On this day the Mets baseball team pays former player Bobby Bonilla over 1 million dollars each year until 2035.

From Wikipedia

After his subpar 1999 season, the Mets released Bonilla, but still owed him $5.9 million. Bonilla and his agent offered the Mets a deal: Bonilla would defer payment for a decade, and the Mets would pay him an annual paycheck of $1.19 million starting in 2011 and ending in 2035, adding up to a total payout of $29.8 million.^[19][20][21] Some fans refer to these payments on July 1 as “Bobby Bonilla Day”. Mets owner Fred Wilpon accepted the deal mostly because he was heavily invested with Ponzi scheme operator Bernie Madoff, and the 10 percent returns he thought he was getting on his investments with Madoff outweighed the eight percent interest the Mets would be paying on Bonilla’s initial $5.9 million. As a result, the payout was a subject of inquiry during the Madoff investment scandal investigation when it came to light in 2008.^[22] Bonilla also has a second deferred-contract plan with the Mets and Baltimore Orioles that was initiated in 2004 and pays him $500,000 a year for 25 years.^[23]

Seems photo retouching is nothing new and goes back to the earliest days of photography.

After Lincolnâ€s assassination, there was a dearth of “heroic-style” pictures of the president. So one portrait painter got creative. On a print of the late president, Thomas Hicks superimposed Lincolnâ€s head onto the body of John C. Calhoun—the virulent racist and slavery proponent who did not exactly see eye-to-eye with the 16th president.

“The Great Lengths Taken to Make Abraham Lincoln Look Good in Portraits,” by Michael Waters

Great article on this subject: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/abraham-lincoln-photos-edited

Where I first heard this info:
https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/episode-2-deepfakes-and-the-future-of-truth/

The statistic that was mind bending is that Starbucks reported in a current financial report that they have $1.6 Billion in “stored value card liability.” In other words, customers have loaned Starbucks over a billion and a half dollars by buying gift cards, some of which may never be redeemed (some estimates as much as 7%).

According to Planet Money, pepperoni was actually developed in America.

Basically, pepperoni first starts to emerge in the early 20th century around the nineteen-teens, 1920s. And it was essentially Italian American immigrants who were trying to replicate the sausage that they had in Calabria and Apulia, which was known for its distinctive red color, with what they could get on the Lower East Side of New York. So it is this distinctly American thing. And the funny thing that Anthony told me is that now we actually export pepperoni back to Italy. So it is something that has become an American thing that is now going to Italy.

THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY

One reason pepperoni is popular as a pizza topping: it’s long shelf life.

THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY

Honeybees were brought to America by the early European settlers. At that time, they use skeps, upside down woven bowls to maintain the bee hives.

In the mid 1800s a Presbyterian minister named Lorenzo Langstroth, discovered that the bees built their honeycombs by precise measurements, and incorporated this into the wood frame beehive that is still in use today.

99percent Invisible podcast on Beeing

Sometimes you hear statistics and they just don’t compute. I was recently struck by a couple after listening to a conversation with the author of The World in a Grain on the podcast 99% Invisible. I’m still having a hard time wrapping my brain around these.

Weâ€re adding the equivalent of eight New York Cities to the world every single year.

…

Hereâ€s another way to think about it. The amount of concrete that we use every single year is enough to build a wall 88 feet high, 88 feet wide right around the equator every year.

The World in a Grain, author Vince Beiser

99% Invisible website: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-on-sand

The title on this post came from here:
https://concretehelper.com/concrete-facts/

The Freakonomics podcast is currently doing a series on sports that’s worth checking out.

And don’t forget the NFL operates with a special allowance that allows it’s owners to collude with one another, exempting it from corporate monopoly laws. Not to mention that up until 2015, the NFL operated as a non-profit 501c (although the individual teams do pay taxes on their revenue).

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/20/630949390/the-market-for-air

TLDW: Mower blades create a vortex to suck up the blades of grass and hold them in position for the mower blade to cut them. If it did not do this, the blade would simply push the flexible grass blades down as it impacted them. (Hmmm, too many “blades” in this could be confusing. Maybe that’s a good riddle about a blade cutting a blade.)