Numlock News: July 30, 2025 • Krill, Conspiracies, Chargers

By Walt Hickey

The Modern-Day Prometheus

Decades of engineering, biophysics, orthopedics and robotics have come together here. It is the cutting edge of scientific innovation and futuristic technological miracles, sights that would have dazzled the finest minds of the millennium, and is poised to launch our society into the next phase of civilization: Home Depot has announced a new Halloween decoration. “Ultra Skelly” is a new version of its iconic 12-foot-tall skeleton decoration, which stands at just 6.5 feet tall but possesses the ability to animate movements and, yes, talk. This golem of silicon and bone can rotate its torso and head, retailing for $279.

Andrew Liszewski, The Verge

Conspiracies

After spending several years keeping in touch with people who immersed themselves in conspiracy theories, a new study out of the University of Bath found that the sense of community and social and emotional connections forged with other conspiracy theorists was a significant reason many stuck with the beliefs. The study took the form of 32 interviews that ran for nearly 38 hours total, with 23 participants and 362 pages of participant observation field notes over the course of five years. It’s a landmark study that challenges the stereotype of conspiracy theorists as lonely kooks. That being said, what researchers in the U.K. call “a years-long longitudinal study involving conversations with a recurring sample of people being rapidly consumed by crackpot and divisive beliefs,” Americans merely call “Thanksgiving.”

University of Bath

Cannabis

New York State goofed really badly, and now 60 legal and licensed cannabis dispensaries — as well as 47 applicants that still need to secure a deed or lease and another 45 others just starting business — are staring down the potential of state-mandated closure. The agency overseeing these dispensaries and applicants messed up a crucial measurement that determined where they were allowed to exist. According to state law, a dispensary can’t open within 500 feet of a school, a relatively understandable concession to those who want to ensure that children have limited exposure to drugs, legal or not. On Monday, the state’s Office of Cannabis Management announced that for the past three years, it had used the entrance of a school to calculate that 500 feet. Per the law, they should have been calculating it as 500 feet from the property line of the school.

Ashley Southall, The New York Times

Aluminum

Aluminum is an attractive packaging material, particularly as Europe moves to new packaging requirements in 2030 that will mandate all packaging to be at least 70 percent recyclable, rising to 80 percent thereafter. Aluminum fits that bill, especially because the recycling rate of aluminum cans already vastly beats plastic. A whopping 81 percent of aluminum gets recycled compared to just 52 percent of plastic. However, researchers are considering the question of aluminum vs. glass, as producing new aluminum requires twice as much energy as producing new glass. This is not even mentioning cost, given that aluminum is about four times as expensive as glass.

MaryLou Costa, BBC News

Krill

For the first seven months of the 2024-25 krill fishing season in Antarctica, 518,568 tons of the crustacean were pulled out of the water, 84 percent of the 620,000-ton limit. Through June 30, the krill haul was at a record, and the data was so concerning to someone concerned about overfishing that it was leaked to the Associated Press. The krill are sought-after because they can be processed into oil rich in Omega-3s, which is then added to fishmeal, pet food and human dietary supplements.

Joshua Goodman, The Associated Press

Fast Charger

Despite the federal government attempting to yank funding, market demand for electric charging stations remains strong. This year, we are poised to see the installation of 16,700 new DC fast charging ports, up 19 percent compared to 2024. The national total of fast charging ports is now 59,694, up 23 percent compared to a year ago. These ports are also getting more reliable — Paren’s U.S. Reliability Index rose 5.3 percent — and the industry is pursuing strength in numbers, with the more common installation types being high-capacity hubs with eight or more chargers. Average fast charging rates are around $0.48 per kilowatt-hour.

Jonathan Collins, EVMagz

Geothermal

The United States has 264,555 working geoscientists, and demand for the job is projected to rise 5.6 percent from 2023 to 2033. The geothermal industry has long been competing for that talent, but was historically up against high-paying jobs in already established industries like mining or oil and gas. Currently, geothermal energy meets less than 1 percent of global energy demand, but it’s got the potential to hit 15 percent by 2050. This is provided, of course, that the business can find people who are able to drill the right holes.

Clara Hudson, The Wall Street Journal

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