Rachael McKelvey

• The good in social media
• How does your brain think?
• FTX has found $5bn in liquid assets
• How much for Beanz?
• How do you do all the things?

The good in social media
I’m too old for TikTok and really should delete it, but occasionally it throws up a brilliant thing that is so many things. This week an 82 year old Navy Veteran managed to retire after a GoFundMe raised £89,000 ($108,682).

Imagine working till you’re 82? The GoFundMe was set up by Rory McCarty who owns a company called Bug Boys and he has 300,000 followers on TikTok from sharing the bugs he finds at work. Rory posted a video of him and Warren to his account that was viewed over 3 million times.

Warren is the third Walmart employee able to retire thanks to the generosity of TikTok users…so really my mindless scrolling could change lives at some point!

How do you think?
Off the back of this weeks most impactful listen I’ve been spending the week thinking about how I think, I have aphantasia, a blind minds eye, meaning when asked to visual something – I can’t, its blank. I only “know” I am thinking of the object. So it turns out being an aphant means I use a range of cognitive skills differently to those who see things in their minds eye.

Until this week I would have told you I have an internal monologue, but actually thinking about how my brain works I now know that I don’t, there is no running commentary, there is no range of voices, I am not even sure there is a voice, there is no back and forth. I just think things and I can range of thinking a lot of things at once and never not think about something but I am able to think of nothing…Silence.  

But this doesn’t mean I don’t have an imagination or that I can’t be creative, it just means my brain does it differently. It’s been fascinating to work out how I get somewhere and then ask a hyperphant how they do it. Fascinating.

FTX has found $5bn in liquid assets
At a court hearing on Wednesday this week just gone, lawyers representing FTX declared they had found cash, securities and liquid crypto to the value of $5bn and was asking the court to allow a quick sale of 4 subsidiaries, 2 US regulated companies and FTX units in Europe and Japan, to raise funds to repay creditors.

The amount of shortfall between what assets the company owns and what is owed to creditors is still “not yet clear”.

The court also agreed to allow FTX to keep the names of its creditors secret for at least 3 more months to protect the sensitive commercial nature of the information, FTX were hoping this would remain protected for 6 months but this was challenged but US trustee and the media that the public has the right to access judicial records, just as in any other legal case.

This just gets weirder and weirder and more interesting, future accounting students don’t know how lucky they are on this one!

How much for Beanz?
A little bit like the Big Mac index for currency, the price of Beans has recently become a  useful real indicator on the impact of inflation, while I doubt anyone who shops for food hasn’t noticed the impact of inflation on the weekly shop this week has seen another price increase of Heinz Beanz.

Heinz has raised its price of a can of Beanz for the second time in less than a year. The first time saw a very public spat with Tesco that saw baked beans and ketchup stripped from the shelves after Heinz stopped delivery for a number of weeks.

The food industry is under incredible strain due to increased production costs from ingredients to energy and packaging and there are only so much you can absorb without having to increase your retail price.

Will Tesco revolt again? Will other retailers also pull a face? Given the reported increases in like for like sales and increase in revenue over the Christmas period, I hope not, but only time will tell.

PS: Branston beans are better.

How do you do all the things?
It’s been a week on this end of the screen, how about you? Why are best laid plans never enough? Why do they speak so clearly to my brain in a way that really disincentivise me from wanting to make plans again and strongly cheerlead just winging it when I know that doesn’t work either?

Now I have done it once I am hoping to be able to do it again better, I took too many things to do with me, I over estimated how long things would really take – hi Thursday traffic I am looking at you, I didn’t prepare enough in some areas and overprepared in others.

Did I only take too many things to do because I didn’t plan enough on the other things and if I do that this week did I then actually pack the correct amount of things to do? How do you know? How do you do all the things?

Current watch: The Good Doctor  – I am somehow so behind on life I had no idea that season 6 had arrived in the UK! I absolutely adore The Good Doctor, just the perfect medical drama. Freddie Highmore as Dr Shaun Murphy is just a delight, he plays a young autistic savant surgical resident at San Jose St Bonaventure Hospital. Shaun uses his extraordinary skills to save lives and challenge norms. I highly recommend you start at the beginning S1, Ep1 to watch Shaun and the team develop and grow, but even if you have only time for one episode, just pick one. Representation matters, you can’t be what you can’t see.

Current read: Wheel running in the wild – I don’t always reads books, I read anything. A friend kindly drew my attention to this paper from the Royal Society of Biological Science from 2014. A Dutch scientist placed a running wheel outside and saw that it was used wild mise and other wildlife just for fun! The paper is just a joy to read, THERE ARE PICTURES. Some animals used it intentionally, they even did it when there was no reward or incentive to do so. At the urban test site a significant number of the mice who used the wheel were not of an age to know there was ever a food incentive to bring them to the wheel. It was such a wholesome read in the background of the bonfire that is most other news right now!

Most impactful listen: The Case of the Blind Mind’s Eye – The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry – If you close your eyes do you see things, or are you aphant like me? I literally see nothing and didn’t realise other people saw things until I was in my mid to early 30’s! In this Episode Adam and Hannah speak with a neurologist a psychologist (who also see’s nothing!) and a Philosophy professor about the recently named phenomenon of a blind minds eye and how it impacts all aspects of cognitive behaviour. A podcast that felt like a sympathetic hug.