The tyranny of the penny
It's Free for All Friday!
It’s Free for ALL Friday! Each week I keep track of some of the off-the-path things I've found, and work extra-hard to make sure you never hit a paywall, using my own subscriptions, gift links, and other (legal) hocus-pocus.
Quick note: I’m not 100% sure I’m going to keep doing this weekly feature. We’re running into an issue with some of the links not staying free, which of course defeats the purpose. Also, change is good.
I have a few ideas for a replacement … It might not happen immediately as I’m still unpacking from vacation (both literally and figuratively), but I’m considering it.
Anyway, let me know if you appreciate this weekly roundup or if you think it’s starting to have run its course. (You can just reply to this email.) Thanks!
America Must Free Itself From the Tyranny of the Penny
I was disappointed to learn, recently, that the United States has created for itself a logistical problem stupendously stupid. It’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. I have come to think of it as the Perpetual Penny Paradox.
Most pennies produced by the U.S. Mint are given out as change but never spent; this creates an incessant demand for new pennies to replace them, so that cash transactions that necessitate pennies (i.e., any concluding with a sum whose final digit is 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 or 9) can be settled.
Because these replacement pennies will themselves not be spent, they will need to be replaced with new pennies that will also not be spent, and so will have to be replaced with new pennies that will not be spent, which will have to be replaced by new pennies (that will not be spent, and so will have to be replaced).
In other words, we keep minting pennies because no one uses the pennies we mint.
As far as anyone knows, the American cent is the most produced coin in the history of civilization, its portrait of Lincoln the most reproduced piece of art on Earth. Although pennies are almost never used for their ostensible purpose (to make purchases), right now one out of every two circulating coins minted in the United States has a face value of 1 cent. A majority of the ones that have not yet disappeared are, according to a 2022 report, “sitting in consumers’ coin jars in their homes.”
Young People Are Taking Over the Workplace, and That’s a Problem for Bosses
Chiefs cater to younger workers’ needs and give them advice; ‘nobody told them how to be.’
Gen Z workers are expected to outnumber baby boomers in the U.S. workforce this year. If only their bosses could understand them.
Companies find their youngest employees the most difficult to work with, surveys show. Now executives are making efforts to engage them more. They are arranging mentorship for employees who entered the workforce remotely during the pandemic; they are giving guidance on how to communicate and when to keep their thoughts to themselves; and they are offering new kinds of perks, like an on-site therapist.
Each new generation coming up in the workforce tends to confuse corporate management, at least initially. Members of Gen Z—generally defined as born between 1997 and 2012—are no exception. Dozens of board members from public companies gathered in June at the Sheraton hotel in Palo Alto, Calif., to discuss the questions this latest cohort raises.
Christine Heckart, chief executive of Xapa, a professional development app for Gen Z, told the audience that younger generations want meaning, mentorship and a sense of purpose.
The message didn’t go over well with everyone in the room. One board member in attendance asked why any of those things should be the company’s responsibility.
Maria Amato, a senior client partner with Korn Ferry, an organizational consulting firm, said many of her clients are concerned about attracting and retaining younger employees. And yet every time there is a new generation emerging in the workforce, companies worry about not being able to understand or accommodate them.
“We started having this conversation 25 years ago but then we were concerned about Gen X,” said Amato.
Inside the Family Feud of the Multibilllion-Dollar Sol Goldman Empire
When he died in 1987, Goldman owned the largest private real estate portfolio in New York City: 600 properties, worth over $1 billion.
Sol Goldman was born in 1917 in Brooklyn. He worked at his parents’ grocery store and was entrepreneurial at a young age. At 16, he started buying up foreclosed properties in the neighborhood.
“I think they were $500, and he would borrow $50 from the liquor store and $50 from the pharmacist,” Jane chronicled from the Delaware witness stand. “That’s actually how he met his partner, because he was going around the neighborhood and collecting money. He loved to buy buildings. He loved real estate. And he continued to do it even while he was in the supermarket.”
Goldman built up a portfolio of 600 properties that once included the Chrysler Building. He and his partner Alex DiLorenzo were followed by rumors that they were involved with the mob, which they denied. After DiLorenzo died in 1975, his son and Goldman avoided a protracted dissolution by splitting their properties up via a series of fateful coin tosses.
Today, the Goldman portfolio includes the ground under major office buildings like 1407 Broadway and 475 Park Avenue South, as well as under the Peninsula and Mark hotels. It also owns outright several large apartment buildings, such as 145 East 16th Street and 96 Fifth Avenue.
When Sol died on October 18, 1987, at age 70, his $1 billion estate was the largest ever to enter New York Surrogate’s Court, which oversees the execution of wills. It ended up there because in 1983 his wife of 43 years, Lillian Goldman, moved out of their suite at the Waldorf-Astoria and filed for divorce. Sol promised that if she came back he would give her a third of his fortune when he died, scribbling out an agreement on a yellow legal notepad.
A Father’s Search for a Son Who Didn’t Want to Be Found
Bob Garrison was determined to rescue his son from the streets. The path was more difficult than he had imagined.
From Saturday through Monday, they searched golf courses, train stations, canyons and beaches. City workers in San Clemente helped them print more fliers and showed them where local homeless people congregated. A homeless man on the beach said he recognized Robert’s picture but did not know where he had gone.
Mr. Garrison, who works full time and oversees care for his 94-year-old mother, had to fly back on Tuesday. He and his grandson drove to the pier to wait until dark to see if Robert would return to sleep underneath with a cluster of other homeless people.
Killing time, they wandered down the wooden deck, past the tourist joints, the fishermen, the life preservers. An aircraft carrier floated in the distance.
Mr. Garrison lifted his eyes, and when he glanced back, he noticed a ragged figure on a bench, gazing south, a big Navy sea bag nearby.
The height. The long beard. The open Bible.
“I paused,” Mr. Garrison recalled on a recent afternoon, his voice thickening at the sheer odds of that moment.
“And I said to my grandson, ‘Is that him?’”
X Gets Banned in Brazil
For once, Elon Musk has a case worth fighting — but he has to do it in the courts.
What makes the story of Brazil and X such an unusual tech policy story is the way it has been driven almost entirely by two people.
On one side is Elon Musk, who has often claimed the mantle of free speech warrior in public while capitulating to government requests in private. One analysis last year found that under Musk, X had given into 83 percent of requests from authoritarian governments to remove content. And he appears more willing to accede to the requests of right-wing governments, such as India’s.
In 2021, it seemed possible that India would be the first democracy to ban Twitter, after the company fought court orders to remove political dissent — including from left-wing opponents to the government of Narendra Modi. But relations have warmed between Musk and the Modi government since he stopped fighting those battles.
Brazil once again gave Musk the choice of sending an employee to prison or complying with its laws. This time, he chose not to comply.
Musk’s defiance likely would have sparked a backlash in most countries where X operates. But he has found a particularly pugnacious opponent in a Supreme Court justice named Alexandre de Moraes, a hugely powerful and controversial figure within Brazilian politics who came to prominence during the tenure of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro, a Trump-like figure who threatened to undermine Brazil’s democracy, lost the 2022 election and left office after a violent riot at the capitol by his supporters last year.
Why It’s So Hard to Know How to Care for Your Baby
There simply isn’t good evidence—as in large, randomized, controlled, blinded trials—for many pediatric practices.
When you go to a website with a question pertaining to the care and maintenance of your newborn baby, you will almost certainly see this disclaimer attached to the advice: “Ask your pediatrician.”
The problem is that, in many cases, the answer depends on the pediatrician you ask. In the few short months that my son has been alive, various doctors and specialists have said:
that my baby is allergic to soy or that he probably isn’t;
that I should place him, screaming, onto his stomach for 30 minutes a day to help strengthen his back muscles or that I shouldn’t bother;
that he should take probiotics or that he shouldn’t;
that I should use a steroid cream on his face or that I shouldn’t;
that he should get the tissue under his tongue snipped—or “released”—to help him breastfeed more easily or that he shouldn’t.
The reason for all this disagreement comes down to the fact that there simply isn’t good evidence—as in large, randomized, controlled, blinded trials—for many pediatric practices.
No scientist has conducted a gold-standard study that would tell parents exactly which probiotic or steroid cream leads to the best possible outcome. As maddening as these conflicting instructions might be for new parents, they should also be reassuring: They suggest that there’s often no wrong or right way to take care of your baby.
Feeling Suddenly Older? Scientists See Aging ‘Waves’ at 44 and 60
New research suggests age-related changes aren’t as gradual and linear as we thought.
The oldest millennials have entered their 40s and are noticing the effects of aging. It might not be in their heads.
A growing body of research says the aging process might resemble rolling hills more than a slow and steady climb. Age-related changes—slowing metabolism, wrinkling skin—pile up over time but may crescendo at specific points in your life.
In a study published in the journal Nature Aging in August, a team of Stanford scientists described “waves” of aging, where major biomolecular shifts happen in the body around ages 44 and 60.
The researchers found people in their mid-40s, for example, had meaningful changes in biological markers and pathways related to their abilities to metabolize alcohol and fats. These types of changes can lead to gradual weight gain or greater sensitivity to that nightly glass of wine.
“People assume everybody’s kind of aging gradually,” says Michael Snyder, a professor of genetics at Stanford University and senior author of the study. “It turns out that most changes are not linear.”
So far I have about 30 replies via email, probably 28 are very strongly in favor of continuing FFA Friday. I try not to run this whole thing as "majority rules," but it gives me a pretty good sense. Thanks!
Regarding pennies -- during my overseas assignments in the Air Force, no retail activity used pennies. All U.S. currency was airlifted overseas on Air Force cargo planes, and pennies were eliminated from these airlift missions years ago to save weight, space, and fuel. How did it work? At the point of sale, final prices were either rounded up or rounded down to the nearest nickel. It was weird the first time, but after that it was second nature.