Well, it’s the second daily anniversary of Tuesday. Tuesday is usually trash day. Of course we had a holiday, which sets trash pickup back a day. I’ve noticed that even though they don’t want to call it Columbus Day anymore, everyone who works for the government still wants the day off. I think it’s the descendants of the same governments that sorta crowded out the indigenous people around here, and sent them to the Dakotas, or perdition. They still want the day off to celebrate it. Go be indigenous somewhere else, though. But a  day off is a day off, I guess.

I’m reminded of St. Patrick’s Day in Boston. If you’re not from the Bay State, you may not know that Boston was once about 110% Irish. The indigenous people were the Yankees back then, and the Irish newcomers made them trace a trail of tears and mortgages to the suburbs, to live on cul-de-sac reservations in godforsaken places like Wellesley and Brookline. Anyway, St. Paddy’s day was more than a holiday in Boston. It was all the holidays put together.

There was a problem. Everyone Irish in Boston worked for the government in one way or another, and St. Paddy’s wasn’t an official holiday. You couldn’t be in the parades for ten minutes and the barrooms for ten hours if you were on duty at the State house, sleeping behind a desk like you did on any other given day. So Massachusetts invented a holiday called Evacuation Day. It’s the date when British troops finally got as tired of Bostonians as you are and left the city for good. I know the feeling. It’s amusing to see the Wikiup even gently calling the date of the holiday falling on the same day as St. Patrick’s Day “a coincidence.” Yeah, and Oswald was just trying to shoot pigeons and missed.

Not many people in Boston could actually tell you what Evacuation Day is supposed to commemorate. But eventually, everyone just decided it refers to evacuating every government building in town. And of course taking shelter in any safe haven. You know, one with a liquor license. They’re famously safe.

So it’s a day late for being a day late, and as always a dollar short unless someone hits my tip jar, but I’ve got to evacuate my browser bookmarks before Tuesday rolls around again, or I’ll have to put two bags of pixels out on the curb next week.

The Rise and Fall of Matchbox’s Toy-Car Empire

The announcement that John Cena has signed on to be the star of the new Matchbox live-action movie raises a few questions. First—there’s going to be a Matchbox movie? And second—what will it be about, exactly?

Egad. Please, no. The Barbie movie is mentioned. Enough. But I’m here to tell you that the original Matchbox cars were the coolest toy a male American child could own, and we owned hundreds of them. They were simply miniature versions of real cars, and very well-made. Eventually the company lost its mind and tried to compete with Hot Wheels, and started making ridiculous looking race car thingies, and got bought out by Mattel for their troubles. Now every car that passes me on the highway looks like a Hot Wheel. I long for a return of a Matchbox world. Not a Matchbox movie. And by the way, American Bricks were way, way better than Legos, too.

Why birds do not fall while sleeping

In this model, the body and foot bones were replaced by bars, and muscles and tendons by more or less rigid cables. The joints between each bone in the feet were replaced by pulleys. “We began the experiments by using a single cable that began at the ‘bird’s’ pelvis and stretched to its feet, passing through all of the joints (hip, knee, ankle), and therefore through all of the pulleys.”

That sounds like a lot of work. They should have just found a parrot, and asked nicely.

EV battery prices to fall by nearly 50 pct and near ICE parity by 2026, says Goldman Sachs

Technological advances designed to increase battery energy density, combined with a drop in green metal prices, are expected to push battery prices lower than previously expected, according to a new briefing from Goldman Sachs Research.

It says global average battery prices declined from $153 (all prices in USD) per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2022 to $149/kWh in 2023 and are projected to fall to $111 by the end of 2024.

Goldman Sachs’ researchers further predict that average battery prices could fall as far as $80/kWh by 2026, which would equate to a drop of almost 50 per cent from 2023 levels.

I assume this prediction just means Goldman Sachs is buying electricity generating companies.

Federal Trade Commission Announces Final “Click-to-Cancel” Rule Making It Easier for Consumers to End Recurring Subscriptions and Memberships

The Commission’s updated rule will apply to almost all negative option programs in any media. The rule also will prohibit sellers from misrepresenting any material facts while using negative option marketing; require sellers to provide important information before obtaining consumers’ billing information and charging them; and require sellers to get consumers’ informed consent to the negative option features before charging them.

Hey, maybe you can finally stop paying AOL every month.

Why Don’t We Use Awnings Anymore

They built these structures with incredibly clever passive heating and cooling systems like the double-hung window, making the best of the technological limitations of their day to create buildings that could keep people relatively comfortably even in extreme temperatures and awnings were a major part of that.

The author points to air conditioning as the death knell for awnings. Fair enough. But plenty of Americans didn’t have A/C until fairly recently. Vinyl siding killed awnings just as fast as A/C did. Everything was stripped off the exterior to make way for its plastic winding sheet.

How to Work for a Boss Who Always Changes Their Mind

Reporting to an indecisive boss is an unquestionably “challenging and frustrating situation,” says Sydney Finkelstein, the director of the Leadership Center at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. If your leader is easily influenced by whoever talked to them last, what other organizations are doing, or the TikTok they saw this morning, it shouldn’t sentence you to a constant state of flux. While you can’t control their behavior, you’re not powerless.

I can simplify this much further, Sydney. If your boss even knows what TikTok is, you have a stupid job. And man, the Harvard Business Review has lost a lot off its fastball over the years.

Court Tells EPA to Consider Fluoride Risk, to Dentists’ Dismay

Many experts say water fluoridation is a safe, crucial tool for preventing tooth decay. Critics say fluoridated water has little dental value, and they point to some studies suggesting that swallowing fluoride may harm developing brains.

I drank fluoridated water all the time while I was growing up, and I haven’t noticed any bad pancakes curbstones zzzyva garfish toenail gllllll fzzzbit gurgle… uh, effects.

The not-so-glamourous origins of standard track gauge

As it happens, the story in question was plagiarised in its entirety from an email spam chain that has been doing the rounds in the US since the 1990s. However, speculation over the reason why standard track gauge is, on the face of it, such an odd number isn’t confined to dodgy email spam — in fact, it occurs amongst seasoned railway folks too.

If you’re unfamiliar, they’re discussing the distance between railroad tracks, which is more or less standardized. It demonstrates something interesting about the internet: Not only is the internet mostly wrong about everything, it’s also the only source of information anyone pays attention to anymore, including the LLMs that are going to be used to answer everyone’s questions going forward. Good luck with that.

RTX to pay $950 million to resolve US defense fraud, Qatar bribery charges

Prosecutors in Boston alleged that Raytheon from 2012 to 2018 defrauded the Defense Department into paying over $111 million more than it should have in two contracts to purchase Patriot missile systems and operate a radar system.

So Raytheon will pay a fine to the US government using funds no doubt paid to it by the US government. No one gets fired or goes to jail. Nice work, when you can get it.

Two accused of DDoSing some of the world’s biggest tech companies

The prosecutors said Anonymous Sudan operated a cloud-based DDoS tool to take down or seriously degrade the performance of online targets and often took to a Telegram channel afterward to boast of the exploits. The tool allegedly performed more than 35,000 attacks, 70 of which targeted computers in Los Angeles, where the indictment was filed. The operation allegedly ran from no later than January 2023 to March 2024.

Interestingly, Anonymous Sudan was the name of my Joni Mitchell tribute band. Well, I think it was. Or it might just be the fluoride talking.

Have a great Tuesday… er, Wednesday… um, Thursday… hot damn that fluoride lingers, don’t it?