Making October Count

Currier & Ives, American Homestead Autumn

Forget about rebooting one's life every new year. The month for goal setting is October, according to the TikTok meme "October Theory":

October Theory is catching on partly because it sets someone up for success by the time January rolls around, say fans of the trend. Instead of picking up a new habit in the dead of winter—at the same time everyone else is trying to make it to the gym, for instance—it has already been in place for three months...

Others view October as a last chance to fulfill the goals and aspirations they set months ago.

October is the perfect month for recalibration. There's still time to complete the unfinished aspirations for this year and test-run the goals for the next. The busy-ness of Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas is still weeks away, and the weather is pleasant and often magnificent.

Metaphorically, we baby boomers (60-78 years old) are in or about to enter the winter of our lives, if indeed we are lucky to be still alive, and there are not many seasons left. Your humble blogger feels the fierce urgency and intends to make this October count.

Another Group That is Falling Through the Cracks

Elena Portacolone (research gate photo)

We are used to hearing about vulnerable subsets of the American population who need a lot of help in taking care of themselves. Here's another one that numbers in the millions: [bold added]

]Sociologist Elena] Portacolone got to work and now leads the Living Alone With Cognitive Impairment Project at UCSF. The project estimates that that at least 4.3 million people 55 or older who have cognitive impairment or dementia live alone in the United States.

About half have trouble with daily activities such as bathing, eating, cooking, shopping, taking medications, and managing money, according to their research. But only 1 in 3 received help with at least one such activity.

Compared with other older adults who live by themselves, people living alone with cognitive impairment are older, more likely to be women, and disproportionately Black or Latino, with lower levels of education, wealth, and homeownership. Yet only 21% qualify for publicly funded programs such as Medicaid that pay for aides to provide services in the home.

Increased longevity is a societal good, but smaller families, that is, fewer relatives to check on a person, and the decline of churches and other community organizations have resulted in millions of aging, cognitively impaired adults falling through the cracks.

Costco Napa - No Surprise

Selman Medina (Chron photo)

As further proof that its stores are not all alike, the new warehouse that opened in Napa today already is reputed to have one of the best wine selections among Costco's 140 California stores. [bold added]

[Selman] Medina is a Bay Area Costco legend. He spent 11 years commuting from Napa to work the floor of the wine section at the Novato Costco, widely believed to have the best wine section of any Costco in California. He’s one of 30 “wine stewards” employed at Costco stores across the U.S., and according to Bay Area Costco wine buyer Mark Kalkbrenner, he’s one of two wine steward program originals still standing.

Costco is one of the best-run and most popular retailers in the country. It doesn't go overboard on standardization and has a few products (e.g., surfboards in Hawaii warehouses) that cater to the local market. It's no surprise that its new store in wine country has an excellent wine selection, overseen by an expert buyer.

Watching a Subspecies of Money Men

Last month we commented about how the super-rich signal their wealth to each other without making it obvious that's what they're trying to do. But not all of them, or those trying to be as wealthy as they are, are into that game at least when it comes to timepieces.

WSJ: The Anti-Status Watch: Why Men in Finance Love Cheap, Cheesy Watches

Sponge Bob and Avengers watches worn by financiers
Patrick Lyons and Leroy Dikito (WSJ/Lyons/Dikito)

Though finance guys famously flaunt Rolexes or Patek Philippes on their wrists, an established subspecies of money men goes the other way entirely. In place of a sleek steel case and elegant ceramic dial? Mickey Mouse. SpongeBob SquarePants. Fanta-orange rubber straps.

Over the years, highfliers have made headlines for sporting Swatches. (See: Blackstone Group CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman or former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.) That “wealthy guy, cheap watch” ethos continues to resonate in boardrooms and on trading floors, with men of all seniority levels embracing plasticky, offbeat designs, from superhero models to calculator Casios. Many resemble something you might win in a claw machine. Priced from $30 to a few hundred bucks, they’re a bit of fun and a different sort of flex, conveying an “I don’t need a Rolex” bravado that comes from having made it. Call them anti-status watches.

A practical reason for this anti-status affectation: cheap, everyday watches can be used as conversation starters in business conversations.

It's also possible to be viewed as truly wealthy, especially if everyone knows that a person is rolling in it, by not appearing to care about looking the part. The psychology of wealth, like the most important aspects of life, can be complicated.

Right Before Our Eyes

This happened on Sunday and was widely reported on all media channels. Your humble blogger had nothing to add, so initially refrained from comment.

Upon reconsideration, I thought that, of all the important events that have happened or likely will happen this October in a Presidential Election year, this is the one that will be remembered centuries from now.

WSJ: SpaceX Catches Huge Booster Back at Launchpad [bold added]

SpaceX caught a towering booster rocket back at its launchpad in south Texas, an engineering milestone for the Starship vehicle at the center of Elon Musk’s plans for deep-space exploration.

The Super Heavy booster, the first stage of Starship, lifted off from south Texas on Sunday morning and propelled the Starship craft into space. Shortly after the launch, SpaceX made the call to return the booster back to the pad from which it had launched.

A livestream from SpaceX showed the device zipping back toward the facility, and, as it approached a tower, its engines slowed the enormous device down, allowing for the catch around 8:30 a.m. ET. The vehicle latched down on mechanical arms sticking out of the tower.

It was SpaceX’s first attempt at the catch, a feat that the company and Musk, its chief executive, have said is key to reducing the cost of rocket launches...

Starship, which consists of the Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft, stands about 400 feet tall when it is launched.

Elon Musk is that rarest of technological pioneers who prioritizes the economic viability of his product. After the Apollo missions NASA lost its funding because its programs were always viewed as nice-to-have, not got-to-have. Reusability of boosters will drive down the cost sufficiently to make space travel more accessible and perhaps even profitable in its own right.

Saving One Dollar at 99 Ranch

This year I've started to look my age. I've lost hair, and what I have remaining has turned white. Which is background to the following:

We've been shopping at the local 99 Ranch Market for 20 years. As I was checking out, the middle-aged Chinese man at the register said, "I'll get you a senior discount." I didn't even know 99 Ranch had one. Sure, I shrugged.

He put his hands on his hips and bellowed, "Senior....senior!" Several customers turned their heads. Apparently the senior discount had to be approved by the manager. She came over in less than a minute and scanned her cellphone over a reader, authorizing the transaction. So 99 Ranch does use current technology, except for the part where cashiers yell for the manager.

I studied the receipt. The vegetables, ramen, and pastries cost $23.59, and the 5% senior discount saved $1.18. After writing the check to the U.S, Treasury for our 2023 income taxes, every penny counts.

Procrastination Hits the Immovable Deadline

Your humble blogger spent most of Sunday night and Monday morning working on his 2023 income taxes. While there are some justifiable reasons for his procrastination, it's hard to utter with a straight face that he couldn't have spared some time in the six months since April 15th to finish the task. October 15th is the drop-dead due date for filing.

But that's water under the bridge. I completed the input forms and submitted them to the processor. The preliminary run came back this afternoon, and there was a $10,000 error that should be easily fixable. Tomorrow I'll phone in the correction, get back the final run in the afternoon and drop it off at the Post Office by 5 p.m. Easy as pie.

A Choice, But Not Really

The priest read from Mark 10:

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”

It is true that most people---yours truly included---try to build up their wealth to a point where it provides protection against the exigencies of life. It's very difficult to "sell what you own, and give the money to the poor" and trust in God to take care of our future.

There are other examples in the Bible of how money is an obstacle to faith. Later in Mark, Jesus observes, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

However, it would be a mistake to focus on wealth as the sole impediment to faith. I have encountered people who claim that money is not important to them. Putting aside whether I believe them or not, I have observed that certain activities (cooking and dining, sports, grandchildren) are their highest priority--and just ask some young people to turn off their phones for a day.

It's very difficult to leave everything behind, though the irony is that we eventually will have no choice in the matter.

The Road Not Taken

Perhaps the importance of "which road
do I take" is not the decision but the fact there
are at least two roads (WSJ/Carole Hénaff)

In unhappy situations where we tell ourselves that there's no other option (e.g., staying in a bad job or marriage), we really do have a choice. It's just that we are unwilling to face the consequences of that choice. [bold added]

But the truth, though it often makes people indignant to hear it, is that it’s almost never literally the case that you have to meet a work deadline, honor a commitment, answer an email, fulfill a family obligation or anything else. The astounding reality—in the words of Sheldon B. Kopp, a genial and brilliant American psychotherapist who died in 1999—is that you’re pretty much free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

Consequences aren’t optional. Every choice you make comes with some sort of consequences, because at any instant you can only pick one path, and must deal with the repercussions of not picking any of the others. Spending a week’s holiday in Rome means not spending that same week in Paris. Avoiding a conflict in the short term means letting a bad situation fester.

Freedom isn’t a matter of somehow wriggling free of the costs of your choice—that’s never an option. It means realizing that nothing can stop you from doing anything at all, so long as you’re willing to pay those costs. Unless you’re being physically coerced into doing something, the notion that you “have to” do it just means that you don’t want to pay the price of refusing to do it. After all, it’s perfectly possible for you to quit your job with no backup plan. You could book a one-way ticket to Rio de Janeiro, or rob a bank, or tell your social media followers your honest views.

The economist Thomas Sowell summed things up by saying that there are no solutions, only trade-offs. The only questions to ask about any choice is what the price is, and whether or not it’s worth paying.

The benefit of the I-really-do-have-a-choice perspective may have an effect on one's psychological well-being.

If a path you’d love to take is genuinely likely to leave you destitute, or seriously harmed in some other way, then you probably shouldn’t take it. But for most of us, if we’re being honest with ourselves, the temptation is often to exaggerate potential consequences, so as to spare ourselves the burden of making a bold choice. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed that there’s a secret comfort in telling yourself you’ve got no options, because it’s easier to wallow in feeling trapped than to face the dizzying responsibilities of freedom...

Whatever choice you make, so long as you make it in the spirit of facing the consequences, the result will be freedom—not freedom from limitation, which is something we unfortunately never get to experience, but freedom in limitation. Freedom to examine the trade-offs—because there will always be trade-offs—and then to opt for whichever trade-off you like.

Thanksgiving will soon be here, and, although circumstances stay the same, changing our viewpoint toward life is a glass half full instead of a glass half empty makes all the difference in our feelings about the world.

Humorbragging

(Illustration by Verplancke/WSJ)

Humblebragging (“I hate that I look so young; even a 19-year-old hit on me!”) has been around for years. Now there's humorbragging.

A team of researchers have found that “humorbragging”—referring to your accomplishments through a veil of humor—allows people to play up their skills without coming across as smug or conceited. And that makes them more likely to get hired or get their pitch accepted...

The researchers used a series of studies to test the impact of what they called humorbragging. In one instance, they sent out two résumés to 345 companies—but one version of the résumé added a dash of self-promotional humor instead of being purely serious: “The more coffee you can provide, the more output I will produce.” The résumés with the joke got an email or a callback by 156 companies, versus 125 for the others.

Another study got similar results when looking at humorous bragging on the first four seasons of “Shark Tank”—people who used humor to highlight their accomplishments were more likely to get funding than others.

Speaking from personal experience (okay, missteps) it's really tough to be funny, especially in a business setting.

Many subjects should not even be broached, or should be mentioned only within narrow constraints. It's advisable to test-run your humorbrag before a trusted confidant. Because of the consequences of a poor reaction to your humorbrag, follow the advice of grammar teachers regarding commas: when in doubt leave it out.

Santa Cruz Students Don't Know Why It's Popular

John Travolta wears the iconic T-shirt (SFGate/YouTube screenshot)

Most UC-Santa Cruz students don't know why its banana slug T-shirt is a sought-after item. The shirt's popularity is due to Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarentino's greatest film, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.

“The Fiat [slug] is like the logo,” said [Jason] Cohen of the UCSC bookstore. “It’s a cartoon banana slug wearing glasses and reading Plato. It’s our best-selling logo, period. We sell it in many different capacities. I put that on academic planners and notebooks and all kinds of stuff.”

Among all the slug merch available, the Fiat Slug T-shirts remain the school’s top seller, by far, Ray Rideout, UCSC’s apparel buyer, told SFGATE. “Everyone gets it,” he said. “Anyone who’s seen the movie, it was the cleaner scene, right? When people — they find out where I work, they always send a picture of Travolta wearing it.”

Last month we noted how the banana slug has been named the official California state slug.

"Politics is downstream of culture" is a well-known saying. 30 years after it entered the culture, politics has recognized the cultural significance of the lowly banana slug.

Money and Happiness: Not So Simple

We've commented before on the 2010 study that asserted that more money does lead to happiness, but only up to a relatively modest level of income, i.e., $75,000 per year:

In 2010 Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton analyzed data from over 450,000 responses to a daily survey of 1,000 U.S. residents by the Gallup Organization. They found that money does influence happiness at low to moderate levels of income. Real lack of money leads to more worry and sadness, higher levels of stress, less positive affect (happiness, enjoyment, and reports of smiling and laughter) and less favorable evaluations of one’s own life. Yet most of these effects only hold for people who earn $75,000 a year or less. Above about $75,000, higher income is not the simple ticket to happiness that we think it is.

(WSJ illustration)

Since that 2010 study more research has been performed on the relationship between money and subjective well-being. Now it seems that more money in absolute terms does make higher-income people happier. [bold added]

A big raise provides significant boosts in happiness even at household incomes of $500,000, according to a new research report...according to a paper by Matt Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the bonuses and leaps in income high earners reap are so large that they keep adding to well-being in the same way that smaller pay bumps do at lower tiers of earnings.

“I think of this as a ladder across society. The rungs are separated by more and more dollars, but exactly the same amount of happiness,” said Killingsworth, who published his report on his Happiness Science website.

An academic paper in 2010 popularized $75,000 as the salary threshold beyond which earning more money didn’t make people any happier. More recent research indicates that there is no such plateau.

Killingsworth and other researchers stress that many things influence human happiness, including your relationships, your job and the country you live in.

“No single factor, including money, dominates the equation,” Killingsworth said.

Previous studies on money and happiness have consistently demonstrated two things: that richer people are happier, and that it takes progressively more money to keep generating a well-being boost of a given size.

It makes sense that more money always makes people happier, ceteris paribus.

However, as people age money's importance diminishes (caveat: as long as one has enough to provide for retirement and health care) and no longer is the measuring stick of one's life; family, legacy, and discernment of life's meaning become foremost.

I wonder if there's research being performed on that.

Michelin-star Chef Gives Up on SF

Peter Hemsley prepares a dry-aged blue
fin tuna steak (Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle)

Michelin Award-winning chef Peter Hemsley thought that he could both succeed in business and help revive San Francisco's South-of-Market area. He has given up. [bold added]

Less than two years after Aphotic opened and drew acclaim in San Francisco, the fine dining restaurant will close.

Aphotic, which won a Michelin star in its first year of operation, announced on Instagram that it will close on Dec. 21. Chef Peter Hemsley said despite the accolades, the restaurant’s location at 816 Folsom St. in SoMa proved challenging.

“The fact that we all did this at the ugly butt end of a desolate convention center suck hole in the post-panny apocalypse, is nothing short of a small miracle,” he wrote. “And I believe in miracles — I have to as a chef and restaurant owner in these times. But I also know that miracles do not last forever.⁠”

In an email to the Chronicle, he wrote, “The energy may come back to that part of town in the years to come, but it will be a long and painful battle. Longer, much longer than anyone expected.”

Aphotic's dry-aged blue fin tuna steak (Suzuki/Chronicle)

Hemsley, an alum of the Michelin-starred Quince, opened the moody Aphotic last March in the former home of Palette, his combination art gallery-fine dining restaurant. It served an ambitious, seafood-focused tasting menu and standout cocktails. Aphotic is one of the rare restaurants with a license that allows it to distill its own spirits, producing a seaweed-infused gin...

In an email to supporters announcing the closure, Hemsley wrote that he “stayed put where I am because I was always charmed by the architecture of my restaurant, and the potential it had as an exceptional dining venue from within." Yet he said he increasingly felt the city failed to address post-pandemic challenges in Aphotic’s neighborhood. In the message, he cited “fear of parking on the street due to broken windows,” construction and other issues, coupled with the rising costs of doing business.

Mayor Breed and other San Francisco boosters are trying to make us believe that San Francisco has put the worst of homelessness, crime, open-air drug use, and general filth behind it.

To get at the truth watch the behavior of Peter Hemsley and other business people who have their own money on the line.

Inflammaging

(Illustration: Jemal R. Brinson/WSJ)

Yet another portmanteau [a word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two others, for example motel (from ‘motor’ and ‘hotel’) or brunch (from ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’)], but the WSJ says this one is important for our health. [bold added]

“Inflammaging” sounds like just another marketing buzzword wellness companies are throwing around. You would be wise to take the condition seriously.

A combination of inflammation and aging, the term describes a simmering form of inflammation—the immune system’s response to a perceived threat—that is chronic and low-grade, and builds stealthily as you age. It is associated with an increased risk of heart attack, cancer, Alzheimer’s and other conditions.

Inflammaging happens to everyone to some degree as we age, and some people don’t develop much. But scientists say we should pay closer attention. More research is showing the damage it can cause...

High levels of inflammation have been linked to an increased risk of death from any cause—a seven times higher risk compared with those with the lowest levels of inflammation, according to one study examining blood samples from more than 160,000 patients.

Women with high levels of chronic inflammation had a 70% greater risk of a heart attack, stroke or death from a cardiovascular cause than those with low levels, according to a separate study published in August by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who followed the women for 30 years.

Finding effective treatments for inflammation/inflammaging is still in the early stages:

A drug has to tamp down inflammation without blocking the immune system. Some patients who have atherosclerosis or are at high risk of cardiovascular disease are treated for inflammation with a low-dose version of the drug colchicine, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2023 for that use. The drug has been used for years to treat gout, a joint-pain disease.

Researchers are studying whether other drugs, including GLP-1s, can lower inflammatory markers. And Novo Nordisk and CSL Behring are testing potential anti-inflammatory medications in patients who have cardiovascular disease or are at high risk.

Some people have experimented with taking medications such as metformin and rapamycin to target inflammaging. Both drugs, approved by the FDA for other uses, have shown potential to target inflammaging, but more research in humans is needed.

Otherwise, the best ways to ward off inflammaging today? All the things you should be doing anyway: exercising consistently, not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight and eating healthfully.

Some research suggests the Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes nuts, whole grains, fish, fruits and vegetables, is particularly protective against inflammation. Red meat, by contrast, promotes inflammation.

Most important for brain health is seven to eight hours of sleep a night, said [Mass Gen's Rudolph] Tanzi. The brain gets rid of amyloid that triggers inflammation then, he said.

“Every time you go from dreaming or REM to deep sleep, I call it a rinse cycle.”

The good news for your humble blogger is that metformin (diabetes) and colchicine (gout) have already been prescribed. I'll continue to take them regularly because they may help to reduce chronic inflammation.

Because the upward trajectory of health advancement is so steep, the goal is to hang around until cures for inflammaging, cancer, Alzheimer's, etc. can be found.

Blessing of the Animals 2024

Today the church celebrated the Feast of St. Francis (the official Feast day is October 4th), who many regard as the greatest post-Biblical saint in the history of Christianity.

St. Francis turned his back on his family's wealth in favor of a lifetime of poverty and service. He is the patron saint of animals and the environment.

Pets and their owners came forward to be blessed at the altar. This afternoon, as we have for the past 20 years (interrupted by COVID in 2020 and 2021), the church set up a table at the Foster City Dog Park to say a prayer for pets and owners who came forward.

Included in St. Francis' legacy is the composing of the second most-recognized prayer in Christendom:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury,pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen