health impacts were concentrated in two urban areas: the towns of Venta Belgarum and Corinium Dobunnorum. These towns are now known by the names “Winchester” and “Cirencester,” where 81 percent of the urban Roman adults had bone abnormalities indicating illnesses like tuberculosis, osteomyelitis and so on compared to just 62 percent of Iron Age urban residents. Clearly this had a marked impact on the British consciousness for centuries to come, which is of course why Britain itself never embarked on any sort of imperial ambitions that led to widespread subjugation of local populations for extractive purposes, right?
Nostalgia
A survey asked Americans what time period they would want to live and found that while 40 percent said they would prefer to live in the present, 45 percent would prefer to live at some point in the past and just 14 percent would prefer to live at some point in the future. Overall, 20 percent said they would have liked to live 50 or more years in the past, while 25 percent said they would like to live less than 50 years in the past. I can see some advantages within reason, I guess. Choosing to go back and live one month with full knowledge of the stock market and every sporting event could set a savvy investor up for life. And who wouldn’t at least consider pulling a fire alarm during the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner just to see if nipping the wings of that butterfly could stop a hurricane today, eh? Still, the future has its charms for some — nine percent would rather live 50 years or more in the future, ranging anywhere from the mere Steve Rogers to the full Philip J. Fry — who I suppose are weighing the thermodynamically obvious vs. the optimistically possible and coming out ahead.
Jenn Hatfield, Pew Research Center
Fraud
Gérard Lhéritier, a Frenchman who was considered to be the most important buyer of manuscripts on the market, has been found guilty of gang fraud by a French court where he was accused of masterminding the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of France. His company, Aristophil, collected 850 million euros from 18,000 investors over the course of 12 years, only to evaporate upon Lhéritier’s arrest in 2015. The compay’s 135,000 assets were subsequently sold for 105 million euros. Lhéritier reportedly promised investors an eight percent annual return, and clients only recovered 12 percent of their investments.
Vincent Noce, The Art Newspaper
This week, I spoke to Sarah Amos, who produced and hosted the podcast Tough Cookie from Vanity Fair. The show is excellent; it’s a personal story exploring the chaotic life of Sarah’s father, Wally Amos, who created the Famous Amos brand of cookies and built it into a nationally renown brand. The story doesn’t stop there, though, and talks about Wally’s troubles operating the brand, the lack of wealth that followed its sale and the years he spend reckoning with the vast gulf between “famous” and “rich.” The show can be found wherever you get podcasts.
Numlock Sunday: Sarah Amos on Tough Cookie
This week, I spoke to Sarah Amos, who produced and hosted the podcast Tough Cookie from Vanity Fair.
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All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
The classic rock rotations is to be expected. I remember it being the fiftieth anniversary of “The Day The Music Died.” With an obligatory Don McLean bed, the anchors were going on and on about what had happened.
You all do realize the President of the United States wasn’t born?