🐤 It's gonna be all right

🏦 Markets: Wall Street is reopening today after a long holiday weekend and investors are keen on recovering some of the losses sparked by last week’s inflation reports.

Once again, Big Tech will be a major focus with Nvidia set to submit its latest earnings report. But reports are also expected from big names in other industries, including pharma (Moderna), entertainment (Warner Bros. Discovery), and retail (Walmart and Home Depot).

Consumers are receiving more package deliveries than ever before these days, and many of them arrive via those ubiquitous brown UPS trucks. And while there’s a good chance of spotting one whenever you’re on the road, chances are you won’t see it making a left-hand turn.

It all basically boils down to a mathematical calculation.

The traveling salesman problem

An equation of sorts that’s caused confusion for nearly two centuries seeks to find the shortest route … and long story short, it becomes much more difficult to find the answer with every added stop. This is particularly important for UPS, which goes to great lengths to optimize its efficiency.

With about 55,000 drivers making between 100 and 200 daily deliveries, one wasted minute per driver per day would cost the company $14.5 million per year — not including the roughly $500,000 in wasted fuel.

An effective, but not perfect, solution

Since it’s impossible to account for traffic jams, weather, etc., no delivery company can come up with a perfect route. But UPS has implemented some general rules of the road aimed at shaving off as much time as possible.

The main three optimization techniques include:

• Driving with the door open
• Not engaging in small talk with customers
• Avoiding left-hand turns at all costs

That last one is a biggie. Not only does turning left take longer since it involves cutting across traffic, it is also much more dangerous. Left-hand turns lead to more than three times as many pedestrian deaths than right-hand turns.

And focusing strictly on the profit margin, UPS has found that eliminating unnecessary left-hand turns saves about 10 million gallons of gas (and 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide release) each year.

It also allows the company to deliver about 350,000 more packages annually.

🦉 Give a Hoot: Candlelight vigils are a common way for people to recognize a loss, but usually it’s not a chain restaurant known for its scantily clad servers. That’s what happened in Charleston, West Virginia when news spread that a local Hooters building was being demolished. A social media invitation to a vigil being planned for next week has already attracted more than 300 RSVPs with a number of fans expressing their dismay that their beloved eatery is never going to be slinging hot wings again.

✂️ Google layoffs: The tech industry continues to prove that corporate profits have little to do with job security for those who made those profits possible. Google has been engaging in a steady stream of layoffs and the trend is continuing. Last year, the company handed pink slips to about 12,000 workers, and thousands more are expected to lose their jobs across various teams, including those working on Pixel, Nest, Fitbit, and augmented reality projects. Its parent company, Alphabet, posted record profits for the final quarter of 2023.

📸 Spy cams: There are more cameras in our lives than ever before, and sometimes that can be a good thing, such as when used for security monitoring. But one leading company in that sector recently made a troubling announcement. Wyze co-founder David Crosby sent out an advisory to customers following a temporary service outage last week, confirming that a security breach resulted in people being shown footage from the wrong cameras, i.e. seeing what’s happening in other people’s homes.

👴 Calling it quits: More Americans than expected have been retiring lately, and there are a few reasons being cited for the trend. The stock market is up, which is good for retirement accounts. Plus, more employers want workers back in the office and many older workers aren’t interested. Baby boomers are either in or approaching retirement age, so a rise in these numbers was anticipated — but analysts say there are currently about 2.7 million more retirees in the United States than predicted.

In generations past, most students either walked to school or caught the bus, but the trend has been slowly shifting in the direction of parental drop-offs in recent years.

By the numbers

Before we get into the causes, let’s take a look at the statistics. Using data from the National Household Survey, the Washington Post broke down student drop-offs like this:

• 53% are either driven to school or drive themselves
• About one in three students ride on a bus
• 11% walk or ride a bike, a number that has been steadily declining

As for why a growing percentage of students now get to school in a car, it appears that COVID-19 has caused an existing trend to speed up considerably.

Remote workers

Since a larger number of parents are now working from home either full-time or at least a few days a week, many now have the opportunity to take their kids to work. Whether this allows them to sleep a few minutes later or just spend some extra time with the kids each morning, it’s a compelling option for many families.

Driver shortages

With the pandemic shutting down schools, there was no need for so many bus drivers … and districts nationwide have had trouble replacing them since schools reopened. This is due not only to a tight labor market but also the decision by some school boards to trim the budget by cutting spending for bus routes.

This has caused big problems for working parents who rely on bus transportation and the associated rise in the number of vehicles on the road has led to mounting environmental concerns.

Some tech companies are working on solutions, including artificial intelligence, that could help streamline bus routes, but the underlying problem won’t be going away anytime soon.

You might be familiar with the claim that the greatest fears for most humans are public speaking and death … in that order. But there’s something else that keeps many of us in the grips of anxiety, and it’s always with us.

The unknown — financial, relational, occupational, or in any other aspect of our lives — is always there. We can’t predict the future with any accuracy, so it makes sense that we’d be fearful, right?

Why it’s so scary

Journalist Maggie Jackson wrote a book on the topic, called “Uncertain,” and explores the rationale behind finding the ambiguities of life so stressful.

“We need and want answers,” she said in a recent interview. “And this unsettling feeling we have is our innate way of signaling that we’re not in the routine anymore.”

Despite the fact that humans are hard-wired to “need routine and familiarity,” she took the subject a step further and advised that “it’s really important to understand, in some ways, how rare and wonderful uncertainty is.”

A growth opportunity

In compiling her book, Jackson heard from a host of researchers, including neuroscientists who have studied the impact of the unknown on our brains.

As it turns out, an interesting thing happens to the neural connections when a person recognizes that he or she has no more knowledge on a particular subject.

“Your focus broadens and your brain becomes more receptive to new data and your working memory is bolstered,” she said.

University of Pennsylvania psychologist Joseph Kable described it as “the moment when your brain is telling itself there’s something to be learned here.”

It might be uncomfortable and it’s probably easier to just freeze up, but viewing uncertainty as a chance to mature and grow can give you a helpful new perspective.