Numlock News: January 22, 2026 • Cuartetera, Encanto, Sulawesi

Jan 22, 2026

By Walt Hickey

The Bays From Brazil Argentina

Argentina has quietly become a global leader in cloning horses, owing to the popularity of the practice among the country’s elite polo teams. Cloning a horse is cheaper than ever at around $40,000 per born animal, a price point that doesn’t make a ton of sense unless you’re talking the elite upper levels of an already posh sport like polo. The trend really kicked off when top polo player Adolfo Cambiaso preserved the DNA of his favorite horse in 2006. Since then, his club, La Dolfina, has used over 150 cloned horses. Given that polo horses already can go for between $50,000 and $1 million, simply cloning the ones that have been proven — such as Cambiaso’s mare Cuartetera, a clone of which was auctioned for $800,000 in 2010 — isn’t too financially absurd. The 2016 Palermo Open was a turning point, with six identical mares (Cuartetera B01, Cuartetera B02, Cuartetera B03, Cuartetera B04, Cuartetera B05 and Cuartetera B06) in the competition, even though the original Cuartetera had retired a year ago. Last year, there were 600 to 700 cloned horses in Argentina.

Maximiliano Fernández, Knowable Magazine

Manga

The full-year chart of graphic novel sales is overwhelmingly dominated by manga, which was responsible for 19 of the top-selling adult graphic novels of the year. Jujutsu Kaisen alone accounted for four of those entries and claimed the top three slots, with Jujutsu Kaisen Vol. 26 selling 127,543 copies and leading the list. Other top-selling manga franchises included Demon Slayer, Berserk, Solo Leveling, One Piece and my personal favorite of the bunch, The Summer Hikaru Died. The only Western comic among the top 20 was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin, which came in at No. 15. It’s a different story entirely among kids’ graphic novels, which sell vastly more copies for what it’s worth. The top book there was Dog Man Vol. 14: Big Jim Believes, which sold 793,474 copies. Indeed, Dog Man books alone accounted for 13 of the top 20 kids’ graphic novels of the year.

Brigid Alverson, ICv2

Encanto

The best-performing film on streaming in America has been Encanto, and while KPop Demon Hunters has had a hell of a run, it’s still slightly lagging behind the Disney movie. Comparing each of the movies thirty weeks into their releases, KPop Demon Hunters lags behind the aggregate views of Encanto by 31.6 million hours, but that’s still pretty close, given that KPop Demon Hunters is at 322.1 million hours watched, according to Nielsen. After 29 weeks in Nielsen’s top ten list, KPop Demon Hunters has only just fallen out of the top 10, though it may very well return.

Entertainment Strategy Guy

Sports

Players on the trivia show Jeopardy! have a reputation for being bad at the sports categories, a phenomenon that is highlighted whenever a category completely stumps a trio of contestants, and then the clip spends the next several days making the rounds on sports social media. Why does sports knowledge lag behind other subjects? Well, that’s the fun part, it actually doesn’t. Overall, 86.1 percent of Jeopardy! questions related to sports have been answered correctly from 2002 to mid-2025, above the overall average of 83.7 percent. The real stumpers tend to be in art (78.4 percent overall correct), literature (79.6 percent) and classical music (79.9 percent).

Zach Gozlan, Defector

NEVI

Congress made $4.4 billion available to states as part of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program four years ago. However, due to a slow initial rollout and the subsequent active sabotage of the program by detractors, only two percent (or $94 million) has been reimbursed. The data came out when a group of states sued the federal government over the frozen funds, which have hampered the states’ abilities to build out infrastructure.

David Ferris, E&E News

Caves

Sulawesi, Indonesia, is home to caves where early human art has survived to the present day. A new study documented 44 sites, 14 of which were previously unknown, and used a new technique to date 11 cave art motifs. One of them, a hand stencil found in a cave on the island of Muna, was dated to 67,800 years old, moving back the earliest example of rock art by 1,100 years. Presumably, this work was followed 67,798 years ago by Hand Stencil 2, which critics considered derivative but was ultimately more popular. Then naturally came Hand Stencil 3, produced 67,796 years ago, which is where the franchise really fell off, explaining why it took 1,100 years until the I.P. was revived.

Garry Shaw, The Art Newspaper

Mercy

This weekend will be a big test for Avatar: Fire and Ash, which has held the top spot at the box office for seven consecutive weeks. Seeking to overthrow it is the Chris Pratt movie Mercy, currently projected to bring in between $10 million and $13 million from 3,400 North American theaters. These estimates put it well in range of beating the $8 million to $10 million that the third Avatar movie is projected to earn this weekend. Regardless, it’s a big weekend for escapist fantasy at the box office; Mercy is a science fiction story with the fanciful and imaginative plot of an American cop being investigated and subsequently tried for possible wrongdoing.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

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