Thursday Things: Brave New Year Edition
14 January 2021. Vol 3 No 2 By Dan McGirt. #75
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“I don’t even know that guy.” Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
It wasn’t just you. Earth Was Spinning Faster Last Year Than at Any Other Time in The Past 50 Years
The 28 fastest days on record (since 1960) all occurred in 2020, with Earth completing its revolutions around its axis milliseconds quicker than average.
I am not a beer drinker and this is not selling me on the concept: You can now buy a beer made from human saliva
According to Dogfish Head Sam Calagione, 100 coworkers were instructed to chew on purple maize to produce the base for the brew. This soggy mulch was then left to ferment with a mixture of fresh strawberries and pink peppercorns in order to produce the final bottle. According to Calagione, the results are, “sweet, tart and 100% sanitary”, which is exactly what you want to hear before you crack open a cold one.
Ewwww! Where did they even get this idea?
The saliva beer is actually inspired by an ancient South American tradition, in which people have been using chewed up maize and other fruits to make alcohol for hundreds of years. Also known as “chicha”, it is clear that this tradition has been a direct inspiration for Calagione and the Dogfish team.
I’ll stick to sparkling water just the same.
News from two years ago, but still interesting and I imagine the trend only accelerated in 2020. Meeting online has become the most popular way U.S. couples connect, Stanford sociologist finds
Algorithms, and not friends and family, are now the go-to matchmaker for people looking for love, Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld has found.
In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Rosenfeld found that heterosexual couples are more likely to meet a romantic partner online than through personal contacts and connections. Since 1940, traditional ways of meeting partners – through family, in church and in the neighborhood – have all been in decline, Rosenfeld said.
My question: If technology is now displacing family and friends as a means of meeting romantic partners, what is next? Technology replacing romantic partners as a means of finding love? Don’t think they aren’t working on that too.
Here is the link to the study discussed in the article: Disintermediating your friends: How online dating in the United States displaces other ways of meeting
“Al introduced us. Algorithm.” Source: Linked article
Crocodiles feel no need to evolve. And, really, would we want them to? Study links little crocodile evolution in last 200M years to lack of need
Crocodiles are a hardy group -- they've been around for more than 200 million years -- but the reptiles aren't particularly prolific, evolutionarily speaking.
Modern crocodiles look much the same as their ancestors that lived alongside dinosaurs, and research published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications Biology suggests they haven't changed much because they haven't really had a reason.
When you perfectly fill your niche of sleeping most of the day and eating whatever you want, why change?
10 Best Investing Tips for People Who Don't Follow the Market This article has ten great tips for anyone who is thinking about or wants to get started in investing — and everyone should. Also good reminders for experienced investors.
I've long been a fan of The Motley Fool, which offers stock investing advice, but also has an educating mission of helping people to invest better and to get a better understanding of other aspects of their financial lives. In a new year — especially after the year we just had — you might be thinking about getting a better handle on managing your money and investing for retirement or other goals.
I agree with TMF’s philosophy that everyone should have some exposure (which is investor talk for “have some money invested in”) the stock market. Over the long term, the market goes up. It rises on average two years out of every three. It is simply the best engine available for building your financial security or “wealth” however you want to define that.
None of which means you have to buy or even know about individual stocks. The simplest and easiest and smartest thing you can do for your future — or advise your kids or anyone else to do — is buy shares of a broad market index fund, like an S&P 500 index fund, and add to it regularly. That one thing alone will put you ahead of the vast majority of people and your future self will thank you.
Take a look at this chart and see what a tiny little blip the 2008 Financial Crisis was if you kept your money in the market and just kept going:
Source: The Motley Fool
Okay, I’m blatantly plugging a new book, The Charmed Wife, by an author friend of mine, Olga Grushin: Olga Grushin’s Cinderella novel, like her life, is no fairy tale
“I hope people come to this book with an open mind,” she says, “because it’s not at all a traditional retelling but a genre-bending mix of fantasy and realism.” Grushin’s Cinderella lives in a three-dimensional reality that sometimes overlaps with the author’s own life. Or as Grushin puts it: “Expect talking mice, yes, but also expect divorce proceedings and custody arrangements.”
Talking mice! I’m in!
“The mice, their lives and community, are essential to the story,” Grushin says. “I think of them as a sort of upstairs/downstairs component of the book. While all these humans are dancing waltzes and obsessing over romance, the mice are overthrowing governments, engaging in wars and cultural revolutions.” Cinderella’s story, too, grows more complex, shape-shifting as she moves through different eras.
Mouse wars? Even better. Reminds me to get back to work on my own talking mouse book. Here is more about the book from Olga in her blog on Goodreads. I haven’t read The Charmed Wife yet, but I’m looking forward to it. Check it out because Olga Grushin is an outstanding writer … and also talking mice!
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