Cold nights make thicc potatoes

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Lewis and Clark’s mercury-laced poop helped archaeologists trace their expedition

“Picture a scene from the journey: It’s a cool morning, the silence punctuated by birdsong and the rustle of the breeze through the cottonwood trees. To one side, Commander William Clark, his rifle leaning against a plum tree and his rucksack nearby, squats over a latrine pit, unceremoniously heeding the call of nature. … Believe it or not, the holes that were used as toilets along the march to the Pacific have been invaluable for archaeologists and historians. This is thanks especially to a type of treatment included in the expedition’s medical kit.”

This one dashboard already knows more than your other finance apps

Most credit scores, debt totals, and savings goals live in three different apps, none of which talk to each other. Credit Karma puts all three in one free dashboard: credit scores, debt standing, and next-step guidance show up together, already organized. Setup is quick, and checking for updates is simple after setup. Worth a look now; checking on Credit Karma can help take the guesswork out. [Ad]

Satellite record reveals Arctic melt season has plateaued after decades of lengthening

“For decades, Arctic sea ice has been melting earlier in spring and freezing later in fall, extending the melt season and contributing to widespread ice loss. A new NASA-led study … has found that while the Arctic melt season has lengthened dramatically since satellite records began, that trend unexpectedly stabilized around 2010. The Arctic sea ice melt season is now about 40 days longer than it was in 1979, according to the study. Most of the increase occurred before 2010. Since then, the average melt season length has remained relatively unchanged, despite large year-to-year fluctuations.”

Americans are a lot more worried about AI than the rest of the world

“It turns out that people in much of the world outside the West still feel pretty optimistic about the future of AI. The first results from a global survey conducted by Gallup and Microsoft found that AI adoption varies widely around the world and so do people’s attitudes toward the technology. On Tuesday, Gallup published results from the first 37 countries in an AI engagement study that will eventually cover 140 countries. The survey looks at how aware people are of AI, how often they use it, their feelings about the tech, the impact they expect it to have, and how much they trust it. The findings arrive amid a growing debate over whether the AI industry is moving too fast.”

This chatbot habit is costing you the actual point of Claude

There’s a quiet gap between people who ask Claude questions and people who’ve stopped asking and started delegating. The difference isn’t intelligence, it’s workflow: agentic coding, automation across Gmail and Drive, plugin chains that do the boring parts without you. A new certificate course walks through all four, with real projects instead of theory, so the habit actually changes instead of just the intentions. [Ad]

Why Five Guys is so fussy about where its potatoes come from

“If you know anything about Five Guys’ burgers and fries, it’s that you get so, so, so many fries with one order. A regular order of fries looks fairly reasonable in its tall paper cup, but your bag will inevitably be full of what feels like another half pound of loose fries. It would be annoying if they weren’t so delicious — or if Five Guys didn’t take such obvious care of its fries. Case in point: The vast majority of Five Guys’ potatoes come from Idaho, north of the 42nd parallel. You can probably guess why most of Five Guys’ potatoes come from that state — famously America’s potato capital. But why is it important that these potatoes come from above the 42nd parallel?”

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