Numlock News: May 15, 2025 • Curvularia, Barbie, Feijoas

May 15, 2025

Bots

South Korea has the highest number of industrial robots per capita, with 1,012 machines for every 10,000 workers as of 2023, three times the global average. The robotics industry is expected to hit $367 million this year, up from $245 million last year. The country is highly industrialized but also aging rapidly and is staring down an eventual labor shortage. So, the government is trying to increase the use of industrial robots in many professions. It’s working better in some areas compared to others: efforts to roll out robotic chefs at restaurants have had mixed outcomes, with some diners complaining that the food is worse when made by bots. I happen to think the solution is simple, and you can find my proposed working paper published in the preprint database Fanfiction.net titled Terminator Except It’s Actually More Of A Ratatouille Situation.

Michelle Kim, Rest of World

Banned

Seventeen Major League Baseball players who were on the MLB’s ineligible list for various offenses against the league are dead. Incidentally, a new decision from commissioner Rob Manfred revoked permanent ineligibility upon death, meaning that all of a sudden, the men are potentially eligible to enter Cooperstown in the Hall of Fame. Some of them are probably not bound for the halls — many were mediocre players on the infamous game-rigging Black Sox, while some made the list due to criminal charges, such as Benny Kauff, who was banned from baseball by Kenesaw Mountain Landis over an auto theft charge. All eyes are on Pete Rose — infamously banned for betting on baseball — and Shoeless Joe Jackson of the White Sox, who was accused of throwing the 1919 World Series on behalf of gambling interests. Either way, Manfred’s decision certainly refocuses attention on the only interesting part of professional baseball: the past.

Brendan Coffey, Sportico

Synergy

Fungi get viruses, too, and there are a whole host of viruses that specifically target them. In some cases, Fungi actually gain a significant boost from being infected. Fungal viruses differ from many that infect animals and plants, with many having no protective protein coat at all, never leaving their host and only transmitting when two fungal strands meet in the soil. One study found a fungus that contained 17 different viruses, and others can carry even more. What’s particularly wild is when there’s a symbiosis: in Yellowstone National Park, there’s a type of panic grass called Dichanthelium lanuginosum that lives in the geothermally heated soils of the park. Alone, whenever the soils get hotter than 50 °C, the plant withers, and when exposed to temperatures of 65 °C or above, it dies. However, when hosting the Curvularia protuberata fungus, the plant survives and thrives at either temperature. Interestingly enough, the heat tolerance only happens when the fungus contains a virus named Curvularia. It then takes three organisms together to endure the heat, which increasingly sounds like “later-generation weird Pokémon evolution forms” to me.

Amber Dance, Knowable Magazine

Giacometti

Gasps, shock and one must presume the occasional falling monocle followed an unexpected twist at Sotheby’s Modern art evening sale earlier this week. The pre-sale estimate of $170.3 to $248.7 million completely missed the mark, with a total haul of just $152 million, well under the $198.1 million cleared at the same event last year. One issue? The star of the show bombed: a painted bronze by the artist Alberto Giacometti called Grande tête mince cast in 1955 failed to sell. The bust, which depicts the artist’s brother, was projected to sell for over $70 million. However, bids capped out at $64 million, as there was no guarantee that the lot would sell. The auction did set a record for Frank Lloyd Wright, as a lamp he designed went for $6.1 million.

Carlie Porterfield, The Art Newspaper

Barbie

A new study tracked the shifts in the styles of Barbie dolls over the decades, analyzing 2,750 versions of Barbie dolls from 1959 to 2024. Interestingly, one of the biggest shifts for Barbie is posture, as the percentage of Barbie dolls that stand on tip-toes has declined from all of them in the first decade of production to just 40 percent of the dolls produced between 2020 and 2024. The study found that Barbie dolls who had jobs were more likely to have flat feet, while the more fashion-oriented varieties of Barbie were more likely to stand on tip toes.

Public Library of Science

Mother

In our society, it is often assumed that the mother is the default parent and the first contact for schools and other caregivers over children’s fathers. In one study, researchers posed as fictitious parents and emailed 80,000 school principals, saying that they were searching for a school for their kid. The principals were 40 percent more likely to call the mother than the father listed in the experiment. Even in experimental cases when the “father” was the one who sent the email and specifically indicated that he was more available than the wife, principals still called the mother 12 percent of the time.

Olga Khazan, The Atlantic

Feijoas

A feijoa is the fruit of a plant native to the highlands of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina that has, by way of a historical mystery, made its way to New Zealand. From there, it has become a cult favorite for the past century. The trees thrive in New Zealand’s climate, but the fruit itself is a bit tricky, lasting only two to three weeks in chillers and thus resists export. Researchers are working on ways to increase the shelf life of the fruit, but for the time being, it’s an institution in New Zealand. For a few weeks in the autumn of each year (the Northern Hemisphere’s spring) people with feijoa trees in the backyards will offer it for free to neighbors, if only because it’s damn near impossible for a single household to consume a tree’s bounty alone. There is still demand in stores — they go for NZ$9 to NZ$10 per kilogram (US$5 to US$6), but there are only about 100 commercial feijoa growers in the country, and much of the fruit gets juiced.

Charlotte Graham-McLay, The Associated Press

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 ·