Joy of missing out, New Year's resolution fails, Spice Girls and a Heinz ketchup bottle
Just a few minutes of your time!
…oh, hi! Welcome to 2024!
The holiday season has come and gone. And, even though I didn’t get to do as many things as I had initially hoped, I had such a great holiday season.
After deciding on a full slate of holiday events, I scrapped most of those plans and ended up at one holiday tradition that never fails to captivate my heart: Kennywood Park’s Holiday Lights. I visited the amusement park eight times between Nov. 19 and Jan. 1 (I have a season pass).
Stepping into the park during the most wonderful time of the year feels like entering a real-life Hallmark Channel Christmas movie. With more than 2 million lights, delightful food offerings and the thrill of Jack Rabbit rides, Kennywood’s Holiday Lights is a Christmas wonderland like no other.
You can get a glimpse of my joy as shared on Instagram here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. 😉
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Finding the joy of missing out
As part of its “New Year’s tuneup” series, The Washington Post this week wrote about the joy of missing out.
Yes, the joy of missing out — or “JOMO.”
We all know about the fear of missing out — or “FOMO.” But there’s research to suggest we can enjoy not being part of things. And, for someone like me who has been on a quest to right-size my life, I’ll listen to all of the research on JOMO.
“JOMO is actually being able to be in the here and now,” Tali Gazit, an associate professor of information science at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, said in an interview with WaPo. “To be able to enjoy what you are doing now without looking left and right and be jealous or anxious about missing something.”
Remember Oct. 4, 2021? It was the day Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp encountered a massive outage. And, it also served as an important event for Gazit, who, with a graduate student, was able to get 571 adults to answer questions on their experience with the outage.
“A large amount of people really enjoyed themselves, and they found themselves talking to their partners, talking to their friends and doing things, cooking, doing sports,” Gazit told WaPo.
Read the full story from The Washington Post.
Few people keep New Year’s resolutions
Did you know that 91% of Americans fail at their New Year’s resolutions?
I was one of those people who sometimes got caught up in the Oprah Magazine-Good Housekeeping-Parade magazine-etc push of generic calendar-checking things when it came to New Year’s resolutions.
You know what I’m talking about. All of those stories that pop up talking about how January is the best time to just completely overhaul everything you know about your life. (Declutter! Drink more water! Drink less alcohol! Eat more veggies! Walk more! Go to a gym! Wake up earlier! Go to bed earlier!)
Over the years, I’ve learned to implement changes when they make sense — and not necessarily follow a calendar or some kind of predetermined checklist from a once-trendy magazine.
Professors at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business offered reasons why resolutions so often fail, such as underestimating potential obstacles.
If you’re one of those people who feels the need to start fresh with the change of the year, life coach Marlene Boas offered tips on downsizing resolutions on KDKA-TV’s “Pittsburgh Today Live.”
Grown men can’t handle that a standout Duke basketball player paints his nails
He’s popular across social media and is a really good college basketball player.
And, during the quarantine days of COVID-19, Jared McCain picked up an interest in painting his nails.
That last part has a lot of grown men trolling the Duke guard.
"I like to get manicures and pedicures. I take care of my body," McCain told Complex. "Some of these people hate, I don't know if they do take care of their body... the hate is funny because it's usually grown men most of the time, and it's like, ‘You're a grown man just hating on a kid.’”
Stanley cup fans have a thirst for limited-edition tumblers
You know the Stanley brand that your grandfather took with him to work at the steel mill? The one that’s probably still in a crate in your grandparents’ or parents’ basement?
Well, the brand that’s been around since 1913 has seen quite a resurgence in popularity as of late.
In November, self-proclaimed “Stanley cup car fire girl” Danielle Faudree posted a TikTok video of her reaching into her burned-out vehicle after it caught fire the day before and grabbing her bronze Stanley cup that had been in the cup holder.
Ice clanged against the cup when she shook it.
The video has racked up more than 92 million views.
Stanley reached out to the 37-year-old Maryland woman offering to replace her cup and her car. (She said the company gave her nine Stanley cups and a 2024 Mazda CX-90.)
“They never made me feel like I was a commercial or I was a marketing opportunity,” she told The Washington Post. “It was really just focused on: ‘We want to make sure you’re happy, you’re safe, and we want to get this car for you and your family.’”
And thus began the absolute craze over Stanley cups.
So much so that Target’s Stanley display has been empty at stores across the country. On my recent trips (yes, plural) to Target stores (yes, plural), the Stanley cup displays have been empty each time. I overheard two customers on separate visits ask Target workers if there were “more in the back” (ha!) — to which each employee exhaustively said no.
A few different limited-edition cups were released in recent days at Target. (“Cosmo pink” and “Target red” cups were released at Target and a Starbucks “winter pink” cup was released at Starbucks locations inside Target.)
By the way, the limited-edition cups allegedly sold for between $40 and $55 at retail. In a quick eBay search, I found many cups for sale/auction — with at least one listing at $630 for two cups.
(Someone should gift the Philadelphia Flyers some Stanley cups since it’s been 17,756 days, as of Jan. 6, 2024, since the organization last won the Stanley Cup. Hey-o.)
Ohio governor bans trans-related surgeries for minors
In a major anti-trans move on Friday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced an executive order that bans transition-related surgeries for minors.
His announcement came a week after he vetoed a bill that would have banned all gender-affirming care for minors.
“I believe the parents, not the government, should be making these crucial decisions for their children,” he spewed on Friday, which contradicts his executive order.
It should be noted that major medical associations — including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association — support minors’ access to gender-affirming care and oppose state bans.
It should also be noted, underlined and highlighted that: “Surgery for minors is rare and is generally not recommended under standards of care developed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a nonprofit professional organization dedicated to transgender health care. In the rare cases minors do receive surgery, it is usually a double mastectomy, also known as top surgery. Genital surgery is never available to minors.”
Ohio transgender woman denied on ballot for not using her deadname
In more anti-trans news out of Ohio… a transgender political candidate was disqualified from a House race for not using her deadname.
Despite receiving enough signatures to appear on the ballot, Vanessa Joy learned this week that she was denied by the Stark County Election Commission, which used a little-known 1990s state law that says candidates must provide any changes to their name within the last five years to qualify for the ballot.
The law was not listed on the 33-page candidate requirement guidelines on the Ohio Secretary of State’s website. Nor was it listed on the candidate petition.
"Something that is that important should have been on the instructions," she told WEWS-TV in Cleveland. "It should have been on the petition."
About the lawsuit over the missing ‘cute’ Reese’s pumpkin faces
Like you probably did, I initially laughed at the lawsuit a Florida woman filed against Pennsylvania-based (and my favorite chocolate company) Hershey.
Then I thought more about Cynthia Kelly’s lawsuit and the efforts companies make to deceive us out of our hard-earned money.
In her lawsuit, Kelly alleges she bought the pumpkin-shaped Reese’s believing that the chocolate would include a “cute looking” face that the wrapper has.
And, as we all know, there is no face on that chocolate/peanut butter jack-o'-lantern.
But it goes beyond the pumpkin. Images in her lawsuit show a football-shaped Reese’s that looks exactly like the Reese’s Easter egg.
"Today, it's a $2 item — tomorrow it's your vehicle, the next day it's your home," Anthony Russo, the attorney representing Kelly, told NPR. "It could be your life savings or your nest egg that you're saving for your retirement. It could be anything if it is not kept under control."
There’s merit in what he’s saying.
The federal Lanham Act allows civil lawsuits for false advertising in which an advertisement “misrepresents the nature, characteristics, qualities or geographic origin” of goods or services.
In 2016, Business Insider listed several false advertising scandals that cost some brands millions. Among the brands included Kellogg's, which the Federal Trade Commission ordered to stop advertising that claimed the company’s Rice Krispies cereal improved a child's immunity with "25 percent Daily Value of Antioxidants and Nutrients — Vitamins A, B, C and E." The FTC said the claims were "dubious."
A few years after that, Kellogg claimed Frosted Mini-Wheats could improve “children's attentiveness, memory and other cognitive functions.” People who consumed the cereal during a period of time were able to claim $5 per box with a $15 limit.
New Balance, in 2011, claimed a pair of shoes could help burn calories. There were no health benefits from wearing the shoe, studies found.
So, keeping companies honest is important.
I didn’t think much about the lawsuit until I had a Russell Stover chocolate/caramel Santa Claus the other day. The wrapper depicts a Santa Claus, and, when opened, a similar image appears etched in the chocolate.
Help back friend’s board game creation
My friend Tim enjoys creating board games, and he could use your support to reach his Kickstarter goal of creating a game he’s worked on for five years. He only has a few days left to reach his goal.
I've been lucky enough to follow Tim's board game development journey for a long time. I still think about the game he created and introduced to me years ago.
And now he's stepping out into a journey to fund a full-fledged effort to develop a board game.
“Five by Five is a game about rolling and manipulating dice on a shared board to complete objectives in your hand,” Tim wrote about the game. “Completing objectives earns you points. It's that simple.”
Take a look at his Kickstarter page and consider backing his efforts.
Other news I’ve read recently…
U.S. moves closer to filing sweeping antitrust case against Apple (NYT)
Spice Girls celebrate 30th anniversary with commemorative postage stamp collection [it’s not in America, sorry] (Rolling Stone)
Embezzlement of Oregon weekly newspaper’s funds forces it to lay off entire staff and halt print (AP)
And, finally…
Check out the giant Heinz ketchup bottle that was recently installed on a corner of the Sen. John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh’s Strip District! It’s from Heinz Field and is the history center’s largest artifact (though, I contend that the building itself is the history center’s largest artifact).