Spout

This site is full of ideas. Some of them might make you cringe. They may not align with your worldview, perspectives, or experiences. That’s a great thing.

Sore need of grace

As America slowly tugs itself into pieces and divides itself based on how evil we assume people with opposing views to be, there’s one thing sorely missing: grace. Because we don’t have enough division and angst in this country, there are always people out there actively scouring social media and other digital records looking for anything various people may have written or posted that would warrant cancelling them from culture. And I’m not just talking about people who are still alive. We are looking through historical records and judging all people, past and present, against the cultural “norms” of…

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Top seven stressors

My friend, who’s a mindfulness professional, was telling me that one of her resource books list the top seven sources of stress as (in no particular order): Getting married or divorced Chronic or serious illness Moving Changing or losing a job Going to prison Death of a loved one Significant financial obligations It struck me that one of these stands out from the others: prison. Unlike the others, going to prison equals a loss of freedom. Unlike the others, you don’t get much say in going to prison (after you made the decision to do whatever it is that…

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The devil I know is content

There’s an old saying: “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” It speaks to the advantages of working or dealing with a person you don’t like but know well versus someone who is unknown and unpredictable. I think it is this kind of thinking that is largely responsible for the state of the United States today. People are so risk-averse and so afraid of being challenged or uncomfortable that they’d rather just suck it up and deal with what’s happening to them rather than putting their energy toward finding something better. Sitting and suffering is the…

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Mask protection conversion

Our local grocery store recently changed it’s mask policy. If you have been vaccinated, you don’t need to wear a mask. I am not vaccinated, nor will I be. So naturally, I was excited to get back to entering the grocery store with no mask on. The residents of the Pacific Northwest did not disappoint. I’ve been in that grocery store five times since they changed their policy. Each time, I was the only person in the store without a mask on. There’s no way to know this, but given the anecdotal evidence and sensibilities (such as they are)…

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The racism of audience targeting

You can’t see a television show, streaming series, commercial, or nearly any cultural event without noticing how overtly everyone is trying to make up for their own racism. You can’t swing a dead cat without seeing an over-representation of black people in nearly everything you see in media. Movies. Television shows. Tik Tok clips. Award shows. Hallmark specials. Commercials. Advertising. No matter where you turn, you’d think America was 75% black people, based on current casting practices. Which is fine. If the content of the story or the successful sale is the point, who cares whether it’s a man,…

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Short term thinking in a long term business

A friend of mine just traveled to Hawaii only to find that, along with all of the expected pains in the ass presented by COVID, he had no rental car waiting for him after reserving it two months earlier. Meanwhile, it is nearly impossible to rent a car at one airport if you’re hoping to drop it off and fly out of a different airport. It’s a fairly well-known and universal travel problem right now that car rental companies have no inventory. Why do they have no inventory? Because when COVID hit, they thought the best idea out there…

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Sperm bank promotion

In a recent conversation about Mormon’s, the conversation naturally turned to sperm banks. We were talking about having many kids with many wives, and we thought a sperm bank may be easier than juggling all of the personalities. Being marketers, the direction of the conversation evolved to how to encourage more men to donate to the sperm bank. Obviously, hiring prostitutes would be a great draw to get men to stop by. But in nearly all areas of the country, hiring prostitutes, and calling them prostitutes, would be illegal (although that’s not entirely clear, since you wouldn’t be paying…

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Things you shouldn’t do on social media

It’s no secret historians are going to identify social media as the key catalyst for the downfall of humanity (unless, of course, the historians are simply social media employees). One of the many reasons they’ll draw this conclusion is because social media has leveled the playing field between important friends and barely acquaintances. Similarly, our usage of social media has equated the death of a loved one with a poorly-photographed plate of food. People take to social media for to share thoughts or news ranging from waking up to a plate of eggs to the birth of a first…

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House flippers and scalpers

House flippers and scalpers are two sides of the same dirty coin. Both take something of value to a very limited audience, artificially insert themselves into the transaction, bump up the price, and take a cut they have no business taking. House flippers take a house with imperfections, in which they have no interest, so real house hunters can’t buy it at a legitimate price, and wallpaper over the imperfections to hide them to the buyer. Then they put it on the market and sell it to the highest and most unsuspecting buyer they can. Scalpers buy tickets to…

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Ban awards

A rare flip through the television channels took me to a story on BBC America about a woman in Kenya who was using recycled materials to make a very strong and sturdy brick. The story started out by calling attention to all of the plastic in the ocean (apparently an area the size of Texas). It went on to show some massive landfill areas in Kenya which were teeming with buzzards. Meanwhile, I was talking to a friend who’s department at work is moving to a new building they had built on their campus. She was telling me about…

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