Numlock News: June 12, 2025 • Taxol, Labubu, Solar Pole
By Walt Hickey
Pop Mart
China’s Pop Mart has been a smashing success in the toy business, selling blind boxes that have become an instant hit with young consumers, particularly around its Labubu line of ugly-cute dolls. Sales reached 13 billion yuan (roughly US$1.8 billion) last year, double the previous year. The company behind the cute toys has quickly eclipsed Japanese rival and stalwart of the Hello Kitty industry, Sanrio. The blind boxes — which themselves are scarce — have been a massive driver of sales in Pop Mart’s 401 locations. The trend cycle for toys could be an issue for the company. By comparison, Sanrio may be smaller, but it has diversified beyond simply Hello Kitty and has proven more resilient as a result. Labubu alone accounted for 23 percent of Pop Mart’s revenue, up from 6 percent the previous year.
Taxol
The cancer-fighting drug Paclitaxel is one of the most important in the world, with millions of patients taking the chemotherapy over the course of their treatment, often in the form of the brand Taxol. The key precursor chemical in making paclitaxel is baccatin III, which only comes from the needles of the English yew tree, thus making it expensive to produce. A new study published in Nature reveals that researchers have managed to fully identify the 17-gene pathway that yew trees use to make baccatin III. They went on to transfer the genes to a tobacco plant, producing baccatin III in similar concentrations compared to yew. This is no small feat, as the yew tree has a genome that’s three times the size of the human genome, and the genes that synthesize baccatin III are all over the place. The ultimate goal is to modify microbes, such as yeast, to produce the drug industrially in vats. This would drastically reduce the price of producing paclitaxel and, subsequently, the price of cancer treatment.
Force Majeur
The U.K. High Court has ruled on a major case for the insurance industry. It relates to 147 planes and 16 engines that were seized by Russia at the start of the Ukraine War, and they had the bad luck of being on Russian soil when the nation took counter-sanction measures. The aircraft lessors and owners sued their insurers for over $4.5 billion in claims that the insurance companies did not want to pay out. The insurers argued that the planes are, simply, not lost since Russian airlines still use them for domestic flights. Thus, this issue wasn’t really the insurance company’s problem. The judge determined that this sanction retaliation fell under “war risk,” and only those policies that covered war risks explicitly would be made to pay out.
Mianyang
China is considering rolling out a 2.5-day weekend in the city of Mianyang to see if a longer weekend and shortened work week would give a boost to domestic spending. The city is home to 4.9 million people and has the second-largest GDP in Sichuan province, with a specialty in electronics, specifically the appliance maker Sichuan Changhong Electric. The average employee in an urban area in China works 48.3 hours per week, which is up 5 percent from 2016.
Solar Obiter
The European Space Agency has shot the first images of the Sun’s poles using the Solar Orbiter, which has been adjusting its angle of orbit to get the first images of the Sun that aren’t from the star’s equator. The Sun’s south pole is visible to the spacecraft now that it’s orbiting at an angle of 15° below the solar equator, maxing out at an angle of 17°. The observations found that the Sun’s magnetic field at its south pole is currently messy, with both north and south magnetic fields present at the south pole, which happens for just a short time in the star’s 11-year solar cycle. There are fun new angles planned in the years to come, including a flight in 2026 past Venus that will tilt its orbit to 24° and plans in 2029 to orbit at an angle of 33°.
Land Alteration
A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimates that wild animals expend a total of 76,000 gigajoules of energy to alter the land around them. This includes activities as common as the burrows dug by 216 species of animals, as well as foraging, building mounds, making nests and digging out spawning beds. The study looks at over 600 animals that all contribute some kind of geomorphic effect, changing the land around them through deliberate or incidental action. That said, the 76,000 gigajoule estimate is likely an underestimate.
Cody Cottier, Scientific American
Restaurant
The oldest restaurant in the world is said to be Sobrino de Botin in Spain, which was established in 1725 and has been open for three centuries in Madrid. Guinness awarded Sobrino de Botin the title of oldest restaurant in 1987. However, there are a number of rival claimants to the record, one of which — Casa Pedro — is in Madrid too, with a reputation of being around since 1702. However, Casa Pedro has only been verified to 1750. That said, this is not merely a Spanish question, as Beijing’s Bianyifang (founded 1416), the White Horse Tavern in Rhode Island (1673), Le Procope in Paris (founded 1686) and La Campana in Rome (claiming 500 years of age) may all have claims.
Suman Naishadham, The Associated Press
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I’ve been a Rhode Island resident for over 20 years now, and I have no idea where the White Horse is. Around here the oldest Dunkin probably gets more press.