How do most of us learn how to use our money wisely and well? When we’re growing up, we’re given special instruction in important subjects — swimming, driving, sex — to arm us with info and keep us from harm.
Yet when it comes to managing our money — an activity that every one of us needs to do, every day — we receive surprisingly little preparation. We’re not taught much about it in school, because education systems leave it to us to learn from our families and friends. However, those people often don’t fill in the gaps because money can be such a loaded or taboo topic.
Natalie Torres-Haddad, who grew up in southern California, saw many people around her struggling with debt and financial instability. She was determined to be the exception, and she purchased her first rental property in her early 20s and earned an MPA in Finance & International Business. In the process, however, she became buried in debt. Only by teaching herself the basics of money — basics that she’d never learned — was she able to steady herself and her finances.
The 73rd annual Primetime Emmy Awards is in the books.
Netflix was the big winner this year with 44 trophies, including a leading 10 at the primetime ceremony and 34 at the Creative Arts Emmy ceremonies last weekend, to wipe out the competition. The combined HBO/HBO Max was next with 19, including 10 wins tonight, followed by Disney+ with 14, including one tonight. Apple TV+ is next with 10, including four tonight. NBC has eight, and VH1 took six; both took home one statuette Sunday night.
Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) endures as one of humanity’s most lucid and luminous minds — an oracle of timeless wisdom on everything from what “the good life” really means to why “fruitful monotony” is essential for happiness to love, sex, and our moral superstitions. In 1950, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for “his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.” On December 11 of that year, 78-year-old Russell took the podium in Stockholm to receive the grand accolade. Later included in Nobel Writers
on Writing (public library) — which also gave us Pearl S. Buck, the youngest woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, on art, writing, and the nature of creativity — his acceptance speech is one of the finest packets of human thought ever delivered from a stage.
Russell begins by considering the central motive driving human behavior:
All human activity is prompted by desire. There is a wholly fallacious theory advanced by some earnest moralists to the effect that it is possible to resist desire in the interests of duty and moral principle. I say this is fallacious, not because no man ever acts from a sense of duty, but because duty has no hold on him unless he desires to be dutiful. If you wish to know what men will do, you must know not only, or principally, their material circumstances, but rather the whole system of their desires with their relative strengths.
Walzin Castle is a castle in the city of Dinant, Wallonia Belgium in the province Namur over the river Lesse, district of Dréhance.Construction began in the 13th century, and the 15th-century Renaissance horseshoe tower with four cannon ports still exists, even though the castle was burned down by the French army in 1554. There were several restorations later, the latest by Baron Fréderic Brugman between 1930 and 1932. Victor Hugo made a drawing of it in 1863. Wikipedia
Last month, the New York Times Magazine published an in-depth look at the increasing flooding problems faced by New Jersey’s coastal cities and towns and said that the sea level has risen 18 inches in the past century, which is twice as fast as the global average, with incidences of nuisance flooding (which is associated with high tides) more than doubling in the past 20 years.
This followed closely on the heels of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which found that global warming is accelerating, and “unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5°C or even 2°C will be beyond reach.” The window of opportunity for decisive action is closing, as the long life of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere means that a certain amount of further warming is already baked into the system. Upon publication of a special report in 2018, IPCC co-chair Debra Roberts said ominously, “The next few years are probably the most important in our history.”
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The B.L. England plant is seen in this file photo. Andrew Mills/The Star-Ledger
Communities across New Jersey are suffering from respiratory diseases and other health impacts because of dangerously high levels of air pollution. Most of our counties have failing levels of ozone and particulate matter, both of which are emitted in large amounts by diesel trucks. This pollution increases the incidence of asthma, heart disease, heart attacks, cancers, chronic lung diseases, and premature deaths, with a disproportionate impact on communities of color. One out of every four children in Newark has asthma, a rate three times the national average. Trenton has four times more asthma-related emergency room visits than the state average.
There is a critical need for improving air quality and meeting our climate targets in New Jersey. Not only does diesel pollution directly impact the health of our communities, but it also contributes to climate-related impacts. Extreme heat can lead to heat-related illness or make existing health conditions worse. Storms and sea-level rise lead to flooding, impacting some of our most vulnerable communities.
In 2016, my doctor, Kelly Baek, a no-nonsense reproductive endocrinologist in L.A., gave it to me straight: “Your best chance for a healthy baby would be surrogacy.”
I had been through an adenomyosis diagnosis and more miscarriages than I could confidently count, and all I could do was nod. I was not ready to do that. I wanted the experience of being pregnant. To watch my body expand and shift to accommodate this miracle inside me. I also wanted the experience of being publicly pregnant. I would shake off the distrust society has for women who, for whatever reason—by choice or by nature—do not have babies. I had paid the cost of that for years, and I wanted something for it.
I held out for a year after Dr. Baek suggested surrogacy and instead chose to endure more IVF cycles and losses. Everyone comes to the decision differently. Near the end of that year—that hopeful and hopeless year—I had a new plan to take Lupron, which basically quiets the adenomyosis. Dr. Baek told me I would have a 30% chance of bringing a baby to term. But the side effects of Lupron can be intense: you’re basically throwing your body into early menopause and you can break bones very easily.
It was something my husband said that changed my mind. I told him I wanted to try the drug. Dwayne was quiet, then said, “You’ve done enough.”
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In an excerpt from her new book, ‘You Got Something Stronger?’ Gabrielle Union, pictured in 2017, opens up about the questions that still linger after her daughter’s birth via surrogate.
Learning is a life-long process. Yet if you’re someone who always loves learning or wants to pick up a new, specific skill, then cost might be a problem.
However, there are lots of free websites out there that can teach you a range of skills for free.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Illustration by Priya Mistry.
Bertrand Russell
Renée Pollard and Bill Beren
New Skills
James' World 2 