"Quick Hits” on Provocative Topics - April 2, 2025
“Self-exploration through varied interests leads to a deeper understanding of who you are.”
Following up on my “quick hits” from two weeks ago, I thought I’d take a quick round through a variety of topics today.
Reflections — Great audio essay on not hoarding
Health — Word finding difficulty and memory lapses
Finance — SECURE Act and RMD’s
Tech — Adobe Scan
Business — Stocking up before tariffs
Politics — Our voice
PNW — Hands Off Demonstration
As always, I’d enjoy your thoughts on these topics, too!
Great audio essay on not hoarding
Right now, Marsha and I are in another “purge” exercise. We’re somewhat used to purging, as we’ve moved 8 times since we’ve been together, dutifully getting rid of things along the way.
By far, the most traumatic move was from decades of suburban house living into urban condo living back in 2016. We had another mini-purge when we moved to Portland in 2018, selling our condo up in Seattle.
However, in the past 7+ years, we accumulated “stuff” ,,,
kept in Seattle up at Marsha’s family home back in 2018, which we never moved down to Portland because we already had corresponding items in our Portland home.
accumulated by our older daughter through her time at Yale that she never took with her to Oxford in 2020.
accumulated by our younger daughter through her time at Carnegie Mellon that she never took with her to University College London in 2023.
accumulated by us while living in Portland, “crapifying” the things we bought previously. (Per Jerry Seinfeld, “Your home is a garbage processing center where you buy new things, bring them into your house, and slowly crapify them over time.”)
Some life changes on our side, including my brother-in-law preparing a condo for sale, the desire to clean up my wife’s family home, and making room in our Portland condo for a craft room now for Marsha is prompting us to go through the stuff again!
Because our iPhones are listening to us all the time (😜), somehow an excellent audio essay hit my YouTube feed. It does an excellent job of addressing our inner demons that get in the way of the purge. I shared it with my family, and I share it here with you.
I highly recommend that you schedule 16 minutes on your calendar and watch it. It makes great arguments all the way until the very end and deserves the time.
Are there any points about hoarding stuff that this video didn’t address?
Word finding difficulty and memory lapses
In a past post, I wrote about my failing memory with age. I wrote at the time that my memory is failing but my CPU is fine! It turns out that it’s important to differentiate these memory-related symptoms and “cognitive decline.” This week, a Medium editor correctly asked me to change text from how it appeared here in my original Substack post:
“As a country, we had to watch the decline of Joe Biden, and he was most certainly not retired.”
To this new phrasing in my corresponding Medium post:
“While not necessarily impacting overall decision-making, we also observed the impacts of aging on Joe Biden, including word-finding difficulty, and he was most certainly not retired.”
Why is this important? Word finding difficulty and memory lapses are generally considered a normal part of aging.
“Minor changes in memory as a person ages are considered normal. This includes misplacing reading glasses or occasionally having difficulty finding the right word. These situations are common and within the range of normal memory changes. These types of lapses don't interfere with daily life and aren't considered signs of dementia.”
The important elements to look at are decision-making and judgement, and neurologists hypothesize that experiences might help compensate for the losses in memory.
“Although the raw power of memory has some degree of decline, perhaps wisdom can increase because the individual has a greater backlog of experiences and different situations as to what is the best thing to do,”
— Dr. Thomas Wisniewski, NYU as quoted by NBC News
I stand corrected!
Do you have any personal stories of a bad memory but a functioning CPU?
SECURE Act and RMD’s
We’re at that age now where we’re becoming orphans, and this happened to Marsha in 2024 with the passing of her mom. (Her dad passed back in 2001.) As a result, Marsha inherited a share of what remained of her mom’s small IRA account. For anyone else faced with the unfortunate passing of their last remaining parent, starting this year in 2025, there were rule changes for non-spouse recipients of inherited IRAs as part of the SECURE 2.0 Act.
The IRS website explains this rule in detail, and there are also articles for laypeople (sample) that came out at the beginning of this year explaining the existence of penalties for failing to take required distributions (RMDs).
This is a little-known rule, so I just wanted to publish it here as a finance topic to help anyone else in our demographic that wasn’t following the tax laws closely.
Are there any tax changes for 2025 that have affected you?
Microsoft Lens
For today’s tech tip, I want to refer to an oldie, as I’ve been taking photographs of old things we’re about to toss. Microsoft Lens does a good job of removing the “skew” in photos, so you can take a straight-on picture or a “scan” for the archives!
Try it out:
Are there other photo apps that you use?
Stocking up before tariffs
Today is “Liberation Day” but at the time I’m writing this, we still don’t know exactly what Trump has planned.
In response, our contractors for our condo’s HVAC replacement project have already purchased our new rooftop boiler months before we need it, and it’s currently in storage.
We did our own stocking up of alcohol. Marsha’s favorite gin is Monkey 47 out of Germany. With a threatened 200% tariff on liquor from EU countries, this gin could become unaffordable. So, last night, we emptied the shelf at our local liquor store, and bought two bottles at $69.95 each. Let’s see if it pays off!
Did you stock up on anything before “Liberation Day?”
Our voice
Even though this is the political blurb of this post, I want to emphasize that I don’t intend to make this a conservative or a liberal issue. I believe in science, and I appreciate conclusions based on facts. I believe that there are people across Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, who also demand that leaders tell us the truth.
While he is a Democrat, I believe Adam Schiff represents a reasonably non-partisan opinion on his Substack video to advocate for the vigorous pursuit of a marketplace of information on which we can base decisions, whether traditionally conservative, liberal, or in-between. While I recognize that there are some who view lies by a politician as a feature, not a bug, it’s pretty well-documented, even on Wikipedia, that we are being subject to a plethora of lies and misinformation. I am personally OK with some of the surface objectives being discussed today. (Who would be against making the government more efficient?) What I’m not OK with are flagrant lies that are easily disproven to justify actions taken without care. (No, we are not paying social security to tens of millions of dead people!)
In demanding the truth, I believe that Adam Schiff makes a good case for us all to make our voices heard, whether we have 5 followers or 5 million followers. I encourage you all to watch it.
Does this message resonate with you?
Hands-off Demonstration
This is the Pacific Northwest part of this post, and I wanted to advocate for my fellow Portlanders to attend a demonstration at the Japanese American Historical Plaza here at NW Naito & NW Couch on April 5th at noon.
This demonstration is part of a nationwide, non-violent campaign to show our national leaders that we as citizens do not accept the current dismantling of our institutions. Robert Reich describes the event on his Substack, too.
Again, I do not believe this is uniquely a Democrat, Republican, or Independent issue. I believe this is about moving forward together. There will be similar demonstrations all across the country on April 5th.
Remember, research shows that it only takes 3.5% of the people to change the world. I believe we can do it together.
For those RetiredPDX readers in the US, I hope you join me.
Are you planning to join?