Numlock News: October 20, 2025 • BTS, Denim, Brownies

Oct 20, 2025

By Walt Hickey

Welcome back!

Phone

In the latest cinematic argument against picking up one’s telephone, the Blumhouse movie Black Phone 2 has pulled in $26.5 million domestically and another $15.5 million overseas. It’s a remarkable achievement for a telephone-based serial killer concept that inexplicably did not run out of gas in 2021.

Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter

Football

The Game Book is an essential fixture of college football games, a singular resource for the very best college football coaches to ascertain the most ideal methods to win games. It is an 87-page book, of which 63 pages are updated each week, which is licensed to college football coaches who need to figure out how precisely to handle a given fourth down, or when to punt or what situation calls for an audacious play. The cost of this book — which is recalculated weekly given the actual performance of, for instance, kickers — was $20,000 for Mississippi last year, per an invoice.

Rachel Bachman, The Wall Street Journal

Shipped

A container ship called the Istanbul Bridge has made it from the Chinese port of Zhoushan to the British port of Felixstowe in just 20 days by going through the Arctic Circle. That was still two more days than originally anticipated, but nevertheless, vastly faster than the 40 to 50 days that such a voyage would ordinarily command. “Thanks” to global warming, the Arctic sea route that runs through Russia’s exclusive economic zone can be exploited for commercial gain.

Reuters

Atoms

A new survey found that 59 percent of Americans favor more nuclear power plants, a considerable shift from the 43 percent of Americans who said as much in 2016. Nuclear power is a rare type of non-oil-based energy that enjoyed broader support on the American right wing. In general, this increase has been driven by respondents on the left becoming more comfortable with the idea of nuclear, as many in the environmentalist camp adjust their perspective based on the brutal arithmetic of carbon-based energy versus proton-based energy.

Rebecca Leppert, Isabella Pula and Brian Kennedy, Pew Research Center

Edge Cases

A new survey from YouGov sought to find the overall perspective on a number of burning food questions. For instance, 60 percent of respondents consider chili a stew rather than a soup, 53 percent said they do not think a hot dog is a sandwich, 49 percent prefer a diagonal cut to a sandwich and 67 percent think cole slaw is a salad. Now, the real question is this: which is better, the center of the brownie tray or the edges? All told, 45 percent of respondents prefer the edge and 39 percent prefer the center. If anything, that means our society ought to adjust the dimensions of brownie pans accordingly; otherwise, we can never solve inequality in this country.

Alexander Rossell Hayes, YouGov

Denim

Japanese denim has become popular worldwide in fashion circles, but the long-term availability of the stuff is in question. Japan’s market for denim is projected to grow to $5.2 billion by 2035 (an 85 percent increase), provided it can keep up. The issue is that most of Japan’s denim is made by only a few companies, where high-quality cotton is made into yarn and then dipped into natural indigo repeatedly, then made into denim using looms crafted in the 20th century. In 1975, the country had 300,000 looms, but today it has fewer than 400. The original devices were invented by Sakichi Toyoda, who eventually became interested in engines and is now better known for other work.

Emi Tanimoto and Nicholas Takahashi, Bloomberg

BTS

The awaited return of K-pop phenomenon BTS is around the corner, as the group teases a new album in 2026. This would be a massive event in the music business. A reunion tour alone — with perhaps 65 shows averaging 60,000 fans each — might gross $664 million, with merch alone adding another $72.2 million onsite and a total of $352 million in sales elsewhere. That’s not even mentioning $80 million give or take in gross album sales and $33 million in incremental streaming revenue. Soon, you’ll be talking $1.05 billion in revenue.

Glenn Peoples, Billboard

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