🐤 Case closed

🏦 Markets: It’s the first day of a shortened trading week … the last of the year. And things are looking pretty good (knock on wood) as 2024 rapidly approaches.

Inflation is heading in the right direction and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been flirting with its all-time high for days. But there are some end-of-year data points yet to surface that will provide the context investors need to determine how Wall Street rings in the new year. It’ll start today with the home data numbers.

America remains divided on a number of important issues, but one thing we can all pretty much agree on is that serious crimes should be solved and the perpetrators punished appropriately.

But data released over the past several years shows that a lower percentage of crimes across a number of categories are ever actually solved.

A look at the stats

The best way to gauge what crimes are being committed and how many of them are eventually cleared is found within the Uniform Crime Reporting Program report compiled by the FBI.

As analyst Jeff Asher explained, this report “is sort of the best source of crime data that’s released each year” and “provides a trove of information on what’s happening nationally.”

In a nutshell, the latest statistics aren’t all that encouraging:

• The clearance rate for murder dropped from 60% in 2019 to 52% last year.
• Among all violent crimes, the rate fell from 46% to 36.7% during the same period.
• Property crimes were down to just 12% solved in 2022 compared to 17% in 2019.
• All crime categories except for burglary decreased over the three-year span.

So what’s going on? Let’s see what one expert has to say about the troubling trend.

A police chief’s perspective

Asher pointed to the fact that the number of police officers on the job started declining in 2020, in part due to the pandemic and in part as a result of anti-police backlash in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

But Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia offered some additional context.

“There’s a lot more on officers’ plates, quite frankly,” he said, adding that they often feel “overworked,” unsupported, and unfairly compensated.

The answer, he concluded, is “strong leadership” from local governments as well as “great community trust and great community understanding.”

🐭 Release the mouse: Public domain has long been an invaluable resource for cash-strapped creators. After the copyright expires on a popular character or story, it’s available to be reimagined for new stories. And while Disney has utilized this strategy countless times, it’s also maintained a tight grip on its own copyrights. That’s why it’s such a big deal that the first versions of Mickey and Minnie Mouse enter the public domain on New Year’s Day … 95 years after they first appeared on screen.

🐶 Home for the holidays: Animal shelters across the U.S. are often overcrowded all year long — and during this season in particular — but one such location in Pennsylvania provided an almost unbelievable bit of good news over the weekend. The Adams County SPCA shelter was filled to the max earlier in the month but was empty as of Saturday. That hadn’t happened in nearly 50 years, the staff said, thanking volunteers and locals who stepped up to help find them new homes.

😟 Across enemy lines: The Israel-Hamas war continued throughout the weekend and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu crossed into Gaza on Monday where his nation’s troops were targeting militants behind the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the ongoing conflict. His visit came in the aftermath of a strike on Sunday that Gazan sources claimed targeted a neighborhood and resulted in the death of civilians. Netanyahu vowed that Israel’s military action would “deepen” in the near term.

🦋 Sneak peek: If you’re looking for an alternative to Twitter (yeah, we know it’s called X now) then you might be waiting for an invitation to Bluesky. It’s been billed as a “decentralized” social media option, but part of its appeal is the exclusivity built into its membership. Thus far, if you weren’t invited to create an account you couldn’t see what’s going on at all. A new blog post from the platform’s CEO, however, confirmed that anyone can now check out posts via the web and on its app.

We’ve made it past Christmas (and we hope you had a pleasant one, by the way) but we’re still in the midst of a holiday season that often involves multiple party invitations … including some that you’d probably rather skip altogether.

Of course, there’s usually a nagging fear that the hosts will be upset if you decline. So should you just show up anyway?

Expecting the worst

Let’s begin by clarifying that most people struggle with turning down an invitation due to some perception that doing so will result in hurt feelings or even some type of retribution. But there’s mounting evidence that those concerns are simply unfounded.

Psychologist Julian Givi led a recent study that aimed to determine whether the reaction to declined invitations would be as bad as anticipated.

The results, published by the American Psychological Association, determined: “Invitees have exaggerated concerns about how much the decline will anger the inviter, signal that the invitee does not care about the inviter, make the inviter unlikely to offer another invitation in the future, and so forth.”

What’s the right move?

When the time comes to decline an invite, you don’t have to invent some elaborate excuse. Anticipating how the host might react can result in unnecessary anxiety.

This is especially true for last-minute invitations or events that are scheduled at inconvenient times. A simple “no” will often suffice.

And even with more important events like a wedding, the hosts are likely to be pretty forgiving. But just because you don’t have to stress as much about the reaction of others, that’s not an excuse to just turn down every invitation you receive.

Humans are hard-wired to benefit from social interactions, so if it sounds like fun and won’t wipe you out, you should probably consider accepting the invitation.

I bought my son a refrigerator for Christmas.

When he opened the door, his face lit up!

If you found your stocking filled to the brim with milk chocolate this week, your sweet tooth probably had a happy holiday. But if you’re thinking that they’re all pretty much the same, then you might not have tried products outside of your home country.

What’s the difference?

It might not sound like a big deal, but there are entire websites, news stories, and online forums dedicated to this topic.

Food science professor Greg Ziegler said that expectations about what chocolate should taste like depend on “what you were exposed to growing up.”

And even a brand that you remember from childhood (or earlier today) might have a much different flavor if you purchase it elsewhere around the world. While these companies are pretty tight-lipped about their international recipes, there are some pretty broad differences:

• Belgian milk chocolate is often comparatively darker than other countries
• Swiss milk chocolate typically has a higher milk-to-cocoa ratio
• Americans seem to prefer their milk chocolate to be a little more acidic

The “chocolate crumb” effect

Of all the various approaches, England seems to have the most mystique. And on the surface there doesn’t seem to be much that separates the U.K.’s process than that of other European nations.

The core ingredients as well as the rate at which the chocolate melts is pretty standard. So it all seems to come down to the milk, which has to be treated before it is introduced into the mix.

British chocolatiers tend to use a 19th century process that creates “chocolate crumb” by which the milk is sweetened with sugar before the addition of cocoa liquor and heat.

It results in a subtle but distinct taste variation that you might or might not love, depending on what you are expecting when you take a bite.