Is Thanksgiving Real

It's Thanksgiving week, which means I'm going to the well again for a list of things for which I am not thankful.  It's going to be a politically heavy list this year, because it's an easy fit....

The most corrupt, amoral, unethical person to be elected U.S. president, Trump.

All of the complicit, lying, sycophants of that person.

The right-wing Republican propaganda machine.

The stupidity of Americans, and by default, the American electorate.  I wrote about this 15 years ago!

Our lack of critical thinkers.  I wrote about this 13 years ago!

I'm sure I've said this in the past, maybe multiple times, but....reality television.

Tech bros.

Crypto bros.

Real estate commissions.

People who don't take care of their yards.

Door dings.

Spam texts and emails.

Drop The Anchor

I've written before about behavioral science, and my interest in the same, especially in the sub-area of economics.  In short, it's the study of why people persist doing certain things, even though the logical quantitative answer is to do something else.
 
There are a variety of terms that describe what causes these events.  One of them is referred to as 'anchoring', which is when people use initial information as a reference point for decisions.

For example, a car dealer might show someone a very expensive vehicle with a high price before showing a more modestly priced version.  That's more likely to make the buyer think they're getting a good deal for the latter car.

I'm having issues with anchoring right now, thanks to the process of buying and selling a house.  It's a great test of allowing (or not allowing) anchoring to influence behavior. 

The seller has to set a price, and although everyone assumes they'll take less, it still establishes a point from which negotiations start.  It's the same for a prospective buyer, who offers a purchase price that becomes an anchor for a seller counter-offer.

The anchoring effect is very powerful, even in non-financial situations.  Consider a contest to guess how many items are in a basket.  The first person to make a guess is going to influence the others making a guess, even though the first person has no additional knowledge beyond the others.

Probably the best way to avoid being influenced by anchoring is to get more reference points, if not ignoring the first choice/offer altogether.

On the other hand, if you want others to be influenced by your  anchoring, get your information/number out there ASAP!

Home Sweet Home

Last month, after a few years of looking for the 'right' place, my spouse and I purchased a new (actually 5-year old) house in suburban Des Moines.  We loved our residence of the past 22 years, which we located and built, but it was time to move on.

In those two decades, we've gone from a family of five with three teens or pre-teens, to a family of two.  We neither need nor want a large 2-story house on a big corner lot.  We want something newer and easier to maintain.

It's been a while since I've been engaged in all that comes with selling and buying a house.  Of course. I have a bulleted list of the my thoughts:

• After living in the same home with three children for 22 years, you accumulate A LOT of stuff.  Some of of it qualifies as valuable, some as keepsake, but way too much are long forgotten items with no reason to be kept, much less packed up and moved.  Get started early with packing.

• Even the keepsake items don't all deserve to be kept.  Some things I thought I'd keep until I was old to look back on as a fond memory.  And then I realized, that's what I'm doing right now!  So it was time for some of it to go.  It's hard, but take a picture and digitize it forever, and it'll be fine.

• Take it from me -- don't have a garage sale.  We did, but let's do some math.  If it takes two days to get it ready, two days for the sale, and one day to clean up what's left, that's five days times let's say eight hours equals 40 hours.  (A low guess.)  Then if you have very above-average sale of mostly $10 or $5 or $1 or less items, let's say you end up with $600.  That's $15 an hour -- not bad, but I value my time at 5x or 10x that.  It isn't worth it.  Sell the higher priced things, and donate or toss everything else. 

• As for the move in part, if at all possible, spend a few days cleaning and making any repairs to the new house when it's empty.  So much easier than maneuvering around boxes.  There's so much ancillary stuff to do anyway, like re-key the doors and connect the Wi-Fi.

• Last but not least and probably most, we need reform in the residential realtor industry.  Just a month ago the industry agreed to more transparency in the commissions they charge, but transparent doesn't mean less expensive.  Realtors have coalesced around the idea they are entitled to a 6% commission on the sale price, regardless of their time or effort.  There is no substantive negotiation about whether that commission percentage should apply based on the actual sale price or the length of time it might take to sell.  They think they deserve it, even before doing anything.  I think they should be embarrassed. 

It's tough to say goodbye to a place where so many milestones occurred.  That's what the memories are for.

On Turning 60

I turned 60 years old last week.  Much like my 40th and 50th birthdays, I've been very contemplative about it.  I'm mainly trying to determine how my life is different, for better or worse, than I thought it might be when I was younger.

It's easy to come up with the 'worse' part.  In your 20s and 30s, if you're thinking about the future at all, you're thinking of a lot of nice material things, like big houses and luxury cars and destination vacations.  You might be thinking of having a family, but you aren't worried about that deterring you from the material things.

Of course, the reality for most of us is we don't get all of that.  With hard work and good luck, you achieve some of those goals, but ultimately you realize there's a big difference between goals and dreams.

Meanwhile, I always conclude the 'better' of it is the non-material things.  Family.  Friends.  Health.  I'm old enough now that I don't care about having the biggest house or the nicest toys.

In fact, thanks to the lessons of time, it's a good feeling to not care so much about things that now seem trivial.  I still have goals (and dreams), but now the list is shorter.  Much shorter.

I said the same thing at 60 that I did and 40 and 50.  Achieving a new decade -- age itself -- is a gift.  I'm very satisfied with that.

Midway

I recently returned from a trip to the La Jolla / San Diego area.  I'd been there once previously, which I wrote about in 2021.  I want to add something to that summary -- this time, I toured the decommissioned aircraft carrier, the USS Midway.

The Midway was the main naval vessel involved in Operation Desert Storm, circa 1991.  It's now a museum, permanently docked in the San Diego harbor across from the Navy base on Coronado Island (where it just so happened two active aircraft carriers were docked).

Along with an audio tour, there were dozens of volunteer docents to help guide you around.  These were almost all retired Navy vets, so they could add great context to what you saw and heard.

About what you saw and heard about.....this is a short list:

The flight deck, full of past Naval aircraft.

The bridge.

The navigation room.

The communications room.

The lower decks, which included the barracks, the officers quarters, the galley and kitchen, the sick bay, the machine room, the boiler room, and much more.

It was mind-boggling to think of what it took to build the ship, and what it took to operate it a city of 4500 people on the sea.  Not to mention how something that weighs 100,000 tons can even float!

I highly recommend going to the USS Midway Museum.

Escape Pods

For something that is now so ingrained into our culture, only once before have I blogged about podcasts.  That was back in 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when we all craved for new entertainment content.

There are so many more podcasts out there now.  Some are good, some are bad, and some only exist to make money for a producer without any social value.

I don't have time to listen to all of the podcasts I'd like -- there are too many of them, and/or their running time is too long.  (In the same way no movie needs to be longer than two hours, no podcast needs to be longer than 45 minutes.  And this is coming from someone who never listens to the commercials, nor listens at less than 1.5x speed.  To me, an hour-long podcast equals a three hour-long movie, and no one has the time or content to remain interested in that.)

As mentioned in 2020, my main go-to podcasts are those from the Freakonomics Network.  They have several now in addition to the main weekly podcast, including a newer one called The Economics Of Everyday Things.  It's about how some industries work, anything from Girl Scout cookies to car washes to body part sales(?).  Plus, it's always less than 30 minutes long -- see last paragraph.

A longer, similar podcast is called Search Engine, which is a deep-dive on a hodgepodge of topics that we might never think about.

For politics, you can't beat Pod Save America, hosted by the former Obama speechwriting crew.  If you don't lean progressive, a more middle-of-the-road podcast is Hacks On Tap, hosted by former democratic and republican political operatives.  (Mike Murphy, the republican, is as witty as they get.)

On the lighter side, I prefer Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend, in which he interviews mostly other comics.  His shorter fan-interview offshoot, Conan O'Brien Needs A Fan, is also great.  No one is funnier and more likable than Conan.

I know, I know, there are so many more that I'm sure would be great to hear, including some I've never even heard of yet.  (That doesn't include true crime or cold case stories, which I don't care about.)

This is as far as I can go in my current pre-retirement world.

Dear Graduating Class of 2024

Congratulations, Class of 2024!  You got to start your journey during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, and now many of you are, or should be, ending it during the year democracy may die.  What is it with you?

Never mind that.  Think about this.....I've often said that all possible graduation commencement addresses may have already been given.

Think about the tens of thousands of speeches given every year by valedictorians and featured guests, over decades, and it's hard to believe every theme hasn't been covered.  I've been doing this annual post since 2012, and I'm not even going to pretend I haven't repeated a theme, or at least infiltrated one.

With that in mind, my advice to you this year will be an addendum of advice I gave from last year.  In 2023, I talked about how being 'woke' was generally a good thing, not a bad thing.

Which brings me to now, when we've seen small but noteworthy protests on college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war.  More specifically, the protests allege Palestinian genocide by Israel for its bombardment of Gaza, and ask for the war to end.  Some of the protests have not been peaceful, and have disrupted graduation ceremonies.

Look, it's good that you twenty-year-olds are so concerned about genocide that you'd want to actively protest about it, and bring awareness to an issue for which you care.  That's good woke.

However, it's dumb that some of you would protest in a way that threatens or physically harms people or property.  That's bad woke.

And to what end do you protest?  Once you've brought awareness to the issue, and maybe got the college trustees to meet about defunding some part of their endowment, you should declare victory and leave.  How does ruining graduation ceremonies for yourself or others advance your cause?

Also, let's face what should have been an obvious truth -- after graduation, when campuses empty out and there are no cameras to record you, the protests were going to end.  They would have ended soon anyway, as our very short American attention spans lost interest.

So to the Class of 2024 I say, choose your wokeness wisely.  There will be plenty of reasons to be offended in life.  If you're ignoring or amplifying all of them, you're doing it wrong.