Numlock News: November 17, 2025 • Bourbon Street, Spy Satellites, Sunspots

Nov 17, 2025

By Walt Hickey

Running Behind

The Running Man came in second place at the box office this weekend with just $17 million, coming in behind Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, the third installment in the stage magic-themed heist caper. Now You See Me made $21.3 million domestically and another $54.2 million abroad. The big winner of the week, though, was Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle. It finally opened in China and made $52.4 million there, bringing its global cume to $730 million. It is the top Japanese movie of all time at the global box office, and this weekend became the top-grossing international film in North America. The title is a high-water mark that has been long held by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. While American releases have struggled in China, Japan’s movies are on a hot streak, with other features like Suzume and The First Slam Dunk also overperforming there.

Patrick Brzeski, The Hollywood Reporter and Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter

IV Waste

It is rare to describe a sanitation contractor as universally beloved by a community. However, the French Quarter of New Orleans company IV Waste is held in incredibly high regard for its ability to remove the filth of Bourbon Street. Despite this, the outgoing mayor appeared poised to terminate the contract for IV Waste until a subsequent outcry prompted a reconsideration of that move. The $14 million, six-month contract to keep Bourbon Street free of debris now has an option for three more six-month extensions. One thing that inspired the affection for IV Waste is the company’s practice of spraying lemon-scented fragrance after cleaning, which has made the otherwise fetid boulevards of the party city smell downright pleasant come morning.

Rachel Wolfe, The Wall Street Journal

Trash

The last penny was produced in Philadelphia last week, but now comes an ambiguous afterlife for the coin. There are no plans from the government to phase the penny out of circulation, and the current strategy appears to be letting society figure out what to do with the estimated 300 billion pennies in circulation. Rounded to the nearest 0.1 percent, pennies account for 0.0 percent of the total money supply of the United States. Truly, the government does not care what happens to these cois. It’s not entirely clear that anyone wants to recycle them, either: pennies are mostly zinc, and zinc is worth a quarter of what recycled copper is. The metals are very hard to separate, and only about 165,000 tons of zinc are recycled annually.

Caity Weaver, The Atlantic

Coronal Mass Ejection

Friday saw the sun release a powerful X4.0-class solar flare out of the dynamically active region AR4274. Lucky for us, that region is currently on the other side of the star relative to Earth. However, the sun has a 27-day spin, so it’s entirely possible that AR4272 could stick around long enough to come back around into Earth’s range in a few weeks. After the flare, the sun also had a coronal mass ejection that could very well trigger auroras if they reach Earth. At this point, it is unclear if they will. The sun is particularly rowdy right now because it’s near the peak of its 11-year solar cycle of activity.

Megan Bartels, Scientific American

Quibi 2: This Time We’re Ready For It

Microdramas are gaining popularity the world over. So far, the American entertainment industry has been reluctant to get in on the trend because of the broken “Ozymandias”-esque statue on the outskirts of L.A. named “Quibi.” But the money is real; according to Owl & Co., apps like DramaBox, ReelShort and FlickReels will make more than $3 billion in revenue outside of China, which is triple the revenue of 2024. The top 20 apps have 250 million monthly active users, including about 10 percent of U.S. smartphone owners. The trends are really in microdrama’s favor here; the time spent watching videos on social media is up 22 percent in the past four years.

Julia Alexander, Puck

Marriage

The percentage of 12th graders in high school who expect to get married one day has declined from 80 percent in 1993 to 67 percent in 2023. The percentage who said they don’t plan on marriage has remained for the most part unchanged, but those who are uncertain rose from 16 percent to 24 percent over the same period. For boys, the numbers have been flat: 76 percent of boys surveyed in 1993 wanted to get married, and 74 percent said as much in 2023. The shift has been significant for 12th-grade girls, whose percentage of wanting marriage dropped from 83 percent to 61 percent.

Dana Braga, Pew Research Center

Starshield

A new technical paper detected strange emissions of signal from 170 out of the 193 known Starshield satellites, which are spy satellites built by SpaceX on behalf of the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. Essentially, the satellites are sending space-to-Earth signals on the 2025–2110 MHz band, a frequency that has been reserved for space-to-space or Earth-to-space signals. This issue could cause interference with ground stations trying to communicate in orbit. While it’s likely that NRO coordinated with others within the American government about the usage of the signal band, it’s entirely possible that other countries are unaware and could be causing the interference.

Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica

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