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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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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