Good morning! Forty-eight years ago today, three friends from Albuquerque came down in a French barley field and finished something people had been failing at for more than a century. The photo below catches them a little later, still grinning. First, though: if there's a pull-down ladder to your attic, there's a good chance it's part of a recall announced this month.
Worth Knowing
| 1 |
1.77 million attic ladders are being recalled because the bolts can snapLouisville Ladder recalled about 1.77 million pull-down attic stairways on August 6 after reports that the spreader bolts can break while someone is on them. The company has logged 11 breakages and one injury involving the neck, head, and back. The recall covers Louisville, Featherlite, Lite, and Century attic ladders with gas struts, sold from November 2012 through July 2026 at Home Depot, Lowe's, Do It Best, Orgill, and on Amazon, for roughly $170 to $600. That is a 14-year window, so age is no reason to assume yours is fine. The remedy is a free repair kit with two replacement quarter-inch spreader bolts, washers, and lock nuts. |
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Medicare's 2027 drug prices are set, and Ozempic drops 71%Medicare's second round of drug price negotiation covers 15 medicines, with new prices effective January 1, 2027. Ozempic goes to $274 a month against a $959 list price. Higher doses of Wegovy land at $385. Across the 15 drugs, cuts run from 38% to 85%, and the list reaches well beyond diabetes and weight loss into the inhalers, blood thinners, and arthritis drugs a lot of households already fill. Worth knowing now rather than in January: Medicare's shopping season opens October 15, and what a plan charges for these drugs is part of what you'll be comparing. |
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⚠ Scam alert
The voice on the phone can now be borrowedThe signal: a call from a familiar voice in sudden trouble. An accident, an arrest, a hospital. The story is urgent, the request is money, and the caller asks you not to tell anyone else in the family. What to do: hang up. 3 seconds of audio from a voicemail greeting or a social post is enough to clone someone's voice convincingly, so sounding right proves nothing. Call the person back yourself on the number you already have for them. Verify it: agree on a family code word now, before you need it, and use it on any call asking for money. Report what happened at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and to the FBI at ic3.gov. The FBI's most recent Internet Crime Report logged 22,364 complaints of AI-enabled fraud and nearly $893 million in losses. People 60 and older filed 3,143 of those complaints and accounted for $352 million of the money lost. |
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Social Security is finishing off paper checks this yearSocial Security expects to complete its move to fully electronic payments during 2026, the last step in a shift that stopped issuing new paper checks on September 30, 2025. Fewer than 1% of beneficiaries are still on paper, so this is a small group by share and a large one by count. If you or someone you help is in it, there are two routes: add bank details through a my Social Security account for direct deposit, or use the fee-free Direct Express card if there's no bank account. The security case is straightforward, since a paper check is 16 times more likely to be lost, stolen, or returned undeliverable. Anyone genuinely unable to make the switch can ask the Treasury for a waiver at 1-877-874-4699. |
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The best CDs still pay more than double the average oneTop nationally available certificates of deposit are paying roughly 4.15% to 4.50% as of mid-August, while the FDIC's national average for a 12-month CD sits at 1.68%. The gap is the point: staying with whatever your own bank offers by default is what costs money here, not picking the wrong term. Two things to check before moving anything. Confirm the institution is FDIC-insured, and read the early-withdrawal penalty, which is usually several months of interest and is what makes a long term expensive if plans change. |
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The iPhone update worth installing this weekApple's iOS 26.6, released July 27, fixes close to 90 security flaws. One of them, in the software that handles images, could be triggered by a maliciously built image simply being previewed in Messages, Mail, or a web page. No tapping, no downloading. It runs on iPhone 11 and later, and the whole job is Settings, then General, then Software Update. |
Remember When?
The Atlantic finally gave in to a balloon
At 8:43 on the evening of August 11, 1978, a helium balloon named Double Eagle II lifted off from Presque Isle, Maine, carrying Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman. Thirteen crews had tried to cross the Atlantic by balloon before them, the first of them in 1859. None had made it.
They flew for 137 hours and 6 minutes, close to six days, carried by the wind at an average of 22 miles an hour. Newman had brought a hang glider along to fly himself down at the end; on the sixth day they dropped it overboard as ballast to hold their altitude. Le Bourget, where Lindbergh had landed 51 years earlier, was closed to them, so on the evening of August 17 they came down in a barley field at Miserey, outside Paris.
Abruzzo, Anderson, and Newman after the flight. Photo: San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives
The field filled with people almost immediately. By the time anyone thought to secure the gondola, souvenir hunters had made off with most of the flight logs and charts.
| Gallon of regular gas | $0.67 → $4.07 |
| Dozen eggs | 79¢ → $2.19 |
| Movie ticket | $2.34 → $12.45 |
| First-class stamp | 15¢ → 82¢ |
| New home, median | $56,100 → $398,300 |
U.S. averages unless noted. New-home medians are Census monthly figures (August 1978, June 2026); other 2026 figures current as of August 2026.
Test Yourself
| 1 | How many hearts does an octopus have? |
| 2 | Which frontiersman and three-term Tennessee congressman, born on this date in 1786, died defending the Alamo? |
| 3 | Which Miles Davis album, released on this date in 1959, became the best-selling jazz record ever made? |
| 4 | What 1983 series finale is still the most-watched scripted broadcast in American television history? |
| 5 | Which came first: sharks or trees? |
Answers are near the bottom of today's email. No peeking.
Live Better
The one-time ultrasound most men over 65 never get
An abdominal aortic aneurysm is a bulge in the body's main artery that usually causes no symptoms at all until it ruptures, at which point it is frequently fatal. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends a single ultrasound for men aged 65 to 75 who have ever smoked, even briefly. Randomized trials behind that recommendation found one-time screening cut deaths from aneurysm rupture by roughly 42% to 66%.
It is a Grade B recommendation, which means Medicare and most insurance cover it with no cost-sharing. The scan takes minutes, involves no radiation, and once it comes back clear for most men that is the end of it. Ask a primary care doctor whether the smoking history qualifies.
Homeowners premiums are climbing a fifth straight year
The average U.S. homeowners premium is projected to reach about $3,057 in 2026, a roughly 4% rise on top of last year's 12% jump. Increases are far steeper in high-risk states, with California projected around 16%, while a handful of states should see rates flat or slightly lower.
Renewal is the moment with leverage, and it passes quietly if nobody opens the envelope. Three things are worth doing: get one competing quote, ask your insurer what mitigation discounts it offers for a newer roof, a security system, or a water leak sensor, and reconsider your deductible if you have the cash reserves to carry a higher one.
If you claimed early and still work, the 2027 earnings cap is rising
For anyone collecting Social Security before full retirement age while still working, the Trustees project the 2027 earnings limit will rise to about $25,200, up from $24,480 this year. Above it, Social Security withholds $1 for every $2 earned. For people who reach full retirement age during 2027, the projected limit is roughly $67,200, with $1 withheld for every $3 above it, and the test stops entirely the month full retirement age arrives.
Two caveats. These are projections, and Social Security confirms the real figures in mid-October. And withheld benefits are not forfeited: your monthly payment is recalculated upward once you reach full retirement age, so the money comes back over time rather than disappearing.
Enjoy Yourself
Six decades of rock and roll, told by the hotel that housed it
If These Walls Could Rock traces the Sunset Marquis, the West Hollywood hotel where touring musicians have been put up, hidden, and occasionally thrown out since 1963. Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr, Roger Daltrey, Dave Grohl, Cyndi Lauper, and Slash all turn up to tell on themselves. It reached theaters and Apple TV and Amazon on August 14, so you can rent it tonight.
Four more rescued belugas landed in Chicago
Caspian, Peekachu, Rain, and Secord, aged 20 to 27, arrived at Shedd Aquarium on August 13 after an overnight flight from Marineland, the shuttered Ontario park. They are the second group moved in an international effort to relocate the last captive whales in Canada to accredited aquariums, and all four are reported to be doing well. More transports are planned.
Freeze tomatoes whole and skip the blanching entirely
Late August is when the tomatoes outrun what anyone can eat. The simplest method needs no pot of boiling water: rinse them, dry them completely, and put them in a freezer bag whole.
The skins split and slide off under warm water as they thaw, which is the step blanching was supposed to save you, and they keep eight to twelve months. They come out too soft for a salad and perfectly good for every soup, sauce, and braise you will want in February.
One Last Thing
1. Three — two pump blood through the gills and a third serves the rest of the body, and that main heart stops when the octopus swims, which is part of why they'd rather crawl · 2. Davy Crockett, born in Tennessee on August 17, 1786, who served three terms in Congress before Texas · 3. "Kind of Blue," released August 17, 1959, still the best-selling jazz album ever made · 4. "M*A*S*H," whose February 1983 finale drew close to 106 million viewers and peaked above 121 million · 5. Sharks, by a wide margin — they were swimming about 400 million years ago, tens of millions of years before the first trees
The mail carrier and the block that had his back
James Tate, 53, has carried mail in Old Irving Park on Chicago's Northwest Side long enough that people on the route know him by name. When he had a stroke in May, the neighborhood started a fundraiser for his medical bills and put more than $20,000 into it.
When he was well enough, they threw him a porch party. One neighbor described him as the glue that holds the neighborhood together, which is a large thing to say about the person who brings the mail, and evidently the whole block agreed.
More tomorrow. — The editors