By Walt Hickey

Desalination

The average cost of producing a cubic meter of freshwater from seawater has declined from $1.10 in 2000 to $0.50 today, as desalination efficiency improves and the cost drops considerably. The key cost at this point is energy, which comes out to up to half the price of separating salt and minerals from otherwise perfectly drinkable water. For some island countries it’s a massive energy investment; on Cyprus, desalination is responsible for 5 percent of power consumption. Worldwide, the global market for desalination of water is $20 billion, and as populations in arid yet coastal regions rise, that’s projected to at least double by 2032. As of 2023, desalination was producing 99 million cubic meters of water, up from 27 million cubic meters in 2003.

Patrick Sisson, Sherwood News

Monkeys

Of the 43 monkeys that escaped the Alpha Genesis medical research facility in South Carolina last week, as of late Monday, 30 had been recaptured, leaving a contingent of 13 monkeys in the immediate vicinity of the compound who were still tasting free air. Yes, we’re clearly in the last hour of The Great Escape here, as our debonair heroes with their crafty means of escape are being picked off one by one and returned to incarceration. Still, one hopes that perhaps one of these primates might commandeer a bicycle and make their way into neutral territory, or perhaps stow away on a tramp steamer bound for Sweden, or go on a thrilling motorcycle chase along a barbed wire fence between South Carolina and a place that’s cool with monkeys, if only they can stay under the radar and not be seduced back into custody by offerings of food by Alpha Genesis employees.

The Associated Press

Toilet Paper

Manufacturers of toilet paper get needlessly clever with equivalences, claiming, for instance, that a sheet is some sort of consistent or fungible unity, and that double- or triple-ply tissue constitutes a savings. Indeed, a “roll” is not even a reliable unit; Charmin’s regular roll has 55 two-ply sheets, but good luck finding it in stores, as it’s more of a conceptual, Platonic idea of a roll rather than a legitimate product, with the mega roll being the one you actually get in stores. By the same logic, the Platonic Quilted Northern roll has 73.75 sheets, Angel Soft has 80 sheets, and Cottonelle has 61 sheets.

Whizy Kim, Vox

Sails

Maersk Tankers is putting an eSAIL suction sail on five tankers in 2025 and 2026, a wind-assisted propulsion system that cuts down on fuel use and carbon emissions by generating aerodynamic lift. The tankers with sails won’t be a massive contingent of the Maersk fleet — it’s got over 240 tankers and gas carriers, so five of them isn’t really all that many — but Maersk is still projecting double-digit declines in fuel consumption for the five ships that will be outfitted with the 26-meter-tall eSAIL kit: the Maersk Tacoma, Maersk Tampa, Maersk Tangier, Maersk Teesport, and Maersk Tokyo.

Mike Schuler, gCaptain

Self-Pubbed

A new analysis of ISBNs found that the number of self-published books increased by 7.2 percent from 2022 to 2023, reaching 2,637,367 titles that year. The number of traditionally published titles slipped by 3.6 percent, to 563,019 titles in 2023. There is a slight question of money, given that it’s hard to gauge the weight of a notoriously dispersed community of indie and self-publishers, so we mostly have to take Amazon’s word for it that over the past 10 years, Kindle Direct Publishing authors have made $3.5 billion in royalties, of which $650 million came in the past 12 months.

Andrew Albanese and Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly

Forgeries

A massive European network of art forgers has reportedly been busted as part of a joint operation between Eurojust, the Italian national police, and the prosecutor’s office in Pisa, leading to the discovery of what was reported to be 2,000 fake Banksy works as well as forgeries of works by Monet, Van Gogh, Dalí, and more. The network of counterfeiters reportedly was working with multiple complicit auction houses across Italy to move the fakes. So far, 38 people have been arrested and over 500 forged certificates of authenticity have been discovered.

Gareth Harris, The Art Newspaper

Ouch

A new study published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America sought to find out how people exclaim in pain across different languages — stuff like “ouch!” and “agh!” They analyzed vowel interjections from 131 languages and compared them to 500 vowels produced in contexts of joy, disgust or pain. In general, pain interjections tended to feature open vowels, usually the “a” sounds such as the ai sound you’d find in “ayyy!” or the aw sound you’d find in “ouch!” It appears my local dialect wasn’t represented in the study as I cannot find on the chart the vowel sound “ucking hell, my toe!” that is regularly found in the exclamations of my people.

American Institute of Physics

Thanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today.

Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.

Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement.

Previous Sunday subscriber editions: MCU · Fanfiction · User Magazine · Reentry · Panda Dunks · Net Zero · Spiraled · On The Edge · Luggage · The Editors · Can’t Get Much Higher · Solitaire ·

Posting Nexus · Memorabilia · Drainage Tile · Desert Surfing · Music · Congestion Pricing · Underwater Sound · Hunts Point · Queer Olympics · Energy Drinks · Baseball Movies · Trillion Trees · Risk Aversion ·

Packaging · Ice Cores · Stadium Names · Uncertain · Green Homes · Political Future · UFOs · Antarctica Comms · Rot Economy · The Internationalists · Video Game Funding · BYD · Disney Channel Original Movie · Talon Mine · Our Moon · Rock Salt · Wind Techs

Sunday Edition Archives: 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018