TRIVIAL PURSUITS

A Medley of Snippets from Around the Web: Elon Musk, Frank Zappa, The Beatles, Dave Barry and More

If I put my phone in airplane mode, will it fly?

Ed Newman
5 min readJan 9, 2021

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Photo by Anh Nguyen on Unsplash

I keep running across things I want to share, few of which I’d consider a blog post on its own without my having to do more work to make it seem important. For this reason I’ve decided to batch them here and call it a Medley.

Let’s start with Thursday’s StockTwits Daily Rip which had this item about Elon Musk:

His net worth is now approximately $188B, which means that if you stacked up his net worth in $100 bills, the stack would be 142 miles high. That’s … a lot.

Musk’s recent jump in net worth is tied to his equity in Tesla, which is up over 535% since he tweeted the stock price was too high last year.

Last night someone sent me this quote from Frank Zappa, who made a name for himself living on the fringe while challenging the status quo, regarding the nature of freedom in America:

“The illusion of freedom will continue for as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will take down the scenery, move the tables and chairs out of the way, then they will pull back the curtains and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

And yes, The Beatles are back. (Have they ever really gone?) As some of you may have heard, producer/director/screenwriter Peter Jackson
(Lord of the Rings) has been working on a new documentary on The Beatles called Get Back. I believe it was supposed to be out in 2020 but — like so many things in the year of Covid — was held up for a season. Jackson has whet our appetites by producing a trailer that he deliberately declares is not a trailer. Whatever. It’s a teaser then. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UocEGvQ10OE

When it comes to humorists, Dave Barry is one of my favorites. I’ve listened to countless Dave Barry audiobooks, most…

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Ed Newman

An avid reader who writes about arts, culture, literature & other life obsessions. @ennyman3 Look for my books on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/y3l9sfpj