Numlock News: December 22, 2025 • Snoopy, Avatar, Ants

Dec 22, 2025

By Walt Hickey

Welcome back! Something cool after the stories.

Peanuts

Sony is buying a 41 percent stake in Peanuts Holding LLC, now owned by toy company WildBrain, for C$630 million (US$457 million USD). This purchase brings Sony’s ownership of Snoopy, Charlie Brown, et al to 80 percent. The remaining 20 percent is still held by the family of Charles M. Schulz. WildBrain is the company behind Strawberry Shortcake and Teletubbies, and selling off the stake will be good enough to clear its debts with another $40 million to spare.

Natalie Miller, The Toybook

Avatar

Avatar: Fire and Ash made $88 million in North America, coming in slightly behind expectations, which is right where James Cameron is at his best, dammit. Both of the other Avatar movies had relatively muted opening weekends but then proceeded to run for months and rack up colossal box office revenues. Also, North America? North America ain’t Pandora’s home turf in the slightest; these movies have generally made 70 percent of their revenue abroad, and the movie already has momentum internationally. The global box office came to $345 million, of which $57.6 million came from China. IMAX and 3D also tend to be massive for Avatar; 14 percent of the worldwide box office came from just one percent of the screens.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Ratty

Prior to 1900, there were roughly eight million water voles in Britain. Following the introduction of the American mink, an invasive predator that escaped into the environment from fur farms, the number of voles plummeted to 132,000. This is a problem because voles eat up to 227 different species of plants, stopping any one from becoming overly dominant. After a dedicated campaign, the mink is believed to have been eradicated from Greater London, and a subsequent campaign to reintroduce the native voles to the waterways is underway.

Adam Vaughan, The Sunday Times

Running Up That Score

Following the release of the first four episodes of the final season of Stranger Things, the needle-drop prone program is lifting a bevy of ’80s songs featured in the show up the charts. Currently, Stranger Things accounts for seven of the top 10 songs on the Billboard Top TV songs chart, led by Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” with 14.2 million streams. Also included are “I Think We’re Alone Now,” “Upside Down,” “Fernando,” “Mr. Sandman,” “Rockin’ Robin” and “Oh Yeah,” each of which is enjoying a boost from the binge watchers.

Kevin Rutherford, Billboard

Prophylactics

China will begin taxing condoms and contraceptives on January 1, adding a 13 percent value-added tax to the goods that have otherwise been tax-exempt since the nationwide VAT’s introduction in 1993. The move is the result of government policies aimed at raising the country’s birth rate. The one-child policy that had been in effect for 30 years was reversed a few years ago as the country’s vital statistics began to shift into an inevitable population contraction. Couples are now allowed three children, and some provinces have gone so far as to offer cash subsidies for extra children. China’s birthrate in 2024 was 6.77 per 1,000, a slight increase from 2024.

Amy Hawkins, The Guardian

Expendables

A new 3D imagery experiment of over 880 specimens and over 500 different species of ants sought to find out why the amount of cuticle — armor, essentially — ranged from anywhere from six percent to 35 percent of an ant’s body volume. They found a few things that were somewhat correlated with variations in the cuticle size, such as temperature (which explained 12 percent of variation) and nitrogen content (explaining 37 percent). However, the real winner appears to be the size of the colony. Essentially, ants from species with significantly larger colonies have evolved to be a bit lighter on armor, and those from smaller colonies have more armor. Presumably, colonies that could just engage in mass overwhelming tactics against rivals saw an evolutionary trade-off when it came to contributing less armor towards the size of those armies.

Jacek Krywko, Ars Technica

Odometers

New data from vehicle history provider CARFAX estimates that about 2.45 million cars on the road have had their odometer rolled back at some point. Odometer fraud is relatively common; the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that about 450,000 vehicles are sold every year with faked odometer readings. The transition away from mechanical odometers toward digital odometers has made it cheaper and easier than ever to fake a value. On the other hand, vehicle mileage is also recorded more often these days, which does help identify discrepancies.

Carrier Management

Stephen Follows writes about movies and data, I write about movies and data, we both like each others’ work a bunch, and for years we’ve chatted about what a little collaboration might look like.

Just to test the waters, we decided to take a little stab at a video to see how it felt. Check it out, and let us know if you’d like to see more.

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