Walk this way

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. The new era of the Old Fashioned; LEGO says farewell to some awesome sets; and the Bird Photograph of the Year.

Let’s get into it!

The Old Fashioned is aptly named. It’s officially over 150 years old, but crafting cocktails with spirits, sugar, and water is a technique that’s been around for hundreds of years.

The Old Fashioned added bitters, and was fairly popular throughout the Gilded Age, but like many adult beverages, it fizzled tremendously during Prohibition. Most brown liquor-based cocktails were wiped from menus for decades and didn’t return with soaring popularity until the 21st century.

In fact, in his 2014 book on cocktails, The Old-Fashioned: The Story of the World’s First Classic Cocktail with Recipes and Lore, journalist and author Robert Simonson referred to this era as “sacchariferous window dressing.”

It really was largely in response to the popularity of AMC’s Mad Men that the Old Fashioned made its comeback.

“Do this again; Old Fashioned, please,” Don Draper replied to his waiter at a Midtown tavern in the series’ very first scene. Though not necessarily the writers’ intention, it turned out the cocktail industry and its patrons heard Mr. Draper loud and clear.

These days, with infinite content at the fingertips of anyone with a smartphone, cocktail enthusiasts and craft connoisseurs have been hard at work trying to teach an Old Fashioned new tricks.

You can read about the modern riffs on the classic cocktail here.

Revolution Medicines set out to treat pancreatic cancer, but it never intended to produce a drug like Rasonque (daraxonrasib), which received regulatory approval from the Food and Drug Administration in August.

In its final trial run, the daily-dose pill was found to double the life expectancy of those with the most common form of pancreatic cancer, the five-year survival rate of which is less than 13%. Among the 500 trial participants, median life expectancy jumped from 6.7 months to 13.2 months.

Initially, RevMed’s scientists were trying to cut off communication between an enzyme external to cancer cells called SHP2 and a group of proteins (RAS) inside cancer cells to prevent them from facilitating tumor growth.

Instead, they found daraxonrasib was able to stop growth or outright shrink tumors that were being driven by mutations in those proteins—a result they not only didn’t expect, but outright believed wasn’t possible.

“Despite RAS being the first genetic driver of human cancer ever discovered, RAS-driven cancers have defied targeted treatment approaches for decades, making RAS truly the holy grail target of oncology,” said RevMed chief scientific officer, Jan Smith.

Henley Spiers is the British photographer who captured the surreal image above, which may appear at first glance to be an interesting-looking fish reentering its natural habitat. However, what you’re seeing is actually the majestic moment a gannet dove into the ocean to retrieve its lunch.

Gannets dive at a speed of 50 mph, which gives you a sense of the sheer precision required by any photographer to capture a moment when the creature pierces the boundary between air and sea.

Unsurprisingly, the documenting of this moment earned Mr. Spiers the distinguished title of Bird Photographer of the Year 2026.

“Even in summer, sunshine is far from guaranteed in this remote British archipelago,” Spiers told CNN. “So, my creative engine started firing when the sun ball was visible from underwater. I envisioned the shot of the gannet diving straight through the middle of it and dedicated my entire dive to capturing that single frame.”

“The gannets were diving all around me, but I refused to be distracted and kept my camera pointed at the sun. After a long wait, a gannet finally dived through in the perfect spot and I met the bird as it careened under the sea,” he added. “The moment was over in a split second.”

LEGO has built some true classics over the years, and the extremely popular ones tend to get makeovers or anniversary editions regularly.

Ultimately, however, no model is safe from being discontinued, because LEGO understands the value of keeping its crown jewels scarce. There’s a whole other world of LEGO collectibles available outside of the official LEGO website or store, with the resale market always booming.

Star Wars Cloud City, Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters, Lord of the Rings: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, and The Simpsons House are just some of the most popular sets that are now retired and on the resale market, some of which for upwards of five figures.

Some heavy hitters will be joining them at the end of 2026, most notably including the most recent Millennium Falcon, which LEGO describes as “the largest, most detailed Lego® Star Wars Millennium Falcon model we’ve ever created.”

It came out on Sept. 14, 2017, making it the longest-running LEGO model currently in production. Builders have a few months left if they’ve got US$849 to spare for the Rebellion’s favorite 7,541-piece carrier.

Levelling the playing field, the company will also retire the Venator-Class Republic Attack Cruiser, which preceded the Death Star. At 5,374 pieces, it goes for $649.99.

Here’s what you said

Under my tongue

Ok, that was cheesy. More like on the tip of my tongue…but you get it. That’s right, because it’s time for another round of guess the lyric, with today’s trivia