Numlock News: October 22, 2026 • Pinball, Godzilla, Volleyball

Oct 22, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Adidas

Shoe company Adidas spent something like $1 billion total on the World Cup, an outlay that rattled investors given the sheer size and doubt around whether or not Adidas can reasonably expect to make that back. The company supplied jerseys for 14 teams, ran myriad fan events and a blue chip ad campaign with the Cup that culminated in a 30 percent spike in marketing costs. And while measures of Adidas’ brand have shown improvement, the company missed earnings expectations back in July. That said, analyst still think there’s money coming Adidas’ way as a result of the World Cup spend, with something like €250 million to €350 million ($280 million to $393 million) in World Cup-related action to still be delivered this quarter.

Megan Graham, The Wall Street Journal

Bacon

The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game contends that any actor in Hollywood can, within a reasonable number of steps, be connected to a film also starring Kevin Bacon. Drawing from a dataset of 169,000 actors, 1 percent of actors have appeared in a film with Bacon, 70 percent of actors just two movies away, 29 percent of actors three movies away, and less than 0.1 percent of actors four movies away. Running the data for every actor, it turns out no single performer can reach all of Hollywood within three degrees. Kevin Bacon’s remoteness score is 2.28, meaning an actor is on average 2.28 degrees from Bacon, however that’s only 175th-best in the industry. The center of Hollywood is, in fact, Samuel L. Jackson, who has a remoteness of 2.09, followed by Willem Dafoe at 2.13 and Robert De Niro at 2.14.

Owen Lacey, The Pudding

Volleyball

Two competing professional leagues have formed in the United States for women’s professional volleyball, with both Major League Volleyball and League One Volleyball (or “LOVB”) each serving up in the past two years, anticipating that the sports’ rapid growth at the youth level and a big focus at the 2028 Olympics will put the sport over the top culturally. There are some differences between the promotions: MLV has the standard locally-owned teams, draft, and free agency period seen in other sports leagues, while LOVB has league-owned and operated teams that are vertically integrated with youth clubs and add players through deals with the league. The next MLV season starts in January and will feature 26 regular-season games for each team, while LOVB tips off in December and will see teams play 20 games.

Katie McInerney, The Fixture

Pinball

Most of the pinball industry is historically based around Chicago, and every year it gathers for the Pinball Expo in October. Pinball has stabilized from a sharp decline in popularity caused by other games becoming available, and there’s actually some fascinating innovation going down in the space. The business is dominated by Stern Pinball of Elk Grove, Illinois, which controls around 90 percent of the industry and is largely fueled by licensing, such as a new game revealed this year tied to Fallout.

Nick Indge, Ars Technica

Toho

Japanese film giant Toho saw domestic anime streaming revenue decline 6 percent year over year to ¥5.5 billion ($35 million) in the six months ending in August, reflecting the changing demographics of the home Japanese market. Business is otherwise booming overseas, though, with international anime streaming revenue up 62 percent year over year, hitting ¥9 billion ($57 million) in the same six-month period. Overall, it’s good to be in the kaiju business, with Godzilla IP hitting a record high.

Richardson Handjaja, Animenomics

Pharmaceuticals

When the big employer in town goes belly up, it can be a struggle for communities to figure out how to adapt and find new companies to invest in a region. This has been a significant issue in Myanmar’s Shan state, where difficulties in the financial and sales sectors has forced the region to innovate and switch to pharmaceutical research and production. By which I mean, the various scam and fraud businesses that defrauded victims of $43.8 billion globally have been the subject of a government crackdown in the Mekong. This has in turn fueled a sprawling drug empire in Shan state producing methamphetamine, which is known as yaba or shabu depending on its form. It’s been a blockbuster product for the Golden Triangle, with $48.1 billion to $74.8 billion in sales within Southeast Asia alone.

Joseph Rachman, Foreign Policy

Overshoot

The United Nations says that it has now become impossible to avoid global warming above 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, with the primary goal now to ensure that the overshoot above 1.5C is as brief as possible. Emissions are currently on track to cause 2.8C of warming by the end of the century. The lowest possible overshoot would see global temperatures peaking at between 1.7C and 1.8C above pre-industrial levels, with a 50 percent chance that they fall back to 1.5C by 2100. Accomplishing that would require an 18 percent emissions cut by 2030, a 45 percent cut by 2035, and a 69 percent cut by 2040. Currently, under existing climate pledges, emissions will fall 5 to 8 percent by 2030 and 11 to 15 percent by 2035.

Madeleine Cuff, New Scientist

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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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