Tuesday

A longer read today, highlights are prompting personal experiences and more questions about how we act, do things, and what gives us goosebumps. Today, Tim Urban dives into the science and art of Tipping, and it reminds us of how we started our careers, a trip through our past to how fast Elon Musk brought us the future and how much it might cost. A blue creature we've never seen or heard of before should be a mascot and a behind-the-scenes look at the “Sphere.”

-

🤘We are here every day, and every minute you spend with us sends ripples of gratitude through our souls! 🤘

Tim Urban sent us another highlight from his archive from Wait But Why, his creative blog. Urban is an author and recently published a book called What’s Our Problem, which Urban describes as a "Self-Help book for societies. It's a deep read, a good selection for a road trip audiobook for the first read/listen-through. Today, Urban takes us back to a post he wrote in 2014 about Tipping. I love stories about everyday things that we all think about but may need to go deeper into. Seth Godin does this daily; the Freakonomics Team also looks at common things and dives into the data to find interesting topics of conversation.

Urban went on a journey and interviewed over 100 people for his piece. It combines humor and useful information; he includes a handy table of who to tip. Baristas and Bellman have always confused me? Tips for getting bigger tips are also included in the article.

Let's start with a few disclosures: I received my first tip working at a restaurant when I was 15 years old and worked in and out of the service industry for another 10 years. Most of my friends have been in the service industry at some point, and my three children have all worked for tips. When I was a manager responsible for hiring other managers, I looked at potential candidates' jobs in high school and college. Every successful manager I've ever hired worked in some service-related job while attending school. Learning how to deal with customers, especially in a business where Tipping is involved, teaches you how to handle difficult situations in high-pressure environments and get better at a job over time. The better a service worker you become, the better the shift you will get, and the bigger the tips you might be eligible for. 

Oh yea, this is also where you will learn that most rich people suck at tipping, and your gratitude for the middle class will grow. 

Tim's piece is more data and general statistics related; one of the stats he cited is a graph that determined a Tipping Spectrum and that older men were on the higher end of the tipping spectrum. Also mentioned was the trick of folding up smaller bills to hand a valet who parks your car, another trick I am intimately familiar with as a former manager of several hotel valets (Busch Stadium Days…). A Tipping Statistics table is also included, which begs the question, "why is tipping still a thing?"  To be continued.

5 minutes of good cheer every day. Become a Fan to get daily posts and updates.

A new website in our mix, Treehugger, has a cool story on Blue Creatures. It starts with a statement that claims BLUE is the most popular color in the world. We did some light research on it and found similar claims; a combination of surveys worldwide suggest blue is the most popular color, and some of the surveys suggest it's the color of the sky and the ocean, which could be why it is popular.

Some of the animals on the list are familiar, the blue jay, iguana, and even a lobster; weird, but it's just a lobster. Some of them are deadly, like the blue poison dart frog, but the best is this bizarre creature, the Glaucus atlanticus. This thing is a nudibranch, which we also had to look that up (slug-like), it floats upside down and feeds on the Portuguese man 'o war, which can be considered the deadliest jellyfish on the planet.

Why hasn’t this been turned into a sports mascot!?

The new Musk Biography written by Walter Isaacson has gotten a lot of buzz. Isaacson was given unprecedented access to Musk while he wrote his book, and David Brooks wrote another piece about Musk and his drive to achieve. Brooks asks the question that Isaacson's book doesn't answer: is it worth it?

Would anyone have believed that a private company would become the general delivery service for things in space and create reusable rockets in less than 20 years from its start? How about a fully electric vehicle with speeds equivalent to many gas-powered vehicles, self-driving features, and a production count in the millions in under 15 years? Not to mention low orbit satellites, Neurolink, and the advancements of AI.

Could that have been possible without all the reported negatives that went along with the break speed of this unbelievable innovation? A difficult question, a person can be against unfair labor practices and repressive regimes, and still have Amazon show up on the porch delivering unbelievably cheap goods everyday…

-

Blue Monday.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

-

-

🤘We are here every day, and every minute you spend with us sends ripples of gratitude through our souls! 🤘

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

5 minutes of good cheer every day. Become a Fan to get daily posts and updates.

O/X