Home heating costs are expected to jump more than 9% this winter. Plus: Slinkys, widgets, “football,” and AI training.
An expensive home cooling season over the summer has many families starting winter in the red.
Now that many AI algorithms have mastered simple tasks, companies are looking to train their models on data directly from engineers, lawyers, scientists, and more.
Widgets are a general stand-in for any produced good. But how do we think about widgets when goods are only a fraction of what we produce?
“What walks down stairs alone or in pairs and makes a slinkety sound? Everyone knows it’s Slinky!”
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!["In the 1970s, [Betty James] purchased an idea for a plastic slinky," recounted Michelle Parnett-Dwyer, curator at The Strong Museum National of Play. "And then in the 1990s she gets a call from Pixar, and they said, 'We would love to bring your Slinky dog into our movie Toy Story.'"](https://img.apmcdn.org/8155ed6454ba363c62a65aee1e2a2d3166a7fd47/widescreen/5dacbb-20251218-slinky-toy-history-of-toys-webp2000.webp)