Numlock News: July 17, 2025 • Romantasy, Delta Smelt, Witchcraft

Jul 17, 2025

France

France’s national debt now stands at 3.3 trillion pounds, and the prime minister — who, to be clear, is not the president (the guy with actual power) but rather the guy with no majority in government at this time — has floated the idea of cutting two of France’s national holidays to shore up the finances. He has proposed to end Easter Monday and 8 May, which celebrates the end of World War II. The thinking goes that making people work two additional days per year at no increase in salary would juice productivity a bit and lessen the amount to which France is in the hole. France has 11 national holidays, which is the same as Germany and the United States, and is indeed lower than the European average. It’s not the first time the French have reconsidered their holidays; in the 1950s, Charles de Gaulle killed the 8 May Victory in Europe, claiming they couldn’t afford it, only for it to be reinstated in 1981.

Hugh Schofield, BBC

Romance

Stores specifically catering to the romance audience have been springing up across the country, with more than half of the 157 romance-dedicated book stores in the American Booksellers Association opening within the last two years. Romance books have developed the kind of big-spending, reliable and convention-going readership previously enjoyed by the likes of the science fiction or fantasy genres. If anything, this may just be a sign that the romance side has learned a few tricks from the romantasy playbook.

Tracee M. Herbaugh, The Associated Press

Tracked

When scientists want to understand the movement of an animal species, they tag a few subjects with electronic tracking devices that can beam back the location and other vitals to the researchers. This strategy works on all kinds of creatures, but it gets considerably more difficult for smaller animals because the weight of the device starts impeding the subject’s ability to survive. Research indicates a tracking tag should weigh less than 2 percent of an animal’s mass to avoid hurting them. A key example of this phenomenon is the delta smelt, a small silvery fish that averages only 6.5 centimeters in length, found only in California and being pushed near extinction. For them, a tracking tag would have to weigh just 0.06 grams (0.002 ounces) so as not to impact their survival, which is a tough tech problem. However, thanks to significant advances in energy-dense microbatteries from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, researchers have been able to develop experimental tracking tags. They can transmit for 40 days with a signal that can be picked up hundreds of meters away.

Moira Donovan, bioGraphic

Magic

A new study analyzed survey data on the popularity of four different supernatural belief categories. The first and most common category is what might be considered a more traditional religious belief, such as “there are angels that can affect your life,” a belief held by 58 percent of respondents. The second category is beliefs in spiritual and mental forces, new-age stuff such as communicating with the dead or astral projection; 27.9 percent of respondents think it’s possible to commune with the dead. The third category is belief in witches or witchcraft, with 20.4 percent of respondents thinking “it is possible to cast spells on people.” The last category is about supernatural forces that can shape luck, though only 7.3 percent of respondents said they thought “black cats can bring bad luck.”

Christopher P. Scheitle, Bernard DiGregorio and Katie E. Corcoran, The Conversation

Phones

A new study found that 74 percent of adults would support banning middle and high school students from using cellphones in class, which is up from 68 percent compared to that question posed in the fall. Opposition to such proposed bans also declined from 24 percent to 19 percent. Support for banning phones all day is considerably more split — 44 percent in favor, 46 percent opposed — but that has also shifted in the months since the issue was polled. Among respondents aged 18 to 29, support for banning phones in class rose particularly sharply, increasing from 45 percent in Fall 2024 to 57 percent when polled in June.

Jeffrey Gottfried, Eugenie Park and Monica Anderson, Pew Research Center

Recession Pop

One of the bigger trends in music this year is “recession pop,” those upbeat songs from 2007 to 2012 that have seen an increase in popularity. According to Luminate, on-demand audio streams of pop songs from that era increased 6.4 percent in 2025, led by Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Bruno Mars and Rihanna. Pop songs from those years are actually outpacing the growth of the music industry as a whole. What’s the cause? Who can say, beyond the difficulty in discovering new pop music ever since the onset of streaming? That and maybe the fact that people who were teenagers at that time are now in their early thirties and thus, of course, blasting those pop songs in supermarkets these days because those listeners have become “consumers” and we’re statistically only a few years away from hearing Ke$ha on a classic rock station.

Maria Sherman, The Associated Press

Micro-CT

A new study published in the Radiocarbon questions whether a widely regarded, nondestructive technique used to study fossils may actually damage fossils in an unseen but important way. Micro-CT is similar to the medical CT scans used by doctors, but is instead done at a much smaller scale and at a greater resolution on fossil specimens. The imaging technique is seen as a way to peer inside a fossil and produce a virtual copy without actually cracking it open. X-rays are still ionizing radiation, though, and the researchers observed a significant decrease in the amount of collagen present in specimens after they were scanned with micro-CT. The samples have 35 percent less collagen after scanning than they did before. If the collagen in a sample was depleted enough after perhaps multiple scans, it would make it unsuitable for techniques like radiocarbon dating.

Mathieu Duval and Laura Martín-Francés, The Conversation

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: Dark Roofs · Geothermal · Stitch · Year of the Ring · Person Do Thing · Fun Factor · Low Culture · Romeo vs. Juliet · Traffic Cam Photobooth · Money in Politics ·