February 23, 2026
Good morning! It was worth the wait — If you watch hockey only once every four years, it was worth the wait. Blame it on the moon. (Are you watching the waxing crescent?) The Frenzied February Quadfecta continues unbridled: Ramadan, New Year of the Horse, greasy fried fish, Bob Sleds, Wuthering Heights… on and on…Wait… that’s a Quintfecta…February never had it so good.
- Hannah Montana is back — twenty years reunion and a reprise! Wait… did she ever leave?
- Counterintuitive?
- What bird swims the fastest? (Penguin)
- You’ve waited and waited and waited and waited… until your patience is upended…
- The Dairy Queen on 25th, for the ~70th-plus time, opens this Friday!
- 120+ days without a hot fudge sundae… or a crunch cone
- Be there!
- If you had to guess, and we are asking you to remember, when was the infamous Tonya Harding vs. Nancy Kerrigan cage match?
- We thought so, too… (Answer down below)
- The 2026 results are in: The safest cars/ vehicles — based upon Road tests, reliability, owner satisfaction, and safety.
- Subaru and BMW are tied at the top — followed by Porsche and the usual Japanese suspects. (Consumer Reports, 2026)
- At the very bottom: Jeep, Land Rover, GMC, and Dodge.
- Biggest surprise? The meteoric rise of Lincoln to be on a par with the perennial Japanese favourites.
- Do you think it was influenced by The Lincoln Lawyer?
- Two dramatic datum points — if you care about the data, and many don’t, but…
- Ages 0 – 24 are declining in the U.S. by about 1% annually
- Ages 80-84 are increasing in the U.S. by about 1.5% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2026)
- The Lutherans are once again championing change.
- At an iconic location in Edina, MN the Mount Olivet church is proposing to replace its traditional worship space with a beer brewhouse – and pretzels, presumably? (Halter)
- The thing is, brewhouses are ALSO losing popularity.
- Is it best to not chase trends?
- (I made up the part about pretzels, but not the rest.)
- Good relationships don’t just happen, they take care, intention, and continuous effort.
- Choose community… reprioritize relationships, service, and purpose… (Murthy, Aspen Ideas)
- Contemporary United States society is deeply age segregated.
- Yet, a yearning for connections is palpable across the age spectrum.
- We can all — the young and the old — be teachers (acquaintances at least) to one another. (Ibid.)
- “When there is volatility that means the current world order changes, and as it changes you have to ask, ‘What’s the opportunity?’
- Let’s take inflation as an example.
- A consequence of inflation is higher interest rates.
- When there are higher interest rates, people are looking for more productivity.
- As they look for more productivity, there is a greater appetite for technology solutions.
- So, absolutely, volatility brings all these headwinds.
- And, you could hunker down and say, ‘Oh, my God. This is not what I was planning.’
- Yes, it’s not what you were planning, but your competition has the same headwinds.
- So, I would say whenever there’s uncertainty there is opportunity, and it’s our role as leaders to help guide our people through it…” (Krisha, IBM CEO)
- We at Without A Vision Consultancy find this enormously fascinating: Agricultural Miracle in Almeria*, Spain
- A typical Almeria greenhouse is 30 times more productive per acre than an average European farm.
- This is achieved through a combination of advanced technology, careful environmental control, and intensive farming practices.
- At the heart of a greenhouse’s efficiency is its ability to concentrate solar energy.
- The clear plastic or glass covering allows sunlight to enter while trapping heat inside, creating a warm, humid environment ideal for plant growth.
- In the 2022-2023 growing season, the region produced 35 millions tons of crops, generating Euro 3.7 billion in revenue.
- Bell peppers were the #1 product, followed by tomatoes, watermelons, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplants…
- The Almeria greenhouses supply over a fifth of Spain’s fresh fruits and vegetables… (Hite via The Economist)
Answer to the Feast of Valentine arithmetic problem: (Thanks for your patience.)
48″ — or, if you prefer, four feet.
Their expression of love was exactly as far from the ground as when they carved it 40 years earlier.
Trees grow from the tips of their twigs and branches — not the parts of the tree already established as wood.
As a faithful reader and friend just to the north of here noted, the trunk will have probably grown in diameter, but the location of the carving relative to the ground will not have changed.
The Harding/ Kerrigan cage match: Believe it or not, 1994 — 32 years ago! (Holy smokes, time flies!)
* With apologies to non-English languages, this keyboard doesn’t have accents, umlauts, or other important letters; IDK why? (Frustrating)
