Stan Lee died Monday at 95, and the internet performed the full global grief ritual (#081’s Prince protocol) for the man whose collaborative mythology — WITH Kirby, WITH Ditko; the footnotes built half of everything, #141, same week’s lesson — became this century’s shared narrative operating system. The MCU is architecture: twenty films on a common continuity substrate, the boldest long-term integration project in entertainment (#130’s Infinity War snap was its TSB-scale cutover, executed clean). Excelsior, and credit the co-authors.
Amazon’s HQ2 circus reached its punchline: after 14 months, 238 cities’ bids, and municipal humiliations ranging from tax-break arms races to renaming-offer stunts, the “second headquarters” is… SPLIT between New York and Northern Virginia — the two most predictable talent pools on the map. The takeaway every mayor learned at cost: the contest was substantially a DATA HARVEST (238 cities’ detailed economic-development playbooks, delivered free) with a real-estate decision attached. Run the hand-squeeze test (#105) on any process asking you to compete: what does the machine do that the obvious answer didn’t? (NYC’s backlash is already brewing; this file may reopen.)
Gaming’s cautionary counterweight: FALLOUT 76 launched Tuesday into the most brutal reception of the year — a beloved single-player universe shipped as a bug-riddled, NPC-less online service nobody asked for. The No Man’s Sky clause (#088) inverted: NMS overpromised a good idea; 76 competently shipped a wrong one. Vision bugs don’t hotfix.
TIL: RFP-as-reconnaissance — procurement processes that exist to extract information, not select vendors. Now I can’t unsee them. Audit what your bids TEACH before you submit them.