Free Espresso Machine! (Again!)

If you are willing to wait long enough, eventually you will find whatever it is you are looking for, for free.  Might have to wait a long time for a free Ferrari, though.

NOTE: To all who sent Christmas greetings, thank you and here's to hoping 2023 is the year the world goes back to normal. 

Mark and I were talking about the mid-century meals we used to have as kids - as well as what our parents served.  Maybe the gays just like these kitchy 1960's things, or maybe it is just boomers in general pine for the "good old days."  We remember the days, pre-microwave, where the Swanson TV Dinner was king.  Oddly enough, Tucker Carlson is heir to that fortune - a self-made man!

We were in an "antique" shop and saw (and bought) a 1965 copy of the Campbell's Soup Cookbook.  It was replete with recipes (mostly for casseroles or meatloafs) which all started with "open one can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup."  Or maybe tomato soup.  That's how you cooked back then, in an era before frozen pre-made treats or food delivery (which simply did not exist, other than pizza delivery on college campuses).

My parents thought themselves sophisticates - and perhaps they were, for their time.  I recall one day they brought home a ceramic bottle of Lancer's Rose, which they served with "Wispride" port wine cheese spread, that came in a crock, on Ritz crackers.   We didn't have cable TV in those days, or food shows - other than "The French Chef" with Julia Child, on snowy UHF.  Maybe you might get "The Galloping Gourmet" as well.  It wasn't like today, with all these celebrity chefs and cooking contests and people calling themselves "foodies" because they have a preference of Coke over Pepsi.

But I digress.

One of the other fads of that era was fondue.  People were fascinated by Danish modern furniture or anything vaguely Swedish or Nordic.  Busty blonde Swedish girls were considered the epitome of beauty.  Maybe it was part of the ski culture of the era, I don't know.  But fondue was a fad for quite a while, and Mark and I were reminiscing about the fondue pots of old - usually in harvest gold, avocado green, or sunburst orange.

As if on cue, a lady at the Parcheesi club (where Mark is now President, alas) told Mark she was cleaning out her closet and had a fondue pot she was getting rid of.  Did he want it?  Is the Pope Argentinian?  Of course we would take it - Christmas Fondue this year!  Yee-Haw!

Sunburst orange, in the original 1970's box, sans instructions, but with a set of four fondue forks (also in the original, cheese-stained box).   Such a deal!  It was like traveling back through time.

And to sweeten the deal, she thew in a Robert Krupps (yes, that is his name) Model 963 Espresso maker - the second one we have gotten for free over the years.  The first was a scratch-and-dent returned model that Mark got while at Williams Sonoma.  Apparently Karen bought it and didn't like it, so she returned it, despite the instructions clearly stating that it should not be returned to the store, but instead shipped back to Robert Krupps North American Headquarters, in New Jersey.

You know why they want you to do that, right?  If you return it to the store, it is a charge-back to the supplier.  They sell 1,000 espresso makers and if 50 of them are returned to the store, well, that means they only sold 950 machines, and the retailer will charge-back the wholesale cost to the manufacturer.  The retailer then disposes of the "broken" machines (giving them to employees, like Mark) as the manufacturer doesn't really want them back as the hassle of trying to sell "factory seconds" or "open box" returned items just isn't worth it.

These things retail for over $100, so we've gotten a couple of hundred dollars worth of free espresso makers over the years.  Of course, the best and cheapest espresso maker is the Bialetti type stove-top maker, which is just fine for most of us, who make espresso once in a while when our Cuban friends are visiting.  (Generic versions are just as good, too). The fancy machines are just counter-hogs and not worth the expense.   Tellingly, the very first machine we got - back in 1998 or so - we sold at a garage sale for $20, after using it maybe a half-dozen times.  We valued the counter space more.

But free is free, so I cleaned up the old espresso maker and rediscovered why I hate these things.  Well, hate is a harsh word that should be reserved for Nazis and Republicans - just kidding!  But the machine is a PITA to clean and sort of complicated to use.   I noted before that in an ordinary coffee maker, you heat water to the boiling point (about 212 DEGF or 100C) and pass it through ground coffee beans, either in a basket with a filter, or some other contraption, where the aromatic oils are extracted and make the brew.  It is served at about 180 DEGF and no, McDonald's didn't discover some secret way of making coffee hotter - they served, and serve today, their coffee at the same damn temperature as Starbucks or your coffee maker at home.  Sorry - but that's the truth.   Too bad about that lady, but your crotch is not a cupholder, particularly for hot beverages.

But espresso is made under pressure, and under pressure, it is possible to get boiling water hotter that 212 DEGF, just as your Insti-pot or pressure cooker can cook at a higher temperature because it operates under pressure.  I think this extracts more of the oils from the coffee beans, making for a stronger cup of coffee - particularly when the coffee is ground so finely as it is used in an espresso machine.

As a bonus feature, this machine has a wand for frothing your milk.  And this is where it gets tricky.  You can either put a "plug" in the coffee maker part and let the "boiler" make steam (it will bypass the lid as a safety - you can really burn yourself good with these machines if you are not careful!).  You can then use the steam to froth your milk with the attached wand.   But by then, your espresso is cold, so the resulting latte is kind of luke-warm.

The other technique is to froth your milk while the machine is making espresso and this is where it gets really, really tricky.  You have to put extra water in the tank, which if left to its own devices, will overflow the 4-cup beaker.  So just as the water starts to boil, you have to bleed off just enough steam to froth your milk, while still keeping enough pressure to make espresso, while not using too much of the water - or too little!

Obviously the baristas at Starbucks don't have these issues - their machines no doubt have an endless supply of steam available, which is why those fancy brass-and-copper jobs that take up an entire bar, have all those knobs and dials and gauges.  The home version is never the same.  Sure, you can up your game for a few hundred (or thousand) dollars more, but what's the point?  Are you going to keep up a head of steam at all times on the odd chance you'll want a cappuchino?

It is akin to the home fryer or "fry daddy" which was briefly popular in the 1990's as well.  I recall Mark brought one of those home from scratch-and-dent as well.  The problem was, the "basket" was so small as to not be able to hold even a half-sized serving of fries.  So if you wanted to make french fries at home (always a healthy choice!) you would have to fry one handful or less at a time, and end up with lukewarm soggy fries as a result.  It just wasn't the same as at a restaurant.

Worse yet, when you were done, you had to decide what to do with a half-gallon of rapidly congealing and soiled oil.  Do you keep it for next time, to go rancid in the garage?  Or do you dump it out, making a mess of your trashcan and alienating the garbage man forever?    You realize quickly why fried foods are a restaurant thing - they have huge fryers and a service that comes once a week to vacuum up all the nasty used oil.

Even frying on the stove is problematic - oil everywhere and a grease fire waiting to happen.   And it is hard to get things to fry evenly in a frying pan.  Like I said - not a healthy choice.  Save that shit for special occasions when you are at a restaurant with friends.

Mark has had good luck with slicing potatoes very thin and then putting them on a cookie sheet with raised edges (usually with parchment paper underneath the potato slices) and lightly spraying them with oil.  Also a good way to make bacon.  It just means the splatter is confined to the oven, which ends up being my job to clean, for some reason.

I digress, yet again.

It is not just me - a number of others have noted that single-use appliances are usually a waste of money.  They occupy a lot of counter space and as such, then get shunted off into a cabinet or worse, the attic or basement (or garage).  Once out of sight, they are out of mind and rarely used, which is why they are often sold for cheap at garage sales, or in our case, given to us free (on more than one occasion!).

The exception to the rule is the single-use appliance you use every day.  If you make coffee every morning - or tea - then a coffee maker or tea kettle might be a good idea.  On the other hand, many folks make these things on the stove top.  They are, also, very inexpensive appliances, if you avoid getting fancy.  If you eat waffles every day, then I guess a waffle-maker is a good idea for you.  But if you want a "deal" on one, look to a garage sale or thrift shop - people toss those things on a regular basis.  And all it takes is a little cleaning to make them good as new (and even a new one will get crusty after a few uses).

Speaking of which, I helped a friend of mine unpack and set up their third Keurig machine they have owned in less than a decade.  The first machine - a real monster of a thing - got clogged somehow and sucked coffee grounds back into the "needle" and clogged it.   I think the pump was shot.  I am not sure what happened to unit #2, but they are now on #3 which at least has a smaller footprint than the older models.  These things cost hundreds each, so they have thrown a lot of money at coffee makers.  The Braun we found on the streets of Charleston lasted nearly a decade.  The $9 Walmart machine is working just fine after a few years.  You don't have to spend a lot of money on appliances, and often, the more you spend, the more disappointed you'll be.

So, what will happen to the espresso maker and the electric fondue pot?  I'll bet we use them both for a while, then they will get packed into a cabinet in the pantry, along with the panini maker, and eventually be passed on to some other deserving soul, either by gift or by garage sale or through the local thrift store.

I mean, it makes good espresso.  And it tastes even better when the machine is free and my credit card balance is zero.

Investment Advice

Most investment advice is self-serving for the person advising.

A reader writes, asking me what I thought of a particular bank's investment advice.  The problem I have with investment advice is that no one would give it away for free - or indeed, at any price.  If you had an inside track to the stock market and could predict the future, why on earth would you tell anyone about it?

If you could travel back in time with today's paper having the winning lottery numbers, would you:

(a) Go out and buy the winning lottery ticket, or

(b) announce the winning numbers in advance, so everyone could "share" in your good fortune!

Of course, you would do (a).  Option (b) is just stupid.  Assuming anyone would even listen to you, if hundreds or millions of people bought that winning number, the winnings would be divided up to the point where no one would win more than a few dollars.

Yet, every seminar scam is based on option (b) above.  The guy telling you how to flip "ugly houses" proclaims they made so much money doing this, that they want to share this "secret to success" with you!  MLM schemes use the same mantra - the people at the top of the pyramid want to help you succeed because they are nice people!  It isn't like they want your money or anything.

Investment gurus like "The Sooze" want you to watch their Tee-Vee shows and buy their books.  Storefront investment houses (and you know which one I am talking about - coming soon to an abandoned strip mall near you!) want to help you invest - for a percentage of your net worth, of course!

Or take the shouting guy on television - he says to BUY! and SELL! stocks to get rich, but his own track record of trading is shoddy.  He makes his real money from the salary he gets from the network to be the shouting guy - and from books and appearances he makes.  If he really had an inside track to investing, well, he would be investing, not shouting on television.  And from what I understand, he did try investing, and sucked at it, so he resorted to being the shouting guy, which turned out to be a more lucrative gig.

So how do you invest?  If you peel away all the glitz and glamour of these celebrity investors, who want you to buy their hyped stocks, attend their investment seminars, or buy their investment books, it all boils down to the same three principles, which all legitimate investment advisors will explain to you:

1.  You have to keep investing - putting money in - over time:  You can't just plop down $5000 on a trendy "stonk" and end up a millionaire.  Most of the money you take out of your 401(k) when you retire will be the money you put in - or at least a substantial portion of it will be.

2.  Diversify: Invest in a number of things, so that if one goes bad, the rest won't also go.  This does not mean you won't lose money on occasion - the overall market will go down every so often.  But over time, you will do well.  Maybe you won't make fabulous riches, but you won't be dead broke, either.

3.  Leave it Alone:  It is tempting to want to "time the market" by trading investments based on the news of the day or your perceptions of where the market is heading. By the time something is in the news, however, it is too late to time the market.  So just let go, invest your money in logical, ordinary things, and watch it grow over time.

Of course, this is boring advice.  We all want to be the next Billionaire, who saw that such-and-such stock was going places and had the foresight to invest when the timing was just right!  But the reality of such folks is that they got lucky a few times, and some of them got so lucky they had enough money to manipulate markets and make more money - or so they thought, in some cases.  We are seeing today, a lot of high-fliers who thought they were financial geniuses, now realizing they just got lucky early on, and then resorted to chicanery to keep it going.

Just walk away from that nonsense - it will bankrupt you.

A reader asks what I think of exchange-traded-funds (EFTs) versus Mutual Funds.  I am not sure there is really much of a difference for the ordinary investor.  We have a lot of money tied up in mutual funds (because historically, with an IRA or 401(k) those were the only choices).   A fund that invests in a number of things can do well over time, as it is not dependent on one individual stock or bond or whatever, to succeed.

And yes, you can invest in mutual funds and EFTs that track certain indices (DJIA, for example) or invest in certain things (bond funds, which haven't been doing well lately, thanks to inflation and rising interest rates).  I am not sure why an EFT is better (or worse) than a corresponding Mutual Fund that is invested in the same area.  Usually, you have to have an account with the fund company to invest in that mutual fund, but I notice lately that some mutual funds are offered on other platforms than the house that hosts them.

The majority of investments we have are in mutual funds, only because historically, most IRAs and 401(k)s were limited to mutual fund investments.  I did spend a few years with a self-directed IRA, buying and holding about 50 dividend stocks.  I did OK, but it really was just a self-directed mutual fund of income-producing stocks.  I am not sure I beat the market or anything.  Mark put his money in a mutual fund (Fidelity) that his father recommended and then basically ignored it for 30 years.  He did pretty well - probably better than I did!

Of course, your timeline is important as well.  If you are in your 20's, you can afford to take a higher risk in stocks.   But by your 60's, maybe you want to be in something less risky and more stable.  I have more money in boring things now, including cash, which I am spending, now that I am retired.

But the bottom line is, no one is giving away the goose that laid the golden egg (or selling stock in it).   Just walk away from anything that sounds too good to be true, or some kind of fast-buck something-for-nothing, wealth-without-work-or-risk kind of venture, because they are all pretty much con jobs.

The best investment "advice" is just common sense.  But you'll never get rich selling common sense!

Ford Mustang Mach-E

This is why Elon Musk is losing his mind.

I had a chance to see a Ford Mustang Mach-E up close today and speak with the owner.  He bought a basic model for about $42,000 sticker, with a 250-mile range (a little light - 300 seems to be the "go to" number these days).   But it was interesting to see.

Even as a base model it had a nicely stitched leather interior.  And all the door and body panels fit properly and evenly.   No trim pieces were falling off or loose.  It had the build quality of a typical Ford - perhaps slightly better - and that is not a bad thing.   Ford has made millions - billions - of cars since 1908.  They seem to have it figured out.

It is about the same size and shape as the Tesla Model Y, which unlike the Model-X, ditched the troublesome and pointless "gull wing" doors.  Given the bad press about those doors, I think they are not a selling point, but detract from the value of the Model-X.  The big difference is in price - the Tesla Model Y is nearly 50% ($20K) higher in price - and there is a substantial waiting list to get one, too.  The model X is more than double the price of a Mach-E.

If you need service for your car, well there is a Ford dealer in nearly every town in America.  Granted, not all may have qualified mechanics (yet) to work on the electronics, but everyday items, such as body, trim, brakes, and whatnot, can be repaired at the dealer.  Tesla?  The repair centers are few and far between, and the wait times for parts and the difficulty of repair are legendary.

And this is just one product from one manufacturer.   What will the EV market be like in 2023 and beyond, as nearly every automaker on the planet offers a line of EV models?   Tesla has made big noises about its poorly designed (and embarrassingly named) "cyber-truck" which, like the Elio, is slated for production "next year" (every year). Meanwhile, Ford and Chevrolet are actually selling EV pickups, without fanfare or noise or hyping their stock price on Twitter.  And despite the FUD, they probably will sell well for a niche market of users.

Tesla's P/E ratio is down from a staggering 1000 thanks to the collapse in share prices (investors are seeing the writing on the wall) to a still staggering 45 or so.  20 is a more rational target - either Tesla has to double profits or the share price has to drop by half to be rational, particularly in an era where Savings Bonds (Series I) are paying 6% or more for chrissakes.  Ford's P/E ratio is down to less than 8, which means Ford is earning a staggering 12.5% on investment, and paying dividends to boot!  The latter is something Tesla never has done and promises never to do.

So why the disparity in stock prices and car prices?   Well, Ford is an old-line manufacturing company with factories all across the globe.   Small investors don't find that sexy, as they are always looking for "The Next Big Thing!"   Also, no one at Ford is spending all day on Twitter (working those 120 hours a week!) hyping their share price with outright lies and misdirection.  Ford knows the rules and knows about the SEC so they can't and won't play fast-and-loose with the facts.  Instead of promises, they deliver vehicles.

Sadly, people are idiots and there are legions of fanboys (many of them bots or employees of Tesla) who go online and fawn over one man as though he were a tech genius and not just the johnny-come-lately investor of a company that already designed the product almost two decades ago.

First to Market is Last in the Marketplace.  The fellow I was talking to, had placed orders for a Tesla Model Y, a Ford Mach-E and a Nissan Leaf.  Ford delivered first and he cancelled the other orders.  "I'm glad I did, too!" he said, "with all the nonsense Elon Musk is up to, I don't think it would be cool to be seen driving a Tesla!"   Sadly, I have heard this from other people who already own Teslas and now are tagged with the new Hitler-mobile.  Kind of awkward to show up in a gay campground on drag weekend driving a Model-S (as I saw this weekend).  Park that shit out back!

EVs will not "replace" the IC-powered vehicle entirely.  I suspect that there will still be a lot of gasoline and diesel powered vehicles on the road for 20-30 years or more and even then, they will still exist for certain applications.  I see cars from the 1990's still on the road where I live, so in 2040, there will still be 2022 models going strong.   What will happen in the interim is a shakeout in the EV industry as so many automakers start making cars - with perhaps fewer customers than they anticipated.   As a result, there will be a price war and boutique, expensive models will find themselves priced out of the market.

The Ford Mach-E is just a shot across the bow.  Expect other competitive cars to enter the market shortly - at very attractive prices as well.  From what I can see, Tesla has a lot to worry about.

Hedge Fund Housing?

Will hedge funds buy up all the homes in America and leave us all homeless?  Maybe not.

I read a recent alarmist article online that stated that such-and-such hedge fund was going to commit millions if not billions of dollars into housing.  The article was long and rambling, but the point (if there was one) was that eventually we would all be reduced to renters and have to pay whatever price they set.

And maybe there is a nugget of truth to that.  After the real estate collapse of 2008, no one had the cash to snap up all those properties in places like Cape Coral.  But some investors who were not broke, did snap them up, and as a result, more and more houses and condos were being owned by corporate landlords.  It was a bit of a sea change.

Recently, it was revealed that these same corporate landlords are using an "AI" (trendy term meaning nothing - it's just an algorithm) program to establish what is a "fair" rent to charge.  Some are arguing that this amounts to price collusion, as if enough landlords use this program, they all end up charging a uniform rent - and use each others' overpriced rentals as "comps" to raise their own rents.

If this bothers you and you vote Republican, I have no sympathy for you.  If this bothers you and you say things like "both parties are the same, why bother voting?" I have no sympathy for you.   This sort of thing is the direct result of a laissez-faire "hands off" business policy that is favored more heavily by one side than the other.   If there really is price collusion in the marketplace, well, we do have anti-trust laws and if one party is in power, they might actually be used to bust this practice.  If the other party is in power, then not.  It is up to the voters to decide.  Choose wisely.

The other half of the equation is the market.  Already Redfin is dumping hundreds of millions of dollars worth of properties after they judged badly and overpaid for houses.  They also failed to realize that flipping houses is a business of margins and boots-on-the-ground.  The local guy with a pickup truck and an army of illegal immigrants can buy and flip a house on a budget.  A big company cannot.  And landlording?  Even worse.  Ten years ago we hired a "manager" to handle our condo for us. In retrospect, we realize we should have sold it back then as the price hasn't changed much in a decade and with fees, repairs, and other charges, we basically have broke even over a decade.  If we were living there and managed it ourselves, we would have made money every year.

I expect that many of these corporate landlords will learn - or are learning - the same lesson.  They will then decide to sell their properties in a down market, and lose even more money.  A collapse in real estate prices would ensue - fueled not only by mass sell-offs, but the rising interest rates designed by the fed to lower housing prices by 20% or more.

So eventually the market will sort itself out - which is cold comfort to the person looking for a house or apartment today.  And the guy who overpaid for a house today, thinking, "I'd better buy now before I am priced out of the market!" will get hurt, just as they did back in 2008.

There are things a tenant or home buyer can do to protect themselves, even in a screwy market.  Number one is to not get caught up in the hype and believe that a home is an "investment."  I have proven this theory wrong before.  At best you break even on a home you occupy, which is not a bad deal compared to paying rent.  There is a reason the IRS doesn't tax capital gains on your personal residence - they know you aren't making any money at it and to tax it would be cruel.  Back in 2008, many people took out home equity loans as housing prices rose, spending the "phantom equity" in their houses. When housing values went down, they ended up underwater.

The second thing is to try to live as cheaply as possible in a bubble market - and bide your time until the market collapses.  I see many people claiming they can't afford a two-bedroom apartment on their low-wage salary.  I am not sure it is a Constitutional right for a single person to be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment on their income from working at Wendy's - but some folks think so.  Downsize, get a roommate, live with your parents - whatever it takes.   If you cough up big bucks for a big place, you won't be able to save money to jump when the market softens.  But of course, this is hard to do.  Then again, I had to do it.  More than once!

Third thing?  Don't invest in a hedge fund that is buying and renting out houses!  Expect a bloodbath, shortly.

2023 will be an interesting year.  The chickens, as they say, are coming home to roost, and we are due for the biggest hangover of the new Century.  Many people are over-burdened with debt and have tapped out their savings, and although many companies are still hiring, we are seeing massive layoffs in the "tech-that-is-not-tech" sector as well as collapse of share prices.  Folks are cutting back on spending, due to inflation, and this will lead to layoffs in the retail and manufacturing sectors.  It seems people are waking up as if from a dream and thinking, "Bitcoin.  Theranos.  Donald Trump.  What on earth were we thinking?"   A year ago, such talk would be heresy, today it is doctrine.  Maybe people aren't as crazy as I thought.

Or as one famous President put it, You can't fool all the people all the time.

UPDATE:  The matching shoe to this hedge-fund real-estate bubble is the AirBnB-loan based bubble, where people are buying houses and over-paying for them based on rosy overnight rental projections.  A similar thing is happening in the UK, with "buy-to-let" loans, and apparently a lot of loans are going to go bust.  Schemes of avarice always fall apart when you run out of chumps and fools to satisfy your schemes.  Sort of like Uber.  As soon as they found enough chump users to pay "surge" pricing, sure enough, they ran out of drivers.  Never made a profit - never will.

Comment Bait

Resist the Urge!

I don't have comments enabled on this blog for very obvious reasons.  If you have comments enabled, you will get SPAM messages.  For example, I post about payday loans and a typical comment will be, "You're right, most of these payday loan places are crooks!  But I found one that is honest!  [link]"  It is just an advertisement that I am not getting paid to host.

Others are just argumentative trolls.  They don't have an interesting angle or valid argument, they just want to derail discussion - or they are just plain crazy.  Yet others want to start flame wars with other commenters.  So you have to "moderate" the comments and I'm not getting paid enough ($0) to do that.

I have tried to refrain from commenting on other sites as well.   Tried, but not always successful.   Sometimes I write a comment and then find out someone else said the same thing, only better than I did.  Often I end up deleting comments I leave. There is no profit in it.

I realized that many sites are just comment bait.  They say something so obviously wrong or stupid or just incomplete that you itch to respond with a comment.  And I realize, now, that they may have done this by design.   When you leave out one fact from a YouTube video or make an obvious mistake, commenters will pile on to let you know.  So if you want to increase your internet visibility,  you want to have more "engagement" and to do this, it helps to have people "mash that like button, subscribe, and comment!" So many YouTubers encourage comments, saying "I read 'em all!" but in fact, this may be impossible with a channel with hundreds of videos and tens of thousands of comments.

I am not alone in this observation - the term "Comment Bait" appears in the urban dictionary.  Apparently, Facebook is so aware of it, they will suppress postings that contain "engagement bait."  The top postings on Reddit are little more than comment bait - "What is one movie that you think is great but never caught on with audiences?"   Such postings contain no content in themselves, but entice the reader to chime in with his opinions.  This drives up engagement and may in fact by posted by employees of the site to keep people interested.  Or it may be a user who is trying to raise their profile, so they can sell their "influence" to advertisers.

They want comments because in online algorithms, comments mean engagement.  If you click on a video by mistake and then click right back, that still counts as a click (although they may be able to figure out how long you loitered on the video).  But if you "like and subscribe!" you are clearly engaged, watching the video, and spending time on the page (that is, unless you are a bot).  A comment takes this even further - although again, bots can comment and it isn't too hard to spot their generic comments ("Great video!  I love your channel!").

But if you can entice people to comment, so much the better.  So you leave out one salient fact or make some tiny mistake in your posting or video - which people will want to "fix" by commenting.  I noted before that I fell into the trap of buying cars, boats, motorcycles, and even houses that had something that needed fixing - that was a rather obvious repair need.  Like an abandoned kitten crying out for a saucer of milk, I wanted to make things right and rescue that poor abused car.  It is a bad way to go about buying anything.  And I almost wonder if some sellers realize that leaving one unfixed "thing" on a car or boat or house, makes it more attractive to the handyman than not.   Just a crazy idea I have.

Similarly, you can make a posting, video, or article more attractive to commenters by leaving it with one minor "broken" thing for your audience to "fix".

And this is where I get sucked in.  Someone posts something about a famous author, and I want to respond with, "Did you know he was also famous as a stage actor?" or something to that effect.  The original poster left that out, and it was kind of key.  But then I post that and scroll down and see ten other comments to the same effect.  So I delete my comment.

What I should do is never read the comments, particularly on YouTube, where within ten comments, the discussion has devolved from "kittens are cute!" to "Hitler was misunderstood."    People make a big deal about "Social Media" as if it were some recent invention, but discussion groups and comments sections are, in fact, the prototype of social media.  And discussion groups go back to the 1980s.  I recounted before how "Computer Science" majors (considered part of the "Liberal Arts" curriculum back then, not Engineering or Science) would sit online all day, typing messages on old LA-36 DECwriters (a printer terminal that used wide computer paper and a 9-pin dot matrix).

I looked over the shoulder of one such student, and they were engaged in a flame war with someone at another University over which Star Trek character was the best.  "What's this?" I asked one of my Engineering friends.  "Oh, they're on the Inter-Net!" he replied, "It's just a big waste of time!"

That was 1985.  Not much has changed since then - trolls, flame wars, toxic content, vast amounts of time wasted, compulsive-addictive behavior.  I'm so glad I avoided all that and just blog.  /s

So, what't the point?  Perhaps nothing.  But perhaps if you read an online posting or watch a video or read an article and you have this itch to comment, step back a bit and think.  Someone probably already has said what you want to say, perhaps better than you would have.  No one will likely read your comment anyway, or if they do, they will want to argue with you, take offense, or start a flame war or personally attack you.

I am not sure what the solution is, other than back in the day, when we read something in the newspaper or saw something on television, most of us didn't feel the need to respond.  Sure, there were "Letters to the Editor" but only the better ones were printed, or maybe the editor printed the crackpot ones to show people they were right in the first place.  Television used to have an "equal time" provision, but that is gone now - and most of the people appearing in those equal time slots were wearing tinfoil hats.

Today, we can all wear the tinfoil hat with just the click of a mouse!  Resist.... The...... Urge!  (Ug!)