By Walt Hickey

The Devil

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is expecting a $75 million to $80 million opening weekend in North America, with some analysts expecting ticket sales to come in closer to $90 million to $100 million. With another $100 million internationally, that would be a solid global opening for a movie that cost $100 million to make, and would put it on pace to out-gross the original’s already pretty impressive theatrical run in just a few weeks. Clearly, the world is clamoring for one thing: cash-grabbing sequels to movies that scored Academy Award nominations for Meryl Streep. All your lingering questions will be answered in Doubt: Part Two. Mark you calendar for Silkwood: Half-Life and One True Thing Two: A Second True Thing. Audiences would line up around the block for a lega-sequel of Out of Africa that ignores all the problematic elements of the first film. Whoever wins, we lose in Kramer vs. Kramer: Requiem. The Iron Lady is about to get a visit from Nick Fury if you catch my drift. And speaking of drifting if you loved Julie & Julia, well you better buckle up for 2 Julie 2 Julia, Julie & Julia: Tokyo Drift, The Julie and the Julia, Jules 5, Julie & Julia 6, Julia 7, The Fate of the Julia, J9: The Julia Saga, Julie & Julia Presents: Jacques & Pépin, Julia X and of course Julia: Forever.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Toto

Japanese manufacturer Toto is best known as the producer of toilets and bathtubs, but decades in the ceramics business have teed it up perfectly for a moment in which ceramics have become critical components in semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Yes, welcome to another edition of the best business story of 2026, where the entire global supply chain for AI chips is dependent on a Japanese company that got into the manufacturing of a critical ingredient basically accidentally. Toto expects profits from its advanced ceramic division to jump 32 percent to 27 billion yen (US$169 million) in the fiscal year ending March, which means that the advanced ceramics business is now responsible for 55 percent of its operating profits, outstripping its toilets and tubs.

Rika Kimura, Nikkei Asia

Visionary

Since 1956, peace in Europe has been largely sustained by productive forms of great power competition that can let the people of the continent blow off their nationalistic steam in a productive or at least peaceful manner — like inter-league soccer, Formula 1 racing and of course the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Still, one international competition stands well above the rest: the Eurovision Song Contest, which since 1956 has attracted millions of fans while also simultaneously diverting the continent’s imagination away from developing innovations like “phosgene gas” and towards pursuits such as “inventing ABBA.” A new analysis of the 1,763 songs submitted across 51 countries from 1956 through 2024 found distinct evolutions in the themes and attributes of the submissions. The study found that the music has been getting steadily less nostalgic, more rebellious, less acoustic and more decisively in the genre of pop rather than rock.

Luis A. Nunes Amaral, Arthur Capozzi, and Dirk Helbing, Royal Society Open Science

Penguins

A new study published in The Anatomical Record purports to have found the muscle that causes penguins to waddle. The research looked at the m. flexor cruris medialis, which was known to be involved in bending the knee but has been otherwise debated for over 100 years. The study is based on an autopsy of one male (16 years old, 4.48 kg) and one female (36 years old, 3.16 kg) macaroni penguin donated from SeaWorld San Diego. Researchers found a part of the m. flexor cruris medialis that was actually attached to a different section of the tibiotarsus than previously thought, and while previous research suggested it was just part of the larger muscle, the new study finds it to be anatomically distinct, suggesting the name m. adductor tibialis.

Taylor Mitchell Brown, Science

Oligarchs

Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has had one incidental positive impact for Kyiv: the state that once struggled mightily with corruption as a result of enormously wealthy oligarchs has now shed some of those tycoons. It is a somewhat circuitous path towards a 2019 promise from then-candidate Volodymyr Zelensky who took office opposing the “oligarchization” of politics. The domestic political rivalries that fueled oligarch-controlled media companies gave way to an external fight, and several of the more pro-Kremlin oligarchs — Viktor Medvedchuk, Igot Abramovich and Vadym Stolar — have either left for Russia or the French Riviera. Those that remained loyal have either rebranded as pro-Western philanthropists or began to play ball with the government. The very structural assets and heavy industries that fueled the oligarch’s wealth and gave them outsized power came under attack from the Russians; Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine, saw his fortune cut in half to $7 billion after the invasion.

Paul Hockenos, Foreign Policy

Canada

Canadian liquor brands have enjoyed a boom in local consumption after several provincial liquor authorities cut the sales of American imports after repeated persistent insults from the highest levels of power in charge of their ally and neighbor. The Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation reported that sales of spirits from the province are up 14.5 percent over the past year, with Cape Breton’s Blue Lobster Vodka being a particular breakout hit. When the Liquor Control Board of Ontario — one of the biggest purchasers of alcoholic beverages in the world, supplying booze to 16 million people in the same province where the Toronto Maple Leafs play — removed U.S. products from sale, that cut off $705 million annual sales in U.S. spirits. The LCBO has since reported a 52 percent increase in sales of wine from Ontario-grown grapes and 94 percent increase for sales of deluxe Canadian whisky.

Evan Rail, VinePair

Tech

While American technology giants boast about shrinking their workforces, Chinese tech giants are doing the same, but are keeping it quiet. Last year, Alibaba cut headcount by 34 percent, Baidu’s employee count dropped seven percent and BYD cut 10 percent of their workforce, information only known because the companies disclosed it in annual reports at the end of March. While Silicon Valley talks about their layoffs loud enough for Wall Street to hear, China’s tech plays it close to the vest, in no small part because the layoffs run counter to a Beijing policy of keeping the urban unemployment rate below 5.5 percent through 2030, and adding 12 million urban jobs in the process.

Kinling Lo, Rest of World

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Bioluminescent · CaaStle · Everyone Knows · Buzzballz · Such Great Heights · NFL · Sea Ice · Second · Made in China · Dinosaurs · Tracking · ICE ·

Vera Rubin · Dasani · Uncharted · Dark Roofs · Geothermal · Stitch · Year of the Ring · Person Do Thing · Fun Factor · Low Culture ·

Sunday Edition Archives: 2024 · 2023 · 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018

By Walt Hickey

The Story of Everest

Mountaineers and “icefall doctors” have successfully cleared a route past a massive piece of ice that had been preventing them from reaching Camp 1, and they have already fixed ropes up to Camp 2, which lies 6,400 to 6,500 meters high. The 30-meter-high serac has still pushed preparations weeks behind schedule for a season in which 425 climbers have permits to summit the mountain; climbers will move out of Base Camp starting tomorrow. Clearing a path up Everest is a major annual endeavor, but an increasingly economically crucial one; the Department of Tourism said the climbing season will generate 924,222,675 Nepalese Rupees (US$6,114,955) in government revenue from the permits.

Phanindra Dahal and Olivia Ireland, BBC News

Fire Sale

Oregonians who buy nicotine pouches are paying a 65 cent tax on each tin because the state had a shockingly bad fire season in 2024 and was looking for a way to stash some money away for the next one. Wildfires burned 1.9 million acres in Oregon that year, costing the state $350 million in firefighting expenses alone; it had budgeted just $10 million. This has become a theme across the West as supercharged wildfire seasons overwhelm budgets that were at one point entirely sufficient. Idaho has $38 million budgeted, but a bad year could run them double that. Montana saw that the $40 million special account of 2008 was woefully below what may be needed; the legislature upped that to $152 million in 2023.

Kylie Mohr, High Country News

Mesonet

The 2,500 airports in America with weather stations constitute the backbone of the weather data network that fuels forecasts across the country, but there are lots of people who live more than 20 miles from an airport and therefore tend to get lower-quality weather forecasts than the rest of us. To fill in the gap, a network of 3,000 “mesonet” stations across 38 states constitute an intermediate network that can cover areas with inadequate weather monitoring stations. A new mesonet in Wisconsin, for instance, involved the installation of 78 new stations on three-meter tripods in open areas, and their installation is already resulting in NWS flash flood warnings in regions that might otherwise not have gotten an early warning due to reduced coverage.

Chris Vagasky, The Conversation

Cocaine Hippos

Breaking news on the Pablo Escobar invasive hippopotamus front; the son of an Indian billionaire has offered to buy them. For those inexplicably out of the loop on the most important story in the world, drug lord Pablo Escobar illegally imported a male and female hippopotamus to Colombia using the proceeds of his global pharmaceutical development and sales business. When he was killed in ’93, nobody wrangled the hippos from Hacienda Nápoles, so now there are hundreds of them thriving in the jungle. The government has tried a sterilization campaign, but recently indicated they will just euthanize 80 of the hippos. Enter Anant Ambani, the son of Asia’s richest man, who has announced that he is willing to take and care for the (one must assume remarkably inbred) population at his private zoo in Gujarat, and while Colombia has not yet commented, one must imagine Bogotá is willing to hear him out.

Paulin Kola, BBC News

Planet

A new survey of Americans found that, beyond Earth of course, Mars is the favorite planet in the solar system, with 19 percent of respondents saying that the red planet is their favorite. This is followed by the deeply photogenic Saturn (14 percent), Jupiter (eight percent) and Venus (six percent). About seven percent of respondents wasted their ballots by saying Pluto, which is famously not a planet. Also 55 percent of people don’t have a favorite planet, what else is the point of all that astrology? I’m afraid this is a dismal and frankly ungrateful showing from Earthlings, who failed to recognize their silent protector, their constant guardian, the big guy himself Jupiter. Do you think that Mars is capable of capturing hoards of asteroids and safely marshaling them towards its Lagrange points? Do you think that Mars would take a comet for us if the situation presented itself? Do you think that Mars is the one thing standing between us and the barbarians of the Oort cloud? Sure, Gustav gave it the best entrance music, and it is inhabited entirely by robots, but if Mars is the bringer of war, consider it brought.

Jamie Ballard, YouGov

Grocery

A new projection from the Food Industry Association and NielsenIQ predicts that online grocery sales will grow to $452 billion by 2028. Already, most of the grocery dollar growth is happening online, with 72 percent of growth in the grocery business last year coming from the online space. This year, sales are projected to come in at $363 billion, an improvement on the projection from last year. Online grocery sales are expected to increase at a rate of 11.6 percent annually, while in-store sales are expected to stay flat and grow only about 0.62 percent annually.

Jeff Wells, Grocery Dive

Microwave

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is planning an experiment as soon as this fiscal year to transmit electricity collected on an orbitting solar panel to Earth by way of microwaves. A 2023 CalTech experiment successfully transmitted microwaves from a satellite to the ground, but this experiment will try to get some actual electricity out of the process. This test — the Ohisama Project — will send a satellite with a two-meter-wide solar panel into orbit at 450 kilometers. The satellite will convert that electricity into microwaves that will be targeted at a location in Japan. The goal is to figure out exactly how wide of an area the microwave receivers will need on the ground; receivers will be spread within a 40 kilometer radius centered around Saitama prefecture, with tests taking place over months. The satellite’s power generation capacity is very small at 720 watts, but a successful test could advance JAXA’s goal of a power-generating satellite with a 2.5 square kilometer solar panel in geostationary orbit producing one gigawatt of electricity by 2050.

Mana Kuroda, Nikkei Asia

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By Walt Hickey

PCB

The price of printed circuit boards (PCBs) has risen sharply since Iran struck the Jubail petrochemical complex in April, which halted the production of the high-purity polyphenylene ether resin — a base material of circuit boards. That facility is responsible for 70 percent of the world’s high purity PPE resin, and as a result, PCB prices are up 40 percent in April compared to March, with lead times increasing from three weeks to 15 weeks. Besides the resin, copper accounts for 60 percent of the raw material cost of a PCB, and that too may rise in costs given the 30 percent increase in the price of copper foil seen this year. Multilayer PCBs are selling for 1,394 yuan (US$204) per square meter; the higher-end kind seen in AI servers can cost 10 times that.

Che Pan, Liam Mo, and Hyunjoo Jin, Reuters

Station Wagons

The humble but efficient station wagon — an automobile style also known as estates in the U.K., Kombis in Germany and breaks in France — has been steadily going out of style as SUVs and crossovers gobble up market share for the kind of cars that can comfortably fit a family. In 2017, 2.45 million station wagons were sold globally; as of 2025, that’s down to 1.39 million rolling off the lot, a decline of around 40 percent. Germany is the biggest market for them; there, about 15.1 percent of new cars sold are station wagons.

Chris Bryant, Bloomberg

Piracy

Two pirate raids of merchant vessels off the coast of Somalia raises new concerns about the renewed threat of Somali pirates to global shipping. A cargo vessel carrying cement from Egypt to Mombasa was hijacked off the coast of Garacad, with nine pirates taking control of the vessel. This followed another attack on Wednesday, when an oil tanker was taken by pirates off the coast of Puntland. Piracy had been successfully reined in off the coast of Somalia over the past decade thanks to international naval patrols; needless to say, attentions are elsewhere at this time and the opportunistic attacks are raising worries of a possible resurgence.

Omar Faruk, The Associated Press

Premium

Last year, 17 percent of film tickets sold were for the premium large-format screens, up from 13 percent in 2021. Consumers are willing to pay more to see movies on bigger screens and with better sound, and at this point, cinemas angling to get butts in seats are trying to figure out just how big a screen they can add and how much they can charge for it. There simply aren’t enough IMAX screens to meet demand; Regal went so far as to charge $50 for opening night seats to the 70mm IMAX screening of Dune: Part Three, and they sold out in minutes.

Ben Fritz, The Wall Street Journal

Tungsten

A Vietnamese bet on tungsten mining is paying off, with the owners of the Nui Phao tungsten mine estimating that net profits will be 150 times higher than they were last year amid a spike in tungsten costs outside of China. Vietnam is a distant second when it comes to the production of Tungsten, producing about 3,000 metric tons of metal content, well behind the 67,000 metric tons produced by China, which accounted for 79 percent of global production. Tighter export controls for Chinese tungsten have sent prices for the metal spiking outside of China; the benchmark price for ammonium paratungstate in Rotterdam and Baltimore ranged from $2,800 to $3,289 this month, up from $330 to $355 in February 2025. The Nui Phao mine appears to be a big possible winner, as industrial and defense needs mean that tungsten is in high demand.

Mai Nguyen and Yuji Nitta, Nikkei Asia

Sewers

The limited amount of time that wastewater spends in sewers has made sewer networks a rounding error when it comes to greenhouse gas emission inventories, even though that which gets flushed can be a potent source of methane later on its journey. A new study suggests that practice may not be entirely right, with sewers worldwide emitting an estimated 1.18 to 1.95 million tons of methane annually based on a simulation of 3,000 different pipeline scenarios. That would add 1.7 percent to 3.3 percent to the global methane emissions.

City University of Hong Kong

Vertical

Quibi, I’m so sorry, you were right, you were just early: Omdia projects that the global vertical video market will grow 27 percent this year to $14 billion, and increasingly Americans are getting hooked on microdramas. Sure, China is the most mature market in the space, accounting for 83 percent of total revenue, but several apps are developing highly engaged audiences among Americans that rival some streaming networks. For instance, a viewer of ReelShort averaged 35.7 minutes per user per day on the app in the fourth quarter of 2025, which came in ahead of the 24.8 minutes average for a Netflix user in the same period. Microdrama apps racked up 5.78 billion hours of viewing time last year, and despite the smoking crater that was Quibi, those are the kinds of numbers that attracts attention from studios thinking that maybe the world is finally ready for this.

Stephanie Prange, Media Play News

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Previous Sunday subscriber editions: Tough Cookie · Bigfoot · How To Read This Chart · Uncharted Territory · Fantasy High · Ghost Hunting · Theodora & Justinian · Across the Movie Aisle · Radioactive Shrimp ·

Bioluminescent · CaaStle · Everyone Knows · Buzzballz · Such Great Heights · NFL · Sea Ice · Second · Made in China · Dinosaurs · Tracking · ICE ·

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Sunday Edition Archives: 2024 · 2023 · 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018

By Walt Hickey

Welcome back!

Box Office

The Michael Jackson biopic Michael made $97 million at the domestic box office, making back nearly double its budget for reshoots. The movie opened very strongly, making $217.4 globally against production costs that neared $200 million. A sequel is in development which will presumably dive into everyone’s favorite thing about Michael Jackson: the events of his personal life from the early 1990s onward. Given the box office, even a third film is being considered, and I can only imagine the fans are speculating ravenously over who will be cast as Elizabeth Taylor and Washed Up Brando fleeing New York City in a rental car after 9/11.

Jake Coyle, The Associated Press

Moonshot

Nike’s long-sought decade-long moonshot project to design a shoe that can help an athlete run a sub-two hour marathon saw that goal reached not once but twice this past weekend at the London Marathon…by runners wearing Adidas shoes. Winner Sebastian Sawe finished the race in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 30 seconds, and second-place runner Yomif Kejelcha pulled off the feat in 1:59:41. Both runners were wearing the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, a state-of-the-art running shoe.

Sara Germano, Sportico

Gravity

Physicists have devoted considerable attention towards measuring the strength of gravity, a constant known as “big G.” While the relative strength of other fundamental forces have been measured, gravity is a hard one both because it’s the weakest of the fundamental forces and because you can’t shield an experiment from gravity. A new measurement by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, using a reproduction of a 2007 French experiment, has found a value of big G at 6.67387×10^-11 meters³ per kilogram per second². Please adjust your instruments appropriately.

Leah Crane, New Scientist

Splits

A new study published in Nature Communications finds that the ongoing continental split-up of Africa is further along than understood. The 500-kilometer long Turkana Rift — a segment of the East African Rift System and the meeting point of three tectonic plates — is the site where two plates are drifting apart, which will eventually cleave the continent and form a new ocean between the split lands, it’s all very exciting. The new study found that the crust at the center of the rift is only 13 kilometers deep, much shallower than the 35 kilometer deep crust at other points in the rift, which is a sign that it’s getting pulled apart. It should still be a few million more years before the split.

Adam Kovac, Scientific American

Cars

Lots of people who bought cars during the pandemic are deeply underwater on those vehicles, meaning the amount they owe is considerably higher than the actual value of the vehicle. Among car buyers who traded in a car to buy a new one, 30 percent had negative equity on their trade-in, owing an average of $7,200. One thing that may have caused the surge is the emergence of the 84-month (seven year) car loan; 42.6 percent of underwater buyers had an 84-month loan, about double the level of a decade ago.

Ryan Felton, The Wall Street Journal

The Wind Rises

Airlines are in serious need for aviation mechanics, as 40 percent of those in the field are over the age of 60 and nearing retirement. As it stands, the labor shortage is projected to hit 7,000 certificated mechanics next year, meaning the field is understaffed by about 12 percent. Entry level salaries are up 50 percent since 2020, and major airlines are offering large signing bonuses to recruit workers. The pipeline has some issues; a third of seats in aviation maintenance tech schools are empty and dropout rates are high, but what’s particularly tough the schools inability to hire instructors because the industry is so desperate for experienced techs that professionals can make way more in the field than in the classroom.

Allison Pohle, The Wall Street Journal

Upfronts

Every May is upfronts season, when American television businesses tout their programming for the next year to the advertising industry, selling most of their commercial time in the process. As television has become a diminished business, the show still goes on, but tends to now involve forms of advertising sales beyond the standard inventory, including streaming ads. Ad commitments to broadcast primetime were down 2.5 percent to $9.1 billion in 2025 and cable was down 4.3 percent to $8.68 billion, while dollars bound for streaming increased 17.9 percent to $13.2 billion. That said, about 65 percent of total U.S. ad spend at this point is going to Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft, and this year’s cable ad spend is projected to drop 10 percent with broadcast expected to dip five percent.

Brian Steinberg, Variety

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Bioluminescent · CaaStle · Everyone Knows · Buzzballz · Such Great Heights · NFL · Sea Ice · Second · Made in China · Dinosaurs · Tracking · ICE ·

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Sunday Edition Archives: 2024 · 2023 · 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018

By Walt Hickey

Have a great weekend!

The Simpsons

California has become desperate to hold on to fleeting jobs in the television and film industries, and the studios based in Los Angeles are electing to film their movies and shows outside of the historical production area, opting for cheaper shoots in Canada, the UK, or whichever state is offering the juiciest incentive at this particular point in time. As a result, Sacramento has decided to play hardball and will offer those very same shooting incentives to preserve the behind-the-camera crew jobs and local acting work that serve as the lifeblood of the industry. One of the 38 movies granted subsidies from the California film office is, in fact, The Simpsons Movie, which will get $21.9 million for shooting the film in the state. Given that The Simpsons Movie is animated, it’s not entirely clear in the math how that will benefit the sound stages logging a 62 percent occupancy rate, but that which cannot be explained with the science of Professor Frink can likely be explained with the arts of Mayor Quimby.

Winston Cho, The Hollywood Reporter

The Way Is Shut

The icefall doctors who prepare the ropes and ladders on Mount Everest ahead of the climbing season are reporting that there’s a big block of ice in the way and they’re having trouble doing their jobs. There is a 100-foot high unstable chunk of glacier blocking the path that sits 600 meters below Camp 1. This late in April, the icefall doctors working for the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee — which secures the ropes as far as Camp 2 — normally would have already fixed the route all the way up to Camp 3, but because there is a colossal block of ice in the way, they have had to wait it out. Scaling it was deemed too risky, an alternative route to Camp 1 would be too challenging and the Department of Tourism is weighing options that would include airlifting teams to Camp 2 by helicopter so they may begin to open the route above the ice block while they wait for it to melt.

Ashok Dahal and Simon Fraser, BBC News

Traffic

Since 2022, traffic cameras have caught one specific pickup truck speeding through school zones and running red lights over 547 times in the borough of Staten Island, with the vehicle receiving 187 camera-issued tickets in 2025 alone — an average of one every other day. Based on the data, this vehicle is piloted by the second-most-reckless driver in New York City. The truck — a 2022 RAM 1500 — weighs at least 4,775 pounds, and the tickets are only automatically given when a vehicle is going 11 miles per hours above the legal limit. Based on Department of Transportation data, a city driver who received more than two moving violations per year is 40 times more likely to cause a crash that results in death or serious injury than a driver who never does; this driver has received between 116 and 180 moving violations in each of the past four years. Since 2022, that is $36,650.02 worth of speeding tickets. Streetsblog, curious as to why nothing has been done about this and why the law or consequences does not appear to apply to this particular car, discovered that the driver of that RAM 1500 is, naturally, an officer in the New York City Police Department.

J.K. Trotter, Streetsblog

Odometer

A new study published in the Journal of Marketing Research looked into how the specific number on the odometer of a used car impacted the eventual sale of that vehicle, and found that left-digit bias — the phenomenon when $1.99 feels materially cheaper than $2 — has a big effect on pricing and sale timing. Based on DMV records of 4.8 million used car transactions in Texas from 2014 to 2021, cars that were just below a 10,000-mile odometer threshold sold 6 percent faster than cars just above that threshold.

Hope Reese, University of Texas at Austin

Glass

A study of wine packaging published in the journal Cleaner and Responsible Consumption found that while consumers did indeed tend to appraise wine sold in a glass bottle more highly than wine sold in other packaging, perceptions are changing and consumers are open to new options. Aluminum was the second-most popular choice for wine packaging (with those in the study assigning a 19.3 percent to 26.2 percent discount for aluminum-packaged wine compared to glass) followed by PET plastic packaging (a 31.1 percent to 36.9 percent discount) and then — bad luck, Franzia — a 38 percent to 54 percent discount for flexible bags.

University of Arkansas

Cigarettes

Several countries in Asia have lagged behind their peers when it comes to reducing tobacco use, and one reason is that in many of those countries, the very same government trying to rein in smoking is also the owner of the tobacco company. The Japanese government owns a 37.6 percent stake in Japan Tobacco, the largest player in the domestic market for cigarettes, and collected 156.05 billion yen in dividends (not to mention the tax revenue) from the tobacco business. China’s government fully owns China National Tobacco, which has a 96 percent market share, and India’s government has a 28 percent stake in ITC, which dominates the business. Those conflicts of interest have made it hard to build the kind of political coalition necessary to unwind lucrative investments and commit more fully to smoking cessation.

Kenji Kawase, Nikkei Asia

Coral

Submersible robotics have demonstrated promise when it comes to restoring coral reefs. One device, the Deployment Guidance System, is the first automated underwater coral planter, which when attached to a boat can identify suitable planting sites for coral autonomously. The pricing is great: each DGS should be able to plant about a million coral seedlings over the course of its operational lifetime at a cost of $1 per seedling, well under the $8 per seedling commonly paid by coral restoration projects today. Coral stressing robots are also under development; under lab conditions, coral can be gently heated and put under temporary heat stress in order to toughen up the fragments, where they can then be replanted in the reefs to multiply and produce resilient descendants. Researchers envision a suite of underwater robots able to maintain and preserve these reefs.

Ryan Hesketh, bioGraphic

In the Sunday Edition, I spoke to Alex Mayyasi from NPR’s Planet Money, the beloved podcast that invented an entire version of audio storytelling, who is out with a brand new book from the show called Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life, a delightful anthology all about the ways money and the economy affect nearly everything in our daily lives. The book is available wherever books are sold. Alex is a regular contributor to the Planet Money podcast, writes his own Substack, and will be out with a his next project, the Gastronomics podcast available on Spotify, soon. Check out our interview here.

If you subscribe, you get a Sunday edition! It’s fun, and supporters keep this thing ad-free. This is the best way to support a thing you like to read:

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: Tough Cookie · Bigfoot · How To Read This Chart · Uncharted Territory · Fantasy High · Ghost Hunting · Theodora & Justinian · Across the Movie Aisle · Radioactive Shrimp ·

Bioluminescent · CaaStle · Everyone Knows · Buzzballz · Such Great Heights · NFL · Sea Ice · Second · Made in China · Dinosaurs · Tracking · ICE ·

Vera Rubin · Dasani · Uncharted · Dark Roofs · Geothermal · Stitch · Year of the Ring · Person Do Thing · Fun Factor · Low Culture ·

Sunday Edition Archives: 2024 · 2023 · 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018