New York's trash shows where the city went in 2020, one district at a time
We read every month of New York City sanitation tonnage since 1990. In 2020 Midtown's collected trash fell 20.69% and Throgs Neck and Co-op City rose 14.86%, further than any district moved in nine ordinary years.
TeardownOctober 27, 2026October has an extra Saturday this year. It is not good news for everyone.
October 2026 swaps a Wednesday for a Saturday against October 2025. From 416 months of Census retail data, that alone adds 1.47% to a liquor store's month and takes 2.07% off a building supply dealer's. November gives it all back.
MethodOctober 20, 2026The customers you are losing are still ordering.
In two years of a real retailer's sales, 65.30% of the money lost from existing customers left with customers who kept ordering and spent less. A list of who stopped buying sees only the other 34.70%.
AnswerOctober 17, 2026We want every small business to have the data team only billion-dollar companies could afford.
A seven-person data team costs a $100 million company 0.59% of its payroll and a $2.5 million to $5 million business more than all of it. That wall is why small businesses never had one. Here is the arithmetic, and how we take it down.
TeardownOctober 13, 2026The first warm day of spring is just a warm day.
Across eleven springs of New York bike counters, the first warm day drew +83.32% on the week before, and exactly what the same weather draws on any ordinary day in the same weeks. The rush is the thermometer, not the calendar.
AnswerOctober 6, 2026Waiting longer will not tell you whether it worked.
In two years of a real retailer's sales, a month against the month before moved up to 44.82% on its own, and a quarter up to 63.69%. What you compare against decides whether you can tell, far more than how long you wait.
TeardownSeptember 25, 2026Bed Bath & Beyond paid $53.32 a share for stock it later cancelled for nothing.
It repurchased 163,780,000 of its own shares for $8.73 billion, an average of $53.32 each. On September 29, 2023 those shares were cancelled without consideration. Both numbers were in its own filings; nobody put them in the same sentence.
TeardownSeptember 24, 2026Twice a year America runs a free experiment on every restaurant in the country.
An hour of new evening daylight moves dinner about fourteen minutes later. An hour of lost evening daylight does not move it earlier at all. Measured against twenty ordinary weeks, from free taxi data and computed sunsets.
AnswerSeptember 24, 2026What it costs to build a data team in-house.
Seven people, about $1.1 million to $1.6 million a year once they are on payroll. Built from Bureau of Labor Statistics wage medians, with the benefits multiplier most estimates leave out.
MethodSeptember 24, 2026A shop asked whether rain was good for business. The answer changed three times.
The first answer was plus 31 percent. The second was plus 9. The third was that rain brings fewer people through the door, not more, and the obvious move would have cost the shop money.
MethodSeptember 24, 2026Palantir built an ontology for billion-dollar companies. We built the small one.
Palantir charges £3,000,000 a year for the licence and £150,000 per person per quarter for the engineers. Its own annual report says the barriers are the strategy. Here is the same idea at a size a $6 million business can hire.
TeardownSeptember 24, 2026Nine days before the post, Bud Light's own marketing chief said the brand was dying.
Bud Light lost about 26 percent of its volume in 2023. It had been losing around 6 percent a year for fifteen years before that, and its own VP said so on a podcast nine days before the post everyone blames.
TeardownSeptember 24, 2026Strawberries run on a price calendar. It has not missed once in thirty-five years.
In 35 measurable years of United States producer prices, winter strawberries cost more than summer strawberries every single year, by a median of 1.73 times. Computed from two free government files.