October 14, 2024
Good morning! More gorgeous autumn weather, though we would sure appreciate a few rainy days — or even hours. We have a number of friends, readers, and colleagues who have been hit hard by hurricanes — with perhaps still more to come. You can’t do anything about the weather, but wait… maybe we can?AquaFence to the rescue!
Kudos to the Norwegians who have invented and now manufacture a product to temporarily protect your assets against flooding.
A few of the Floridians used it recently — and it worked!
- Observing the massive proliferation of yard decorations related to All Hallow’s Eve an hypothesis was formed.
- Here it was: Consumer spending in the United States for All Hallow’s Eve is equal to and possibly exceeds consumer spending for Christmas.
- The hypothesis was tested and quickly tossed.
- Even though the anecdotal visuals suggest otherwise, consumer spending for All Hallow’s Eve is barely more than one percent of that for Christmas in the United States. (2023 A.I. data)
- Christmas = $>1 trillion
- All Hallow’s Eve = $12 billion
- Beware those Cheetos!
- Researchers have discovered over-consumption might turn your skin transparent — allowing people to observe your internal organs functioning as you munch away.
- Tartrazine is the chemical and the FDA has said it’s OK to eat, but… beware. (Science Magazine, 2024)
- It has been wrong before. How about all those PFABs?!
- For or Against?
- Google should be restructured into several smaller companies.
- Remember Ma Bell? How about Standard Oil? How about Ted Roosevelt?
- As the old saying goes, we might be out ahead of our skis.
- There seems to be renewed interest in this aphorism… or, it could be I’m just listening to a different demographic.
- The surge in popularity for electric vehicles seems to be cooling — in part because sources of electrical power haven’t kept up with the demand.
- And so what you have is frustration, annoyance,
- fahgettaboudit.
- There’s a popular advertisement on television right now wherein a young boy asks a group of adults, “What’s the economy?”
- This is meant to be the awkward equivalent of, “Where do babies come from?“
- There is obfuscation, stuttering, embarrassment, and eventually a non-answer answer.
- The boy eventually says, “I’ll just look it up.“
- To which the adults are left in various states of conflict avoidance.
- But, the question never gets answered: What is the economy?
- Remember the old Grade #3 answer? The total of all goods and services? (Actually, that’s gross domestic product, but close enough.)
- But, it’s much more complicated, isn’t it?
- What is your answer?
- And, how would you explain it to a nine-year-old?
- Among the challenges associated with top leadership is the inevitable onset of delusion.
- Sooner or later delusion will catch up with you unless you put systems in place to minimize its impact.
- We’ve all experienced it — even if we don’t realize or admit it:
- “Morale can’t be as bad as they say…”
- “These numbers don’t look good, but there must be an explanation…”
- “These data aren’t the most important thing, there are other things to consider…”
- “‘Our sales are down? Must be something wrong with our customers…”
- “That’s always been our #1 territory, it’ll come back…”
- “We just had a Board meeting and no one said anything about it…”
- “It’s because of the plague…”
- “It’s part of a macro-trend, and we can’t expect to out-perform a macro-trend…”
- “We’re getting more complaints and concerns, but the good still far outweighs the bad…”
- “Let’s double-down on our messaging; for some reason people don’t seem to understand…”
- Delusion: It’s among the scariest of all monsters and you can’t just hide under the covers.
- Put systems in place to minimize its impact.
