Numlock News: March 31, 2026 • K-Beauty, Warhammer, Hermit Crabs

Mar 31, 2026

By Walt Hickey

K-Beauty

The United States has overtaken China as the largest importer of South Korean cosmetics. Exports of K-beauty products to the U.S. have increased from $841 million in 2021 to $2.2 billion in 2025, while exports to China have fallen sharply from $4.8 billion to $2 billion over the same period. The shift comes amid souring relations between Seoul and Beijing while Korean pop culture secures a serious foothold in the United States. With that, Korean beauty products are making their way from 32nd Street all the way to Walmart and Costco.

Mizuki Uchiyama, Nikkei Asia

Heist

Thieves stole three paintings from a private museum on the outskirts of the city of Parma in Italy on the night of March 22-23. The three paintings — Fish by Auguste Renoir, Still Life with Cherries by Paul Cézanne and Odalisque on the Terrace by Henri Matisse — are worth millions of euros. The thieves forced open the entrance door of The Magnani Rocca Foundation, grabbed the paintings in less than three minutes, and then escaped through the museum gardens.

The Associated Press

Grey’s Anatomy

The Ship of Theseus persists, with Grey’s Anatomy getting the greenlight for a 23rd season, pushing the program past the 475 episode mark and extending its run as the longest-running primetime medical drama on television. Just three actors — Chandra Wilson (who plays Dr. Miranda Bailey), James Pickens Jr. (Dr. Richard Webber) and Ellen Pompeo (the eponymous Dr. Meredith Grey) — have remained with the ensemble the entire run. The show continues to perform, more than doubling its original on-air audience of around 2.22 million viewers thanks to streaming. Its voluminous library also consistently pushes it into the top tier of monthly Nielsen streaming ratings.

Rick Porter, The Hollywood Reporter

Production

As studios drastically dial back the volume of film and television produced in the Los Angeles area, Hollywood workers have been under conditions that resemble a recession: there was a 30 percent drop in employment off the late 2022 peak for people who work in motion pictures and television, as the number of newly started productions in the US collapses from 251 in 2021 to just 159 today. Television has been the real killer for the workers in Los Angeles; while film production dropped from 3,406 days of on-location production activity in 2021 to 1,999 days in 2025, television production fell calamitously from 18,560 days of LA production to just 6,582 days.

Nate Rattner and Ben Fritz, The Wall Street Journal

Miniatures

The miniature figurine market (generally dominated by Warhammer and other Games Workshop products) reached $585 million in 2025 in the United States and Canada. That is up 7.3 percent year over year, an accelerated growth from the two percent growth notched in 2024. Games Workshop sales were up 18 percent in North America over the period, while RPG-related miniatures slowed from Dungeons & Dragons, which saw new players decrease. Also performing well was BattleTech from Catalyst Game Labs, which did well despite a surprise $240,000 tariff bill when their product was in transit to the U.S.

Milton Griepp, ICv2

Lightning Storm In Space

A new study published in AGU Advances argues that lightning bolts in the massive storms of Jupiter are 100 to 10,000 times more energetic than the lightning bolts of Earth’s comparatively smaller storms. The finding is based on data from four storms observed from the Juno spacecraft that has orbited Jupiter for a decade. Given that a bolt of lightning on Earth releases one billion joules of energy, the biggest lightning bolts on Jupiter would carry 10 trillion joules of energy. That is roughly equivalent to a sixth of the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Those four storms saw three flashes of lightning per second on average in storms that were 3,000 kilometers across.

Robin George Andrews, Science

Hermit Crabs

Some devotees of hermit crabs object to the way that the animals are treated as boardwalk curiosities destined for a brief life as pets. There’s evidence that hermit crabs can live for 50 years under ideal care; Jonathan Livingston Crab was a specimen purchased in 1976 in Ocean City, Maryland, which died after 45 years in captivity. Advocates argue that hermit crabs ought to be handled as exotic pets worthy of special care, and programs that attempt to breed them in captivity have had some success. Self-taught expert, Mary Akers, for instance, saw her crab spawn 242 larvae in 2016, proving that captive breeding could be done and that hermit crabs need not be harvested from the wild in order to fuel the pet trade.

Katie L. Burke and Rebecca Byerly, The New York Times

This week in the Sunday edition, I spoke to Manny Fidel, of the podcast NO SUCH THING and author of the brand new book Colored People Time: A Case for Casual Rebellion.

The book is an insightful and page-turning collection of essays contemplating time, how time feels different at different moments in our lives, in different places, between different people. It’s a really delightful book and I enjoyed it a whole lot. The book is available wherever books are sold, and if you don’t already, do follow Manny’s great podcast, NO SUCH THING.

If you subscribe, you get a Sunday edition! It’s fun, and supporters keep this thing ad-free. This is the best way to support something you like to read:

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: Tough Cookie · Bigfoot · How To Read This Chart · Uncharted Territory · Fantasy High · Ghost Hunting · Theodora & Justinian · Across the Movie Aisle · Radioactive Shrimp ·

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