Numlock News: May 22, 2025 • Stitch, Hummingbirds, Tarot
By Walt Hickey
For the next two weeks, we’re celebrating Numlock’s seventh anniversary! The newsletter is still going strong seven years in, and that’s thanks to the many readers who pay to subscribe to the newsletter. For the next couple of weeks, we’re doing one of the two big sales we do every year.
If you subscribe, you get a Sunday edition! It’s fun, and supporters keep this thing ad-free.
This year, there’s a small catch. I’ve kept the price of Numlock at $5 per month or $50 per year for the past seven years. I have no immediate plans to raise prices, but I’m just going to put this out there: 2025 is the last year I can promise that new subscriptions can be this price. As a result, this is potentially the best time to subscribe, ever.
Stitch
Disney is out with a new live-action version of Lilo & Stitch, the latest in its quest to recycle the emotional weight the company has mined over the course of its long animation history. The property is an interesting one, in a kind of classic Disney way: while the original movie did fine upon release, making $273 million globally ($484 million adjusted for inflation), this little alien has had a very, very long tale on the merchandising side. The bat-like alien Stitch has become a bit of an under-the-radar juggernaut brand for the company. In its two most recent annual reports, the Mouse goes so far as to specifically name Lilo & Stitch as one of nine examples of major licensed properties in its IP library. The property joins the company of Winnie the Pooh, Star Wars, the Avengers and Mickey and Friends. Reality is, when it comes to creatures like Stitch, the box office dollar — projected to be $120 million opening weekend this time around — is just the first revenue stream of many. If anything, this live action is just an ad for a renewed push in Stitch plushies, clothing, accessories, toys and more, which probably produces more revenue for Disney than that movie ticket.
Ashley Spencer, The New York Times
Humpbacks
Humpback whales continue to swim into fishing gear, and a new study of their eyesight may indicate why. The Humpback’s eye has a large sclera (the white part), and it is thick in the back of the eye, which shortens the focal length. They have a low density of retinal ganglion cells (the business part of the eye), with a maximum density of 180 cells per square millimeter, vastly under the human 12,000 to 38,000 cells per square millimeter. The visual acuity of the sight of a Humpback whale is 3.95 cycles per degree, considerably lower than the human 60 to 100 CPD, and even lower than the threshold for human blindness at 6 CPD. Seen from their perspective, the ocean looks different than the way we would see it: a dense school of prey fish is clearly recognizable, but a gillnet is downright invisible.
Poly
A new survey of Americans’ romantic experiences found that 70 percent of participants have had an an unreciprocated crush, 53 percent have been cheated on, 47 percent have had a long-distance relationship, 38 percent have gotten back together with an ex, 33 percent have cheated on someone and 19 percent have been in a love triangle. Of interest in the survey is the 9 percent of respondents who said they had been in a polyamorous or open relationship at some point. Polyamory remains controversial, with just 14 percent of respondents indicating they might be open to a polyamorous relationship. Of the 80 percent who said they probably or definitely would not consider polyamory, the most common reasons cited were moral opposition (50 percent), lack of interest (50 percent), jealousy (34 percent) and a lack of emotional capacity (14 percent). Although “I already have enough things on my GCal, and from an organizational perspective, I don’t think I can handle anything more” was admittedly not an option.
New Age
A survey of 9,593 U.S. adults found that 30 percent of respondents consult a fortune teller, tarot cards, astrology or a horoscope at least twice a year, with astrology being the most common by far. While it sometimes seems we’re in a bit of an astrology boom — one must assume that texts to parents asking for the precise time of one’s birth are at an all-time high — the level of people who engage with astrology is actually pretty stable; the 27 percent who consulted astrology at least twice this past year is not too different from the 29 percent who said so to Pew in 2017 and the 23 to 28 percent who said as much every time Gallup asked the question from 1990 to 2005. Most do it for fun; just 1 percent of respondents said they rely a lot on what they learn from such divination.
Chip Rotolo, Pew Research Center
Hummingbirds
A new study looked at the changing population and morphology of the Anna’s hummingbird (found in the western United States) and found that the use of bird feeders appears to have made a swift evolutionary impact on the birds. Early hummingbird feeders became widespread in California following World War II, and the researchers developed a number of proxies for feeder count, including newspaper ads. As the feeders proliferated, the hummingbirds’ beaks got longer and larger, natural selection presumably favoring animals adept at consuming the most calories available from feeders. These changes were more pronounced in areas with more feeders. The wild thing is how fast this happened: the difference between specimens from the 1930s and the 1950s is noticeable, and that’s only about 10 generations of birds.
Brake
Brakes in cars and trucks operate through friction, and that process tends to wear away brake pads over time, necessitating their eventual replacement. The stuff that wears away then becomes particulate matter on roads and in the surrounding air; even EVs give off this kind of particulate emission. However, Europe is set to roll out the Euro 7 standard, which limits 10 and 2.5-micron particulate emissions, exactly like the kind that brakes give off. Brembo, the Italian manufacturer of braking systems, has developed a new brake called Greentell, which cuts brake dust emissions by 90 percent, as well as an 80 percent reduction in surface corrosion compared to your typical brake.
Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica
Teeth
A very cool new paleontology study suggests that dentin, the inner layer of teeth that transmits sensory information to nerves, actually first emerged as a form of sensory tissue. The study discovered an early vertebrate fish from the Ordovician period, 465 million years ago, that possessed dentin in its bumpy armored exoskeleton, presumably allowing the fish to feel out its environment from underneath a tough armored exterior.
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The dentin piece is fascinating. Dental issues seem to proliferate among people with MS; are our immune systems eating dentin along with myelin?
What you don't mention in your automotive-related story is that there is already a black market for the old style brakes, which are much cheaper. Organized crime is almost certainly involved, making this a case of Braking Bad.
(Thank you; I'll show myself out now)