T.G.I.F. Friday: Volume 149

Welcome to “Thank God I’m FI” Friday, Volume #149!

Here are some things I really like and that you might too – and HAPPY 4th of JULY!!

Financial Independence/Work Life/Retirement Articles & Content

The New Trend In Personal Finance: Revenge Saving (Forbes) “From matched savings at work to cutting discretionary expenses, Americans are reshaping their financial priorities in response to economic uncertainty.

The Illusion of Wealth (Humble Dollar) “Appearances, it turns out, can be very deceiving.”

Video

The singer Tom Jones had a TV variety show from 1969 – 1971.  Thanks to YouTube, gems like the below can be revisited.  Ain’t no lip syncing there my friends, Little Richard tears it up and Jones – who I long dismissed as a chest-hair-bearing crooner – delivers the goods and hold his own right there with him.  Played and sung live with a full band off camera, this is raw music as it should be.  I’m so grateful we can watch these gems… and if you’ll excuse me I’m going back to my YouTube rabbit hole.

What I’m Grateful For

Serendipitously seeing my brother at a massive beach town when neither knew we were down there.  The chances of it happening were beyond astronomical and yet it did.  I’m confident some kind of power is at work.

Lyrically Speaking

Life’s so cheap
It’s cheaper than it looks
You can’t learn that from books

From “Crueler” by Buffalo Tom

I can’t believe it took 149 T.G.I.F. Fridays for me to highlight Buffalo Tom.  While music nerds like me consider them a big and well known band, I realize many casual music fans don’t.  The term “alternative rock” became increasingly common in American lexicon in the early 1990’s, and back then before the web and 1000 cable TV channels it described rock that wasn’t played on MTV or radio.  It’s not a stretch to say that Buffalo Tom was one of the first – and definitely one of the most successful – ‘alternative’ rock bands.  I loathe the use of that term now but understand it’s genesis. 

Buffalo Tom are a three-piece rock band from Boston, plain and simple.  And a damn good one.  With only ten studio albums dating way back to 1988 they’re certainly not the most prolific band, but when they release a record it’s clear they’ve given it their all.  Their sound is guitar-heavy, often flirting with punk but far more melodic and full of juicy hooks.  Front man and lead songwriter Bill Janovitz has penned some absolute gems over the years, the kind of songs you hear and think “damn I wish I wrote that”.  I remember discovering them in 1992 after hearing “Tailights Fade“, which to me is one of the best songs of the 1990’s, period.  It captures the angst and anxiety of the decade, told in dreadful snippets of desperate lives.  In the end it’s simply about love lost, like a million other rock songs.  But the marriage of words and music is so powerful it defines an entire period of my life. 

As for the lyrics above… well, life is really cheap when you think about it.  I was camping a few weeks back and thought how we live so stratospherically beyond our basic needs here in the first world we forget the bottom layer of Maslow’s hierarchy really can be kinda cheap.  But Janovitz is wrong, you can learn that from books.  I’d start with “Your Money or Your Life”, and then go to “The Simple Path To Wealth” 🙂

Miscellaneous

Ginger vs. Cancer: Natural compound targets tumor metabolism – “Suppression of de novo fatty acid synthesis with ethyl p-methoxycinnamate found to inhibit tumor cell growth.”

The hidden cost of convenience: How your data pulls in hundreds of billions of dollars for app and social media companies – “Mobile apps and social media platforms now let companies gather much more fine-grained information about people at a lower cost.”

The AI social network war has begun – “OpenAI is building a rival to X, while Meta plugs AI into everything.”