The Birkenstock Dream This evening we are watching a movie we know that we have seen before, but which is less than fully memorable to us since so much of it is subtitled. It is the 2022 film called The Swimmers, and it is a real story about two Syrian girls that are trained Olympic swimmers. It tells the harrowing tale of their escape from war-torn Damascus, leaving their family behind for the time being,…
R* R* is something that I don’t recall seeing before today, which is probably an indicator that I’m not as fully tuned into the world of global finance, as I like to think I am. R* was mentioned in the Financial Times headlines this morning with the title of “the most important chart in the world”. R* is defined by the Federal Reserve as the natural rate of interest, a rather theoretical concept that gets…
A Walk Through the Uncanny Valley We cannot go a day without encountering artificial intelligence in some quadrant of our lives. I have explained already that as a university professor during the last academic year, the first year of the full appearance of ChatGPT and its use by my students in preparing and submitting their graded papers on ethics, I can honestly say that I have looked at the AI beast in the eye, and…
CostCo to the Rescue As I have previously explained, my hilltop pal Mike is a real devotee of CostCo, along with about 119 million other people on the planet. That all makes CostCo the third largest retailer in America behind Walmart and Amazon. When I think I need something right away, I go online to Amazon and try for the same-day delivery program. I just did that for my favorite shampoo yesterday (false alarm, I…
Our Gypsy Blood I am somewhere in season five of following the travails of Thomas Shelby and his family of Peaky Blinders. I recognize that I am a full decade behind in finding fascination in this series, but I am enjoying it nonetheless. The story covers the fifteen years after WWI in Birmingham, England and follows the rise of a larcenous and unscrupulous family as they work their way through the roaring twenties dealing with…
Crystal Clarity I want some new laws of thermodynamics. Thermo means relating to heat and dynamics relating to the forces of change within a system or process. If we don’t break down that term like that, we get mired in the world of arcane physics and get dragged into the realm of energy conservation and things like entropy, which are all about randomness and uncertainty. The first two laws of thermodynamics were promulgated in the…
Dizzy Disney Today Kim takes daughter Carolyn, her husband John, granddaughters Charlotte and Evelyn, as well as sister-in-law Lisa to Disneyland. Carolyn and her family will stay for three days while Kim and Lisa return after one day of Disney overdose. Carolyn and her family are addicted to Disney as much as anyone can be. She and John got engaged at Disney World and they have each spent milestone birthdays there (she at 30 and…
RichFlix My son Thomas is a top notch video producer. It is what he does for a living, now on a freelance basis, but previously for Shake Shack and then for an advertising agency. Besides commercial work and promotional videos, he has also been hired to record and storytell for gatherings. He recently spent a week in Cabo San Lucas on the Mexican Baja at a corporate incentive meeting and filmed it with every piece…
A Not-So-Happy Meal During our go-home day after a long 2,200-mile roadtrip with my daughter and her family and two granddaughters, all sitting amongst piled-up luggage and miscellaneous souvenirs (including one particularly sweet rusted metal armadillo with a bobble-head that was purchased in an old Route 66 way-station) in a rented dirty white church van that had served us well, Kim started out with a desperate cry for a stop at Starbucks. I had a…
Marketing 101 I don’t know about you, but I am getting more and more cell phone marketing calls by the day. The old standards include something about my Google Business Listing needing to be upgraded, a desperate need to lend me money either for my business under some sort of free government benefit regime or just to consolidate my debts, my car warranty running out (that one always wants me to say “well, go catch…