When Will You Disappear From Memory?

On October 11, 2024October 11, 2024 By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Calculating my “Moment of Oblivion.”

They say you aren’t totally dead until your name is spoken for the last time.

For some it will take longer than others. Much, much longer. I can’t imagine we’ll stop saying Julius Caesar’s name anytime soon. He did pay a high price of admission into Club Immortality, though, what with all those knife wounds in the back.

Or Genghis Khan. Especially when he was such a prolific baby daddy that even today 1 in 200 men in the former Mongol Empire share a common male ancestor — which was almost certainly him. Guy must have had a hell of a Tinder profile.

Adolf Hitler will be hanging around for a bit. History is filled with noteworthy murderers. In fact, that seems to be your best bet for a ticket into the remembrance afterlife. We won’t soon forget Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong either.

Most of your prominent dictators, kings, barbarians, and major leaders down through history, good or evil, beloved or reviled, will likely live on in the collective consciousness. Ozymandias’ statue may have crumbled in the desert, but hey, we’re still talking about him, aren’t we?

After that, the list starts to really narrow. It’s mainly inventors and scientists like Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. Influential artists and thinkers like Shakespeare, Socrates, or Leonardo da Vinci. Explorers such as Christopher Columbus or Neil Armstrong. Religious figures like Jesus Christ or Muhammad. Then a smattering of other human highlights. Your Typhoid Marys (Mary Mallon), Rube Goldbergs, and Roland the Farters.

Yes, Roland the Farter was a real person, and apparently, he was gastronomically quite skilled.

Sadly, I don’t think many Medium writers will make the recall cut past even 100 years from now, except maybe Barack Obama and other big names who happen to have accounts here. Sure, some server in a cave somewhere will probably have all of us stored away. But how desperate will those of 2124 be to read through hot takes from the 2020s? How many bestselling books or films do you know of from the 1920s? I can think of one off the top of my head — The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

It’s a sobering thought experiment calculating your “moment of oblivion.” Mine is probably around the year 2135. I was born in 1982. The average male life span in the United States is 80. I’m currently childless. If I were to have two children in the next ten years, my kids might be in their 30s by the time I die.

Everyone remembers their parents and talks often about them. So, at the least, I’d be remembered by my own kids until they pass away, possibly sometime early next century.

If my kids have children of their own, my grandkids would certainly remember me, assuming I live long enough to get to know them. Everyone loves their grandparents. If my future grandkids are born while my kids are in their late 20s or early 30s, they would live until around 2135.

After that, it starts to get real murky. Very few people ever know their great grandparents personally. Often you just know their name and some basic biographical information. Maybe a few family members have stories about them. I have no idea who my great great grandparents even are.

So, that’s it then. 2135. My Moment of Oblivion.

I could improve on my date with nothingness by living longer. Maybe I add ten more years then. Or I could have more kids than just two. Working against me there is the fact that I’m starting late. But if I were to live to my 90s and have five kids, and my kids have a bunch of kids, then perhaps I could stretch my remembered self to the mid-2100s. I’d have to be a real prodigious procreater like Genghis Khan to make it past the next century via genetic legacy alone.

If I don’t have any kids, then I’d be reliant on my nieces and nephews to remember their favorite uncle. That would get me no farther past sometime early next century. Aunts and uncles are rarely remembered past one generation.

Aside from being remembered by family, I’m left with having to do something extraordinary to make a big enough impact. I’m not a king, scientist, or explorer. I’m just a writer. Even if I were to write a huge bestselling book — like the next Jaws or Gone Girl — that probably only buys me notoriety for a few decades. The only two authors living today that I could see still being remembered in 100+ years solely due to their writing and not counting their offspring are Stephen King and J. K. Rowling. I don’t see myself getting that lucky.

Of course, if I were to somehow manage to kill millions of people, that’d be sure to keep me in everyone’s thoughts for centuries to come. But I’d have to really raise the bar there. I’m competing with some heavy hitters. Hitler killed around 17 million. Stalin whacked 23 million. Mao had a whopping 49–78 million extinguished.

How many would I need to kill to ensure I stick around forever? 80 million? 100 million? I think I’d better shoot for 100 million just to be sure. That’s a nice round number.

No, I think I’m okay with 2135 being my final goodbye year. That’s still 153 years of being thought about and talked about. Not a bad run for an average person.

When do you think your Moment of Oblivion will be?

Some Context To Robert Downey Jr.’s Ridiculous $100 Million Paycheck

On October 10, 2024October 10, 2024 By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

To the Victor Von Doom go the spoils.

It’s good to be Robert Downey Jr. these days. With a career and reputation left for dead by the mid-2000s, a role in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang helped reanimate the troubled ’80s star’s corpse back to life.

Famously, it was landing the role of Tony Stark/Iron Man for the newborn Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008 that would send him back to A-list status. It’s hard to believe it, but Iron Man was considered a signficant risk to produce at one point. Nobody had heard of the character outside of comic book fans. Then there was the star himself, Downey Jr. who was an even bigger gamble with his prior arrests, DUIs and rehab visits. Dude was a hot mess.

Iron Man was a massive hit. The MCU completely (for better or worse) took over Hollywood for the next ten years. The mega franchise culminated in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, which saw Downey Jr. finally retire Tony Stark in dramatic, sacrificial fashion.

Ever since then the MCU has been…well, shitty. It’s been bomb after bomb, basically.

Earlier this year Downey Jr. won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as conniving politician Lewis Strauss in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. You may have heard of it. It won Best Picture and made nearly a billion dollars.

Now Downey Jr. is back in the MCU. Winning Oscars is so yesterday, apparently. Why win gold when you could win green? While wearing green. Lots and lots of green going on here. Kevin Feige just hired him back into the Marvel fold to play Victor Von Doom, aka Dr. Doom, in two upcoming Avengers movies. For $100 million.

Yes, $100 million. As in one tenth of a billion dollars. That’s an obscenely silly amount of money to pay someone just for playing dress up for a few months. However, a little perspective is in order. Some justification, even. I contend Feige might have gotten Downey Jr. CHEAP for the role.

You have to remember, an A-list star is an investment in the film’s success. This goes especially so in Downey Jr.’s case. No Downey Jr, Iron Man maybe isn’t a hit. No Iron Man hit, no MCU. No MCU, no billions of dollars.

Like Jules Winnfield said, “Personality goes a long way.”

The last Avengers film, Endgame, made nearly $3 billion. Infinity War made over $2 billion. Even if the next two Avengers films make “only” $4 billion combined, that means Downey, Jr. cost a mere 2.5% of the total revenue, not including merchandise sales and other downstream effects of two hit movies, like traffic to the upcoming Marvel Infinity Kingdom at Disneyworld.

There’s also precedent for paying top talent a huge sum to help lend respectability (and most importantly, ticket sales) to a spandex flick. It all started when Richard Donner approached Marlon Brando to appear in Superman: The Movie as Supes’ dad, Jor-El. Brando agreed, but only for the princely sum of $3.7 million plus a cut of the profits. An utterly outrageous sum back then for what amounted to less than two weeks of work. But Donner needed a big star in addition to the great Gene Hackman already signed on as Lex Luthor, as newcomer Christopher Reeve wasn’t a big name at the time.

‘Superman: The Movie.’ Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Brando got his big payday. Superman grossed $300 million at the box office, making The Godfather’s upfront cut a mere 1% of the revenue. That’s not counting video sales, merch, broadcast rights, and other income sources over the last 45 years since the film’s release. If Superman has made $1 billion thus far, then Brando’s “outrageous” sum only cost about one third of one percent of the total revenue. I’d say Warner Bros. got their money’s worth out of him.

Of course, movies with big actors bomb all the time. It’s risky fronting enough cash to fill a Brink’s truck, even to charismatic, proven stars like Downey Jr. Time will tell whether this massive paycheck will prove a good investment or not. Either way, even $100 million will look small in four decades time, just like Brando’s $3.7 million does relatively-speaking today.

Inflation Nation – A Honda Cost $13,000 in 2004

On October 9, 2024October 9, 2024 By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Inflation is so scary when you really look at it.

It feels weird, but I’m at the age where I’ve developed some perspective on the outrageous rising cost of living. I can finally say things like, “Back when I was young ____ used to cost so much less!”

Of course, everyone’s getting eaten alive by inflation these days. On TikTok, there are people comparing grocery receipts of today with that of just four or five years ago. With the exact same items and brand names, too.

I remember purchasing Old Spice Pure Sport 3.4 oz deodorant in Wal-Mart four years ago for about $2.99, or sometimes there’d be the two for $5.00 pack. That same size and brand currently costs $4.47 for just one according to the website. I live in North Dakota, so that price might be higher or lower elsewhere. But that’s almost a 50% increase in just four years. Ridiculous. But you can’t put a price on keeping B.O. at bay, right?

By the way, I don’t seem to recall my income going up by 50% over the last four years. Someone’s losing ground here, and I think it’s me.

I know, I know. Why didn’t I go all in on GameStop back in 2021? I could have so easily been a millionaire. How stupid was I?

Inflation is known as the “hidden tax.” But that kind of undersells its malicious and destructive presence. That’s like calling Michael Myers the “hidden prowler,” instead of, say, a terrifying homicidal phantom. Dr. Loomis hit the nail on the head by calling him “pure evil.” Which is something you could also call inflation.

Even Michael can’t afford a new mask due to the rising cost of inflation. Credit: By IMDb — Photo taken by Ryan Green, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65823405

Inflation is a result of money printing, government spending, and whatever those three witches were brewing up in Macbeth. Double, double toil and trouble, indeed!

What makes inflation so frustrating and demorializing is that it’s impossible to overcome or avoid. Watching it is like being tied to the railroad tracks and forced to wait for the locomotive to come barreling over you full steam ahead. All the while the sinister mustachiod villain who left you there gets away scot-free and cackling.

All you can do is invest and hope for the best to try and stay ahead of the “blast radius” of inflation as much as possible. But therein lies another problem. What do you invest in, and will it beat the real rate if inflation? According to the Federal Reserve and government reports, inflation is currently ticking back down to 2%, the desired annual target.

But Michael Saylor, the CEO of MicroStrategy, seems to think the “real” rate of inflation actually averages 7% a year. That means that even if you’re investing in the S&P 500, which averages a 10% growth rate every year, you’re only just keeping your head above water.

Saylor is known for loving Bitcoin, and sure, if you’d bought it five or more years ago you’d have realized massive gains. But who’s to say Bitcoin will keep providing such high returns, and how long it will take to get them?

Gold has risen nicely over the last 20 years, but the yellow metal has also had decades of sideways action and decline over its long history. And how practical or safe is it to store your nest egg in gold? I keep a little myself, but only it’s a small allocation.

Real estate has gone up big, too, especially in some states. Many northeastern and western states like California saw real estate grow by as much as 20% over just the last two years. But such a stratospheric growth rate also causes new and younger buyers from being locked out of the market.

Realistically, the average person is left with trying to escape Michael “inflation” Myers by investing in S&P 500 and Nasdaq index funds via retirement plans and personal brokerage accounts. That’s not the worst option. But that’s like only running from Michael on foot. A car would be much better. Or a V-2 rocket.

Michael “inflation” Myers, Source: Midjourney.

I remember 2004 like it was not that long ago. Bush was calling Kerry a “flip flopper” on the presidential campaign trail. The Red Sox won their first World Series since the Middles Ages. And a base model Honda Civic DX only cost about $13,000.

$13,000! That’s nothing! Peanuts! I could make that with a newspaper route. Well, actually, $13k is nothing to sneeze at, but it is managable and within reach.

What’s a base model 2024 Honda Civic LX sedan cost now? According to Car and Driver, $25,045.

$25,000! That used to be a GRAND prize on Wheel of Fortune back in the day. Now it barely gets you the quintessential middle-class starter car. Not counting taxes and other fees.

Honda Civics have nearly doubled in price over the last twenty years at an annual growth rate of about 3.32%. If they were to continue at that rate, then by 2044 they’ll cost like $50,000.

This is something you have to keep in mind when it comes to planning retirement and managing future expenses. If you retire with a million dollars in 2044 and plan to follow the 4% rule (meaning you take out 4% of your portfolio to live every year) that means you’ll only have $40,000, which won’t even be enough to buy a new Honda.

Sure, you could buy a used car. But remember, they’re all likely going to double in price, too. A used 2020 Honda Civic with 35,000 miles today might cost $20,000. But in 2044 that same four-year used vehicle will probably cost $40,000. So, you still have nothing leftover to live on in that scenario.

2044 may seem far away. But it’s not. It’s really not. The last twenty years went pretty fast to me. The next will go fast, if not faster. If there’s one thing we’ve all learned about inflation recently, it’s that it can get out of control very quickly and make life very difficult, unless you’re already rich.

Michael Myers has put on some good Nike running shoes the last few years, and if you don’t stay ahead of him, you’re going to feel his butcher knife in your wallet before long.