Waiting for me in my inbox one morning was an email from a longtime friend who works in the financial industry (that fact is sort of important later). The email’s subject line was, “Stuff you should know about.” That kind of histrionic title could have meant anything from, “I’m using code words to get you to watch a video about a kangaroo that likes to ride bikes” to stuff I actually should know about. Thankfully, it proved to be the latter.

What I received was a link to a Popular Mechanics article on GM’s new “smart bolt,” the “key to GM’s high-tech assembly line.” This is where this whole thing goes back to my point about the financial industry: People love manufacturing, whether they know much about it or not, and whether they work in the industry or not.

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