Weekend Required Reading

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  1. Money for nothing: German university offers ‘idleness grants’. Forget the MacArthur Genius grant, this is the one you want because these are the best grant questions of all time. “The application form consists of only four questions: What do you not want to do? For how long do you not want to do it? Why is it important not to do this thing in particular? Why are you the right person not to do it?”
  2. China restaurant apologises for weighing customers. What possibly could go wrong?
  3. Born to Be Eaten. What’s at stake in the fight over development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? A caribou herd, and a culture that relies on it.
  4. Where Did BIPOC Come From? Just when you thought the humble blog couldn’t be any more woke.
  5. Joe Biden’s Secret Untapped Weapon. “By some estimates, nearly 60 percent of eligible Latino voters in battleground states, who tend to view Mr. Trump unfavorably, will sit out the 2020 election. Rallying these voters — most of them young, most of them hostile to Mr. Trump — will be vital to capturing the White House.”
  6. Senator yells ‘f—, f—, f—‘ on live television during DeJoy testimony as Congress still learns how to use videoconferencing tech. You cast the first stone, I’m certainly not going to.

Drop Everything And Read

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The Chicago kid is visiting for 10 days. Here are the essentials that she packed. When I snapped this picture, she was reading book #7 on the deck fueled by a latte brewed just for her. She plans on going to Browsers if she runs out of essentials. Begs a few questions. Is she afraid of interacting with her Momsie and Dadsie? Are her claims of reading non-fiction exaggerated?

Paragraph to Ponder

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From MacRumors.

“Warren Buffett held 245 million Apple shares as of the end of June, representing a 5.7% stake in Apple as a whole. The stock price of Apple has soared by over 57% to an all-time high this year, boosting the value of Berkshire’s Apple holdings by more than $40 billion to around $113 billion as of yesterday. Apple is by far the largest investment held in Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio, worth more than four times as much as its second-largest holding, a $25 billion stake in Bank of America.”

Try connecting these “dots”. Because individual companies inevitably go through boom and bust cycles, conventional wisdom is that you should never have more than 5% of your total wealth tied to any individual stock. Conventional wisdom is that Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors of all time. Buffett’s AAPL holdings represent nearly 25% of his Berkshire Hathaway portfolio or 5x more than “experts” recommend.

I’m guessing Buffett has no regrets, which begs a question, when have you benefitted in life from consciously ignoring expert opinion?

Monday Required Reading

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1. They’re Teens Biking Across a Turbulent Country. The Lessons Keep Coming. Coolest pandemic punch imaginable.

“Having almost finished this, they are wondering now what other big things they can do.”

2. He Needed to Train. David Duchovny’s Pool Was Out There.

3. How to Add More Play to Your Grown-Up Life — Even Now.

4. Why Be Vulnerable?

5. The Great Big Swim.

And The Winner Is

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In the (dis)United States, politics has become an intense, zero-sum competition. No one is ever changing their mind again. Neighbors signal their team affiliation with signage like TikTok’s Tony and Ezekiel.

We’ve become way too competitive for our own good, and yet, to differing degrees, we’re wired for competition. So what are we to do?

There are lots of different non-political ways to get our competition fix. We should turn our attention to them.

Professional soccer is alive and kicking. As is professional basketball and golf. Maybe we should argue about the Lakers and Clippers chances of winning it all. Or Milwaukee’s? Or be like the young dude on Harrison who when he saw Blanca and me ride up to him Tuesday morn, dug down and rode especially hard to make sure we knew he was faster. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. That’s the spirit.

Psychologists refer to it as displacement.

Or compete with those closest to you. Who does more of the household work or runs more of the errands or listens better? That always ends well. Or see if you can choose the fastest check-out line at the grocery store like me. Or be the driver who gets the most miles per gallon for your model of car like me. Or see who can save the most money in a month by not eating out and other self-imposed austerity measures. Or see who can collect the most masks. Or see who knows the most people at the farmer’s market.

If we just turn off the cable news and unplug from our devices, the possibilities are endless.

I’ll start. No more politics for me. For at least a few hours.

 

 

 

The Rise of Pandemic Pod Schooling

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“These families are pooling resources together to pay for private teachers responsible for a handful of students, and even physical learning spaces. While that may sound like a safe alternative to in-person learning, critics suggest it’s likely to increase the already stark inequalities in our education system.”

Learn more here.

The Good Wife astutely speculated on the probable drama that will ensue. “Why weren’t we included in that pod? Aren’t we good enough? Do we really want that family in our pod? Their kids smart enough?”

In Hollywood, television writers perking up.

Many of these parents are no doubt liberals known to talk the talk of equality. Walking it. Not as much.