Numlock News: May 8, 2026 • Protein, HMS Terror, Curiosity
By Walt Hickey
I am going on my annual vacation for the next week and a half, so per tradition your morning newsletter will come from a brilliant crew of some of my favorite writers who will be filling in for me in my absence. Thanks as always for reading! Enjoy the guest stars, I certainly will.
Protein Powder
In disastrous news for the himbos, beefcakes, swoles, brawny and hunks, there is a looming shortage of the whey protein concentrate that constitutes the central ingredient in protein powders, as demand for high-protein foods has outpaced the dairy industry’s ability to supply what was once a byproduct. Whey protein concentrates with 80 percent protein powder are seeing spot prices hit $11 per pound, and the protein isolate that comes in at 90 percent protein by weight is well into the $12 or more territory. As producers try to grow their supply of why protein, there’s incidentally an increase in the supply of butterfat, which is another byproduct that is actually in a massive surplus right now. Not helping the situation is everyone from Doritos to Pop Tarts dusting their wares with protein now in order to appeal to the macronutrient-conscious consumer, which is seemingly everyone; reports from one small town indicate a local community organizer has resorted to eating five instead of four dozen eggs every morning to help him get large.
Franklin
Researchers have identified the remains of four members of the doomed Franklin expedition, where the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror attempted to find the Northwest Passage in 1845 and were trapped in the ice. In 1848, the remaining crew of 105 men attempted to walk to the Canadian mainland across the ice, all dying in the process. The new studies — one published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports and the other in Polar Record — identified three skeletal remains found on King William Island and one further south by comparing extracted DNA to the DNA of living relatives. So far, the remains of 23 expedition members have been found; with these four identified, the total number positively identified is now six.
Tom Metcalfe, Scientific American
Big
After the recent success of the Godzilla and King Kong updated franchises, it was only a matter of time before producers got wise to the trends and realized that now is the moment to greenlight any kaiju-related content they’ve got on the back burner. Based on the classic 1963 book series that sold 135 million copies across 20 languages and extending the IP past a 2000 animated series, a 2019 animated series and three games, 9 Story Media Group announced that it will produce a new television series of Clifford the Big Red Dog in collaboration with PBS Kids. It’ll consist of 26 new episodes each with an 11-minute story that dive even deeper into the Clifford mythos and lore of the iconic monstrosity for an intended audience aged three to five.
Stephanie Prange, Media Play News
Stuck
The Curiosity rover on Mars ran into a small problem on April 25 when it drilled into a 28.6 pound, 1.5 foot wide, 6 inch thick rock that NASA named Atacama. When the rover attempted to pull out its drill arm, the rock came up with it, having gotten stuck. This is a humiliating moment for any home renovation project, but when the drill in question is on a different planet, it becomes a real problem. The controllers attempted to shake the rock off, tried vibrating the drill, and then on May 1, they succeeded in shaking the rock loose when they tilted and rotated the drill while spinning the bit.
Adam Kovac, Scientific American
Museums
A new study from the Government Accountability Office found that based on a survey of 300 museums and 17 site visits, 85 percent of U.S. museums have a backlog of building maintenance or repairs and 77 percent have at least one structural issue that puts the collection at risk. One conclusion of the research was that most of the 16,700 museums in the United States are actually rather small, with limited budget and staff and often serving local or regional historical interests, many of which are often historic homes themselves, making it even more difficult to repair. I have a solution, hear me out: we do 16,700 Met Galas, doing 46 Met Galas a day, all the way down to the Eastern Oakland Nail Clipper Museum or the Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi Historic Childhood House, all of them get a Met Gala.
Helen Stoilas, The Art Newspaper
Solar
You know that an energy source is really valuable once people start trying to steal it, something that Chile’s solar boom is now having to deal with. A panel weighs 30 kilograms and cost around $60 to $70 apiece, and have become the targets of criminal organizations given the now 11,190 megawatts of solar capacity installed across the sun-drenched country. In 85.7 percent of cases, the thieves go for the copper wire, with the photovoltaic panels pilfered in 54.8 percent of cases.
Teach A Man To Fish? Please Don’t.
A new analysis of thousands of recreations fishing surveys finds that people who fish recreationally catch two billion to six billion fish each year, and while many practice catch-and-release, the estimate is that recreational anglers keep between 230,000 and 670,000 metric tons of fish in the United States. To be clear, that’s well above previous estimated, coming in at 20 percent of the total recorded annual consumption of fresh fish. We also know that some fisheries are under stress; a 2019 analysis of 200 lakes in northern Wisconsin found that 40 percent of walleye recreational fisheries were overfished.
Matthew Robertson, The Conversation
This week in the Sunday edition, I spoke to Stephen Follows who is out with a new video all about the casting of Bond. Casting James Bond is a particularly hard task, even for Amazon, and Stephen breaks down why. We also talked rankings, scoring, and who the next Bond might be.
This project is one of the videos from his new YouTube channel, which I recommend checking out. You can read about the video over at his newsletter too, if that’s more your thing.
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Enjoy your time off, Walt!
About 30 years ago, I drove with my dad from Wisconsin to the Dakotas and back. I drove, he read local papers (they still existed !) to me, and we stopped at every tiny museum we came across. What a delight! The dioramas, the bits of local and regional lore. They were kept up mainly by elderly volunteers, as far as we could tell. It makes sense, but saddens me, that these adorable time capsules are being lost.
Have a great vacation Walt!