If you are a parent in the (dis)United States, recent research suggests you are worrying more and more about your children’s futures.
These numbers blow my mind. Even the 2019 baseline represents a serious break with the post- World War II past when parents assumed their children’s lives would be better than their own. Now, that has completely flipped.
The most cited culprits include the rising cost of higher education, the utter lack of affordable housing, rising health care costs, a gerontocracy that continuously games political and economic systems in their favor, and a tax code that favors investors who tend to be older. It’s no wonder so many young people choose not to vote, thus creating another hurdle.
A picture I took this weekend of an old, solitary tree. I wonder if it worries about its seedling’s futures.
Doubling since October, 2025, Elon Musk’s current net worth is approximately $1.2 trillion.
In a The New York Times article today, Adeo Ressi, Musk’s college roommate at the University of Pennsylvania says, “It’s not like he’s planning to leave this in a massive family trust. It’s literally going to be used to make humanity into a multiplanetary species.”
“Before MacKenzie Scott signed the Giving Pledge and started on her path to give away her $36 billion net worth, she went looking for a paragraph in a book she’d marked up during her college years.
She opened her Giving Pledge letter with a memory of pulling Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life off a shelf of her old college books, where she found a passage that she had ‘underlined and starred.’ Dillard’s advice to writers was to not hoard your best material for some later chapter.
‘The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now,’ Dillard wrote, warning that otherwise, ‘you open your safe and find ashes.’ Scott took the writing advice literally and applied it to her massive fortune.
For the past six years, Scott has remained committed to emptying her safe, so to speak. She’s donated more than $26 billion across more than 2,700 gifts through her philanthropic organization, Yield Giving. Her marquee year was in 2025 when she donated an eye-popping $7.2 billion. (That’s more than Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, have given over their entire lifetimes, according to Forbes estimates). The publication also named Scott the third-most generous philanthropist in the world this year, noting she has given away 46% of her net worth.
True to the Dillard ethos, she gives fast and lets go. Her philanthropic style is stroking unrestricted checks with no applications, no progress reports, and almost no press.”
Absolutely certain it doesn’t mean anything to MacKenzie Scott to be named the “third-most generous philanthropist in the world” this year. In fact, I’m pretty sure if she had her way, pieces like this one would never appear in print. What a role model.
Don’t hoard. Don’t find ashes. Annie Dillard with one of the most amazing assits of all-time.
When it comes to Lynn’s estate details, we’re rounding third base and heading home. As the trustee of her estate, this sentence from an “outline of important details of the trust administration process” stopped me cold.
“You are under a duty to exercise the judgment and care that a person of prudence, discretion, and intelligence exercises in managing his or her own affairs.”
If my estate attorney knew me better, she’d lower that bar. Or Washington State more generally. :)
“The Pentagon pegs the cost of the Iran War so far at $25 billion. Larry Ellison currently has a net worth of $220 billion. That’s just short of 9 Iran Wars. But since the start of the war on February 28, his net worth has grown $46 billion. That’s about 2 Iran Wars during the time of the actual Iran War thus far.”
Postscript. Today, apparently, Ellison’s networth is up $6b.
“Even the wealthiest residents are having a rough time in the Seattle area’s real estate market.
Hitting the market at $85 million in 2022, Bruce McCaw’s Hunts Point mansion was once the most expensive home for sale in Western Washington. The telecom magnate and his wife, Seattle-area philanthropist Jolene McCaw, sold the home last week for $38 million — $47 million under its original asking price and $16 million under its assessed value.
. . . The home stands out among Hunts Point’s collection of luxury waterfront homes. The 12,600-square-foot mansion contains five bedrooms and 10 baths, while the property holds a beach house, a staff house, a cabana, a tennis court, a pool and plenty of space for a seaplane and a yacht.”
Related. I’m always frustrated when I buy a house only to learn afterwards that there’s not room for the seaplane and yacht.
The Feed, whose motto is “Food for Athletes”, is a newish, trendy, growing biz where more and more endurance sports kids are getting their fuel.
And if there’s any chance I might be a wee bit cool by association, I’m going to conform. So today, I received a text message from The Feed saying my most recent order of carbohydrate drink mix, energy gels, and engery chews had arrived.
Lo and behold, when I opened the front door, the big ass box looked like it had been chewed completely open by a colony of beavers. Even worser, the smaller box of 30 gels was also opened. And somehow three of the large gels had opened and were all over everything in the box. Resulting in one very large, very gooey mess.
Somewhere, there’s a colony of beavers absolutely ready to rip some trees apart and drag them into a stream. Right now, everything I ordered is in the kitchen sink waiting to be rinsed and dried.
No, this is not remotely equivalent to the challenges you’re dealing with today. I’m not seeking sympathy for what is ultimately an inconvenience. This is a story about the future having arrived too soon. Or more specifically, about how shit early AI customer service is.
I emailed The Feed. Told them what happened. Shared the pics for emphasis. Asked for a new box of gels. Seemed reasonable.
A minute later, “Matt-bot” replied:
The P.S. says Matt-Bot is better than a real live human being 87% of the time. LOL. The response I received falls squarely in the 13%. When they write that Matt-Bot is “designed for quick, complete resolutions” what they mean is we can employ far fewer people, lower our overhead, and increase profit margins for our shareholders’ benefit. At least in theory.
My fave part of the reply is the braindead closing, “Keep pushing”. Brah, all I was looking for was a run of the mill, “Very sorry for the inconvenience.” Well, and maybe a, “We’re committed to making it right. . .”
I switched from emailing an AI bot that strangely uses personal pronouns to emailing a human being. I wrote, “Really disappointing impersonal reply to my email and pictures about the gels arriving opened and getting over all the contents of the torn/opened big box.”
I have not heard back yet. Which is okay because I’d much rather have a slow, but thoughtful human reply than one from an uber-fast, weirdly impersonal AI customer service bot. I’m afraid, that in relatively short order, more deliberate, thoughtful, and humane responses may be a thing of the past.
MAN ARRESTED AFTER BREAKING INTO A FAMOUS BOOKSTORE ON BURNSIDE AT MIDNIGHT TO FINISH A BOOK HE “WASN’T GOING TO BE ABLE TO SLEEP WITHOUT”
Leonard “Lenny” Whitaker, 67, of Portland, Oregon, was charged Tuesday with breaking and entering after slipping into a closed famous bookstore on Burnside through a propped emergency exit at 12:10 AM—all to finish the final 47 pages of a thriller he had been quietly working through in the armchair section for four straight afternoons.
According to the report, Whitaker discovered the book on day one, read for several hours, carefully re-shelved it spine-out for easy retrieval, and returned daily like it was a part-time job. On day four, he was politely asked to leave at closing with 47 pages left—at what he later described to officers as “an absolutely unacceptable emotional cliffhanger for a man my age.”
Details from the police report: Located the book in complete darkness using his phone flashlight in under a minute (“muscle memory,” he claimed) Returned to his exact armchair like a seasoned professional Came prepared with reading glasses, a granola bar, and what officers described as “focus” Finished the remaining 47 pages in 1 hour and 14 minutes Re-shelved the book properly (alphabetically, no less) Found seated calmly with the book closed in his lap, staring into the middle distance like he’d just unpacked something personal When officers asked if he was okay, Whitaker replied, “Yeah… I just thought it was going somewhere else.” He declined to elaborate.
Officer Jenkins noted in the report, “He didn’t run. Didn’t panic. Just… needed closure. Honestly, we’ve all been there.”
The bookstore has declined to press charges, despite the abandoned granola bar wrapper, which management described as “mildly disappointing but understandable.” The book has since been purchased by three customers. Whitaker has not returned.
He came for answers. He left with… complicated feelings.
Postscript: Alternative Title, “Powell’s Bookstore, Officer Jenkins, And Whomever Left The Emergency Door Propped Open For Whitaker For The Win”
The ICE versus electric car debate is driving me crazy. The debate is intensifying with gas prices soaring and Rivian just announcing it’s new, smaller, “more affordable” R2. The Model Y killer.
The mistake seemingly everyone is making is a tree-forest error. More specifically, all anyone can see is one tree, gas prices versus the price of electricity. The oft stated factoid is that if you drive 12,000 miles a year you can save about $1,200 annually switching to an electric car. To which I say, big whoop.
The electric car I recently sold depreciated close to $1,200 a month! Meanwhile, you’d have to use a magnifying glass to properly assess my new Honda Passport’s rate of depreciation.
Plus, states aren’t stupid, they’ve jacked up registration costs for electric cars since their owners completely sidestep gas taxes.
Repairing electric cars is way more expensive; as a result, insurance rates are considerably higher.
If you use a wide-angle lens and take the whole forest in, electric car ownership prob doesn’t even come close to penciling out. Put differently, what I spend at the pump in the Passport is inconsequential in the larger equation of car ownership.
The forest formula is as follows. Electric car depreciation + registration + repairs + insurance rates > Electric car gas savings + electric car reduced maintenance costs.
Or to borrow one of my favorite phrases from a friend, the cost of gas doesn’t move the needle. And yet, it’s all anyone talks about.
There’s still one good reason to go electric. To bolster your environmental bonafides, and thereby, get DanDantheTransportationMan off your back.
And so, as if you didn’t know it already, further evidence I am a knucklehead.
“On Thursday, a woman named Sharon from Minnesota called into C-SPAN’s ‘open forum’ to express her despair about the cost of living. ‘I’m 65 years old. I’m legally blind. I’m on disability. I went to my doc, and I lost 28 pounds in the last year. I did not need to lose 28 pounds. I did not try to lose 28 pounds. I lost the 28 pounds because I cannot afford to eat anymore,’ Sharon explained, speaking clearly even though she sounded near tears. Because of Trump administration cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the high cost of groceries, gas and electricity, Sharon only allows herself $65 a month for food.”
Pressing Pause 