Numlock News: November 11, 2026 • Kei, Frogs, Beef

Nov 11, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Cars

The average price of a new vehicle in October hit a record $51,109, with transaction prices growing faster than inflation as a whole at 2.1 percent year over year. This comes as new car sales slowed to 15.5 million vehicles last month, down from 16 million in September, as automakers are happy to sell fewer cars if it means that the vehicles that they do end up selling are the higher-margin SUVs and full-sized pickups. I’m telling you, I’m just having trouble remembering the true meaning for the season, by which, of course, I mean Toyotathon or, for those among us who celebrate, a most solemn December to Remember Sales Event.

David Welch, Bloomberg

Beef

Beef prices hit a high of $6.79 per pound in September, up from $6.32 per pound last September, and nearly double the $3.50 per pound in September 2015. The core reason for that is the U.S. cattle herd standing at 86.155 million head, the lowest level since the 1950s, while beef remains in high demand. Now, if this were chickens we were talking about, building up numbers would be a comparative cinch; chickens are ready to be slaughtered in six weeks, and we could solve this problem by Christmas. For cattle, it takes 18 to 22 months to grow one to market weight, and ranchers who are enjoying their highest profit in years — $1,000 profit per head of cattle — are not in a hurry to build up the herd.

Patrick Thomas, The Wall Street Journal

El Niño

The El Niño system that has formed is causing serious consternation among weather news followers, who now have to read all the way to the end of a long sentence to determine whether or not they should be happy about a particular ramification of El Niño. Take the shocking news this past week, where the chaotic climate phenomenon (BAD) brought moisture to the arid Southwest (GOOD?) in the form of torrential storms (BAD?) that revived small or dry creeks (GOOD?) to the point of overflowing and flooding in many local communities (BAD??), replenishing depleted aquifers (GOOD??) when it wasn’t forcing evacuations and cutting off access to many areas (BAD???), with the ultimate effect of raising Lake Powell by more than 20 feet from its mid-September low (GOOD!). Even if the reservoir remains a quarter full (BAD!), additional rain could raise the lake by 1.2 million acre-feet (GOOD!). El Niño is expected to last several more months (???).

Wufei Yu, The Associated Press

KEI-01

In a move that is huge for its core audience of farmers, small businesses and male middle-aged urban weebs, Toyota is releasing a Kei truck in America. To be sold under the revived Scion brand, the kei truck will resemble the light utility truck that is enormously popular abroad, with its tight two-person cab and roomy bed that make it ideal for jobs that need something with the functional features of a pickup truck without all the extra stuff that makes F-150s appealing to people who are, shall we say, more drawn by the lifestyle and aesthetic of the modern American pickup than the utility element. The trucks are 11 feet in length, have engines no more than 660 cubic centimeters, max out at 25 miles per hour and the first model, the Scion KEI-01, will even keep the steering wheel on the right side, just like the Daihatsu Hijet Jumbo back in Japan, so as to get it on to the market faster. In Japan, it sells for 1.1 million yen, around US$7,000.

Owen Tucker-Smith, The Wall Street Journal

Walmart

While communities may bemoan a Walmart coming to town, it really hurts when one leaves, a new study has found. An analysis of 39 Walmart closures from 2019 to 2026 that incorporated store-level shopper traffic and spending data in surrounding stores found that following the closure of a Walmart, nearby stores saw a five percent drop in the following month, a six percent drop in the following month, degraded to a 17 percent shortfall in the ninth month since the Walmart closed and 20 percent down the year after. Essentially, while the stores may have experienced competitive relief, the decline in foot traffic from having a large anchor store had a stronger effect.

Vivek Astvansh, Preetinder Kaur and Pushpinder Gill, The Conversation

Bones

Around 10 years ago, 8,000 frog bones that dated to Roman Britain were found in a single ditch where a highway was under construction, a somewhat distressing if ecologically interesting find. A new study presents a theory as to what happened to these ranine Romans and presents a culprit for the croaking. The study found that the ditch filled within a single year, and that the damage to the bones was consistent with birds of prey, fingering short-eared owls and hen harriers as the likeliest assailants. Along with additional evidence collected, the paper proposes that human changes to the environment — specifically, the felling of woodland to clear pastures for livestock in Roman Britain, thus removing the frogs’ cover and making them easy prey for the birds — likely led to this massacre.

Bournemouth University

Fish

A new paper published in npj Heritage Science details an interesting phenomenon observed by archaeologists investigating a monastery in Denmark where the diet of a person may seriously throw off our ability to use radiocarbon dating on their remains. The issue was flagged by Skeleton III9B, who was buried under a monastery in Svendborg. Radiocarbon dating put the person’s death at 1100 to 1155 AD, which is a bit of a pickle because the Franciscan monastery was not, in fact, founded until 1236. The cause is a diet high in freshwater fish, which contain less carbon-14 than food from terrestrial sources, because old carbon is released from sediments in lakes and rivers. That carbon-14 deficit will, once it shows up in the bones, make a skeleton appear considerably older than it actually is, with an error range of anywhere from zero to 1000 years.

Birgitte Svennevig, University of Denmark

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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; send 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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