VOCABULARY: Defining the “x – factor” whatever that is

Tuesday, August 4, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/tag/nfl-newsletter/?source=athletic_scoopcity_newsletter&campaign=19094208&userId=30483772

The Athletic NFL
By Jacob Robinson

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Bengals’ X factors

Around the league, at least 15 players fit the dictionary’s “X factor” definition (“strong but unpredictable influence,” per Merriam-Webster, in case you were curious) this season.

Among them, the Bengals’ playoff hopes rest on their linebackers specifically, as Robert Mays explains in this clip:

“People are looking at all the moves the Bengals made this offseason: Dexter Lawrence, multiple big free-agent acquisitions, and saying, ‘All right, here we go.’

“There’s plenty of reason to believe that this group will be significantly better than it was a year ago. (But) if the linebacker play from (Barrett Carter and Demetrius Knight) does not take a step forward and looks even marginally close to what it did last year, that could be enough to sink this unit.

“That is the position group on this team where they did nothing to upgrade this offseason.”

Carter and Knight are second-year players who struggled when thrust into starting roles as rookies. They improved in the latter half of 2025, but not enough to quiet concerns about Cincinnati.

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Interesting. I’d never hear that defined before.  I always thought of it as a “fudge factor”.  You know when an ingineer does a load calculation and at the end multiples by two or three “just to be sure”.

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MONEY: Her accounts and savings were nowhere to be found

Wednesday, April 29, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/25/your-money/fidelity-investments-fraud-alert.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dlA.2bK0.gN47H93flP5j

How a Systems Glitch at Fidelity Caused One Woman’s Savings to Disappear

  • How did this happen? Fidelity Investments notified a customer that her phone number and email address had been removed from her profile. When she logged in, her accounts and savings were nowhere to be found.

Tara Siegel Bernard
April 25, 2026, 5:02 a.m. ET

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Nobody thinks about the enormous amount of faith we put into the invisible infrastructure that continuously tracks and documents our financial accounts, until that one day when things go very wrong.

For Ms. Gruntmane, a 35-year-old physician assistant, that moment came on the Friday morning before Easter, as she was getting ready to take her daughter to school. Fidelity Investments sent messages alerting her that her phone number and email address had been removed from her profile — and to contact Fidelity if she hadn’t done it.

*** and ***

From here on in, she said, she’s going to be sure to keep physical evidence of her accounts and balances in a secure place. Her tale serves as a reminder that we all should adopt that habit.

Tell us about your financial dilemma.

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I’d have been stroking out.  Clearly, there’s now a case for EVERYONE to keep at least one printed statement for EVERY account you have.  Physical printed copy!

I’m going to that in conjunction with my tax return compilations. 

YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary!)

p.s., the NYT wants your horror stories.  It might help others and it may scare the Financial Institutions as well.

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