T.G.I.F. Friday: Volume 129

Welcome to “Thank God I’m FI” Friday, Volume #129!

Here are some things I really like and that you might too.

Financial Independence/Work Life/Retirement Articles

Valuable Lessons from My Eighth Year of Freedom (Mad Fientist) – “Dave’s comment – I don’t normally put podcasts here but this is only 19 minutes long and Brandon is one of the originals in the FIRE space and rarely posts nowadays. His update has some great insights from someone who retired very young eight years ago.“

Homebuyers Are Gaining Leverage In These Housing Markets (Fast Company) – “We’re observing a softening across some housing markets as strained affordability tempers the fervor of a market that was unsustainably hot during the pandemic housing boom.“

Video

When grunge hit the world in 1990-1991 everything changed. Pearl Jam were one of the first to take over the world and arguably became the biggest band of the mid-1990’s. A recent YouTube click fest landed me on Pearl Jam’s infamous PinkPop performance in 1992. If you’re not familiar PinkPop is one of the biggest music festivals in Europe, it’s huge. Watch as Eddie Vedder does probably the highest ever stage dive from a camera boom into the crowd during their performance of the song “Porch”. It’s insane that he jumped from that high and trusted a bunch of kids to “catch” him.

Watch here on YouTube (Pearl Jam do not allow video embedding on other sites) starting at 44 seconds in as he starts getting on the camera crane, and he then jumps at about 1:45 in the vid. Bonkers.  And to see how popular they were check out about 2:55 in the vid – it’s very reminiscent to Freddy Mercury’s over-the-head handclaps at Live Aid seven years prior.

What I’m Grateful For

That I was able to successfully repair my inflatable standup paddleboard myself after a seam blowout. Thank you to those who put guides on YouTube. 

Lyrically Speaking

I don’t know why we can’t win
Every time we lose, we just pretend
Running out of money at the end of the month
None of it can buy the things I want

From “Choked Up” by Minibar (written by Ryan Adams)

Minibar hail from the UK but moved to America in 1999.  Their first Album Road Movies did well and led them to tour with the likes of The Wallflowers, Old 97’s, Wilco, Mother Hips, and Teenage Fanclub. They also backed Pete Yorn on a tour. They were often labeled as “alt-country” by music press but I feel they lean more towards pop-ish rock, with some Americana influences. They have a knack for nice melodies and their music conjures up images of the Southwest.  After three albums and one EP they seemed to have gone away but there’s very little info about them online. 

As for the lyrics above from Ryan Adams (who I featured waaay back in Volume 11), I had days in college and shortly thereafter when I ran out of money at the end of the month, but thankfully I put that to bed a long long time ago.

Miscellaneous

New clues point towards how exercise reduces symptoms of depression – “The processes in the brain and body through which physical exercise reduces depressive symptoms have been explored.

“Model collapse” threatens to kill progress on generative AIs – “When AI eats its own product, it gets sick.“

Asteroid 2024 RW1 Just Hit Earth. That’s a Good Thing. – “The asteroid that exploded over Luzon was not a threat—but it was a victory for our planetary defense systems.“