Study Hacks blog. “Seneca on Social Media.” About 2000 years ago, the stoic philosopher Seneca observed that many people do not understand that “free” gifts often come with strings attached, such as what they cost us in time: “Our stupidity may be clearly proved by the fact that we hold that ‘buying’ refers only to the objects for which we pay cahs, and we regard as free gifts the thigns for which we spend our very selves.”
Blogger and author Cal Newport asks us to look at our use of social media services like Facebook in terms of the cost of time:
Over a billion people currently use Facebook … The service is free, conventional wisdom tells us, so no matter how minor the benefits (which tend to orbit around a generalized fear of missing out), they’re still more substantial than the cost. But as Seneca points out, this assessment is misguided because it ignores the human toll of social media.
The Chronicle of Higher Education. “The Great Expectations of Matthew Desmond,” by Marc Parry. Profile of Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Desmond gets at the counterintuitive economics of being a property-owner in poverty-ridden neighborhoods by telling the story of former schoolteacher Sherrena Tarver, who began buying property in economically depressed areas:
Landlording in the inner city paid well for the same reason that owning a home there was a poor investment: depressed home values. A comparable property might be worth two or three times more in a middle-class white area. But rents in the richer neighborhood weren’t all that much higher, Desmond discovered. For example, a two-bedroom unit in suburban Wauwatosa could command about $750, while a similar place in the inner city rented for $550. The Wauwatosa property, however, came with lots more expenses: higher tax and mortgage payments, plus greater maintenance standards. It was tough to match the return on investment of owning in a poor area. Over the years, Sherrena had acquired three dozen inner-city units, all occupied by impoverished tenants. She calculated her net worth to be about $2 million. “The ‘hood is good,” she liked to say. “There’s a lot of money there.”
I Run Far blog. “WeRunFar Profile: Rich Benyo And Jan Seeley.” Ultrarunners and fans of the sport are likely familiar with Marathon & Beyond, a six-inch by nine-inch book-format magazine published six times a year by Benyo and Seeley. Late in 2015, the pair announced that they would stop publication for all of the reasons you can imagine: declining readership, etc. In this passage, Benyo recounts his experience with the Badwater course (a 135-mile run through Death Valley):
The next day, after the beer-induced talk wore off, Crawford called Rich asking if the two really did make a pact to be the first two idiots to try to the out-and-back?
“Yes, we did,” Rich confirmed.
The two completed the adventure in 1990, and Rich returned to the valley two more times, but it was on the third try that changed his running career forever.
“There was really ungodly weather,” he said. “It got up to 128 degrees [Fahrenheit] in the shade, although there is no shade, and I really broke myself down and opened myself to a viral infection in my heart.”
It took several years to figure out that the infection was more serious than it seemed to be, and years of pharmaceutical medications have transformed his running ever since.
His Badwater adventure with Crawford inducted the both of them into the Badwater Hall of Fame in 2004. He was then honored into the Running USA Hall of Champions in 2005 for his work with the Napa Valley Marathon and founding M&B.