It is pretty silly. With cookies, the site can tell the browser to drop the cookie, change the cookie, or just consider the cookie as unauthenticated going for

It is pretty silly. With cookies, the site can tell the browser to drop the cookie, change the cookie, or just consider the cookie as unauthenticated going forward. With basic auth the site has no control, and the user has no control. How basic auth works is a design choice that still baffles me.