Quote:Misconceptions about Coca-Cola Hutch Bottles and the Full Depth Case

These first bottling companies (with a couple of exceptions) used the Hutchinson stoppered bottle to distribute the drink. The Hutchinson bottle dated from 1879 and used a primitive looping wire apparatus and rubber gasket to seal the bottle. This bottle was stored upside down to keep pressure on the fastener, thus maintaining a tight seal between the glass and the rubber gasket. The Hutchinson bottle was costly, hard to fill, and unsanitary. Bottlers needed a better option and found one with the crown, cork and seal bottle.

The bottle crown with a cork seal inside was patented in 1892 to William Painter. In 1898 the first foot-powered crowner that could cap 24 bottles a minute was introduced. But this new crowner was of limited usefulness until the Owen's Automatic Bottle Machine was introduced to bottle manufacturers in 1903. This bottle machine allowed for the production of highly standardized bottles with highly standardized lips. These new standardized bottles made the crown closure easy to use and very economical. They were soon widely accepted and its is thought that all new Coca-Cola bottlers after 1904 purchased only crown top bottles.

Early bottlers and the first bottles they used:
(H) - Hutchinson Bottle    (SS) - Straight Sided Bottle

1894 - Biedenharn Candy Company (H)
1897 - Valdosta Electric Bottling Works (H)
1899 - Chattanooga, Tennessee (H)
1900 - Atlanta, Georgia (H)
1900 - Nashville, Tennessee (SS)
1901 - Chicago, Illinois (SS)
1901 - Cincinnati, Ohio (SS)
1901 - Louisville, Kentucky (SS)
1901 - Shelbyville, Kentucky (SS)
1901 - Campblesville, Kentucky (SS)
1901 - Elizabethtown, Kentucky (SS)
1902 - Jasper, Alabama (H)
1902 - Birmingham, Alabama (H)

Quote:This Week in the New Normal #97



Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.

1. ”Can anything stop bird flu?”

So asks the headline of this piece in New York magazine. A feverishly apocalyptic tale of a virus that could – and probably will – kill every human being in the United States.

The tone is urgent from the beginning. Hitting dates and names like the voiceover of a true crime documentary. It’s also tediously long so we won’t break down the whole thing.

The main takeaway should be this: Despite the winding down of bird flu in the wake of Trump Musk mania, it hasn’t gone away yet. In fact, articles like this make me begin to doubt my bird flu prediction from back in January.

The angle that looks to be shaping up, if this article is anything to go by, is that if there is a bird flu pandemic, it will be all Trump/Kennedy’s fault. A potentially wonderfully violent public debate will ensue, I’m sure, which is very much the point of almost all news media for the last few years.

All that said, the article made me laugh. There’s just something so darkly amusing about his Marvin-like defeatism. He’s typing his ten-thousand words out to a readership of people who don’t even realise they’re already dead.

Quote:There’s no comfort in where we are. Our government has spent the past year allowing H5N1 to spread throughout the country and the past two months dismantling some of the best defenses we have against pathogens of all sorts. We’re beleaguered and suspicious and seemingly incapable of collective action for the common good. The only thing keeping us safe, for now, is the virus itself.

2. Goodbye freedom of religion

A New York court has found that Amish children are not exempt from the state’s “compulsory vaccinations for schoolchildren” law.

The St Vincent Times headlines:

Quote:Amish children in NY face compulsory vaccination as court crushes religious freedom

To be clear, these are Amish schools run by Amish people for Amish children. The children in question are not attending public schools. The Amish are not asking for special treatment, only to be left alone.

This is the entire purpose of the Constitution: to protect people who want to be left alone. A terrible precedent is being set.

3. “Food security requires alternative proteins, upscaling innovation is crucial”

That’s a headline from Euractive, warning that we need to change the way we eat because of climate this and sustainability that.

You know the drill. And you know what they mean by “alternative protein”.

My favourite line claims that “decreasing meat consumption could save the lives of 80 billion animals a year”, which seems to suggest that – should we stop eating pigs and cows and such – that farms are going to become like boring zoos where all the animals are just left alone to live their lives in peace.

Reality check – those animals won’t be saved, those animals will never exist. We’ll need the land they live on to grow soy paste and bug milk (see below).

It’s like arguing that contraception saves children’s lives because babies who were never born can’t die in car accidents.

It also discounts that 80 billion pigs/sheep/chickens/cows – by weight – is probably several tens of tillions of insects, none of which want to be eaten. But I guess those lives don’t count.

BONUS: Superfood of the week

Did you know that cockroach milk is four times as nutritious as cows’ milk?

It’s true. They did a study:



It’s the next superfood.

The hard part is finding the teeny tiny udders.

All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention whatever is about to go down in Serbia or how we should redefine making weapons as “ethical”.

Quote:The 1993 Superstorm moved across the densely populated eastern portion of the nation, with around 40% of the population of the United States directly affected by the storm. Upwards of 10 million electrical customers lost service due to the storm. An event summary from the National Climatic Data Center records the following death toll by state:

            Florida: 44
            Alabama: 16
            Tennessee: 14
            South Carolina: 1
            Georgia: 15
            North Carolina: 19
            Kentucky: 5
            Virginia: 13
            West Virginia: 4
            Maryland: 3
            Pennsylvania: 49
            New York: 23
            Maine: 2

Every major airport on the U.S. East Coast was closed at one point by the storm. The volume of water dropped by the storm was immense: 44,000,000 acre-feet. (enough water to flood 44 million acres of land one foot deep) The volume of snow dropped by the Superstorm was computed at just under 13 cubic miles. [around 14 trillion gallons]

Superstorm of 1993 "Storm of the Century"

Quote:Hegseth ‘disestablishing’ Office of Net Assessment, Pentagon’s strategic analysis specialists

The memo, dated today and signed by Hegseth, directs the Pentagon’s Performance Improvement Officer and Director of Administration and Management to reassign all civilian employees to other “mission critical positions” inside the department, while military personnel will return to their service to receive new billets.

Simultaneously, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official is directed to “ensure that the necessary steps are taken” by department contracting authorities to terminate “all ONA contracts awarded for ONA and ONA-related requirements.” A number of DC think tanks and research organizations will likely be impacted by these cancelled contracts.

However, it appears ONA will live on in some manner: The memo directs the deputy secretary of defense to provide a plan in 30 days to rebuild the office in a manner “consistent with [Hegseth’s] priorities.”

...
On Feb. 7, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, (R-Iowa), sent a letter to Hegseth questioning whether the office was still necessary and asking for information related to ONA’s production net assessments since 2007 and the last decade of contracts.

“I remain concerned that ONA is not performing its mission for the taxpayer and has engaged in financial waste,” he wrote at the time.

Quote:Claude Johnson, then sales manager and managing director of Rolls-Royce, proved his good sense for luxury and elegance when he ordered this 40/50 hp as a factory demonstration car. Due to the silver color scheme in combination with the almost silent engine running Rolls-Royce gave this 40/50 hp the nickname “Silver Ghost”. This name was engraved on a metal plaque which was mounted below the windscreen. This special vehicle first attracted attention at the Olympia Motor Show in London in November 1906.

A year later, it competed in a reliability contest in Scotland. This was immediately followed by an endurance test covering 15,000 miles, which included completing the route from London to Glasgow 27 times. Why this effort? The brands C.S. Rolls & Co. and Royce Ltd. had only formed a joint automobile company since March 15, 1906. Accordingly, positive publicity was important, which at that time was achieved primarily through extreme reliability of the vehicles.

Rolls-Royce 40/50 hp Silver Ghost

Quote:Accordingly, some 50 of the early motor cars were given suitably imposing names, either by Johnson or by their proud owners. In an inspired moment, Johnson dubbed the twelfth chassis, number 60551, the ‘Silver Ghost’, in homage to its almost supernatural quietness and smooth ride. Painted silver and adorned with silver-plated fittings, it was widely exhibited by Rolls-Royce at motor shows, and Silver Ghost would go on to become the name by which the 40/50 H.P. was generally known, as it is today.

But chassis 60551 was more than just a showpiece. Out on the road, it dominated the gruelling, high-profile reliability trials that represented the pinnacle of motoring endeavour at that time and were thus central to Johnson’s relentless promotional activities. In the process, it perhaps did more than any other early Rolls-Royce model to establish the marque’s international reputation for performance and engineering excellence.

Its extraordinary run of success began with the 1907 Scottish Reliability Trial, in which it covered some 2,000 miles without a single breakdown, the only delay being for a minute to re-open a closed fuel tap. Immediately afterwards, it covered 15,000 miles non-stop, driving day and night except for Sundays, setting a new world record for continuous travel.

THE 1910s: THE ROLLS-ROYCE 40/50 H.P. ‘SILVER GHOST’

Quote:It all began in Dundee, where the Beano's publisher DC Thomson & Co is still based. The idea emerged - the Beano's history reveals, external - when the comic's editor George Moonie heard a music hall song with the chorus "I'm Dennis the Menace from Venice" and ordered a character to fit the name.

According to Scotsman writer Stephen McGinty, external, the eureka moment arrived in a St Andrews pub while chief sub Ian Chisholm and artist Davey Law were brainstorming. Chisholm grabbed a cigarette packet, sketched a picture of "a knobbly-kneed boy with dark spiky hair" and a comic strip legend was born.

The Beano's Dennis the Menace

Quote:When to Consider BSL-2+ Containment

It is important to remember that BSL-2+ is not recognized as a containment level by CDC’s BMBL guideline or the National Institutes of Health’s Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant or Synthetic Nucleic Acid Molecules guidance document. No specialized facilities are required for BSL-2+, nor is there a requirement to include BSL-3 facility elements in a biosafety level 2 space. This voluntary designation is only used for materials and procedures that can safely be worked with in a BSL-2 lab space, but where researchers wish to add supplemental safety measures.

That said, BMBL does acknowledge the need for “enhanced practices, procedures, and facilities” in certain circumstances, and the NIH’s Biosafety Considerations for Research with Lentiviral Vectors mentions “enhanced BL2 containment”. Because there is no standardized list of microorganisms, viral vectors, or research projects that researchers can rely on as guidance for when to implement a BSL-2+ environment, each decision to use BSL-3 practices in a biosafety level 2 must be made via a risk assessment process.

Biosafety Level 2+ (BSL-2+): What Every Lab Supervisor Needs to Know

Quote:Since Masons were pledged to come to each other’s aid under circumstances of distress, and to extend fraternal indulgence at all times, it was held that the order nullified the enforcement of regular law. Masonic constables, sheriffs, juries, and judges must all be in league with Masonic criminals and fugitives. The press was believed to have been so “muzzled” by Masonic editors and proprietors that news of Masonic malfeasance could be suppressed. At a moment when almost every alleged citadel of privilege in America was under democratic assault, Masonry was attacked as a fraternity of the privileged, closing business opportunities and nearly monopolizing political offices.

Certain elements of truth and reality there may have been in these views of Masonry. What must be emphasized here, however, is the apocalyptic and absolutistic framework in which this hostility was commonly expressed. Anti-Masons were not content simply to say that secret societies were rather a bad idea. The author of the standard exposition of anti-Masonry declared that Freemasonry was “not only the most abominable but also the most dangerous institution that ever was imposed on man. . . . It may truly be said to be Hell’s master piece.“

The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Harper's, Nov 1964)

Quote:UPDATE: 4:00 PM EDT—

Boeing has issued an official statement on its award, with the following quote from Steve Parker, interim president, and chief executive officer of its Defense, Space & Security division.

“We recognize the importance of designing, building, and delivering a sixth-generation fighter capability for the United States Air Force. In preparation for this mission, we made the most significant investment in the history of our defense business, and we are ready to provide the most advanced and innovative NGAD aircraft needed to support the mission.”

Boeing Wins F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter Contract

Quote:The Von Braun Master Plan: National Dream or National Nightmare?
by Jeffrey F. Bell
Nov 03, 2003

In his recent testimony before Congress, my fellow planetary scientist Wes Huntress made the following cryptic statement: "Fifty years ago, in 1952, we developed a national dream of space exploration. As a nation of people who make dreams happen, and who explore to provide for a better life, we didn't do too badly with making that mid-Century dream of space travel come true."

The Congressmen were probably puzzled by the first sentence of this quote. To most people, the US space program started with Vanguard and Explorer in 1958. But we hard-core space cadets know what Dr. Huntress was talking about: the famous series of articles by Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, Cornelius Ryan, Chesley Bonestell, et al. In COLLIER'S magazine (1952-53), later published as a series of large-format books.

This was the first presentation of an integrated vision for the human exploration of space. And the Von Braun Master Plan was trumpeted to the public over and over again (in many formats from Walt Disney TV specials to comic books) all though the 1950s until it was practically engraved on the brains of the Baby Boom generation..

So Huntress is not exaggerating when he calls the Plan "our national dream of space exploration." However, he is dead wrong when he says "we didn't do too badly" at it. Actually, we have utterly failed to achieve that dream, for two reasons:

A) the space program outlined by Von Braun in 1952 had excessively grandiose goals and was wildly optimistic in terms of funding and scheduling.

B) the solar system is both a lot more dangerous to human life and a lot less interesting than we thought it was in 1952.

Quote:Just one percent of the Smithsonian’s vast collection, spread over 20 museums and galleries, is on display at one time, leaving millions of unseen treasures, like this classic movie prop, hidden in high-security storage facilities.

As I discover when three Smithsonian museums kindly allow me to peek inside their back rooms, the answer is: lots of things that will absolutely blow your mind.

In the maze of storage rooms at the National Museum of American History, for instance, it seems every cabinet I look into holds an iconic cultural touchstone. Behind one door lies Ray Bolger's Scarecrow costume from The Wizard of Oz. A nearby drawer holds, side by side, Jerry Seinfeld’s puffy shirt and Mister Rogers’ red sweater. A small box contains the original stopwatch from the television news program 60 Minutes.

This could go on, literally, forever. But everyone has real work to do, so we reluctantly head for the door—where I spot, beneath Lance Armstrong’s bicycle, a crate labeled “Gremlin. Fragile.”

“Wait,” I say. “There’s a gremlin in there?”

“Yeah, I think so,” says Lintelman. He pries off the front and there, staring at us from behind a wooden brace supporting its head, is a perfectly preserved critter from Joe Dante’s 1990 horror comedy Gremlins 2: The New Batch. His eyes, peering over the brace, seem to implore us to set him free. But there’s a hand-printed warning: “Do not remove screws.”

A rare look inside the Smithsonian’s secret storerooms

Quote:From $6 billion unicorn to bankrupt cautionary tale: The story of 23andMe

Here’s a timeline of events that shaped 23andMe trajectory:

2006: Linda Avey, a genetics expert, Paul Cusenza, an engineer and executive, and Anne Wojcicki, a former healthcare investments analyst, launch 23andMe. Avey had previously conceived of the idea and pitched it to investors, including Google’s cofounders. According to Avey, Sergey Brin suggested Wojcicki become a cofounder. (Brin and Wojcicki were married at the time.)

2007: 23andMe initially begins offering DNA tests for $1,000 per order, asking customers to send their spit to the company in a vial in exchange for information about their ancestry and some health risks. The company’s test allows users to opt in to share their data with researchers and answer questions about their lifestyle, creating a potentially valuable database for future mining. New York Times journalist Amy Harmon writes an in-depth personal account of testing her DNA with 23andMe, bringing widespread awareness of the company and its potential. The company also becomes known for celebrity-attended “spit parties.”

2009: Wojcicki and the board announce Linda Avey is leaving the company. (Cusenza had left in 2008.) Years later, Avey tells the podcast She Leads: “It’s not something I chose.” She also calls the ouster “devastating.”

November 22, 2013: The FDA sends Wojcicki a warning letter over its spit kit tests that offer customers health and disease risk information. The company takes its health results products off the market and hires experts to navigate regulatory affairs. Two years later, the FDA approves 23andMe’s consumer-focused genomic health tests, creating a first-of-its-kind FDA-approved product.

March 12, 2015: Wojcicki launches a drug discovery business, looking to capitalize on the data it has collected from consumers. This leads the company into a costly undertaking, with Wojcicki later recounting how she was warned against doing drug research, which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, require several years, and doesn’t guarantee success. Wojcicki recruits top scientific researchers and 23andMe eventually develops two cancer drug targets that will reach clinical phase trials.

July 25, 2018: GSK signs a deal with 23andMe that gives the drug company exclusive access to 23andMe’s database—including DNA data for it’s then-5 million customers—for four years. “The goal of the collaboration is to gather insights and discover novel drug targets driving disease progression and develop therapies for serious unmet medical needs based on those discoveries,” GSK says in a press release. This partnership will later be extended until 2025 and GSK will announce that it led to potentially viable drug targets.

June 16, 2021: 23andMe goes public via a Richard Branson and Virgin Group—backed SPAC deal. The listing briefly values the company at $6 billion, but it will be worth $3 billion by the end of the year.

November 1, 2021: 23andMe buys telehealth company Lemonaid Health for $400 million. It was always Wojcicki’s goal for 23andMe to offer retail DNA testing, run drug research, and integrate genomic testing and clinical medicine.

October 6, 2023: A major data breach exposes the DNA of 6.9 million people targeted by hackers. The company later confirms that the hackers targeted customers of Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese ancestry. The breach also leads to a class-action lawsuit that will force the company to pay a $30 million settlement in 2024.

January 31, 2024: The Wall Street Journal publishes an explosive story looking at the reasons 23andMe’s was trading as a penny stock and has never turned a profit. As a public company, major flaws in its business model become obvious. Sources in the story question whether Wojcicki is paying enough attention to the company’s fundamentals or if she’s building a personal brand. More broadly, the biotech market is also suffering from a downturn that began in 2022.

April 18, 2024: With 23andMe financials still deteriorating, Wojcicki expresses interest in taking the company private. As the controlling shareholder, she also says she will not be open to outside bids. (She changes her stance a few times months later.) The 23andMe board forms a special committee to prepare to assess a deal.

August 2, 2024: The board responds to Wojcicki’s first bid to take the company private for 40 cents per share. It does not believe the share price is appropriate and it is unhappy with the dearth of details about financing the sale. “Our expectation after months of work was that you would submit a fully-financed, fully-diligenced, actionable proposal that is in the best interests of the non-affiliated shareholders,” the board writes. It also offers the opportunity to resubmit the proposal at a later date. The company extends this deadline again when Wojcicki’s sister, Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, dies of lung cancer.

September 18, 2024: In a shocking turn, the entire board of 23andMe resigns on the same day, explaining in a public letter that its members felt they had few other options. Wojcicki, as the controlling shareholder, had said she would not entertain other offers and the board had not received an improved bid while the company was facing dire straits. The group—which included luminaries such as Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube, and Roelof Botha, head of Sequoia Capital—wrote that while they “wholeheartedly” believed in the company’s mission to personalize health care with genetic data, they disagreed with Wojcicki’s strategic direction.

October 16, 2024: 23andMe completes a reverse stock split to avoid being delisted from NASDAQ. The share price had previously fallen below $1.

October 17, 2024: Wojcicki tells Fortune in her first public interview since the board’s resignation that she still believes she “can land this plane” and that she was as surprised as anyone about the board’s resignation. She also responds to former employees’ suggestions that her overly-controlling leadership style helped to sink the company. “I’ve always said ever since the very beginning, I don’t need to be in charge,” she told Fortune. “There’s no ego for me. I care about the vision and the mission.”

February 20, 2025: After closing the drug discovery business, laying off nearly half of 23andMe’s staff, and adding three CFOs to her new board, Wojcicki links up with New Mountain Capital and submits a new proposal to buy 23andMe that values the company at $75 million. Nervous retail investors tell Fortune they hope the board will not accept her first offer.

March 2, 2025: Wojcicki explains in a new public filing that New Mountain Capital is “no longer interested” in partnering with her on the proposal. Wojcicki includes a new bid, this time valuing the company at $42 million. The board rejects that proposal later the same day.

March 24, 2025: 23andMe announces it’s entering bankruptcy, prompting data privacy concerns. Anne Wojcicki steps down as CEO but says she will still make yet another bid to buy the company. “Consumers are rising up and asking for more control over their health and want greater knowledge about how to be healthy and why they may have health issues,” she writes on X.com. “We fought for consumers to have direct access to their information and for them to have choice and transparency with respect to their personal data. As I think about the future, I will continue to tirelessly advocate for customers to have choice and transparency with respect to their personal data, regardless of platform.”

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the correct year that the FDA sent 23andMe a warning letter about its DNA tests with health risk results.