Numlock News: May 6, 2026 • Steam, Similes, Stomach

May 06, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Lotteries

Societies have long had to deal with the basic phenomenon that lots and lots of people like to gamble a little bit. The long-running issue was that when lotteries were illegal, they were by definition only ran by criminals and were therefore benefiting crime syndicates; states addressed this by making a lottery a function of the government, where it can be tightly regulated and the proceeds directed towards public goods. Now, illegal lotteries are back, and they’re taking market share away from official games. Brazil recently blocked more than 25,000 betting sites, and Costa Rica has seen an illicit lottery game pop up that pays 90 times the original bet on a winning number, beating the 70 times from the official lotto. To compete with the illicit game, the Costa Rican lottery hiked payouts to 209 billion colones (US$406 million), up from 70 percent of revenue to 75 percent of revenue, shedding profit percentage from 30.93 percent in 2019 to 23.27 percent in 2024.

Maya Averbuch and Michael D McDonald, Bloomberg

Pub’s Closed

The British Beer and Pub Association announced that 161 pubs closed in the first quarter of 2026, a significant increase in the rate of closures given that only 336 British pubs closed in the entirety of 2025. Across the country, Wales is the only region that reported an increase in the number of pubs, while Scotland was responsible for a disproportionate 41 closures in Q1.

Tabby Wilson, BBC News

Similes

A new analysis of 200,000 similes — phrases like “it’s as hot as the sun” or “I’m as ravenous as one of the cocaine hippos” — drawn from popular fiction finds that for a few adjectives, there are some pretty clear and obvious go-tos. For instance, “as dry as ____” is written with either “bone,” “desert” or “dust” in 43 percent of all usage. When someone is strong, they’re an ox; when something is empty, it’s as empty as a drum; things are as delicate as lace and as small as an ant.

Russell Samora, The Pudding

Stomach

For the first time since the eventful 2020, the number of metabolic and bariatric surgery procedures in the United States has dipped below 200,000, as GLP-1 medications either avert or delay the need for such procedures. From 2023 to 2024, there was more than a 20 percent decline in bariatric surgeries following several steady years of growth. Even within the bariatric surgeries that are happening, the once dominant sleeve gastrectomy had dropped from 64 percent to 58 percent of procedures.

Roger Kissin, American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery

Crannog

Archaeologists examined an artificial stone-built island in Loch Bhorgastail on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, and found a large timber platform hidden underneath the stones. There are hundreds of such small artificial islands called crannogs all across Scotland, and were mainly built between the Iron Age and the post-medieval period. Some of them, like this 5,000 year old structure, may date to the Neolithic, which was between 3800 and 3300 BC. This one featured a circular wooden platform 23 meters across topped with brushwood; 2,000 years after it was first constructed, another layer of brushwood and stone was added, and then another was added 1,000 years later.

University of Southampton

Steam Machine

Valve, a company famous for its ability to ship promised products in a timely fashion, is coming out with a long-awaited console called the Steam Machine. They are unfortunately trying to launch this tech product into a market where semiconductors are hard to come by, so it has been entirely unclear when this thing is going to hit shelves. Avid Valve watchers have resorted to analyzing the shipping data for containers that Valve is getting from China to ports in Los Angeles and Tacoma. Here’s the rub: Valve has had seven shipments since April 23rd with an average weight of 12,600 kilograms each. This is interesting: for the past few years, as Valve released its handheld console, the boxes it gets from China held up to 42 packages with a total gross weight of 14,500 kilograms. This would imply these seven new shipments hold a different product than what Valve has been getting typically. Perhaps the Steam Machine is on American soil? Or, dare I say, Half Life: 3?

Sean Hollister, The Verge

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