The Mish-Mash

   Reading the previous post you've likely discovered (or dreaded) that the slurry of info would continue and thus, you have my advance apologies for this rambling and almost unsorted compilation.  On the bright side, it helps me to clear those side piles which we all seem to have, piles of this and that which are never really enough to grab their own space, be it in the closet or on the bookshelf or the desktop or wherever.  Ellen DeGeneres noted in her recent standup special that this is primarily a trait of older people, to have drawers that have a little bit of everything, a stray key, a broken tape holder, a red pen, a couple of rubber bands (yes, I do have such collections, even a jar filled with stray bolts and screws in the garage); and for some reason such stuff seems to accumulate even more while its actual usage drops...keep those pencils even if the erasers are so dried out that they're now useless (and who, other than accountants and construction workers, even uses a pencil these days...and the ones used for construction are flat and don't even have erasers).  But Ellen was talking more about how relatable she was to the audience, even if she was paid $20 million for her hour+ standup and that her net worth is estimated to be $450 million, about the same payout and net worth of Bruce Springsteen which Netflix also paid for the rights to broadcast his Broadway special, and about what Netflix paid Dave Chappelle for his standups ($60 million for 2 previous standups and a new one).  I found each of the specials just okay, perhaps because the performers kept emphasizing "I'm that good," quotes from both Springsteen and Chappelle which just didn't sit right with me.  Both admitted that they basically made up their personas, Springsteen having never been a factory worker and Chappelle having never lived in "the hood."  Ellen talked a bit about her early struggles but now appears to have overcome much of that, taking in $87 million in 2018.  It would appear that she should now be able to afford many such "drawers" to collect random rubber bands and red pens.  Of course we pay sports figures such sums and often even more just to kick a ball or swing a bat.  To reach the semi-finals of the Australian Open in tennis you'd get a check for close to $1 million and half that if you "only" made it to the round before.  Which is not sour grapes on my part for such people will only get paid what the market will bear and there are many talented people out there not getting paid much at all.  But with all that is going on in this world, I guess I have to wonder how this reflects our values as a society when we're willing to shell out a vast sum for a ticket to an hour of laughter or music and yet grumble when we're asked for a single dollar increase in our taxes for our school teachers.  For me, $20 million would certainly not be a "bargain" but then what do I know?

In 2019 Japan resumes whale hunting.  Photo: AP Kyoto/WSJ

    Okay, that was all merely a mini segue into my previous post of what defines the word "bargain."  And, since I ran a bit lengthy on words in that post, this will continue the random information which I found to be interesting last year.  And what better place to start than to return to our food...this time, our fish and our farms.  Or maybe I should make that into just a single word because as our oceans have become overfished and acidified and blasted with sound waves and virtually hunted to death (Japan resumed its whale hunting this year), we have turned to farming fish, sometimes humanely and sometimes not.  But did you realize that, said The Nature Conservancy: Some 500 aquatic species of finfish, shellfish and aquatic plants are grown across the globe right now.  Five hundred species (quick, name more than a dozen).  But here are two fish industries which are not doing so well, lobsters and oysters.   If you're starting to notice more black sea bass on restaurant menus, it could be because both the bass and seahorses are moving into lobster territory due to the warming ocean waters, forcing lobster fishermen (and women) to go 30-40 miles further out to reach deeper and colder waters.  The warmer waters have also dropped the birthrate of the copepods which the lobsters eat, so scientists are predicting a 40% drop in catches within the next 30 years (side fact: lobsters take 7 to 8 years to reach restaurant size, and the favorite food of the black sea bass is...the juvenile lobsters).  As to oysters, The Nature Conservancy reported that 85% of oyster reefs have vanished in the last 200 years (they also noted that an oyster can filter 50 liters of water every day, which may give you pause as to where all those chemicals and such being filtered are being stored since oysters are rarely if ever tested for chemical residue).

The winning Swiss note

   One thing which the oysters may be filtering might be plastic since there is now an estimated 5 trillion pieces of plastic in our oceans said Popular Science, and scientists think much more than that may be at the oceans' bottom since scientists are finding that very little of the plastic particles are remaining on the surface.   Take a glimpse of that whale in the photo and throw in another 1500 of them...that would be the equivalent weight of the plastic that is on the surface of our oceans (and to think that 50% of our plastic production has been just in the past 13 years).  But here's one use for plastic...money.  It's big these days (as my wife and I noted upon visiting the U.K.).  The new plastic bills are difficult to replicate (counterfeiting has dropped nearly 400% partially because they can embed the plastic with a chemical signature) and last five times as long as paper.  And making new money is quite the competition (the U.S. bills have never won).  But it is big business and even the new paper bills are quite beautiful to look at (Switzerland once again won this year's International Bank Note Society's competition).  But then why use paper or plastic money at all?  Digital currency might have a ways to go (note the rise and fall of Bitcoin) but credit/debit usage is fast and faster...and watched.  In a piece in Bloomberg Businessweek, the company Cardlytics analyzes your card swipes and puts together that spending information together for banks (yes, Facebook asked to get that data and was denied).  Which is not as big a deal as the biometric data such as iris scans and fingerprints being gathered by the private company Clear and now in use at many U.S. airports and sports venues.  Noted Fast Company, there are no federal regulations regarding the collection of your biometric data or what companies can do with it later (note those ancestry firms and your genetic data).

   But when it comes to gathering data we naturally have to jump into all those apps and cookies and whatever else is constantly lurking in the background while we make calls on our smart phones or browse with our tablets or computers.  Yes, you can certainly try the national consumer opt-out site which will scan your computer and send your request to all the companies tracking you (free); but even after 85 of the companies "allowed" me to opt out, in just one hour of being online there were still 10,000+ cookies and over 500 MB of stored data to be cleaned on my laptop.  Certainly there's all sorts of fun apps out there, from TripLingo to Facebook Container (yes, it only works with Firefox but then Facebook is getting criticism for still tracking you even after you tell them that you want "out"), or those money-saving ones such as relocating cars and RVs (what???...just $1 per day?) or using the massive library system in the U.S. to grab books, music and videos, free with Hoopla.  But if you're after security in this changing world, there's Signal and FoneTrac (not what you think), as well as Sitata and SaferVPN to check out.   How's that for a mish-mash?
 
   Take it for what you will the world keeps changing and it's difficult to stay abreast.  As one comedian said in his standup, his material is old within days.  And often the information is just too much to process as in the rise of oral cancers among men (what???...it appears that men are 3 to 5 times more vulnerable to HPV, the cause of "virus-related tumors," said Scientific American); or that Apple has introduced a system to disassemble and recycle 2.4 million iPhones annually.  Impressive until one considers that the number represents less than 1% of it's yearly iPhone production, said Sierra.  Or that those protected medical records of yours may not be quite as guarded as you think, said an article in The London Review of Books, which is the same with our 215 control centers in the U.S. that run our entire electrical grid, of which 84% are manned by non-technical cyber personnel said Popular Science, a boon for hackers and a possible BlackSky event.

   I purposely threw out a jumble of info, even as I shred my own files and eliminate file cabinets of stuff.  Do the same.  Sometimes we just need a good shaking of the tree, a clean-out both physically and mentally.  For me, the result has been a series of gentle nightmares (which I almost never get), perhaps exorcising the demons of clutter that are being pushed from the comfortable corners of my head.  And with new company arriving, there will be even more shedding and receiving.  It's mental fishing, a catch-and-release for the times with new information and conversation coming (maybe from deep waters) and then being let go.  Go and treasure your own new skin as you shed the old.  Even late in life, it can be time for change and for being open to it...and who knows, it might just prove to be the bargain you actually treasure the most.