Numlock News: July 20, 2026 • Emotes, Romance, Trout

Jul 20, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Odyssey

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey crushed expectations, making $257.8 million globally, of which upwards of $120 million came domestically. That’s good for the third-biggest opening of the year and the third-biggest opening of Nolan’s career, and given exceptional word of mouth and no studio willing to brave an opening release next weekend, room to run. Shot entirely on IMAX cameras, the film made $30 million domestically and $22 million abroad in IMAX screenings specifically. The film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, who is uncontroversially agreed upon to be a polytropos guy; the story has not yet been adapted directly as a film, but has inspired beloved adaptations that include the Coen Brothers’ O Brother Where Art Thou, ABC’sThe Bachelorette and a five-door North American minivan offerings from Honda.

Ryan Gajewski, The Hollywood Reporter

Fire Braveheart

In India, the army has been a primary way for poor men from rural areas to obtain financial security thanks to a generous pension system. That said, a 2022 shift in those veterans’ benefits is upending that security; the new hiring terms stipulate that after a four-year term of service, three-quarters of the soldiers — termed Agniveers, or “fire bravehearts” — will be decommissioned and will leave with none of the long-term benefits that had previously been afforded. Military pensions are pricey, accounting for two percent of India’s GDP. About 44,000 recruits join per year, which means that this year, tens of thousands of people in the military will get the boot and have little compensation to show for it beyond a 1.1 million rupees (US$11,440) exit bonus, and will not be granted the official status of “ex-servicemen” either. The rollout of the plan in 2022 was met with violent opposition; it remains to be seen how the effects of it will be received. It’s probably fine; after all, no country has ever had any issues with large, disenfranchised groups of underpaid military veterans being pushed out of the army by the thousands, right?

Soumyajit Saha, Nikkei Asia

World Cup

Anyone who tuned into one of the World Cup games saw the pregame lineups where a short clip of each player was shown, often doing some sort of bit, expression or gesture. Well, ESPN assessed all 747 player emotes from the 72 games that constituted the group stage, and found that the most common action was touching, kissing or pointing at one’s national badge (131 players doing that), followed by the classic do-no-wrong folding arms pose (121 players), a fist bump with two hands (87 players), the somewhat mixed metaphor of rubbing one’s hands together (59 players) and then the stoic hands on hips (34 players). Twenty players went elaborate and did more than one emote; 14 went stripped down and did absolutely nothing at all. Several players were entirely unique; Tunisia’s Mounib Chamakh moved the camera, Emam Ashour of Egypt did a lion growl.

James Tyler, ESPN

Romance

In the past three years, the American Booksellers Association reported that 232 romance bookstores have opened up across the United States, with at least 54 romance bookstores opening this year alone. That puts us on pace with last year’s full-year total of 120 stores opening, which was up from 58 stores in 2024. Niche bookstores have begun to trend in other genres as well, such as horror bookstores, fantasy and even cookbooks.

Claire Kirch, Publishers Weekly

Dingers

The Home Run Derby aired on Netflix this year, shifting away from the previous broadcaster and longtime MLB stalwart, ESPN. The presentation on streaming generated an average minute audience of 5.3 million American viewers, which was down 7.5 percent from the 5.73 million viewers last year when it aired on cable. Still, that’s good for the most-watched skills competition in sports, beating out the NBA’s Slam Dunk Competition. In a positive sign for baseball, this year’s median age of audience was 44.3 years old, the lowest number in more than a decade.

Erik Gruenwedel, Media Play News

Football

As we come to the end of one kind of football event and approach the start of the season of another one entirely. A new poll looked at which sports Americans tend to prefer, and the answer is that American football still reigns supreme. Asked about pairs of sports and which they prefer, 65 percent of respondents prefer football to basketball, 69 percent prefer football over baseball, 71 percent prefer football over soccer and 76 percent prefer football over ice hockey.

David Montgomery, YouGov

Fish Stocks

A new study contends that hunter-gatherers deliberately transported live fish to lakes locked away in the mountains of Norway about 7,000 years ago, which the researchers argue enabled them to harvest fish stocks when they visited in the summer. This would be the oldest documented example of human-mediated translocation of fish. Lake Tesse, at an elevation of 850 meters, was covered by an ice sheet until 8,400 years ago. Radiocarbon dating of traps found in the area put the fish traps at 4950 BC. There aren’t other fish in these lakes beyond brown trout, and waterfalls prevent fish from getting there by swimming to them; given that it was under an ice sheet for millennia, the likeliest possible solution is humans brought fish up there.

James Woodford, New Scientist

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Numlock News is written each day by Walt Hickey. Email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Every post is entirely by a human; SEN corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news. If you enjoy Numlock, tell a friend, word of mouth is the only way that independent publications like this one grow.

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