Numlock News: July 24, 2026 • Ghibli, Coconuts, Elvers

Jul 24, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Have a great weekend!

Ghibli

Studio Ghibli Fest, the annual event where rep screenings of iconic films from the animation studio get rereleased in the United States, has quickly become an institution. Both a chance for parents to take their kids to movie theaters for the young-skewing fare as well as a chance for older nerds to see When Marnie Was There for the first time, the screenings have become a reliable hit. Upon launch in 2017, the initial release of five movies from the Ghibli Vault made $5 million; in 2024, the programming made $16.4 million in sales, and last year, eight re-released movies made $10.6 million, with the initial footprint growing from 640 to 1,100 locations.

Jake Coyle, The Associated Press

Insects

New research using sonar has determined that the larvae of the lake fly Chaoborus edulis can dive to depths of up to 258 meters during the daytime in Lake Malawi in order to avoid predators like fish. This discovery is remarkable for several reasons, not the least of which is the realization that insects can dive that deep into water. It’s wild because if these bugs can dive that deep, it stands to reason that there’s nothing stopping other insects from doing so, underscoring the question of why there are no insects in the ocean.

Mary Randolph, Scientific American

Games Stopped

According to Circana, physical sales of video game discs peaked in the 12 months ending June 2009, a period in which 297 million units were sold. This makes intuitive sense to me, a millennial whose understanding of video games peaked around then, when Bioshock and The Orange Box were released. Those physical disc sales have declined steadily since, and in the past 12 months, just 37 million discs were sold. Physical software is simply on the way out, one reason that PlayStation recently made the call to phase out physical discs.

Kyle Orland, Ars Technica

Elvers

The wholesale price of eel in Japan in June was down 26.8 percent year over year, thanks in part to a large domestic catch that hit 15.3 metric tons in the fiscal year ending March. But it’s largely thanks to China, which introduced eight times the number of baby eels into aquaculture facilities in the 2025 year. Farm-raised eels still depend on wild-caught elvers; most farmed eels start as babies caught in rivers. In 2025, the eel supply in Japan hit 63,600 tons, with imports accounting for 72 percent of the total, and up to 70 percent of the baby eels coming from imports as well.

Satoshi Shimoda, Nikkei Asia

Transplants

Thanks to breakthroughs in technology, more and more organ donations that would not have been viable in the past are now possible thanks to medical and logistical breakthroughs related to “donation after circulatory death.” Overwhelmingly, organ donations came from people who had suffered brain death, a condition in which the brain has died but the circulatory system persists. This is because circulation is crucial for organs staying alive, and when people suffer circulatory death before brain death, their organs tended to die with them. The issue is, brain death happens in just 3 in 1,000 deaths that leaves organs usable for transport. New advances in making circulation persist mechanically after death now allow for donation after circulatory death; DCD donors supplied 219 organs to the system in 2000, but in 2025 supplied nearly 17,000 organs.

Pratik Pawar, Vox

Cuckoo For Coconuts

Vita Coco, the coconut water company that controls over half of the American market, has purchased Copra, a rival in the super-premium space, for $275 million. The category is booming: Copra projects full-year net sales for 2026 at over $100 million, having experienced a 48 percent compound annual growth rate over the past three years, while Vita Coco’s $216 million net sales over the second quarter were up 28 percent year over year.

Laurel Deppen, Food Dive

Babel

A new study estimates that 2,000 years ago, humans spoke between 20,000 and 75,000 different languages, following a boom after the dawn of agriculture. This grew from the 5,000 to 6,000 languages spoken at the start of the Holocene era, 12,000 years ago, when there were between four million and seven million people in the world. Today, between billions of people, only around 7,000 languages are spoken.

Cody Cottier, Scientific American

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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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