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Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. 38,000 private sector jobs added in Aug., lowest total since Jan; what the calf muscle says about cardiovascular health; and mathematicians finally identify no-tie dice for five player game

Let’s get into it!

A classic Old Fashioned has a bourbon or rye base, a bit of simple syrup, a couple dashes of bitters, and some garnish. It’s one of the most popular cocktails on the planet, with some of the strongest staying power among them.

Its popularity, however, has made it an optimal target for those looking to put their own spin on it. That’s been both a good and bad thing for the Old Fashioned, and for the countless riffs on it that mixologists have tried to build a fanbase around.

John’s Old Fashioned is one of the few that’s actually succeeded. It’s very similar to the original, but the riff is just different and noticeable enough to make it its own drink—a drink that, in turn, has driven a great deal of success for John’s Food & Wine in Chicago’s Lincoln Park.

Like the original, it contains two ounces of bourbon, a teaspoon of demerara syrup, and two or three dashes of bitters. The difference, however, is the inclusion of half an ounce of Bianco vermouth.

“The [vermouth] adds botanical notes to the cocktail while also lightening the drink and cutting through some of the sweetness you find in a traditional Old Fashioned,” said Blaine Smith, John’s general manager.

The heart pumps blood into the body, and in most cases, it pumps hard enough that the blood fully circulates. However, gravity can make getting the blood back to the heart a bit more complex, which is where the calf muscles come in.

It turns out there’s basically a second heart beneath our knees operating in the form of a “calf muscle pump function.”

It helps get the blood flowing back home, and is vitally important to cardiovascular health. Any time you wiggle your toes, flex your ankles, or flex your calves themselves, the pump function is activated.

A 2024 study conducted by the Mayo Clinic found insufficient or impaired calf muscle pump function leads to a considerably higher likelihood of mortality than someone with a normal pump function.

The study found that over a 10-year period, mortality risk for those with normal pump function is 5.9%, whereas those with impaired function have a mortality risk of 17.5%.

“The calf muscle is a very important physiological component of our cardiovascular system,” said study author Dr. Robert D McBane. “Most people, when they think of pumping blood in the body, they think: ‘Yeah, we’ve got a pump. It’s called the heart.’ But the heart can only pump out the blood that’s returned to it.”

Board games often require a roll of the dice to determine which player goes first. In a five-player game, an ultimately-insignificant but still tedious problem often arises: ties.

After years of searching for a solution to this problem, a global team of mathematicians—led by Auburn University mathematician Eric Harshbarger and assisted by Canadian software engineer Paul Meyer—finally solved the problem.

“With two people, we had that answered in the blink of an eye, with three people we had answered in a day or two, four people we had the dice within two to three weeks, maybe a month,” Harshbarger told the CBC’s As It Happens. 

With five, however, nobody could square the proverbial circle for nearly 15 years.

“I knew there was a solution with something crazy like 1,440 sides for each die,” Harshbarger said. “That's not makeable.”

After an Australian scientist emailed Harshbarger with a 120-sided solution, Meyer emailed him asking for failed iterations from previous research. He used those to run a search that theoretically involved more permutations than there are atoms in the universe.

Still, he identified a solution involving five dice with 60 sides.

The search for a smaller solution or one that includes more than five people continues, but as far as the five-person threat of a tie goes, the gaming world can now sleep soundly.

Posthumous albums are always a sensitive subject for fans of a beloved artist. When handled with care and dignity, they can be very powerful, but the way Prince’s new album, Timeless, has been handled has left fans and critics wondering what the point was in the first place.

The album is comprised of ten unreleased outtakes of Prince’s work spanning from the 1970s all the way to the 2010s. One of the songs, Calabama, was flagged by fans who realized it contained new instrumentation that clearly would have been recorded after the Purple One’s passing.

A horn section on the song was credited to players who hadn’t even joined Prince’s band until 2012, despite the song being recorded in 2003. Prince’s estate initially denied any new instruments were tracked for the release, but co-executor Charles F. Spicer Jr. conceded and apologized for the initial inaccuracy.

"I want to correct something I stated earlier," Spicer posted on X. "I stated that nothing had been edited or added to Calabama. I've since confirmed that the released version includes additional horns, so that statement was not accurate, and I will take responsibility for what I stated."

Critics have also questioned how the album will fare long-term, with Minneapolis radio station The Current opining the track list isn’t for Prince’s fans or even casual listeners.

First in line

You’ll know all these songs Staker, but do you know which one was released first? Find out, with today’s trivia 😏 💿️