Numlock News: December 17, 2025 • Icebreakers, Crash Clock, Paperbacks

Dec 17, 2025

By Walt Hickey

MJ

Michael Jordan sold his Chicago-area mansion to a real estate investor last year for $9.5 million. This was a bit of a flop; it had been on the market for over 12 years and was initially put up for sale in 2012 for $29 million, which would be $41 million in 2025. That said, the fate of the property has not evidently improved; the initial notion was to make the property a timeshare, selling off $1 million equity stakes for one week of access to the home of Jordan. This did not work for a couple of reasons, the first being that a week of access to the Chicago suburbs was evidently not that enticing, the second being that the city changed the zoning code to specifically prohibit timesharing “Champions Point.” The new strategy? Renting it out month-to-month for $150,000 a pop.

Daniel Libit, Sportico

Icebreakers

Russia is trying to keep the gas exports going, but is boxed in on multiple sides. To the west, Ukraine has begun to directly assault commercial tankers angling to get oil out through the Black Sea. To the north, Russian ships are being constrained by another entity: ice. For the first time, Russia has deployed all eight of its nuclear-powered icebreakers at once to keep shipping lanes open in the Gulf of Ob or the Yenisei Gulf. This is all in an effort to keep the flow of oil, gas and minerals going out of the Arctic Gate oil terminal, the Yamal LNG plant and Norilsk Nickel. Russia has three more icebreakers under construction due in 2026, 2028 and 2030 as well as a massive Leader-class icebreaker being built to keep the Northern Sea Route open year-round starting in 2030.

Malte Humpert, gCaptain

Chips

There are lots of data centers in the United States, and many large companies want to get AI data centers up and running quickly. However, while small sections of small data centers can probably support AI racks, an entirely new site is often required. It’s physically hard to support the AI racks, which are considerably heavier than conventional server racks due to the density of electronics within the chips. Thirty years ago, a server rack averaged 400 to 600 pounds. Today, it’s closer to 1,250 to 2,500 pounds for a rack. The projected milestone weight of an AI rack is 5,000 pounds. Not only are the chips denser, but water-cooling features and the copper plate busway weigh 37 pounds per linear foot. Add those together, and you’re talking floor-busting levels of mass.

Elissa Welle, The Verge

Paperbacks

At the end of this year, the book distributor ReaderLink is ending distribution of mass market paperbacks, essentially ending the format as ebooks replace them in the overall book business. The mass-market paperback was at one point a bonanza for the industry, which allowed hit books to be printed cheaply and efficiently and distributed not just in book stores but also in newsstands and supermarkets. This format significantly broadens the audience, with retailers like Walmart constituting the core distributor these days. Sales jumped from $656.5 million in 1975 to $811 million in 1979 at the peak, outselling hardcover books with 387 million mass-market paperbacks to just 82 million hardcovers. Ebooks became an even leaner production process and a more efficient mass distribution service, slowly devouring the mass market paperback’s share. Unit sales of mass market paperbacks fell from 131 million in 2004 to 21 million in 2024, an 84 percent decline. Sales this year through October were just 15 million.

Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly

Reptiles

Warming temperatures could spell disaster for reptiles, as the temperature of an embryo has a direct effect on the sex of the eventual animal. With green sea turtles, if the temperature is above 29 degrees Celsius during the mid-incubation window, the hatchlings will be about 50-50 male and female. As it gets hotter, the broods skew female. Once you hit 33 degrees Celsius, you’re looking at an overwhelmingly female brood. The opposite is seen among crocodiles; hotter temperatures in the incubation window mean more males, and scientists fear single-sex generations of gators by 2100. It’s not all bad; “Reptile Sexpocalypse” is at least a pretty sick band name.

Elizabeth Preston, Scientific American

Scams

Meta calculated that about 19 percent of the company’s $18 billion advertising business in China came from ads for scams, illegal gambling and pornography, according to internal documents. China’s government doesn’t intervene when scam ads don’t target Chinese citizens and are instead targeted abroad, so it was up to Meta to root out the bad actors. An anti-fraud team ratcheted up enforcement and, in 2024, cut the questionable ads from 19 percent to merely nine percent of the total ad revenue from China. However, company brass reportedly intervened because, hey, that’s perfectly good money you’re enforcing. The team was disbanded, and the questionable ads climbed back to 16 percent of Meta’s China revenue by the middle of this year.

Jeff Horwitz and Engen Tham, Reuters

CRASH Clock

Over the past seven years, the 4,000 satellites in Earth’s orbit have increased to almost 14,000 in number. In order to avoid collision with one another, the satellites must constantly maneuver. For SpaceX, from December 2024 to May 2025, that means 144,404 collision avoidance maneuvers over the period. A new study looks at what might happen if they could not maneuver for a period of time, perhaps from solar interference or a communications bug. As of 2018, if all satellites suddenly lost their ability to maneuver, there would be a collision within 121 days. Today, that figure is down to 2.8 days without a collision.

Jonathan O’Callaghan, New Scientist

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