Attention newly-arrived Floridians! The weather may be sunny and pleasant right now (today it’s a mix of sun and clouds, with temperatures going up to 30°C / 86°F), but this will come in handy in a few months when hurricane season returns.
Also: I feel a Taco Warning coming on.
If you visit YouTube but don’t sign in, its suggested videos are based on best guesses based on trends, your location, your recent browsing history and a few other factors. I do this from time to time to see what sort of things YouTube’s recommendation algorithm serves up.
Last night, it suggested videos from the FREENVESTING channel (and no, I’m not linking to those jackals), which simply describes itself as “An inspiring channel for those who are seeking growth.” Established on September 1, 2020, it’s accumulated nearly 100 million views to date, and it appears to have done so by harnessing the fear of financial doomscrollers.
The videos feature financial gurus of varying quality. Some are more respectable, such as Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Some are semi-respectable: Ray Dalio and Cathie Wood. And then there are the outright assclowns — I’m lookin’ at you, Robert Kiyosaki and Dave Ramsey.
The videos may change, but the themes and titles on the thumbnails stay the same:
The channel was a little more “tips and tricks from the rich” in the beginning…
…and they certainly covered all the angles, as you can see from these two contradictory videos, which were released one after the other:
But like any good YouTuber, they did some experimenting and found a winning formula with this gem from Mr. “Rich Shill, Poor Audience”:
…and it’s been doom-a-rama ever since.
You’d think it might be enough to say “watch this channel, but only to recognize hucksters when you see them,” or to learn some tricks if you’re an aspiring YouTuber, but I recommend doing so very sparingly. This sort of fear-based stuff has a way of getting in your head, even if you’re trying to watch it objectively and from a distance.
I’m sharing this image in the hope that it won’t be useful information.
Twitter user @muravfx posted this:
Elon Musk spent $44 Billion on Twitter. The World’s population is 8 billion. He could have given each person $5 billion and still have money leftover. I feel like a cheque for $5 billion would be life changing for most people. Yet he wasted it all on Twitter.
— creed mura (@muravfx) November 18, 2022
Your “math sense” should be tingling at this nonsense. Here is some literal “back of the napkin” math I did to see how much everyone on Earth would get you evenly split $44 billion among them:
5.5. As is $5.50 — five dollars and fifty cents. Not 5 billion.
Okay: in the absence of ethanol-free gasoline, you can run a gasoline-powered generator with fuel that has up to 10% ethanol. But you will shorten your generator’s life, and as long as you live in Florida, you’ll need it again. Try to fill your generator with ethanol-free gasoline!
My recommendation: Try and find a gas station that sells ethanol-free gasoline. Wawa is a reliable source — use their store locator, select Advanced Search, and check the Ethanol Free checkbox and run the search!
The person who came up with the phrase “quiet quitting” took the effort to incorporate alliteration, which made the phrase catchy. You’d think the author of the article 5 Signs You Are Being “Quiet Fired” From Your Job (shown above) would have put in a few seconds to do the same for its employer counterpart, but instead, they took the lazy route and simply replaced “quitting” with “firing.”
In my opinion, “furtively fired” — and its noun form, “furtive firing” — sound much better, are grammatically correct, and employ an underused word.