Numlock News: January 5, 2026 • Biscoff, Avatar, Wild Hogs
By Walt Hickey
Welcome back! Happy new year!
Pandora
Avatar: Fire and Ash has earned $306 million domestically and $1.08 billion globally in its first 18 days of release. Taking 18 days to make a billion dollars is generally considered an outstanding pace for any business, but among Avatar movies, it’s a bit sluggish. The first Avatar did it in 17 days, and Avatar: The Way of Water pulled it off in just 14 days. The film series primarily tells the story of the Tulkun Payakan as he deals with an invading force of aliens, as well as some other side stories that I’m sure people find interesting. The trilogy was the highest-grossing trilogy of all time, even before the third movie was released.
Recent Study
A recent study of recent studies found that the word “recent” in “recent studies” has a vast range of definitions. The study, published in the Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal, sampled 1,000 biomedical articles in which the phrase “recent” is used in reference to a citation. It found that the range of “recent” included anything from zero to 37 years ago, with the average age of “recent” research coming in at 5.53 years. Interestingly, what qualifies as a recent approach, discovery and study depends a lot on the specific area of research we’re talking about. Infectious diseases, genetics, immunology and radiology had shorter implications of recency (about 2 years) while dentistry, veterinary medicine and nephrology had significantly longer realms of recency (median recency of 8.5 to 14 years).
Alejandro Díez-Vidal and Jose R Arribas, BMJ
Cookies
Lotus Bakeries is responsible for Biscoff cookies, which many know as an in-flight snack from American and especially Delta Airlines, the latter of which serves 70 million packets of Biscoff cookies annually and counts it as its most popular in-flight snack. The company recently began a push to get the cookies into supermarkets and out of just the sky. Biscoff is a brand name for a classic cookie known as speculoos in Belgium, where it’s a traditional snack. The effort is paying off; Biscoff revenue was north of $700 million in 2024, not too shabby compared Oreo’s $4 billion revenue as of 2022.
Kim Mackrael, The Wall Street Journal
Wild Hogs
Populations of roving, omnivorous, insatiable feral hogs have expanded to 35 states, up from 17 in the 1980s. They are responsible for $3 billion in damage annually, according to new research. Mississippi was the first state to launch a hog-control program back in 2020, and a state trapping program was found to have solid ROI by Mississippi State University. Reducing the local wild pig population led to $300 to $4,000 in savings per pig over the next year.
Katherine Lin, Mississippi Today
Books
Many people set “read more books” as their resolution, and the latest polling would indicate that it’s becoming one of the most prolific readers in American is not a particularly difficult bar to clear. Based on December’s survey, 40 percent of Americans reported reading zero books in 2025, while 27 percent read one to four books. The median American read two books last year. Read 10 or more books, and you’re already in the top 15 percent of American readers. That said, the biggest readers really are grinding out a book a week; four percent of respondents read 50 or more books in the year. We all know someone in that cohort, and maybe even count ourselves among them.
Ships
India approved a large subsidy package last year to bolster its shipping industry as the country sets a path towards becoming a serious maritime power. Currently, India is tied for 20th place in terms of shipbuilding, controlling 0.06 percent of global output. However, the country spends $70 billion to $75 billion on foreign shipping annually. New Delhi wants to replicate what India did for its auto industry in the ’80s by shifting from importer to manufacturer, aiming to enter the top five global shipbuilders by 2047. Currently, China, South Korea and Japan overwhelmingly dominate global shipbuilding.
Roadies
With the music industry’s live entertainment business doing outstandingly well, companies that operate and plan tours are pitching their business as recession-proof and potentially very lucrative for people who have considered becoming roadies. Goldman Sachs projects that the business of live shows will grow 7.2 percent annually over the coming years. Plus, with audiences demanding top-quality lighting, lasers, sound and even pyro for their shows, the art of producing and constructing shows is increasingly pitched as creative work that is uniquely resilient to automation.
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Count me among those who probably will not see the new Avatar movie in the theatre, even though I did see the first two there. The reason is that at 3 1/2 hours long, I simply can't sit for that long (in a theatre). I'll wait until it's on a streaming service or a movie channel and catch it there.
I did see "The Anaconda", though, and it fulfilled its role of being mindless entertainment!