T.G.I.F. Friday: Volume 114
Welcome to “Thank God I’m FI” Friday, Volume #114!
Here are some things I really like and that you might too.
Financial Independence/Work Life/Retirement Articles
Stocks are STILL a great long-run investment! (Early Retirement Now) – “Does the “stocks for the long run” mantra belong on the trash heap of financial market history?“
A Few Years Ago, 8 States Required Personal Finance Education. Now It’s Up to Half (Education Week) – “How many high school students have sat in a required math class and asked themselves: Will I ever use (fill in the blank) in my daily life?“
Video
The longest a great white shark has ever been kept in captivity is 198 days. Thusly, the scientific world has never witnessed the birth of great white shark pups and believe it or not pups have never even been caught on video. Until now – maybe. The below video is believed by many to be the first ever of a newborn great white. Some have doubts, but it’s clear if the shark is not an immediate newborn it is extremely young. You can read more here.
What I’m Grateful For
My local famers market. I don’t go as often as I should because one of my main cycling group rides is the same morning, but when I do go it helps me stay healthy with real food.
Lyrically Speaking
I ain’t got no tuxedo
I don’t know what fork to hold
She asked me to a dance
Where they wear fancy pants
Don’t like me the way I am
Go suck some spam
From “Ain’t High Falutin’” by Mojo Nixon
Mojo Nixon was uh… different. He was probably the life of any party, and the bane of those who get offended easily. Nixon wasn’t a parody artist like Weird Al, he was more of a purposeful gonzo in-your-face stain on the music industry. And that’s what he wanted to be. In blazing that path he became a musical cult hero. With song titles like “Don Henley Must Die”, “Moanin’ With Your Mama”, “Burn Down The Malls”, “I’m Living With a Three-Foot Anti-Christ”, and my favorite “Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child”, you kinda get where he’s coming from. Nixon gave no fucks, and took no prisoners. After having a big MTV hit with 1987’s “Elvis Is Everywhere“, he kept taking things up another notch. And if you didn’t get the joke, that’s okay ‘cuz it was probably on you.
Mojo Nixon died February 7th of cardiac arrest. In true form, he was on something called the Outlaw Country Cruise where he performed with his band. He went out after doing a show. R.I.P. Mr. Nixon, you closed the bar with a round of flaming shots and ran the darn thing off a cliff. Elvis would be proud.
As for the lyrics above, having grown up in Baltimore City, I’m about as far from high falutin’ as you can get. I not only ate the Spam but also that wiggly jelly-looking stuff on the underside of the lid of the can.
Miscellaneous
How obesity dismantles our mitochondria – “Researchers from University of California San Diego School of Medicine have shed new light on how obesity affects our mitochondria, the all-important energy-producing structures of our cells.“
Pursuing fusion power – “Scientists have been chasing the dream of harnessing the reactions that power the Sun since the dawn of the atomic era. Interest, and investment, in the carbon-free energy source is heating up.“
You’re never too old to start exercising – just ask a 93-year-old rowing champion – “Geroscience researchers report an astounding case study of a nonagenarian with the physical fitness of a 40-year-old.“
i love me some outlaw country. i’ll put the dearly departed jerry into that category too.
Yeah I wouldn’t consider Mojo country at all but he has an ethos that fits the outlaw country scene. His humor will be missed.
I never saw so many baby shark – unfortch very un-alive – as on an isolated stretch of Pacific Mexican coast, an hour from Mazatlan. The pangas left at dusk and stayed out all night, returning around noon. Their buoys were flagged by black plastic garbage bags, real difficult for the unwary passage-maker to spot. The pangueros would beach their boats, clean the shark (so many hammerheads!) on the sand, rinsing guts and shark babies out into the surf, then muscle their boats onto battered tractor-trailers. I asked what they did with the shark, they said breaded or ceviche.
We typically have a can of Spam (or an international equivalent) kicking around – it’s so versatile. Breakfast meat, fried rice, sliders, camp pasta…
Yikes that’s really crazy about the sharks, and I’m not sure I’d ever eat them although I had a big plate of ceviche in Peru once and there might have been shark in it, not even sure.
Turns out, the issue with shark is that it frequently turns up as mystery meat, in Mexico and other places globally including in UK/Aus fish-and-chip shops and as U.S. pet food so I’m assuming I’ve eaten some. (Google “eating shark” if you’re interested)
Thanks for the ERN intro, I’d not been on his site before, all sorts of fascinating nuggets there. That level of asset management-speak really pushes the borders of my least-efficient tertiary brain functions!
ERN has a large corpus of posts and yes they get geeky, but he’s a PHd in Economics and used to work for the Fed, so he’s a great source of info. I’ve met him in person and he’s a super nice guy too
I did see that PhD listed, and from my alma mater (well one of them) no less.
Yeah I read his dispassionate critiques of the more sensational big-name FI/RE articles… very patient, very not an a-hole about it, nicely done.
So cool that you guys have met! I was going to ask who was taller, I think I figured it out tho 🙂
I’m tall, but he’s real tall 🙂
Thanks for the link to the ERN paper. I always enjoy his insights and hadn’t visited his site for a while. I’m reading through The Psychology of Money now and it opened my eyes to the limitations of using historical economic data. Reading that Benjamin Graham continually changed his formulas to stay modern was interesting, and that was before 401ks and modern investment tools came about. Definitely makes me give greater weighting to more recent data.
Fusion power could be an innovation that will change thee world in ways we can’t even grasp. Fingers crossed! I’ve been driving along the Texas Gulf Coast recently from the Houston area to the Rio Grande Valley and have been pleasantly surprised by the hundreds, if not thousands, of windmills I saw. If the oil bastion of Texas can embrace windmills, then anything is possible!
If we humans get fusion to work on a mass scale then the game is changed forever. Unfortunately we’ll also probably somehow forge it into a weapon