Numlock News: October 19, 2026 • Leap Second, Microbialites, You Can See Everything

Oct 19, 2026

By Walt Hickey

What’s On Second?

Street Fighter won the box office weekend, opening to $30 million, but the real shocker is that the No. 2 film in America, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s documentary You Can See Everything about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, has made $15 million from 855 theaters. That’s double the already high expectations for the film and a huge number for a non-music or concert documentary at the box office. The movie was made in secret over three years for $7 million, and the movie leaves this weekend with outstanding buzz that could indicate some solid hangtime at the box office as well as bolster an awards season run. Documentaries don’t usually even get a wide release, and when they do, they tend to average like $3 million in their first weekend. It is the largest debut for any film playing under 1,000 screens since Borat and the biggest opening for a documentary since Fahrenheit 9/11.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Game of the Year

The Game Awards, which recognizes the medium of video games in what’s generally become the highest artistic honor in the craft, has seen the jury of outlets that vote on the prizes become considerably more international. The United States has had the largest presence of any country on the jury, but this year, due to changes in the composition of the jury, that has changed. In 2024 and 2025, American outlets accounted for 24 seats out of the over 130 voters for the awards. The 2026 jury, though, sees an exodus of more mainstream lifestyle outlets from the jury. Now, there are just 17 American outlets on the jury, tied with the number of UK outlets, which rose from 14 to 17. Outlets from English-speaking countries account for 28 percent of the jury, Latin American countries now account for 21 percent of the jury and outlets from mainland Europe are now up to 27 percent of the jury.

Oli Welsh, Polygon

Leap Second

Representatives from 69 countries attended a meeting of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Versailles, France on October 15 and voted to do away with the leap second. Since 1967, when we first developed atomic clocks, coordinated universal time (UTC) became based on the vibration of the caesium-133 atom, not how fast Earth actually pulled off during orbit. Given that natural fluctuations in the rate of rotation of our planet now meant that each year was slightly different, to keep UTC in sync with the heavens, people in 1972 introduced leap seconds, which could be added when the deviation between the atomic clocks and the astronomical clocks exceeded one second. Since then, 27 leap seconds have been added, but they’ve been irritating to implement, and it sure looks like Earth’s rotation is actually accelerating slightly and nobody wants to deal with a “negative leap second.” So, we’re doing leap hours now, and they’re not going to be a problem for several centuries.

Jo Marchant, New Scientist

Fare

Holiday airfares will hit their highest levels in a decade, with the average round-trip Thanksgiving ticket being 31 percent more expensive than last year and the round-trip Christmas ticket being 23 percent higher. According to Hopper, the average round-trip domestic airfare for the Thanksgiving travel period has reached $402 for 2026, a considerable leap when average fares haven’t exceeded $307 since 2017. The average monthly spot price of fuel is up 91 percent since February.

Rebecca Cadenhead and Alison Sider, The Wall Street Journal

Ethiopia

Land degradation in Ethiopia has become a significant economic drag on the country. Stripped forests mean fertile topsoil is being washed away, contributing to declining crop yields that cost the country some $4.3 billion per year in lost income, a problem in a country where 100 million people depend on agriculture for their livelihood. In the early 20th century, forests covered 35 percent to 40 percent of Ethiopia, but by 1989, that was down to three percent, and soon Ethiopia’s highlands were losing one billion metric tons of topsoil annually. That gradually recovered to 17.2 percent in 2019, but in a quest to accelerate that recovery, the government has launched a seedling-planting program that aims to plant 50 billion seedlings by 2030. The program planted 800 million seedlings in a single day in August. In 2023, national forest cover is up to 23.6 percent.

Samuel Abate and Freddie Clayton, bioGraphic

Microbialites

In only a few places across the world, such as Western Australia, there are fossil records known as microbialites — the oldest-known records of microorganisms — preserved in rock for 3.5 billion years. These fossil records are unique because they show how life responded to upheaval, as the microbialite record in Australia spans at least one and possibly two of Earth’s five major mass extinctions. A new study surveyed 50 years of microbialite research to look at how fragile these fossils remain, and how the sites where they may be found are vulnerable to both overcollection as well as damage. Sites such as Lake Clifton and Shark Bay have been damaged, possibly irreparably, by dozens of aurora chasers trampling thrombolites in a restricted area.

Heidi Jane Allen, The Conversation

Wagner

Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary organization founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, continues to hold a firm grip in the Central African Republic even years after the suspicious death of Wagner’s founder. His 28-year-old son, Pavel Prigozhin, has reportedly salvaged the operation and righted the relationship with the Kremlin. According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, the business generates over $400 million a year, with the mercenaries seizing control of gold mines and serving as personal security for the CAR’s president.

Nicholas Bariyo, The Wall Street Journal

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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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