Numlock News: September 3, 2026 • Venus, Nexus, Clippers

Sep 03, 2026

By Walt Hickey

N/A

Dollar sales of nonalcoholic beer, spirits and wine in the United States were up 14 percent in the 52-week period ending July 18, and in the three-month period up to June 27, sales of nonalcoholic beer hit $235 million. The thing is, while the phrase “nonalcoholic” sounds rather decisive, chemically it’s not entirely the case, and at times, that can cause issues for, say, people who have liver transplants and people who really cannot consume alcohol anymore. While many brands use phrases like “zero percent alcohol or zero-proof, regulations have anything with less than 0.5 percent alcohol as nonalcoholic. It’s somewhat expensive to get rid of that last trace of alcohol from the brews, and only a few brands — Budweiser Zero, Michelob Ultra Zero — go that extra milliliter. That has led to some legal issues, such as Heineken getting sued back in 2021 by buyers who said that Heineken 0.0 is, in fact, 0.03 percent ABV.

Jennifer Williams, The Wall Street Journal

Pablo Torre Found Out

The NBA has stripped the Los Angeles Clippers of five first-round draft picks, suspended team owner Steve Ballmer and fined Kawhi Leonard $700,000. This follows a league investigation of a scandal alleging a conspiracy to subvert the salary cap by giving Leonard a no-show endorsement deal with a team sponsor that paid handsomely. The Clippers were also fined $30 million and will lose their first-round picks in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, and 2033.

Michael McCann and Lev Akabas, Sportico

Forgeries

Paris prosecutors have requested a trial for the alleged architect of a criminal ring that trafficked forged art, and have requested a renewed arrest warrant for an Italian painter that they believe was responsible for producing the fake art. WARNING: The following alleged crime you are about to read is extremely European. In 2016, a painting of Venus that was being exhibited as a Cranach was seized by authorities from the collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein and exposed as a fake in an art world fiasco that came to involve art galleries and museums around the world that authenticated and exhibited the works. Over the course of 15 years, the French prosecutors have retained 13 works designated as fakes after forensic examinations, and they are believed to have found the people responsible.

Vincent Noce, The Art Newspaper

Crunchy

The cyclosporiasis outbreak that has spoiled the appetite for iceberg lettuce around the country has prompted some restaurateurs to question whether lettuce is actually worth it at this point. It’s famously nutritionally bereft — typically less than one percent of the calories or protein in your standard lunchtime bowl — and at 95 percent water weight, isn’t adding a whole lot beyond fiber, texture and crunch. The tradeoff for that is considerable: Leafy greens are responsible for as much as 9.18 percent of foodborne illnesses, with lettuce responsible for 60.8 percent of those leafy green outbreaks.

Nathan Libbey, QSR Magazine

Talisman

A new survey found that 53 percent of U.S. adults believe they spend too much time on their smartphone, a percentage that rises to 70 percent among the 18 to 29 cohort. While 45 percent of adults have tried to cut back on their smartphone usage in the past 12 months, only 25 percent of those who made an attempt to dial it back considered the experience a success. Thanks to the Pew Research Center, we now have exactly enough information to turn a standard smartphone into a cursed item in Dungeons & Dragons 5e, offering +1 to insight, causing a level of exhaustion, requiring a DC 11 Wisdom check to realize it is cursed and a subsequent DC 15 saving throw to actually remove it.

William Bishop, Olivia Sidoti and Monica Anderson, Pew Research Center

License

An identity theft service was found selling digital scans of 153 million driver’s licenses from people in the United States and Canada, and they appear to be legitimate. The New Orleans field office of the FBI has launched an official inquiry into the Nexus service, and the data — which appears legitimate — is boasted to have come from an active breach of a major identity verification company. Over the course of 24 hours, the number of driver’s license records increased by 400,000, which would indicate freshly stolen data, some of which appears to have come from companies who rented cars to people.

Brian Krebs, Krebs On Security

Cupid

Venus currently has no moons, but it’s entirely possible it did in the past, according to a new study that modeled what could have happened if Venus did have a moon at some point. Venus revolves around the sun in a 225-day orbit, but rotates comparatively slowly, taking 243 Earth days to rotate one day. Earth’s faster spin transfers angular momentum to Earth’s moon, pushing it out a little bit every year. Venus, by comparison, would have angular momentum transferred inward, which would have inevitably calamitous implications for its satellite; a moon of Venus half the mass of Earth’s Moon could last 1.7 billion years, and one that is the same mass as Earth’s moon could last only 30 million years, after which, the hypothetical Venusian moons would reach a distance of 15,000 kilometers, pass the Roche limit, and get ripped apart. The bad news: Any evidence that this, in fact, is what happened has almost certainly been consumed by the volcanically active surface of Venus.

Jonathan O’Callaghan, New Scientist

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