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By Walt Hickey

The latest data finds that in 2025-26, college students spent an average of $338 on course materials, a sharp decline from the $441 spent on books and other course materials the year before. Over the past 10 years, overall spending on course materials is down 44 percent. Digital texts really started eating into the cost of course materials starting in 2014, and as of last year, roughly 40 percent of purchased course material was digital.

Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly

Archive of our Own, the vast repository of fan works, has released the 2026 edition of the Ship Stats, which reveal the most popular romantic pairings in fan works. What makes this year particularly interesting is that it’s the year that the fan ships have finally entered the mainstream and the canon. Ordinarily, the most popular romantic pairings among fans don’t actually exist in canon; Kirk and Spock never actually paired up on screen, and most of the most popular ships exist only unofficially in the minds (and fics) of fans, if only eventually backing into official status down the line (see: Good Omens, Supernatural). This year is different though, as the most popular pairing on AO3, the ship that launched 39,022 new works over the period, is Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, the Heated Rivalry boys, a canonical pairing. It’s perhaps apt given the origin of the Heated Rivalry franchise itself, which started as a fan work, Game Changers initially published on AO3 as a Stucky (Captain America and the Winter Soldier) hockey AU.

Adam Bumas, Garbage Day and centreoftheselights, Archive of our Own

A new survey sought to figure out where respondents drew the line when it came to integrating a dog into a person’s life. Overwhelmingly acceptable was the inclusion of a dog in a family holiday photo (91 percent acceptable), celebrating a dog’s birthday (75 percent), posting about a dog on social media every day (71 percent), dressing their dog in clothing (64 percent) and sleeping in the same bed as a dog (63 percent). More controversial acts included purposefully breeding their dog (27 percent unacceptable, 46 percent acceptable), bringing home a dog as a surprise gift (33 percent unacceptable, 44 percent acceptable) and feeding their dog table scraps every day (44 percent unacceptable, 34 percent acceptable). Straight-up unacceptable dog owner behavior included leaving dog waste on the sidewalk (93 percent unacceptable), bringing a dog to someone’s home without first asking (90 percent) and not vaccinating their dog (79 percent).

Taylor Orth and David Montgomery, YouGov

Those ad-supported tiers added by major streamers now account for 54 percent of the revenue made by North American streamers following a sharp rise in revenues from ads. As recently as 2022, streamers were making only $12.2 billion from ad tiers, a level that has now reached $45.1 billion as of this year.

Erik Gruenwedel, Media Play News

Paint and pigment companies are reporting a distinct color drain from American life. The share of new cars in grayscale colors increased from 60 percent in 2004 to 80 percent in 2023, production of purple cars is down 93 percent over the period and the production of gold cars is down 97 percent. A survey of real estate agents found that 84 percent recommended repainting interiors in grey, white or beige before selling. And once those houses are bought, the HOA’s aren’t helping either: 70 percent of new single-family homes are built into color-restraining HOAs as of 2024.

Amogh Dimri, The Atlantic

Smartphone usage reduced demand for arcades in Japan, which saw the more than 300 Bandai Namco-branded arcades in 2006 drop to about 200 locations today, but the company has targeted 300 locations by 2030. Japan’s domestic arcade market managed to grow 10 percent in 2025 to 900 billion yen (US$5.6 billion), recovering to just shy of the 926.3 billion yen hit in 2006, thanks in part to the success of Namco rival Genda, which has targeted anime fans. The plan is to build on the back of crane games; Japan’s 40 million foreign visitors dig the crane games way more than much of the other arcade fare, particularly ones that have prizes based on IP known overseas.

Daiki Tsugane, Nikkei Asia

Sometime over the next week or so, barring anything unexpected, the Perseverance rover on Mars will set the record for most distance traveled by a vehicle on another planet. Opportunity managed to travel 45.16 kilometers over the Martian surface, and as of writing, Perseverance is at 44.36 kilometers traveled. Perseverance has managed the feat over the course of 1,941 Sols, much faster than the 5,352 Sols that Opportunity was in service, thanks largely to the significantly more sophisticated onboard self-driving technology that the newer rover (launched in 2020) possessed compared to the 2003 rover. Curiosity, basically a twin of the Opportunity rover that launched nine years earlier, has traveled 38.6 kilometers over its service; the difference here is that 10 percent of Curiosity’s mileage was autonomous, while 90 percent of Opportunity’s has been thanks to the Vision Compute Element.

Eric Berger, Ars Technica

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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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