ideas thought fodder

What I Don’t Understand About Retirement Plans

By Mary | by Mary

Please forgive me. This is going to be one of those blog posts that reproduces a bunch of screenshots from a Mastodon conversation, kinda like the articles that are a reproduction of Twitter screenshots, but I hope to use them as context for additional thoughts based on the conversation. It started with an article about Milton Friedman called “Ideas Lying Around,” written and posted by Cory Doctorow. [https://doctorow.medium.com/ideas-lying-around-33a28901a7ae] From which I quoted a paragraph about…

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reading technology

A Thriller About Forensic Accounting … Really, I Mean It

By Mary | by Mary

It has been a tough haul reading books this year. It took me a couple of months to read one book, The World Without Us, so it was a pleasure to find a book that I could read quickly. The book I found was Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow. What attracted me to the book was that it was billed as a thriller about a forensic accountant. That might not seem like the most…

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health

Eczema Update

By Mary | by Mary

I’ve been struggling with a bad eczema flare recently – months of vesicles and itchy patches encircling most of my neck. At one point, the rash was so solid it looked like a sunburn. I also developed eczema in my ears on and off over the past year and a patch in my scalp in December. Most of the time, I tough it out with my various moisturizers, calamine lotion, witch hazel, Vitamin E oil,…

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family health music

Gary Numan Rocks!

By Mary | by Mary

Hubby and I saw Gary Numan in concert at First Avenue in Minneapolis last night. Gary Numan rocks! He is such a stellar performer that it was worth wearing earplugs, standing on a hard floor for three hours, and getting beer accidentally spilled on my shoe. (Why is the floor not covered in anti-fatigue mat, I wonder?) We went with a friend who happened to look down over the crowd at one point during the…

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history reading

“Nobility is expensive, nonproductive, and parasitic”

By Mary | by Mary

I checked my first book out of our new-to-us public library a couple of months ago. It was “The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman, a very good book, whose title accurately describes its contents (what would happen to nature and the human-built environment if humans were suddenly gone), but it took me foooooorever to read. I’ve been too busy moving stuff into the household and painting and such. Truth be told, I’ve also gotten into…

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