Numlock News: July 2, 2025 • Jurassic, FCC, Chuck E. Cheese

Jul 02, 2025

By Walt Hickey

Our longtime friends at Garbage Day are doing three live shows in July at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn, and I’m working on them. It’ll be a great time; more details at the bottom of the newsletter, and you should come! Next Tuesday is the first one.

FCC

The Federal Communications Commission will not enforce a rule to cap the price of phone charges for incarcerated people. In 2024, the FCC sought to rein in fees that reached as high as $11.35 for a single 15-minute phone call, some of which get kicked back to the jails and local government. The Martha Wright-Reed law was signed in 2023, giving the FCC the go-ahead to regulate, which they subsequently did. They decided to adapt the price of a 15-minute phone call to 90 cents in larger prisons, a rule that was set to go into effect starting in January. However, the FCC will not be enforcing this rule until April of 2027.

Emma Roth, The Verge

Chuck E. Cheese

Children’s casino impresario and mechanical music pioneer Charles Entertainment Cheese is launching an arcade business aimed at adults called Chuck’s Arcade. There are now 10 such locations open in eight states, including Florida, Oklahoma, Connecticut, New York, Georgia, Texas, New Hampshire and Missouri. The arcades are not dropping the animatronic band schtick, even if the arcades are ostensibly for adults, and each facility will include a number of animatronics on display.

QSR Magazine, Steph Szulborski, Toy Book

Magic: The Gathering

Wizards of the Coast and SEGA are launching three limited-edition Magic: The Gathering card drops inspired by characters and items from the Sonic franchise. It’s a potent combination that is poised to rip through a subset of the population that has no discernible immunity to such a double whammy. The Friends & Foes drop features seven original cards of prominent characters from the franchise, the Chasing Adventure pack will reskin several popular Magic: The Gathering cards under the Sonic branding and Turbo Gear will rebrand multiple MTG equipment as Sonic-style items.

Katherine Hill, Toy Book

Grandparents

A new study out of Cornell found that 47 percent of U.S. grandchildren live within ten miles of a grandparent. A total of 21 percent of grandchildren live within one and five miles, while fully 13 percent live within a mile of the grandparents. That last number is the same figure as the number of grandchildren who live 500 miles or more away.

James Dean, Cornell University

Beekeepers

It was a particularly rough winter for beekeepers, and despite delays due to funding cuts at the United States Department of Agriculture, federal scientists have pieced together what went wrong. From June 2024 to January 2025, 62 percent of commercial honey bee colonies in the United States died off. That was the die-off on record, more than the 55 percent last winter. A new preprint from those scientists points to bee viruses spread by parasitic mites that have become resistant to amitraz, which is currently the only viable mite-specific pesticide. Miticide resistance is poised to be a massive problem, given the necessity of commercial hives to pollinate the United States’ food supply.

Joanna Thompson, Science

Smell

A new study published in Current Biology suggests that animals that live at higher altitudes have reduced smelling ability. The researchers screened genomes of 27 different species of mammals that live in high-altitude environments, as well as close relatives who inhabit low altitudes. They found a 23 percent reduction in genes related to smell and an 18 percent reduction in the size of the olfactory bulb within the brain.

Krystal Kasal, Phys.org

Jurassic World Rebirth

The new Jurassic Park movie is dropping over this long weekend. The seventh installment in the franchise that’s sort of about dinosaurs and sort of about scientific ethics, but inexplicably about the diminishing returns of audience expectations, is looking to make bank. The movie is projected to make $100 million to $125 million over the weekend, which would come in south of the $208 million made by the initial relaunch of the franchise, Jurassic World, in 2015.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Ryan Broderick and the crew at internet culture newsletter Garbage Day are putting on three live shows this summer, and Numlock is a part of them. If you’re in NYC and looking for something fun, learn more about it here and get tickets to the first, second and third shows. It’s going to be very, very fun.

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