Numlock News: March 3, 2025 • Anora, Mixue, Stars

By Walt Hickey

Welcome back!

Anora

Independent movie Anora won 5 Oscars last night including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Actress for Mikey Madison and Best Original Screenplay for Sean Baker. With four competitive Oscar wins, Sean Baker tied Walt Disney for the most Oscars in a single night. Walt set the record in 1953, winning Best Documentary (Feature), Best Documentary (Short Subject), Best Short Subject (Cartoon) and Best Short Subject (Two-Reel). I’m there was ruthlessly competitive back in the day. That winning documentary short, The Alaskan Eskimo, was such a triumphant success for the medium and a point of pride for Walt and the whole company that Disney+ describes it as, “No results found for ‘The Alaskan Eskimo.’”

Jordan Moreau, Variety

Mount Vesuvius

As archaeology and scientific discovery around the 79AD destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii by Mount Vesuvius continue, there’s one nagging question about the eruption that has not actually gone away: when it happened. There are historically 2 dueling dates for V-Day. The widely accepted date was August 24, the date that 17-year-old Pliny the Younger reported he witnessed the event in letters to the historian Tacitus about 25 years after the fact. The other date is October 24, which was fueled by the discovery of graffiti that indicated “October 17” on the modern calendar. This would have been pretty hard to write if the graffiti artist had been evaporated by a volcano two months prior. There’s also evidence of wine in jars (indicating the grape harvest was over) and unripe autumnal fruits like pomegranates and chestnuts.

Franz Lidz, The New York Times

Wagers

In 1591, Pope Gregory XIV formally banned Catholics from betting on the tenure or elections of popes. While the edict was abrogated in 1918, the rich history of controversially gambling on the papacy is alive and well. You too can head over to betting markets to place money on the health of the pontiff, like some mid-market modern Medici, if you so choose. According to Polymarket, their market for “New Pope in 2025?” has generated $420,000 in wagers as of Friday. This has presented one of several moral questions about gambling as it becomes increasingly legal, common and accessible, with morbid bets making their way to all sorts of markets. My view is that it’s probably a bad idea to place available winnings on the event of an individual’s demise. It essentially creates a crowdsourced marketplace for making someone worth more dead than alive, which is never a great thought to put out into the world.

Scott Nover, Bloomberg

Ancient Stars

The James Webb Space Telescope is eagerly hunting for “population III stars,” which are stars only made from the primordial gasses resulting from the Big Bang. All the stars we know and love are the product of stellar recycling, incorporating elements beyond the hydrogen and helium produced from earlier stars. Essentially, population III stars are made from hydrogen and helium alone. While they must have theoretically existed — masses 1000 times that of the sun, 10 times larger than any existing star, burning hot and fast and going supernova in just a few million years — we’ve yet to spot one given their brief and early lives. That said, the Jaes Webb Space Telescope has spotted a great contender: a dwarf galaxy potentially full of ’em, called GLIMPSE-16043. The telescope observed as it used to be when the universe was 850 million years old: a mass of 100,000 solar masses, burning very faintly for only 5 million years with very hot stars and pretty much no oxygen. It’s just a candidate — it could also just be a cloud of lingering gas energized by a nearby black hole.

Daniel Clery, Science

Mixue

Mixue Ice Cream and Tea has eclipsed McDonald’s, Starbucks and Subway to become the largest food and beverage chain in the world, finishing the year with 45,282 locations, an increase from 7,100 in 2019 and double the level of three years ago. It’s looking to IPO and raise $510 million in the process and debuted in Hong Kong today. It’s selling ice cream and drinks at the price of 6 yuan, or about 83 cents, which has made for explosive growth in China where the economy has many hunting down inexpensive treats.

Stu Woo, The Wall Street Journal

Oscars

Disney managed to sell out all of its ad inventory for the Oscars, including not just ad spots during the award show (which the Mouse was selling for $1.7 million to $2.3 million per 30 seconds) but also the accompanying sponsorships of GMA and Live with Kelly and Mark. These are the feats of synergy that make the whole shebang possible. This comes as Disney hits a bit of an inflection point with the Oscars: the award show is reportedly kicking the tires on other potential distributors to secure the Academy’s desired deal increase.

Brian Steinberg, Variety and Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg

Industry

In many parts of the American West, extractive industries like mining or oil production and landscape-altering industries such as power generation or damming have given way to promising tourism businesses. Participation in road, mountain and BMX biking increased by 22.9 percent in 2022, camping by 12 percent and winter sports like snowshoeing and cross-country skiing by double digits. In many Western states — especially ones with national parks or other preserved land — recreation is a solid and rising percentage of the economy.

Jonathan Thompson, High Country News

Thanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today.

---

Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.

Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement.

Previous Sunday subscriber editions: MCU · Fanfiction · User Magazine · Reentry · Panda Dunks · Net Zero · Spiraled · On The Edge · Luggage · The Editors · Can’t Get Much Higher · Solitaire ·

Posting Nexus · Memorabilia · Drainage Tile · Desert Surfing · Music · Congestion Pricing · Underwater Sound · Hunts Point · Queer Olympics · Energy Drinks · Baseball Movies · Trillion Trees · Risk Aversion ·

Packaging · Ice Cores · Stadium Names · Uncertain · Green Homes · Political Future · UFOs · Antarctica Comms · Rot Economy · The Internationalists · Video Game Funding · BYD · Disney Channel Original Movie · Talon Mine · Our Moon · Rock Salt · Wind Techs

Sunday Edition Archives: 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018