I woke up this morning singing What's the Use by the late Mac Miller and haven't been able to get it out of my head ever since; so of course it's my theme song today [adult content and foul language warning].

"You can love it, you can leave it

They'll say you're nothing without it

Don't let them keep you down"

During my morning coffee, I read about the Reddit-Gamestop underscoring of the shady nature of stock shorting and hedge funds. Here are the articles I found that clarified the situation for my financially challenged brain:

Summary of the story behind the GameStop short squeeze: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/30/gamestop-reddit-and-robinhood-a-full-recap-of-the-historic-retail-trading-mania-on-wall-street.html

How is Elon Musk (Tesla founder and CEO) involved? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/business/elon-musk-gamestop-twitter.html

Musk’s celebratory, limited edition, red satin Tesla “short shorts” are going for $150-200 on Ebay and elsewhere: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-sells-red-satin-tesla-short-shorts-2020-7

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Later, I read the following article (easily skimmed) from the Pew Research Center about how, by 2100, human population growth is expected to nearly stop, Africa's population is expected to be second only to Asia, 90 countries are expected to lose populations, and Latin America and the Caribbean are expected to have the oldest population of any world region, among other things: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-population-is-projected-to-nearly-stop-growing-by-the-end-of-the-century/. It's a very interesting and surprisingly easy read, so I thought I'd pass it on.

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My photo for the day is of the 1980's boom box that graces my kitchen (admittedly solely for listening to NPR). I hadn't really noticed it in years, but I glanced at it today and, for just a second, it hyperspaced me back to the time when it was given to me as a state-of-the-art birthday present.

If you missed my last post, you can find it here: http://www.melissarooneywriting.com/blog/2021/01/31jan2021-lauryn-hill-and-microplastics/.

Thanks for checking in. As always, I'm interested in your thoughts :-)