No Airbags, We Die Like Real Men

I was recently filling up my car at the gas station when I noticed the vehicle on the other side of the pump. It was a third-gen Acura Integra, dark green, produced between 1994 to 2001. On the windshield there was a black and white sticker that read "No Airbags, We Die Like Real Men."

Let's analyze this statement by breaking it down into its elements: cars, death, and honor.

First, let's talk about the car.

In the United States, the safety of automobile passengers has historically taken a backseat compared to other vehicle innovations in design, power, and fuel economy. Seat belts were required on all new vehicles sold starting in 1968, which was 75 years after the first practical American automobile was produced in 1893. Later still were airbags, which were required on all new vehicles sold after September 1, 1998 per a law passed in 1991. This was nearly 50 years after the first airbags were developed in the early 1950s. 

When the 3rd generation Integra debuted in 1994, it featured dual front airbags to protect the occupants in the event of a crash. Like many other auto manufacturers, Acura was compliant with the 1991 law well before it was fully enforced in 1998. The only cars on the road today that do not have airbags as standard equipment are vintage/classic cars, such as those built in the 1950s-1980s which are mostly driven by collectors to car shows. The Integra next to me at the gas station was certainly not a classic car.

Next, we will talk about death.

On a long enough timeline, no one escapes death. But there is a difference between dying from an unpreventable situation versus dying early from a preventable cause. Dying before reaching your full life expectancy is often a tragic affair for one's family and friends.

The grief-stricken family will be especially upset if they learn that the death of their friend or family member could have been avoided through some small amount of caution like wearing a helmet, looking both ways, living a healthy lifestyle, wearing a seat belt, or driving a car equipped with functioning air bags. Each of these choices have been proven to significantly reduce the risk of dying early from a preventable cause or accident.

Finally, we come to the last topic which is honor.

When a person dies, their friends and family must deal with the situation. In their grief, they may evaluate the circumstances of the deceased person's passing. The death of a person can be dishonorable, like when a terrorist injures or kills other people and then kills themselves. Death can be neutral, like when a person passes away quietly in their sleep. And death can also be honorable, like a soldier who dies from injuries sustained while performing a heroic deed, like saving fellow soldiers from a dangerous situation.

All this is to say that modern cars come equipped with airbags to help save lives in the event of a survivable accident. The idea that making a reckless decision and dying in a survivable crash is somehow honorable or something to be proud of is absolutely absurd. The idea that this makes you a "real man" is so stupid, it's almost beyond comprehension.

If the sticker was a joke, it's not very funny or clever. If the sticker was completely serious, then it is no great loss to the human race if you should die unnecessarily as a result of your own ignorance.

Rise of the Monthly Subscription Services

Everyone has bills to pay. Rent, groceries, and some kind of utility payments such as electricity/water/gas are unavoidable no matter where you live. You may or may not have a car payment, student loan payment, mortgage, and other things such as a cell phone or cable TV/Internet service. It can be disheartening to watch so much of your hard-earned money go out the window each month to these basic expenses.

As if that weren't enough, there are a number of services that have come out recently that have taken traditional consumer goods and "reinvented" them by turning the purchase cycle from "as needed" into a monthly subscription model.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, the typical American household would have had relatively few subscription services. Perhaps their local newspaper, maybe a magazine like Time or Reader's Digest, and very likely a Cable TV service. Today there are innumberable services you could be subscribing to, all with the goal of "disrupting" an established big industry.

Now instead of cable, you can pay $9.99/month for Netflix, $7.99/month for Hulu, $12.99/month for Amazon Prime Video, $15/month for HBO Now, $20/month for Sling TV, $35/month for YouTube TV, or $39/month for a PlayStation Vue subscription. Any one of them offers substantial savings over the traditional $90-$150 cable bill from Comcast, Charter, Cox, Cable One, and other providers. But if you want to watch both Game of Thrones (HBO) and House of Cards (Netflix), you must subscribe to each service, which can quickly add up.

Now instead of buying shaving razors at the drugstore as needed, you can subscribe to Dollar Shave Club or Harry's for anywhere from $9 to $21 per month for mail-order shaving supplies. Somehow men have managed to stay clean shaven for generations without having supplies "delivered to your doorstep," so I question the value add of these services.

Home security is another market quickly transitioning to the monthly-subscription model. My local cable company offers home security cameras and monitoring for $30/month ($40/month if not bundled with any other services). Nest also offers cloud-based backups of your home security cameras for $5 to $30 per month. While a home security system can help identify a burglar, these services to little to secure the home in the first place and provide peace-of-mind rather than actual security.

Adding to the monthly cost for creative professionals is online data storage and photo backup, which will run you $6 a month for Carbonite or $0.99/month with Apple's iCloud service. Adobe's famous Creative Suite has also switched to a cloud-based, monthly subscription service at $49/month for the full suite. 

Vanity services recently experienced a boom in popularity. Services like BirchBox, BarkBox, NatureBox, LootCrate, and many imitators provide a monthly box of samples and goodies for whatever you are into - makeup, pet accessories, gaming culture, or anything else you can imagine.

Finally, we come to meal delivery services. Between Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, Plated, Sun Basket, and others have created meal kits that can be assembled by people with limited to no cooking experience. These services have taken home meal preparation - historically one of the cheapest ways of eating - and turned it into a "premium" experience that costs anywhere from $9 to $12 per meal.

There is an old Chinese expression called "lingchi" which roughly translates to "death by a thousand cuts." I feel like it is very easy to sign up for a free trial for each of these services and before you know it, your bank account is being silently drained by a multitude of small subscriptions each month.

While I don't doubt that one or two of them might add real value to your everyday life, the sheer proliferation of these services during the last 5-8 years feels like an all-out war for my hard-earned dollars.

They're also not that innovative, doing the slightly modernized version of what the Sears Catalog did a century ago. Combining an existing consumer product with a monthly subscription does not make it an innovative new business model. It looks great to investors to have that Monthly Recurring Revenue, but all of these businesses are targeted towards price-conscious consumers who will jump ship to your competitor if they have a better price or offer. 

I'm not the only one who feels this way:
https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/05/09/182426256/consumers-facing-subscription-service-overload-will-only-get-more-choices
https://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2016/11/03/has-the-subscription-box-boom-turned-into-a-bubble/
https://qz.com/index/1161993/americans-are-overwhelmed-by-too-many-available-tv-subscription-services/

Ironic Band Names

A few years ago, I wrote about a trend I noticed where hardcore bands were adopting these "verb-the-noun" names en masse.

Now, I've spotted a new trend among indie bands trying to come up with the ultimate ironic band name. Many of them are trying to be funny, but mostly they are just ripping off the status of a celebrity.

Take these band names for example:

• Gnarls Barkley
• Ylvis
• Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
• Com Truise
• Danananaykyrod
• Joy Orbison
• Hoodie Allen
• Gringo Starr
• Ringo Deathstarr
• Tiger & Woods
• Andrew Jackson Jihad
• Abraham Drinkin
• George Moshington

This is a ridiculous trend for several reasons. First of all, it's not very original. Second, basing your band on a misspelling is a terrible way to get people to find you online in the Internet age. Third, most of them are pretty childish. Fourth, it's just piggybacking on someone else's status.

I'm not the only one who feels this way:
http://breezyk.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/when-did-vowels-stop-being-cool/
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/monocle/band_names_referencing_celebrities/
http://rateyourmusic.com/board_message?message_id=3455249