Numlock News: June 16, 2025 • How To Train Your Dragon, Ġgantija, Canada
By Walt Hickey
Welcome back!
How To Train Your Dragon
The live-action remake of animated film How To Train Your Dragon, which is also called How To Train Your Dragon, beat expectations to make $83 million domestically, with another $114 million abroad for a total of $197.8 million. That is a great opening for the kid-oriented movie, given that its price tag was only around $150 million. PG-rated movies have been crushing it this year, from A Minecraft Movie to Lilo & Stitch, in a moment of vindication for the crowd who has been begging studios to put movies directed at families into cinemas instead of tossing them off on to streaming networks or just burying them like they did with Coyote v. ACME.
Motel 6
The voice actor Tom Bodett is suing Motel 6 for $1.2 million, claiming the chain of motels missed an annual payment for his long-running deal as spokesman for the brand. Since 1986, he’s the guy who says “We’ll leave the light on for you,” which is one of the most central branding elements for Motel 6 other than the iconic sign, the vague feeling of desperation when a Motel 6 is the only game in town and the rooms vaguely still smelling like cigarettes even though this clearly hasn’t been a smoking room in two decades. The contract was originally set to end in November, but Bodett broke up with the brand after the missed payment, even though Motel 6 is still using his name and voice in its national reservation phone line.
Strategic Petroleum Reserve
The United States government established a storage system for petroleum (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) after the 1970s energy crisis, allowing the feds to smooth out energy markets if the situation called for it. The SPR itself is pretty neat from an engineering perspective: it’s made up of four geological sites in Texas and Louisiana, which have 60 subterranean salt caverns with a capacity of 713.5 million barrels of petroleum. Basically, we just pump the stuff back into caves that we happen to own, and we keep tabs on it so we can pump it back out if we’re hard up for hydrocarbons. The reserves were at 401.8 million barrels as of May 30. However, the infrastructure on sites was installed from 1975 to 1990. Officials found that 70 percent of its equipment was exceeding its serviceable life as of 2016, and recent overpumping has caused stress on the rock.
Half Life
Some of the biggest beneficiaries of the move to streaming have been catalog shows — programs like Grey’s Anatomy, The Office, Friends and even Bluey that managed to ride the top ten charts of major streamers despite being released years or even decades ago, the ones with a long tail. What’s somewhat interesting is that, particularly on Netflix, shows are one-and-done the week of release. They don’t have much stickiness, don’t have much hangtime on charts and are not benefiting from that long tail. In 2021, the number of shows on Netflix that spent at least ten weeks of the year on the top ten list was 19 series. Last year, that’s down to 12, and this year we’re on pace for only seven shows.
Steven Zeitchik, The Hollywood Reporter
Canada Blames
New data from Statistics Canada shows Canadian tourism to the United States has fallen through the floor, as many Canadians cancel plans to visit the U.S. after a series of slights from the American executive branch against the independence and sovereignty of Canada. Car travel from Canada to the United States was down 38 percent year over year in May 2025, and air travel was down 24 percent. It’s also been getting worse month by month: in February, air travel was down 2 percent, in March it was down 14 percent and as of April, it was down a robust (but not nearly as bad as May) 20 percent. This is kind of important since Canadians have historically been a quarter of foreign visitors to the United States.
Ġgantija Temples
Prehistoric temples constructed on Malta between 3800 BC and 2400 BC have not had a well-understood purpose, but a new study published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences says that (beyond religious or cosmological roles) the temples appear to have been used to train students how to navigate by stars. The temples have straight entrance corridors that connect to open courtyards, and new measurements taken at 32 structures built during the Ġgantija phase (3400-3100B have entrances that align with the stars used to aid in navigation: Hadar, Gacrux and Avior. The skill was likely crucial. Ancient Maltese mariners trying to get from Malta to Sicily just had to sail west until they hit Sicily. However, to get back home to an archipelago that can’t be seen from Sicily would require celestial proficiency.
Anime
By 2050, the number of animators working in Japan is projected to decline by 30 percent compared to the levels in 2019. This obviously poses a potential threat to an anime industry that has achieved worldwide admiration and significant revenue streams for its producers. The animator shortage is coming, if not already here, thanks to overwork among experienced animators and low wages for younger animators. A 2023 survey from the Nippon Anime & Film Culture Association found 45 percent of animators earning less than 2.4 million yen (about US$16,600) per year. One factor is the gulf between what people spend to watch anime and how much of that spending makes it back to production companies. When the streaming market for Japanese anime grew 51 percent in 2023, Japanese production company revenue from streamers only went up 6 percent.
Takuro Suzuki and Takako Iwamoto, Nikkei Asia
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Most of my family is still in Canada, and they are going out of their way to not visit the U.S.
I can't say that I blame them.