On this day (1752): Benjamin Franklin tests the lightning conductor with his kite-flying experiment.
Innovation. From my OED app: “/ˌɪnəˈveɪʃn , ˌɪnəʊˈveɪʃn / ▸ noun [mass noun] the action or process of innovating: innovation is crucial to the continuing success of any organization. ▪ [count noun] a new method, idea, product, etc.: technological innovations designed to save energy. – ORIGIN late Middle English: from Latin innovatio(n-), from the verb innovare (see innovate).”
“A $395 pineapple? How innovation is upending the popular tropical fruit” [Food Dive]. “The seller of a mysterious ruby-colored luxury product describes it as rare and full of global intrigue. When the offering first debuted in China in 2024, it reportedly sparked a waiting list. Once it reached North America four months later, it was positioned as an ultra-premium designer item. The product isn’t a car, perfume or jewelry, but a $395 pineapple from produce giant Fresh Del Monte. Called the Rubyglow, the premium pineapple takes two years to mature and is grown in a tropical rainforest in Costa Rica to help its flavor and quality. Only a few thousand of the pineapples are produced each year and they always sell out. Rubyglow is part of a larger lineup of luxury pineapples from Fresh Del Monte and represents how producers are increasingly positioning fruit as a luxury product to broaden its appeal and generate interest among consumers looking for new experiences.” • If we’re talking about “new experiences,” why stop at fruit? How about very expensive insects?
“US must learn lessons from Ukraine, innovate faster and cheaper: Anduril president” [Military Times]. “U.S. industry became complacent and got ‘ambushed by the future,’ said Christian Brose, who was on hand last week at the Washington Post’s inaugural Building America Summit to discuss defense industry developments…Brose added that the nation has been ‘systematically failing’ at making necessary changes to project a stronger footing in the U.S.-China competition. He pointed to lessons from the Ukraine war and Operation Epic Fury, adding that Tehran has been evolving technologically and ramping up asymmetric capabilities.” And: “Anduril is instead building systems that can be completed by workers with minimal training and simple tools, much like how the country built weapons during World War II.” Of course, in World War II we were fighting Nazis. And: “With the Ukraine war, Brose said that there’s no piece of technology that jumps out at him. Instead, it is the cycle of innovation and rebuilding at scale….. ‘When you look at the opening days of Epic Fury, obviously the United States and Israel have inflicted an enormous amount of damage on Iranian leadership, government, military, industrial base, but Iran’s still in the fight,’ Brose said. ‘They’re still in the fight because they’re using a lot of these asymmetric capabilities, low-cost drones, different types of systems.’” • Brose has got me nodding my head, except is the issue The Empire, or whether The Empire should be fighting its wars with cheaper weapons? Brose thinks the latter, and I would imagine the sort of people who would go toa WaPo summit think so too.
“Innovators 2026: AI Drives Finance Re-Architecture” [Global Finance]. “Global finance is experiencing a profound transformation. Technological innovation, shifting investor sentiment, and an increasing focus on operational resilience are fundamentally reshaping the sector. Submissions for the Global Finance Innovators Awards 2026 offer a barometer of the pressures and potential driving the industry’s direction. The dominant theme, underscoring nearly 35% of this year’s entries, is the overwhelming influence of AI and generative (Gen AI). This trend isn’t merely a buzzword. It goes beyond the automation of discrete tasks; it entails a comprehensive re-architecture of financial services, embedding intelligent systems at the core of banking operations. The ascendancy of AI/Gen AI is also not uniform; it is especially pronounced in certain regions such as Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America, which are aggressively pivoting toward intelligent, data-driven financial ecosystems to reach unbanked and remote, rural customers.” That is, those most likely to be screwed over, as with microlending. More: “But the picture of innovation is richly diverse when viewed through a regional lens.” And: “Underpinning the wave of technological innovation is a stabilizing yet highly strategic fintech investment environment. Total funding rebounded significantly to $116 billion in 2025, up from $95.5 billion the previous year, according to KPMG International. Crucially, however, the total number of deals declined, hitting an eight-year low and signaling a consolidating market in which investors are placing larger bets on more mature, proven businesses.” • Super-triumphalist but still interesting.
“Big Tech’s Hottest New Energy Fix Doesn’t Generate Any Power” [OilPrice.com]. “The artificial intelligence boom is driving a new wave of energy innovation as the public and private sector scramble to match planned energy capacity additions with projected demand. Experts expect that energy demand from data centers in the United States alone will skyrocket by almost 360% between now and 2030 to reach 110 GW.” More: “But the hottest new innovation at the nexus of AI and energy doesn’t involve producing any new energy at all. Instead, it focuses on better and more flexible distribution of existing energy capacity. Just this week, Google signed a first-of-its-kind deal to create a ‘virtual power plant’ with the startup Voltus. As per the deal, ‘Google will finance a program for parts of the Mid-Atlantic US grid that will pay other households and businesses to curb their consumption at certain times,’ according to reporting from Semafor. The firms claim that this approach will make 100 megawatts of energy available to Google without building any additional infrastructure. This will make Google the first customer for Voltus’ new “bring your own capacity” program, in which firms that need energy to power their data centers can finance grid flexibility potential in the communities around them. Voltus will group together a broad variety of devices in a virtual network, from electric vehicles to smart thermostats. The startup will pay customers to participate in the program, and in return they will be able to manipulate flows of energy and call upon the energy stored in the devices when needed, and when spare capacity can be diverted to Google.” • I love it. I’m gonna turn off my widescreen because Google needs the power. Couldn’t we burn a few executives at the stake instead?
Dad Joke of the Day: How do you feel about ‘boustrophedonic’? I go back and forth. Hat tip: Pinboard.
Administrator. From my OED app: “/ədˈmɪnɪstreɪtə / ▸ noun 1 a person responsible for carrying out the administration of a business or organization: hospital administrators. ▪ Law a person legally appointed to manage and dispose of the estate of a deceased person, debtor, or insolvent company. 2 a person who dispenses or administers something: administrators of justice. – ORIGIN late Middle English: from Latin, from the verb administrare (see administrate).”
“Professor at School of the Art Institute of Chicago Under Investigation for Referencing Palestine” [ARTnews]. “According to Talwar, she was called into an ‘urgent’ meeting with senior administrators shortly afterward and questioned about whether she had assigned “anything with Palestine in it.’” • Anything?
“Exclusive: SBA’s Kelly Loeffler predicts AI will fuel Main Street growth” [Axios]. “Artificial intelligence will fuel job creation on main streets across America, Small Business Administration administrator Kelly Loeffler predicted Tuesday at Axios’ AM Live in Washington, D.C.’” Isn’t it pretty to think so. And: “Still, Americans are filing paperwork to start new businesses at near-record rates.” • Interesting. The house of the industrial reserve army has many exits.
“They Didn’t Wait: California Teachers Strike and Win” [Labor Notes]. “As educators across California were gearing up to fight, district administrations across the state united around their own common message—that the money simply wasn’t there. But when educators walked off the job, the districts found the funds.” • Ding ding ding ding ding we have a winner.
Fortune: “You know you haven’t been brainwashed as long as you have a dirty mind.” -Interfluidity
Presence. From my OED app: “ˈprɛzn(t)s / ▸ noun [mass noun] the state or fact of existing, occurring, or being present: my presence in the flat made her happy; the presence of chlorine in the atmosphere; the memorial was unveiled in the presence of 24 veterans. ▪ [count noun] a person or thing that exists or is present in a place but is not seen: the monks became aware of a strange presence. ▪ [in singular] a group of people, especially soldiers or police, stationed in a particular place: the US would maintain a presence in the Indian Ocean region. ▪ the impressive manner or appearance of a person: Richard was not a big man but his presence was overwhelming. – ORIGIN Middle English: via Old French from Latin praesentia ‘being at hand’, from the verb praeesse (see present).”
“Did You Know FDR Was Present For the Most Famous At-Bat in Baseball History?” [Literary Hub]. Babe Ruth’s called shot! “The Babe held up two fingers—’umpire fashion,’ as Burns had it—reminding the Cubs that he still had one strike remaining, then pointed with his right index finger. Whether Ruth was pointing at Charlie Root or at the Cubs dugout or at the center field wall has been the subject of more contention and investigation than any other single moment in baseball history, but what is certain is that when Root followed with another fastball, the Babe caught it sweet with that singular upstroke of his big bat. As Ruth recounted later for a newsreel: ‘I swung from the ground with everything I had and as I hit the ball every muscle in my system, every sense I had, told me that I had never hit a better one, that as long as I lived nothing would ever feel as good as this.’” And: ‘Mayor Cermak [in attendance with FDR] dutifully frowned, but next to him Governor Roosevelt threw his head back and laughed, grinning as he watched the Babe circle the bases with that mincing trot of his, like a man who’d had a few drinks trying to tiptoe a line.
“In the Reality Lab” [n+1]. “Presence is a favorite word of Zuckerberg’s. The feeling of presence, he explained in a promotional video from 2021, would be ‘the defining quality of the Metaverse.’ The video cuts to a scene of Zuck’s cartoonish Metaverse avatar playing poker with a giant robot in a space station. No one could mistake that for presence. Variously mocked and ignored, the Metaverse withered. As of last month, Reality Labs’ losses since 2020 totaled more than $80 billion. Faced with an overwhelming lack of public interest in bumbling around poorly rendered virtual worlds, Meta decided to pursue a subtler strategy: Rather than replace reality, it would attempt to augment it. In 2023, the company partnered with Ray-Ban to release Meta Glasses, chunky-framed eyeglasses equipped with tiny cameras and a voice-controlled AI chatbot. Initially the glasses seemed like a gimmick—a stocking stuffer for techie teens, something Q might slip 007 in one of the cheesier Bond films—but they became a surprise success. Seven million pairs were sold in 2025. The Ray-Ban Metas owe much of their success to the popularity of short-form video. Wearing your glasses, the whole world—restaurants, laundromats, nightclubs, funerals—becomes grist for your content mill. Scroll through Instagram or TikTok and you’re sure to come across at least three videos pulled straight off someone’s Metas: white boys stunning restaurant workers with their fluent Mandarin; ‘awkward rizz’ at the frat function; tours of luxury apartments. Being ‘truly present,’ Meta realized, didn’t require abandoning the real world. It simply required filming it all the time.” • See TikTok….
“Brain Storms” [Literay Review]. How to Use a Fork: Stories of Mending the Broken Brain is a tribute to the spirit of people faced with calamity, who struggle not only to remain alive but also to claw their way back to regaining a semblance of their former selves. It will be embraced by the medical profession as a sign of advancement and will provide realistic hope to those who have grieved the sudden loss of an identity they loved in a person who is still physically present. Below the convolutions, in the sunless deep, the soul remains.” •