Don't know much about history

While I was posting this, I noticed that half of it focuses on stuff we don't know and never care about, except that we should...

1. If I did a man-on-the-street interview with 100 people and asked when inflation will drop below 15%, I would get 95 forecasts and maybe five people would notice that inflation never actually reached 15%. And If I asked 100 people when the current recession is likely to end, pretty much nobody would point out that we aren’t in a recession. We don’t really pay attention as much as we’d like to think. On the other hand, if I asked people to sing the theme song to Friends…
   
   
2. In the Bible, the original sin was Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience to God’s instructions, but many people seem to think it was eating from the Tree of Knowledge itself. That must be the reason so many people think they’ll be better off if they never learn anything.
   
   
3. I met a high school teacher who teaches entrepreneurship and he wanted to know if I could introduce his students to some business founders. I pointed out that less than 1% of all entrepreneurs end up making a living off their businesses, but roughly 95% of plumbers do just fine. On the other hand, there does seem to be a good job market for people who want to teach about entrepreneurship.
   
   
4. Rule Number 2. Never click on an unsolicited link. I’m sure you all remember Rule Number 1 from 2019.
   
   
5. More than a dozen decades ago, Joseph Malins wrote about the choice between putting fences at the top of the cliff or paying for ambulances to collect the poor souls who topple over the edge. I suspect millions of people have read his poem by now, but they all must have an ownership interest in ambulance companies.
   
   
6. I butt-dialed my cousin the other day and she called back when she saw the missed call. We had a nice chat as a result and I was reminded that I should butt dial her more often. 
   
   
7. We need an app that prevents us from re-posting or forwarding any video for three days. That’s enough time to find out if it was a fake, a deep fake or really, really deep fake. If we were all using that app, our average blood pressure would drop 20 points, internet traffic would fall 15% and all our carpal tunnel syndrome would be healed.
   
   
8. I read recently that eighth-grade test scores in civics and U.S. history fell to their lowest levels ever in 2022. Educators are upset by the news, but I suspect most politicians are absolutely ecstatic.
   
   

Maybe we'll discover some areas where we are much smarter than we realized. Not likely, of course, but you'll want to click here to subscribe so you won't miss the update.  

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