I was at the market today and they had big sacks of M&Ms on sale. Two for seven bucks. Then I wandered to a different part of the store, and there were a whole bunch of crates full of half-price stuff—including the very same M&Ms I had seen in the candy aisle. But these were on sale for half off the regular price of $5.

So which was it? $3.50 or $2.50? The only way to find out was to buy one, so in the name of science that’s what I did. Here’s the answer:

They were on sale for $3.50, but everything in the crates was half off, so the final price was $1.75. Maybe I should buy more. M&Ms never go bad, do they?

To memorialize this great day, I also have an answer to one of the great philosophical questions of all time: Is it really turtles all the way down? As you can see, the answer is no. It’s just the one.

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OUR DEADLINE MATH PROBLEM

It’s risky, but also unavoidable: A full one-third of the dollars that we need to pay for the journalism you rely on has to get raised in December. A good December means our newsroom is fully staffed, well-resourced, and on the beat. A bad one portends budget trouble and hard choices.

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We simply can’t afford to come up short. There is no cushion in our razor-thin budget—no backup, no alternative sources of revenue to balance our books. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the fierce journalism we do. That’s why we need you to show up for us right now.

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