Numlock News: July 9, 2025 • Bayeux, Young Adult, Superman
By Walt Hickey
Forest
Federal records revealed by a Freedom of Information Act request have found that the government of Singapore owns approximately 5 percent of all land in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The city-state’s sovereign wealth fund, The Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, is the sole owner of 540,000 acres of forestland in the Upper Peninsula, much of which is slated for active timber harvesting. In Gogebic County alone, Singapore owns one-sixth of all land. From 2021 to 2022, GIC spent $450 million to buy the land from other companies. For perspective, Singapore itself is only around 182,000 acres in size.
Simon D. Schuster, Bridge Michigan
Print
Sales of print books dipped slightly in the first half of the year, with total unit book sales coming in at 343.5 million books, down from 347.5 million books in the same half of 2024. The top-selling title of the year so far is Onyx Storm, which moved 2.03 million copies in two editions over the first six months of the year. It is followed by the nonfiction The Let Them Theory, which sold 1.76 million copies, then the new Hunger Games book Sunrise on the Reaping, which sold 1.69 million copies. Despite the success of Onyx Storm, sales in the romantasy category were actually slightly down. Religion books are still a winning category, as sales were up 16 percent over last year’s first half.
Jim Milliot and Sophia Stewart, Publishers Weekly
Bayeux
France and Britain have cut a deal that will allow the Bayeux Tapestry to go on display at the British Museum next year. This will be the first time that the tapestry depicting the Battle of Hastings will be in Britain in nearly 1,000 years, as the country tried and failed to borrow the work in 1953 and 1966. The Medieval embroidery was created in the 1070s, consists of nine panels and was believed to have been made in Kent. However, it ended up in France and has been housed at the Bayeux Museum in Normandy since 1983. As you can imagine, it’s absolutely devastating to have a priceless and unrivaled artifact of your civilization’s cultural history stuck in the museum of another country, so our hearts truly go out to the British people who have had to endure this indignity for so very long. I’m told that Greece, Afghanistan, China, Ireland, India, Nigeria, South Africa, Rapa Nui, Italy, Pakistan, Ghana, Ethiopia, Sudan, Scotland, Iran, Iraq and Egypt also sent the British Museum their thoughts and prayers in this trying time.
Gareth Harris, The Art Newspaper
YA
A new analysis of 509 books that made the Young Adult New York Times Bestseller List from 2013 to 2023 found that the ages of the main characters of the books have been getting steadily older. This could potentially reflect the trend of many YA genre consumers being older than the traditional “young adult” audience of teenagers, with many readers well into their 20s or older. Of those 509 books, 316 revealed the age of the main character at some point. In 2014, the average age of a main character was 15.56 years old. By 2023, the average age of a main character in these books was 17.54 years of age, reflecting a persistent (if jumpy) trend over the preceding decade of characters getting older. Throughout the studied period, 90 percent of books had a character over the age of 15; if anything, though, that may just be a reflection of the reality that teenagers are less likely to read books featuring protagonists less mature than they are.
Ally Watkins, University of Mississippi, and Taylor & Francis Online
War, What Is It Good For
A new survey found that skepticism of U.S. foreign military intervention has surpassed approval ratings. A whopping 36 percent of respondents indicated that foreign military interventions worsen situations more often than not, 28 percent thought they neither improved nor worsened and only 17 percent thought they improve situations. The survey also asked about Americans’ retrospective analysis of the decision to intervene in multiple wars of the past century. The only ones to come in above water were the two World Wars, the Korean War and the Gulf War. The best way to figure out if a military intervention was vastly more condemned by Americans than approved is to simply ask, “How involved was Henry Kissinger in this event,” as both Vietnam and the Cambodian campaign come in robustly low when it comes to net approval.
Energy
A startling new report from the Department of Energy highlighted just how rowdy the future energy demand from AI data centers is poised to be. It found that parts of the mid-Atlantic and Great Plains regions could face 400 hours of power outages in 2030 under the combined worst-case scenario of large energy-demanding data centers growing unabated, fossil fuel plants closing quickly and new power systems coming online slowly. The PJM Interconnection — which serves Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia — is forecasting a 32 gigawatt increase in demand from 2024 to 2030, of which 30 gigawatts is from data centers.
Superman
Superman is projected to open with profits from $120 million to $130 million domestically and another $100 million internationally. The movie — which tells the story of an immigrant journalist who, despite all evidence to the contrary, still thinks that the American way is worth fighting for — had a budget of $225 million and is looking for a win at the box office.
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TIL there's another new Superman reboot.