Numlock News: July 16, 2026 • T. rex, C. familiaris, E.D.M.

Jul 16, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Dog Law

A new study published in Animals found that people tended to overestimate the level of legal protection provided for dogs. The study, which was conducted in the United Kingdom, found significant gaps in knowledge about dog law, both real and hypothetical, with half of respondents believing there was a nationwide ban on shock collars when there is indeed not, only 16 percent correctly understanding that no legislation explicitly prohibits the euthanasia of healthy dogs and 85 percent believing wrongly that aversive training mechanisms were banned. This shows a gulf between what people believe — dogs are like family members and presumably enjoy similar protections — and what the reality is, which is that legally no, they are not. A thorough interest in the regulations pertaining to dogs can be of value to anyone, even non-dog owners; for instance, I understand that the official determination that there was nothing in the rule book that explicitly prohibited a dog from playing basketball was competitively decisive in several youth sports championships from 1997 to 2003.

University of Stirling

Polystyrene

At least 12 states and 250 counties and cities have restricted single-use styrofoam containers, and from 2021 to 2024, North American polystyrene foam sales decreased 16 percent. Still, the industry producing polystyrene foam has counterattacked through political largesse and lobbying, and has been pushing customers to stick with foam in lieu of switching to something more sustainable. The lightweight bulk that makes polystyrene useful is the very thing that makes it a financial nonstarter to recycle, as collection and transportation are just not worth it given how little value there is to styrofoam by weight. That’s one reason why just 3.6 percent of polystyrene containers and packaging are recycled in the U.S, well below the even abysmal rates of plastic recycling in the rest of the supply chain.

Saabira Chaudhuri, Bloomberg

Music

The mid-year data from music database Luminate is out for 2026, and overall global audio streams were up 9.8 percent year over year in the first half of 2026. The largest category remains R&B/hip-hop, still accounting for about a quarter of music consumed despite shedding about 1.6 percent market share to the likes of electronic music, Latin and country. EDM is up 18.9 percent year over year, and world music is up 11.9 percent. Rock music is aging: 75 percent of rock listening came from tracks that were more than five years old, meaning that deep catalog’s market share was up five percent compared to the newer stuff. Interestingly, CDs have mounted a bit of a comeback, as sales are up 16 percent to 16.3 million units, while vinyl grew 2.4 percent.

Kristin Robinson, Billboard

Warehouses

Developers of industrial warehouses have been cautiously optimistic now that the data centers are taking all the heat from the NIMBY crowd, with construction up 18 percent in the second quarter. Granted, lots of the demand for warehouse space is from suppliers of data center equipment, but with some 305 million square feet of industrial real estate under construction, the two-year pause experienced by the warehouse construction industry appears to be over. Prologis, the largest owner and operator in the space, is planning to start work on $4.5 billion to $5.5 billion worth of development this year, up from $3.1 billion last year.

Liz Young, The Wall Street Journal

Sheds

Building owners, particularly in New York, install scaffolding and sidewalk sheds as safety measures when possible facade issues emerge. The problem is that the cost of keeping the sheds up is often less than the cost of actually fixing the issue, which leads to stretches of sidewalk essentially permanently sheltered under temporary structures. There are currently 7,500 such sheds in New York City, covering 330 miles of sidewalk, enough to circle Manhattan 10 times, with an average age of 550 days, and some even now decades old. The oldest, a stretch of scaffolding in the East Village, has been up for over 15 years. Some of this is on the city — hell, two of the three oldest sheds are on city-owned buildings — but lately, the push has been to roll out new designs that are less ad hoc and ugly for what may be long renovations.

Fola Akinnibi, Bloomberg

Belongs In A Museum

To the dismay of paleontologists and researchers in the field, a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton set a record after being auctioned at Sotheby’s for $50.1 million. It’s the latest in a trend that turns scientific specimens and artifacts into collector’s items for the uber-wealthy, a trend that has been largely condemned by the people who want to keep these fossil records out of the luxury collectibles industry and firmly in the public trust. It is legitimately gatekeeping science; a 2025 study of T. rex skeletons found that at the time, there were just 61 fossils in public trusts compared to 71 privately held. Museums simply cannot compete against a committed -illionaire.

Kristi Curry Rogers, The Conversation

Avocado, Baby

A new study published in Applied Food Research found that across 54 products that were labeled as made with avocado oil, 48 of them were actually adulterated with cheaper oils. This means that consumers paying a premium for avocado oil products are likely consuming either something that’s straight up not made with avocado oil or contains so many other oils that they’re not actually getting the value they want out of the product. Of the products tested, 93 percent of chips and 71 percent of mayonnaises that were labeled as authentic avocado oil in fact contained other oils. When this purity test was applied to olive oil-labeled products, just one in 20 failed.

Amy Quinton, University of California - Davis

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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; SEN 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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