by Rupe | Oct 14, 2017 | Mad Musings
If your family doesn’t want your stuff when you’re alive, they sure won’t want it when you’re dead.
That’s the blunt assessment of yet another self-help author from abroad who is trying to get Americans, who have an addiction to collecting and storage units, to clean up their acts.
The latest volley in the decluttering business comes from Stockholm, where 80-ish artist Margareta Magnusson has just published a slim yet sage volume, “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.” The book will be published in America in January.
Source: By Jura Koncius – WAPO
My Comments: Really interesting concept.
by Rupe | Oct 12, 2017 | Health-Wellness-Sex, Money Matters
A young carer holds the hands of an elderly woman in a residential home for the elderly in Planegg near Munich in this June 19, 2007 file photo. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/Files
If you have an aging parent and want a glimpse of what the future holds, look no further than Leslie Glutzer.
The 66-year-old from Chicago has a mom who is 92, dealing with dementia, now living in a local nursing home. Those costs are not covered by Medicaid, so Glutzer and her husband are spending more than $5,000 a month from their savings.
Source: Start planning now to care for elderly parents
My Comments: Really good piece for everyone.
by Rupe | Oct 7, 2017 | Mad Musings
This might strike you as overly optimistic or pessimistic, depending on your worldview. Certain apocalyptic scenarios envision a perfect storm of inequality, resource scarcity and political instability wiping out civilization as we know it in the next 100 years. On the other hand, the more utopian-minded among us believe that our progeny may one day colonize the entire universe, ensuring our survival for billions of years.
Source: We have a pretty good idea of when humans will go extinct
My Comments: Really interesting piece.
by Rupe | Oct 5, 2017 | Health-Wellness-Sex
The disparity between top earners and everyone else is staggering in nations such as the United States, where 10 per cent of people accounted for 80 per cent of income growth since 1975. The life you can pay for as one of the anointed looks nothing like the lot tossed to everyone else: living in a home you own on some upscale cul-de-sac with your hybrid car and organic, grass-fed food sure beats renting (and driving) wrecks and subsisting on processed junk from supermarket shelves. But there’s a related, looming inequity so brutal it could provoke violent class war: the growing gap between the longevity haves and have-nots.
Source: Pam Weintraub – Aeon
My Comments: Really interesting piece. The coming longevity war.
by Rupe | Oct 5, 2017 | Deep Thoughts
In 1840, Edgar Allan Poe described the ‘mad energy’ of an ageing man who roved the streets of London from dusk till dawn. His excruciating despair could be temporarily relieved only by immersing himself in a tumultuous throng of city-dwellers. ‘He refuses to be alone,’ Poe wrote. He ‘is the type and the genius of deep crime … He is the man of the crowd.’
Source: Jennifer Stitt – Aeon
My Comments: I am somewhat of a loner of sorts. I find that the solitude allows me to think deeper thoughts and probe my inner world more completely.
