Numlock News: February 13, 2025 • Wolves, Titan, Trial of the Pyx

Feb 13, 2025

By Walt Hickey

Sport Stacking

For many millennials, the gym class activity of cup stacking — eventually known as sport stacking after the event captured some cachet — was a peculiar element of physical education for much of the early 2000s. Some back of the napkin math figured out that within the roughly 5,000 American schools that included stacking in their curriculum from 2002 to 2011, up to 8 percent of adults aged 22 to 35 were exposed to the “sport.” A fascinating feature dove into the origins of the sport. It stemmed from an entrepreneurial ex-clown who became a teacher buying up $43,000 worth of dead cup inventory from a Tokyo warehouse of the Hasbro corporation at an export price of 1,300 yen per unit. Each unit was constituted of 12 cups with holes drilled into the bottom. The change in fortune from unsellable scrap to a niche phenomenon came from compelling live demonstrations of mastery sport stacking, which is vastly more interesting than the tedious written descriptions of the mechanics of stacking cups.

Kit Fox, Defector

World’s Greatest Detecting Body

Congratulations to the United States Senate, which did not formally punish anyone last year, carrying on a rich tradition of ethical excellence, probably. Sure, there were 158 complaints filed last year. Sure, perhaps we should consider that any of the 1,826 alleged violation complaints of Senate rules sent to the Select Committee on Ethics since 2007 might have merit — despite there being 0 disciplinary actions over the period — but then again, I’m not a United States Senator, so what the hell do I know? And, of course, there is ample public evidence of violations, documented violations of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 and hell, last week, a former Senator was sentenced to prison. But come on, nothing gets past the steel-trap minds of the world’s greatest deliberate body.

Dave Levinthal, NOTUS

Tilefish

Scientists have described an interesting new find, a deepwater fish new to science from a family that has generally low diversity. There are only 31 described species in the Branchiostegidae family and just 19 in the Branchiostegus genus. They are commonly known as tilefish and live at extreme depths as low as 600 meters below the surface. Only three new species in the genus have been identified in 34 years. This new species has distinctive markings underneath its eyes, and the researchers have named it in honor of San from the Studio Ghibli movie Princess Mononoke — calling it Branchiostegus sanae — given the uncanny resemblance.

Maddie Molloy, BBC News

Rickshaws

Pakistan is home to 1 million 3-wheelers, and the government and industry are betting big on electrification. Sazgar has manufactured motorized rickshaws since 2005, and a year ago became the first company in Pakistan to get a license to produce electric three-wheelers. They have about a 30 percent market share of the business, producing about 2,500 rickshaws a month (30 of which are electric right now) and have roughly 40 competitors. Currently, electric vehicles are just 0.16 percent of the Pakistani market, but the latest EV policy wants to get that to 90 percent of new vehicles sold by 2040. This is one reason the government granted production licenses to a further 57 companies last week, the vast majority of which are for 2 and 3-wheelers.

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, Rest of World

Titan

The U.S. Coast Guard has released the audio recording captured by NOAA of theTitan submersible implosion in June 2023 as it attempted to take tourists to view the wreck of the Titanic. It’s not much for human ears — a muffled underwater burst that was aligned to the same moment of the sub’s disappearance — but how it was obtained in the first place is incredibly impressive. An acoustic recorder belonging to NOAA moored about 900 miles away from the site managed to snag the audio, an impressive feat and a testament to both the observational abilities of the agency as well as the unique acoustic properties of water.

Mike Schuler, gCaptain

Trial of the Pyx

On Tuesday, several judges went to the livery hall of London’s Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths to do that British thing where they go through the motions of some ancient law from times when the king was still consequential. This time, it’s a test known as the Trial of the Pyx, which dates to the 12th century. The Royal Mint would send over a few thousand of the coins they’re going to produce to ensure they’re adequately made. Given that modern engravings are made with what one must imagine is a level of mechanized technical precision that renders human observation all but moot, it’s mostly a chance for the mint to show off some of its new pocket change — about 6,500 coins, this time. This includes a few limited-run commemorative coins and some coinage featuring the visage of a popular local landlord who won some sort of contest. Obviously, I’m just taking the pyx here; I actually find it charming that the United Kingdom sees fit to fund these numismatic cosplay enthusiasts. I think we’ve all learned a valuable lesson about counterfeiting money or whatever it is we’re trying to learn from a country that still used something called a “shilling” as recently as the seventies.

Kwiyeon Ha and Brian Melley, The Associated Press

Dogs

Existing research suggests that humans and dogs have been living in close proximity to one another for 30,000 years, but it also suggests that humans have only been breeding dogs for the past 15,000 years. Checking the register here, I’m noticing a 15,000-year period where humans weren’t even trying to make the wolves that scavenged their garbage more doggy-like. Nevertheless, they stuck around. A new study sought to figure out what was happening here. It involved the team running simulations mimicking that 15,000-year period where the wolves were gradually becoming more dog-like, essentially of their own evolutionary volition. The simulation found that wolves evolved into dogs anywhere from 37 percent to 74 percent of the time, depending on the conditions set. It makes sense because you know somehow they did. The simulation also found that the evolution from wolf to dog may have occurred in as little as 8,000 years, provided that the creatures had what I like to call the “zoomies,” evolutionarily speaking, of course.

Bob Yirka, Phys.org

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