Numlock News: November 6, 2026 • Broadway, Dinosaur, Red Card

Nov 06, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Wind

Revolution Wind is up and running off the coast of New England, with the Ørsted offshore wind farm now the largest in New England. The wind farm is off the coast of Rhode Island, has 65 turbines, can generate 704 megawatts and could power 350,000 homes. Despite facing challenges from the federal government, wind power hit an all-time peak in New England at 2,400 megawatts last Friday. It will meet five percent of Connecticut’s electricity needs and 20 percent of Rhode Island’s, and will save ratepayers $500 million annually by 2028. Though much has been snarled by opposition, a 924-megawatt wind farm called Sunrise Wind off the coast of Long Island has completed the work of installing all foundations, and an 800-megawatt, 62-turbine project, Vineyard Wind, will reach full power soon.

Miriam Wasser, WBUR

Soccer

A semifinal soccer match for the Minas Gerais Under-20 Championship resembled a hockey game in Brazil, resulting in a world record 53 red cards. The game was between Uberlândia and Mamoré, and all told, 43 players, eight members of the coaching staff and even two Uberlândia board members were dismissed. The previous record was 36 red cards in 2011. Mamoré was up 3-1 when one player taunted the opponent’s bench; this led to an altercation that began in the 54th minute of the second half, where the game was subsequently paused for 40 minutes, at which point the referee gave up, abandoned the game and declared it over.

Ffion Wynne, BBC News

Engravings

A new study published in Antiquity described 280 Paleolithic engravings found in a cave in Spain. The cave, Cova de la Font Major, was excavated in 1957 and has since become a tourist destination; the engravings went a long time without being noticed, and may have even been graffitied over in some cases by more recent visitors. The engravings were first spotted in 2019, at which point tourist access to the cave was limited.

Jackie Flynn Mogensen, Scientific American

Life Without Parole

Outgoing California Governor Gavin Newsom has announced he will commute the sentences of all 548 people currently condemned to death in the state of California, commuting their sentences to life without the possibility of parole, an act which would be the single largest death row commutation in the nation’s history. California implemented a moratorium on executions in 2019; the 548 people affected by the commutation are a fourth of the total number of people on death row in the United States and make up the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere. Of the commutations, 166 need no additional act beyond the governor’s commutation for their death sentence to be converted to life without the possibility of parole, and the other 382 were twice convicted of a felony, which in California requires four judges of the California Supreme Court to proceed. The seven-justice court has a vacancy, and of the six current justices, two were appointed by Newsom, three by his Democratic predecessor Jerry Brown and one by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Chris Geidner, Law Dork

Ready to Drink

Beer companies have been muscling in on market share previously held by liquor companies thanks to ready-to-drink cocktails, which have become 10 percent of U.S. alcohol sales by volume, up from three percent a decade ago. Sales by value of RTD is up 28 percent over the 52 weeks ending October 17. Even as beer has suffered, the companies that make beer and have diversified into canned ready-to-drink beverages have found a lifeline. Boston Beer, which is best known for Sam Adams, also owns Sun Cruiser and a number of other RTDs, and at this point, actual beer is just 15 percent of Boston Beer’s volume.

Carol Ryan, The Wall Street Journal

Broadway

Broadway’s orchestras have shrunk and scaled back over the past several decades, a new analysis found. For musicals that debuted from 1990 to 1994, the median size of the pit was 23 musicians, a figure that has gradually shrunk to 14 musicians in the 2010 to 2014 classes of musicals and down slightly more since. That’s due to the total demise of the large orchestra; for the shows that came out in the 1990 to 1994 cohort, 54.1 percent had at least 21 members; in the 2020 to 2024 cohort, that’s down to 8.9 percent.

Chris Dalla Riva, Can’t Get Much Higher

Dubreuillosaurus

Dinosaur fossil auctions are controversial, because they take one-of-a-kind natural scientific specimens and sequester them to the whims of a private collector, potentially never to be seen again. It’s bad enough when it’s, say, a T. rex, but a new auction in Paris by the Millon auction house has sparked even more controversy because they’re auctioning off the Dubreuillosaurus fossil. That is, the only fossil we have of Dubreuillosaurus — the sole specimen, what’s known as a holotype, the fossil that researchers compare other fossils to in order to determine if they’re the same species. It’s an incredibly unusual auction and one that could set what the paleontology community considered a terrible precedent: selling off scientifically unique holotypes to a person who could very well decide to never again share it with the research community. The fossil has been on loan to the National Museum of Natural History by its discoverer, André Dubreuil, and since his death in 2024, his heirs have decided to flip it to the highest bidder, where it is expected to fetch $280,000 to $390,000.

Nicholas St. Fleur, National Geographic

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Numlock News is written each day by Walt Hickey. Email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Every post is entirely by a human; send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news. If you enjoy Numlock, tell a friend, word of mouth is the only way that independent publications like this one grow.

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