By Walt Hickey

Welcome back!

Mickey 17

The new Bong Joon Ho movie Mickey 17, an elaborate fantasy imagining a world where wealthy elites consider the lives of the working class to be disposable, opened to $19.1 million in North America. In addition to the $34.2 million it made internationally, it is good for $53.3 million globally. That is a pretty good start for an original concept at the cinema and a sign that audiences are still down to come out for weird little movies that are R-rated social satires. If there’s a problem for the distributor, it’s that they spent $118 million on the project. Even so, I think the problem is clearly in the adaptation; the original novel is Mickey7, and it’s clear to me that the addition 10 Robert Pattinsons necessary for this project didn’t come cheap.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

National Hurricane Center

The National Hurricane Center nailed it in the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, according to a preliminary forecast verification from the National Weather Service. The NHC issued 347 forecasts, well above the 1990-2023 average of 325. The forecast track performance was also the best in its history, setting accuracy records at every forecast interval it works in, from 12 hours all the way to 120 hours. There were 34 Rapid Intensification events, double the previous decade’s average, which can be particularly hard to forecast.

Mike Schuler, gCaptain

Ovechkin

Longtime Washington Capitals player Alexander Ovechkin scored his 886th career goal in a game against the Seattle Kraken over the weekend, putting him just nine goals away from Wayne Gretzky’s record of 894 career goals. According to friend-of-Numlock Neil Paine, he’s projected to hit the record on April 13, but this one is going to be watched very, very closely by hockey fans. As he bears down on the record, one interesting element of the Gretzky-Ovechkin relationship has come forward: a 2016 double date where The Great One encouraged Ovi to begin collecting pretty much everything his stick touches. He started with every single stick and puck he’s scored with over the past three years, collected from officials, and immediately tagged by equipment staff. He also collected a rumored colossal archive of memorabilia from teammates, rivals and more that is said to contain over 200 sticks.

Eric Jackson, Sportico

Athens

Prior to getting the folks together and inventing democracy, the Athenians dabbled in other forms of government, including a stint operating under tyranny, presumably just for giggles and to see if the boot on the neck fit. The tyrant Peisistratos ruled the city-state in the 6th century after numerous exiles and returning with an army and a truckload of silver to conquer Athens. Researchers have analyzed 22 ancient coins that Peisistratos used to pay for his return to the throne, specifically analyzing the lead content for different isotopes that indicate where it might have been mined. Lead can serve as a telltale signature of where in the world metal emerged. They found that Peisistratos got his metal from Spain, France, the western Mediterranean, as well as Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria. Essentially, regime change was only possible thanks to the assistance of some interested outsiders.

Sahas Mehra, Science

2G

While many in the world are getting on to 5G telecom service, hundreds of millions of people worldwide are still relying on 2G phones. They’re cheaper and it’s still the only way to get connected in some places. Big picture-wise, this is a problem because the electromagnetic spectrum is finite and scarce, meaning lots of places want to sell off the spectrum allocated to 2G for more up-to-date telecommunications uses. Vietnam, for instance, permanently shut down the 2G network in November, and did so only by offering 4G feature phones to 2G consumers at the government’s cost. This successfully reduced the number of people relying on 2G from 18 million in January 2024 to 143,000 as of November. While feature phones — the phones that aren’t smartphones — have been in decline, in places like India, 2G phones are still 73 percent of the 55 million to 60 million feature phone shipments in 2024.

Lam Le, Rest of World

Disc Rot

A DVD will remain in working order for 30 to 100 years if properly cared for, but Warner Brothers Discovery has confirmed the existence of a serious problem with the DVDs of its films manufactured between 2006 and 2008. Some titles have begun to suffer from early DVD rot, a phenomenon where the DVD begins to separate away and becomes unplayable. WBD has gone so far as to replace the titles when possible as consumers reach out. The current theory is that all of the affected discs came from one specific facility in Pennsylvania using materials that did not stand the test of time.

Scharon Harding, Ars Technica

Crater

The oldest remaining rocks on Earth formed 3 billion years ago, and are in the cores of today’s continents. Authors of a new study in Nature Communications present evidence of finding something really special: the oldest meteorite impact crater on Earth. This was found in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, revealed by telltale shatter cones and spherules. The rock layer of the crater is 3.5 billion years old, which would make it the oldest known crater on Earth by over a billion years.

Tim Johnson, Chris Kirkland and Jonas Kaempf, The Conversation

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