Mold is a common problem here in the bay area in the rainy season. Mold is not dirt. It is a living organism. To prevent or kill mold:
1. Remember that mold needs moisture. Use your clothes dryer to dry out towels, especially if you have a lot of them in a bathroom. Mold can grow quickly in wet clothes and towels.
2. Let in sunlight! Sunlight kills mold. I know people who have not opened their curtains or venetian blinds in over 20 years. They live in rooms that have never seen natural sunlight. You may know people like that too. There are many unhealthy micro-organisms that thrive in dark places. Living in a perpetually dark room is unhealthy. If you don’t believe me, ask your doctor.
3. Don’t overheat your house.
4. Let in fresh air, particularly in high humidity areas, such as the bathroom and kitchen. Keep a window ajar or use an exhaust fan, if there is one, to allow the air to circulate.
Tenant Freebie of the Month: Mold Remover. You can pick up a free bottle of mold remover from me anytime. Just ask for it. If you prefer to buy your own mold remover, make sure that the product says that it disinfects. Be sure that you are not buying soap scum remover, which is often placed next to the mold remover in stores and often comes in very similar containers. Don’t use bleach to remove mold. Bleach is much less effective in preventing mold from returning than mold remover. Bleach may also damage the walls, and your room will smell like an over-chlorinated swimming pool when you are done. That smell can hang around for a long time too.
HOT STOCK MARKET TIPS AND FORTUNE COOKIES.
My uncle, Maurice Levie, was a stockbroker for a long time. Back when he was a stockbroker, I used to ship Maurice fortune cookies 2 or 3 times a year. I printed out paper fortunes and took them to the Kar Mee fortune cookie factory in Oakland’s Chinatown. 1/3 of the fortunes said ‘BUY’, 1/3 said ‘SELL’, and 1/3 said ‘HOLD.’ After the factory put my fortunes into their cookies, I would ship the fortune cookies to Uncle Maurice in Baltimore. He put the fortune cookies in a bowl that he kept on his desk.
Maurice was a conservative investor. He was not a speculator or a day trader; however, he had clients who were. Clients often came to Maurice with questions like: “I just got a hot tip from my brother-in-law. I want to buy 10,000 shares of the Stanley Steam Car Company on margin, but I need to know – Is it going to go up this week?” When Maurice got a question like that, he would push the bowl of fortune cookies forward and tell the client to take one. The initial reaction of people when they opened one of my fortune cookies was to either laugh or look befuddled. Maurice would then tell the client that this method of predicting what a stock was going to do tomorrow or over the next few days was as good as any other. Sometimes that got a client to rethink what he was doing. When the bowl was empty, Maurice would let me know, and I would send him more fortune cookies.
I felt the same way as Maurice about this. The fortune cookie method of predicting what a stock or the stock market is going to do tomorrow is as good as any other. The Kar Mee fortune cookie factory is now out of business, but you can still get custom-made fortune cookies at the Oakland Fortune Factory or Golden Gate Fortune Cookies in San Francisco.
FTX Fortune Cookies. In 2021 and 2022, FTX paid fortune cookie makers to put fortunes into their cookies promoting the cryptocurrency exchange. On one side was the company’s logo. On the other side was an ad promoting cryptocurrency. Millions of these FTX fortune cookies were made. They were distributed to over 20,000 Chinese restaurants across the U.S. FTX is now bankrupt, and its CEO is facing criminal charges. I wonder – Did people actually buy Bitcoin because a fortune cookie told them to? I feel pretty sure that nobody bought or sold stock because of the fortune cookies they got from my Uncle Maurice.
IS THERE LEAD IN CHOCOLATE?
People are talking about an article in Consumer Reports this month stating that their tests found lead in all of the 28 chocolate brands they tested. I am sure that’s true. However, this is not news. All foods that grow in the ground absorb minerals from the soil itself. There is a long list of fruits and vegetables that contain measurable amounts of lead. In an article in Consumer Reports back in April, they stated that: “Tests done by Consumer Reports have shown that fruit juice – especially apple and grape – can contain worrisome levels of heavy metals, such as arsenic and lead.”
The Consumer Reports article stated that their tests showed that some brands of chocolate contained far less lead than others. I wouldn’t rely on that when buying chocolate. Major chocolate makers don’t get all their cocoa beans from one place. They buy beans from many places and mix them together. The beans that went into the Hershey bars that Consumer Reports tested may have come from a different place than the beans that went into the bars that you see in your local supermarket today.
WORST MAJOR TOURIST ATTRACTION IN PENNSYLVANIA – THE LIBERTY BELL.
I hope to cover all 50 states. I have already covered Washington – the Seattle gum wall; Massachusetts – Plymouth Rock; and California – any drive-through tree. Admittedly, my list is personal and subjective. My message is this – don’t waste your time visiting these places. Although these tourist attractions are visited by millions of people; there are other, better, and more interesting things to see nearby.
The Liberty Bell is the most famous tourist attraction in Philadelphia and probably in the whole state of Pennsylvania. The Liberty Bell is the symbol of Philadelphia. It is incorporated into the logos of Philadelphia’s professional sports teams. Over 1 million people visit the Liberty Bell every year. Unfortunately, everything that people think they know about the Liberty Bell is wrong. The Liberty Bell had nothing to do with the American Revolution. The Liberty Bell did not ring out on July 4, 1776 to announce that the Declaration of Independence had been signed, although you often see that in movies and TV shows. Besides, the Declaration of Independence was signed over a period of several weeks, not on a single day. The quote on the bell “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land” is not a reference to the Declaration of Independence. The bell was made in England more than 20 years earlier.
The famous crack in the bell did not occur while the bell was ringing after the death of George Washington or Chief Justice John Marshall. No one is sure when a crack first appeared. At first, it was just a hairline crack. The crack you see today is not a natural crack but the result of a botched repair job made by incompetent repairmen. They thought they could get the bell to ring again by creating a much wider crack and then bolting the 2 sides of the bell together. It didn’t work. The bell is also not as big as it looks in photos. The bell is only about 3 feet tall. Most people visiting the Liberty Bell stay only a few minutes. There is no point waiting for the bell to ring. The bell has not rung since the 1840s.There are a lot of great things to see in Philadelphia. The Liberty Bell is not one of them. Visit the Franklin Institute instead.
MARK’S PETTY PET PEEVES.
BLISTER PACKED SCISSORS. Last month, I went to Walgreens to buy a pair of scissors. They had several brands of scissors. Unfortunately, all of them were in plastic blister packages. In order to open any of these packages, you needed a pair of scissors. I bought a pair of scissors and took them to my nephew’s house where I was able to open the package and get the scissors out by using a pair of his scissors. It is just plain stupid for manufacturers to put scissors in packages that require scissors to open the package!
TAIL-ON SHRIMP. It annoys me when a restaurant serves me a dish like garlic butter shrimp with tail-on shrimp. The only way to get the tails off is by getting your fingers covered with garlic butter. Even if you wipe the butter off your hands with your napkin, your hands will still smell like garlic and shrimp. They should use tail-off shrimp.
I would appreciate your comments. If you want to comment on any article in this newsletter, you can do so at: Mark Tarses Newsletter