Numlock News: January 26, 2026 • Hot Sauce, Fake Snow, Poison

Jan 26, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Welcome back!

The Housemaid

Paul Feig’s thriller The Housemaid, starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, has become a sleeper hit at the box office, climbing to $294.9 million at the global box office, surpassing Bridesmaids to become Feig’s top-grossing film. For an R-rated psychological thriller, that’s pretty great. The fact that there are still two built-in sequels ready to go is another perk, with the intention to shoot a sequel this year for a 2027 release. The movie has flown somewhat under-the-radar because it was released the same day as Avatar: Fire and Ash as counter-programming and has thus evaded the top spot at the box office.

Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter

Exploding Hot Sauce

A product liability suit is headed to court over a flawed batch of Lola’s Fine Salsa, which bubbled, exploded and fermented after purchase. The company alleges that its manufacturer, Ecoldeas, should be responsible for the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to pull the product off the shelves. Lola’s says that the out-of-pocket harm was about $525,000, including a billback from Walmart of nearly $155,000.

Ezra Amacher, Insurance Journal

Glasses

Japan’s eyewear shops have been an oasis for tourists visiting from countries where glasses are considerably more expensive. The average price for a pair of glasses in Japan was $141.49 in 2025, according to QY Research — significantly cheaper than the $178.22 average price in the United States and the $174.38 paid in Italy. The average price of eyeglasses in December was 23,303 yen (US$147) according to Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, 20 percent lower than five years earlier.

Misaki Morikawa, Nikkei Asia

Cat’s Cradle

Scientists have been able to get water to freeze into new kinds of exotic structures by pushing water to extremes of temperature and pressure. Your standard ice is termed Ih (hexagonal ice that forms naturally on Earth) and Ic (cubic ice that forms in high clouds). In bad news for Kurt Vonnegut fans, a new study published in Nature Materials reveals the creation of Ice XXI, a blocky crystal structure that develops in supercompressed water, seen only with an X-ray free-electron laser.

Meghan Bartels, Scientific American

Snow

The upcoming Olympics in Italy will feature lots of manufactured snow on the slopes, a feat of engineering that required organizers to create reservoirs of water in the Alps in order to ensure they had enough to coat the mountains. The organizing committee said on Friday that they have produced 1.6 million cubic meters of technical snow across the portfolio of venues, though that is still less than forecasted. The constructed basin at Livigno Snow Park was built to hold 200 million liters of water, which incidentally makes it one of the biggest reservoirs on the Italian side of the Alps. There, 50 snow guns produced 800 million liters of snow in about 300 hours.

Jennifer McDermott and Pat Graham, The Associated Press

Exoskeleton

A Vanderbilt University-designed exoskeleton system performed well in real-world trials, according to a new study where the equipment (produced by HeroWear) was tried over eight to 23 months at five distribution centers over 311,000 work hours. The Apex 2 exosuit saw strain and sprain injuries drop from 10.2 percent per 100 workers per year to 3.8 percent among its users, and decreased strain, sprain and lifting injuries by 62 percent. Back injuries account for 23 percent to 30 percent of workers’ compensation claims in the United States. The concern with this kind of equipment is often that it can shift injuries to other parts of the body, but that concern was not found to occur in these trials.

Insurance Journal

Poison

The 53 regional poison control centers of the United States are responsible for significant healthcare savings across the country. In the past 30 days, there have been 201,545 reported poisonings in the United States, and the poison control hotlines are very successful at providing treatment and diverting non-emergency cases away from hospitals. That has saved something like $3.1 billion annually in healthcare and productivity costs, according to a new report from RAND. For every dollar invested in poison control centers, American communities get $16.77 in benefits.

Shayna Korol, Vox

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