Four Ways a Number Goes Wrong, Taken From Our Own Corrections
Almost nothing we corrected this month was invented. The errors were stale figures, superseded documents, claims attached to the wrong subject, and numbers with no source at all — and each has a different tell.
Nobody Has Published a Humanoid Robot Production Count. That Is the Story.
Tesla has never published an Optimus production figure, and Musk told investors in January that it was not in use in Tesla's own factories in any material way. The widely circulated unit counts come from neither Tesla nor its rivals.
Two in Five Private Credit Borrowers Burn Cash. Regulators Say It Isn’t Systemic Yet.
The IMF puts the share of private credit borrowers with negative free cash flow at around 40%, up from 25% in 2021. The FSB's May report calls the sector a vulnerability but stops short of systemic. The gap between those two statements is the whole…
US Factory Construction Is Down 21% in a Year. One Sector Explains Nearly All of It.
Census data puts manufacturing construction at a $172.7 billion annual rate in June, down 21.4% year over year. The decline is not broad — it is concentrated in semiconductor and electronics fabs, which have fallen 44% from their 2024 peak.
Amazon Retired Blue Jay in February. The Launch Announcement Is Still Up.
Amazon's flagship warehouse robot was announced in October to heavy coverage. Its own announcement page now carries a one-line update, dated 25 February 2026, saying the system is no longer in use. Nothing else was published.
Waymo Runs 500,000 Rides a Week and Recalled 3,871 Robotaxis in June. Both Are True.
Waymo reports half a million paid rides a week across ten US cities and a 13x cut in serious-injury crashes. It also recalled 3,871 vehicles in June and faces NHTSA and NTSB investigations over school buses and a struck child. The two claims measure…
The Data Center Cut Itself 80% and Still Lost. The Missing 500 Megawatts Is Why.
Pinal County supervisors voted 4-1 on 26 August to deny the rezoning behind La Osa. By then the project had shrunk from 59 data center buildings to 11 and published a 500 MW gas plant, a 1 GW demand cap and a 600 acre-foot water limit. It lost anyway,…
The Navy Is Sidelining 17 Ships to Free Up Crews. It Just Ordered Ten More.
Military Sealift Command has sidelined more than a dozen support ships because it cannot crew them, and is simultaneously soliciting ten commercial tankers. The binding constraint on American naval logistics is mariners, not hulls — and hulls are the…
The “Biggest Oil Deal in World History” Pays Venezuela Less Than It Earned Last Year
Trump announced US majority control of 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan reserves. Caracas put the figure at $209 billion over 25 years — about $8.4 billion a year, against the $18.4 billion Venezuela earned in 2025. No contract text exists, and $170…
Canada’s New $750M Export Terminal Fixes a Real Problem. Replacing US Trade Isn’t It.
CANXPORT opened at Prince Rupert on August 27 — 400,000 containers a year of Canadian export capacity. Los Angeles and Long Beach moved 20.1 million in 2025. The terminal solves an empty-container problem, which is a smaller and more interesting story.
