Numlock News: January 14, 2026 • Bob Ross, Zoe Saldaña, Jungkook

Jan 14, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Franchise

Zoe Saldaña has become the highest-grossing actor of all time on the success of Avatar: Fire and Ash. Beyond the three Avatar movies, her work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Gamora (which plugs her into both the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy franchises) and time aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise as Nyota Uhura across the Star Trek movies, has propelled her to a $15.47 billion career movie haul. The title of top-grossing actor tends to go to reliable supporting players who have appeared in multiple different franchises. Other performers who graced the top of the chart include Scarlett Johansson (who, beyond the MCU, appeared in hits like Sing and The Jungle Book) and veteran actor Samuel L. Jackson (who was not only in the MCU but also in Star Wars, The Incredibles, Jurassic Park and has worked constantly for several decades).

Angelique Jackson, Variety

Cuckoo For Coco

Right now, about 25 percent of American households contain coconut water, a new high for a business that is doing over $1 billion in sales. Vita Coco owns about half that business and posted $516 million in sales last year, with a target of doubling that in the next four to five years. That’s up from $310 million in sales in 2020 and growing steadily. One potential avenue for growth is pitching coconut water as a sports and fitness drink, poaching some of the Gatorade crowd.

Christopher Doering, Food Dive

K-Pop

Despite the genre’s crucial work in hunting demonic forces masquerading as boy bands, the market for K-pop appears to have stagnated a bit within Korea. Domestic sales that grew at 30 percent annually for two decades have hit a wall, with revenues falling by 19 percent in 2024. Unit sales are down from 115.8 million physical albums in 2023 to just 93.3 million in 2024. Culture is a major pillar of the Korean economy, and the return of megastars BTS ought to set the industry up for a rebound. But there is a catastrophic problem for the $9 billion industry: BTS’s Jungkook might be dating someone, specifically Winter of the group aespa. Nothing actually untoward is happening, just the rumor of a relationship. That said, this poses a problem, because a central element of pop idols is remaining (at least in public) available, and literal protests have popped up around the country to that effect.

Juliana Liu, Bloomberg

Survival

The annual report from the American Cancer Society has been released, and the news is great: among all cancer patients diagnosed from 2015 to 2021 in the United States, the survival rate at the five-year mark relative to those who didn’t have cancer is now all the way up to 70 percent. In the 1970s, that number was about 50-50. The gains are attributed to better detection, better treatment and reductions in smoking. Some of the cancers with the biggest gains in survival rate include myeloma, which rose from 32 percent in the 1990s to 62 percent today, and liver cancer, which rose from seven percent to 22 percent over that period. These scientific gains were hard won and are far from assured to continue: National Cancer Institute grant funding was down 31 percent year over year, according to a Senate report.

Jackie Flynn Mogensen, Scientific American

Games

A new meta-analysis published in the Review of Educational Research looked at the relationship between board games and early childhood development, specifically gauging math skills derived from playing the kind of basic board games that involve counting — perhaps the number of spaces moved or the number of items in a set. The analysis found that there was a 76 percent chance that playing a game improved numeracy if the game resembled those in the analysis. It makes sense that the games we play as kids can have a strong influence on how we think; I played a ton of chess as a kid, and so, of course, adamantly favor the elimination of monarchies and the institutions that ensconce and protect them by all means available.

Joe Golfen, University of Oregon

Roofs

A new study published in Nature Medicine found that a simple intervention was able to paint away some of the most serious vectors for malaria in a small trial in Kenya. Specifically, installing screens on doors and windows, and painting roofs — which were made out of corrugated sheets of zinc that retain a ton of heat over the course of a day — with white paint that reflects heat. This had the effect of reducing indoor heat by 3.3 degrees Celsius in daytime and 2.4 degrees Celsius at night. That’s a big deal, because cooler homes mean that windows could be closed, keeping mosquitoes and the malaria they may carry out. The interventions reduced Anopheles funestus mosquitoes by 77 percent and Culex mosquitoes by 58 percent, and cost just $189 per home.

Abdullahi Tsanni, Science

Bob Ross

Last year, Bob Ross Inc. announced it would donate 30 paintings by the late artist to be sold at Bonhams, with the proceeds to benefit public television. Three paintings went up for sale last November and brought in $662,000, with Winter’s Peace (1993) selling for $318,000 and setting a record for the artist. Another painting, Cabin at Sunset (1987), was later sold for $1.04 million in an auction organized by television host John Oliver to benefit the Public Media Bridge Fund. This month, three more of Ross’ paintings will be up for sale, and are currently estimated to bring in $155,000. The remaining 24 works are to be sold over the rest of the year.

Carlie Porterfield, The Art Newspaper

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