Numlock News: May 14, 2025 • Obsidian, Adult Swim, Suez

May 14, 2025

New Jersey

A Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey, had sales of about $20,000 in 2019 and less in 2020. However, in April 2021, it was discovered that the diner was the sole asset of a company that had gone public through a SPAC reverse merger, and it had achieved a price of $13 per share. This meant that the company was worth over $100 million because of a single middling restaurant in New Jersey, which obviously attracted the attention of law enforcement. The hundred-million-dollar diner shut down in August 2022. It was only yesterday that an 82-year-old man was sentenced to six months in prison for his role in the fraud.

Chris Dolmetsch, Bloomberg

Firetrucks

The International Association of Fire Fighters, which is the largest labor union for firefighters in the country, is calling for antitrust investigations against the companies that produce fire trucks. The union alleges that consolidation in the industry has doubled the cost of trucks, added years-long wait times to their production and both endangered firefighters and the public. Ladder trucks now cost about $2 million each, double the price of a decade ago, and backlogs have run as long as four years. Three companies — REV Group, Oshkosh and Rosenbauer — have rolled up two-thirds of the market for the trucks.

Jody Godoy, Reuters

Obsidian

A new analysis of obsidian volcanic glass artifacts discovered in the capital of the ancient Mexica Empire, Tenochtitlan, concluded that the Aztecs obtained the valuable material from all sorts of different regions, often importing it from great distances to the heart of the empire. The researchers looked at 788 artifacts and found that the obsidian came from eight different sources, with 90 percent of it coming from Sierra de Pachuca, which is 94 kilometers northeast of the city. Over time, the Mexica Empire diversified its source of obsidian as it expanded its territory.

Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, Science

Go Team Venture

While Americans live in a media environment sculpted in many ways by Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, the cable network itself is in a state of undeath. Warner Bros Discovery’s ownership of the network doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in hawking its library, as the Cartoon Network tile on the Max app only had 11 series out of the hundreds that aired over the decade. The demise of cable is also taking a toll, with annual advertising revenues for the network dropping from $668.3 million in 2014 to $133.7 million last year. Adult Swim, the programming block originally designed for adult after-hours viewers, has a thriving online presence, but ratings have gone dismal, dropping from 1.3 million prime time viewers in 2014 to 210,000 today.

Felix Gillette, Bloomberg

Low Oxygen

New research into whale sharks found that the leviathans deliberately swim into dangerous parts of the ocean, which is deadly for many marine creatures due to the area’s low levels of dissolved oxygen. According to the data, most global sightings of whale shark newborns — a rare sight, with just 33 newborn whale sharks spotted over 50 years of observation — appeared in these oxygen minimum zones, where levels might be 10 times lower than the surrounding area. The theory is that the vulnerable newborns might use the OMZs as a shelter from predation, popping out of them to hunt but otherwise growing in an area where other marine life dare not dwell.

Claudia Geib, bioGraphic

Suez

It’s been a rough year for the Suez Canal: tensions in the Persian Gulf and risks to shipping from Houthi rebels have meant that many ships would rather take the long detour around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope to get from the Indian Ocean to European ports and back. Revenue from the Suez, which is crucial for Egypt, dropped to $880.9 million in the fourth quarter of last year, down from $2.4 billion the previous year. To entice ships, the Suez Canal Authority is doing a 15 percent off sale on transit fees for any container ship with a net tonnage of 130,000 metric tons or more for the next 90 days.

Reuters

Disaster

According to the newly published statistics from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 11 million people in the United States were displaced due to natural disasters last year. This is the largest number of people of any country; worldwide, 46 million people were displaced internally due to a natural disaster. Cyclones — particularly Hurricanes Helene and Milton — were responsible for over half of all such displacements across the world, with flooding responsible for another 42 percent. Those displacements can last a long time: as of the end of 2024, 9.8 million people in the world were still living in displacement from disasters, an increase of 29 percent from 2023.

Chelsea Harvey, E&E 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: Traffic Cam Photobooth · Money in Politics · Sax Solo · Terra Nova · Didion · Me, But Better · Flow · Four Nations · Tabletop · Fortnite · Sleep ·