Numlock News: May 7, 2026 • Alcatraz, Gibraltar, Walks

May 07, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Gibraltar

In a somewhat fitting metaphor of Anglo-Continental relations, the British overseas territory of Gibraltar has just been dumping raw sewage from its 40,000 people and businesses directly into the sea at Europa Point because the territory has never had a wastewater treatment plant. While it’s supposed to be protected for wildlife and the European court of justice ruled that the UK was in breach of wastewater law in 2017, Brexit means there has not been sufficient political will to budget a fix. That may change, as a planning application for a wastewater plant was submitted in March, which would cap a 15 million pound investment in the sewer infrastructure.

Rachel Salvidge, The Guardian

Alcatraz

Biologist have revealed that the coyote that swam all the way to Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay pulled off an even more impressive swim than previously thought. Rather than completing a one-mile swim to the island from San Francisco, the coyote actually managed the swim from Angel Island, which is two miles away, based on DNA evidence of its scat. The coyote was believed to have left its home base in search of a mate or new territory; the park service was initially worried about its origin because Alcatraz is now a seabird nesting habitat and a coyote could cause a lot of chaos for the birds.

Janie Har, The Associated Press

Jackson

The movie about Michael Jackson had the exact effect that its backers intended, and streams of Jackson’s catalog are up substantially in the week following the premiere. His solo catalog registered 137.5 million streams in the week of April 24, up 146 percent week over week and demolishing the 53.7 million steams notched the week of Halloween in 2019, which was the high before the movie’s promotional tour got into swing. Streams of The Jackson 5 are up 135 percent week over week to 10.1 million, while streams for The Jacksons are up 57 percent to 4.3 million. The bump is so big that four decades after its release, Thriller came in at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 with 45,000 equivalent album units.

Trevor Anderson, Billboard

A

Last year at Harvard, 66 percent of grades were an A, and 84 percent of grades were either an A or A-. This has set off concerns about grade inflation and some of the bad incentives that might emerge from such a system; for instance, if an A is the expectation, students may feel pressured to avoid courses that have a reputation for challenging them or are outside their comfort zone. The A situation at Harvard has at times reached farcical levels; the Sophia Freund Prize goes to the graduating senior with the highest GPA, and in the past, the prize went to one student or occasionally two if there was a tie. In 2025, there was a 55-way tie. Some professors want to cap the percentage of flat A’s at 33 percent, while allowing as many A- as needed.

Joshua Greene, The Atlantic

Walk It Back

In the MLB season through Tuesday, 9.5 percent of all plate appearances have resulted in a walk, a sharp rise that is being chalked up to the introduction of robo-umps. The MLB walk rate surged above 10 percent in the 1940s and 1950s before falling back down, and with the exception of a brief bump in the steroid era — listen, you’d rather just walk Barry Bonds at a certain point — has stayed around 8.5 percent since. At the current rate, 2026 would be the season with the second-highest walk rate in 70 years. It’s not all bad; scoring has increased to nine runs per game, up from 8.6 runs in the same stretch of 2025.

Jared Diamond, The Wall Street Journal

Fertilizer

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz means that many products relying on oil and gas production from the Middle East have had serious supply chain snarls, and one important such product is fertilizer. The price of urea hit nearly $700 per ton in April, up from $455 before the war, and farmers are unprepared for the price hike; the American Farm Bureau Federation found 70 percent of farmers nationwide are unable to afford the fertilizer they need, and one in three farmers in the Midwest didn’t prebook fertilizer for 2026 and are now in trouble. Help isn’t coming anytime soon, for that matter: even in the most optimistic scenario, the Agricultural Risk Policy Center projects that prices will remain high heading into 2027 as it’ll take time to repair damaged production infrastructure. The Center projected urea fertilizer will cost 13 percent more than its pre-crisis price heading into at least 2028, even if the Strait does open imminently.

Tadeo Ruiz Sandoval, Wisconsin Public Radio

Standards

China’s dominance in the electric vehicle business means that worldwide standards will likely be determined by Chinese companies given they’re the ones making the most cars. That phenomenon is already being seen in batteries, as the world moves towards the lithium iron phosphate battery chemistry favored by BYD and CATL over the nickel-based battery chemistry favored by American automakers. The winning charging plug design seems likely to come out of Asia, too; China and Japan are jointly developing the next generation plug, the ChaoJi, which can handle about four times the power of NACS, the Tesla-designed North American charging standard.

Indranil Ghosh, Rest of World

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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.

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