Reality Catches Up

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A reader writes, “Hey Ron, August is finally here and I’m going on vacation. I wanna get my financial life in order. What’s one book you’d recommend with that in mind?”

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.

I read Housel’s blog too. Today’s post is titled “Reality Catches Up”. It’s about the precarity of fleeting success. This paragraph will resonate with anyone with much work experience.

“It happens at work, too. A manager who can’t earn employees’ respect by leading often tries to force it through fear. That can feel great: Your employees say “Yes sir, right away sir!” But it’s unearned respect. Employees who fear you will hide the truth from you to avoid repercussions. So the manager flies blind, oblivious to problems large and small that won’t be apparent until it’s too late. Every bit of respect over what you deserve is a liability, a hidden form of debt.”

The Best Ever

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Vin Scully (1927-2022).

From John Gruber’s heartfelt remembrance.

“Most fittingly, it was Vin Scully at the mic for Kirk Gibson’s pinch-hit home run in game 1 of the 1988 World Series, the Dodgers against the A’s. I was 15, watching it live with my friends. Who else to call such a moment in Dodger history? The whole at-bat epitomizes Scully’s gift. He let the drama build. Gibson was unable to start the game because he had not one, but two injured legs. The man could barely walk, let alone run. A mere hit could tie the game. Dennis Eckersley, the best relief pitcher in all of baseball, on the mound. Two outs. The count full. Then: ‘High fly ball into right field, she is … gone!’ And then, for 70 seconds, as Gibson hobbled triumphantly around the bases, as his teammates celebrated at home plate, as the full house at Dodger Stadium erupted in ecstatic pandemonium, Scully said not a word. 70 seconds. The moment belonged to Gibson, the Dodgers, and their fans. And then, this: ‘In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.'”

The GalPal and I were walking on the Hermosa Beach bike path when diners at a beach-front  restaurant erupted. We pressed in to marvel at the replay.

Use the link above to watch and listen to the magical at bat. The fateful pitch was outside. Gibson reaches for it, and because of his injured legs, doesn’t really turn on it. How the hell did that ball clear that fence?

What To Think About Hellfire Missiles

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That are designed to kill a single person.

That’s what my government’s Central Intelligence Agency decided to use to kill Ayman al-Zawahri in Kabul last week as he read on the balcony of a “safe house”. Two missiles to be exact.

We’re supposed to celebrate this. “There’s no where to hide. We will find you no matter how long it takes.”

But I don’t find the revenge satisfying at all because it will do nothing to slow, let alone reverse, the mutual hatred between Al Qaeda and my government, and the back-and-forth killing associated with it.

As I read the account of how the C.I.A. tracked al-Zawahri (Netflix production probably in progress by now), two analogies came to mind. That of a mafia war where competing families ramp up the violence and that of a gang war where competing sides mindlessly kill more and more of one another.

Are we supposed to feel safer with al-Zawahri gone? As if there aren’t younger successors waiting in line to seek revenge on our seeking revenge?

Where does it end? What’s the non-drone, non-hellfire missile plan for deescalating the violence?

The Hardest Thing

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Fitness-wise.

If you’re a long-time reader of the humble blog; or happen to see my slender self; or follow me on Strava where I upload my swimming, cycling, and running workouts; you might assume I’ve got the fitness thing figured out. And maybe I do compared to the average 60 year old person residing in the not very fit (dis)United States.

But I don’t have it figured out. During the parts of the year when I’m not working, like now, I have too much time to think about working out. And sometimes thinking about working out ends with me bagging workouts.

When it comes to personal fitness, the one thing I find most difficult is designing a realistic “basic week” that’s challenging, but not so much so that I only check two-thirds of the boxes because then I feel badly about the one-third that remain unchecked. That one-third has a disproportionate negative influence on how I feel at week’s end.

This decidedly first world dilemma is complicated by my preference for cross-training. I like to swim, cycle, and run every week. I’ve added in a core workout and I’ve started to enjoy lifting weights. So that’s five things, meaning often, something has to give. Right now, because of the nice weather and friends who are cycling a lot, I’m taking time from swimming and running for the sake of cycling.

Another problem is that at my advanced age, it takes longer to recover from hard efforts. I haven’t been running as much lately probably because I’m beating myself up on the bike. I can do two workouts in a day, but only if both are shorter and/or easier than normal.

Tonight (Sunday), I planned the week. The odds are very good that my plan is too ambitious, and that despite closing all the rings on my Apple Watch (woopty doo), I won’t end up feeling much of a sense of accomplishment since I missed that run, didn’t swim at all, only lifted once, or didn’t ride as many miles as hoped for. Of course it’s silly, since I feel great and I’m healthy; and ultimately, that’s all that matters. But we’re all irrational in different ways.

Put most simply, by not planning realistically, I sabotage my feeling contented with my weekly efforts. Most frustratingIy, I don’t get why I understand the problem so clearly and still can’t seem to correct for it.

Tomorrow, I’m “supposed” to do a short run, swim, and lift weights. One or two out of three won’t be bad will it?

How The Former Guy Plays Golf

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From a New York Times reporter who followed the Former Guy during Thursday’s LIV Golf pro-am.

“He had. . . not finished a hole after his blast from a bunker had failed to reach the green and was nestled in some nasty rough. Instead, he had his caddie pick up the ball and march to the next tee. On another hole, when a birdie putt rolled nearly six feet past the hole, he casually scooped the ball up to end the hole, apparently conceding himself a par. Try that this weekend in your match with your usual foursome. Or any foursome.

At other times, a Trump mis-hit would simply be ignored. As if understanding the drill, his caddie would retrieve the golf ball from the sand or deep rough and walk forward.”

Hardly news. Why would anyone, paying any attention, expect him to play it as it lies and count all his strokes?

Dr. Melissa Yuan-Innes

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Understands privilege way better than most. Yuan-Innes is a part-time emergency room doc in Canada and one of six people The New York Times interviewed about this year’s stock market correction.

Yuan-Innes isn’t sweating the downturn. “If we need more money,” she explains, “we would just earn more money — I would rather not do that, so it’s sad, but it’s certainly not as hard as people who are getting paid minimum wage.”

She adds:

“I recognize my privilege in having parents and grandparents who worked extremely hard before me. Lots of financial independence types will tell you they’re entirely self-made, unaware of advantages they’ve gained from their white privilege, gender, middle-class status, education, government, or their relatives’ sacrifices.”

“We’re lucky we have enough money coming in to cover what’s going out.”

Being mindful of one’s privilege and one’s luck go hand-in-hand.

The Boys Are Not Just Fine

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From “No, the Boys Are Not Doing Just Fine” in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Sentence and paragraph to ponder.

“The four-year graduation rate among women is 10 percentage points higher than for men.”

“Gender gaps in higher education do not appear out of nowhere. To a large extent they reflect the disparities in the K-12 education system. Girls outperform boys at every stage, and in almost every subject. According to my analysis, two-thirds of the students graduating high school with a GPA in the top 10 percent of the distribution are female. The ratio is reversed at the bottom.”

I have had a front row seat to this phenomenon for the last few decades. To add insult to injury:

“In recent years, for every BA awarded to a Black man, nearly two went to Black women.” 

My response to this, despite all the countervailing evidence, is to TRY to expect my male students to achieve equal to my female ones. Put differently, to not cut them any “gender slack”. But that resolve seems inadequate to the task given the historic and systemic underpinnings of the academic achievement gender divide.