Public Good

The military tradition that turned a lonely milestone into something else entirely

He stood alone at his Air Force graduation until he didn’t.

At military graduation ceremonies, there's a tradition called "tapping out" where family members step forward to officially escort graduates away from the formation. It's the moment the ceremony becomes personal. For Airman Joel Usher, it was also the moment he was dreading most.

He already knew no one was coming. As Mark Wales reports, Usher stood watching fellow graduates get swept up by cheering families while he waited, alone, for a ceremony that had nothing left to offer him. Then a friend he had made during training appeared through the crowd, phone in hand, walking straight toward him.

What happened next has been viewed 4.6 million times. And the comments say everything about why.

And a rare Image of the Day correction. 

The wonderful Friday photo by Susan Elie was of the moon, not the sun. Thank you for the correction, Susan, but I mean… that’s a pretty bright moon! 

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Everyday Economics

The salary gap between America's 10 priciest cities and its 10 cheapest is wider than you'd think

The 50/30/20 rule meets 20 very different zip codes.

Look, I know the appeal of stories like this. I'm a sucker for it myself! Did my city make the list? You'll have to look for yourself, but I can tell you one state showed up so often that I literally said "Oh, come on!" out loud to nobody but the cat sleeping next to me on my desk. (Sorry, Monroe!)

The piece by Jaclyn DeJohn runs the 50/30/20 budgeting rule (half your take-home for needs, 30% for wants, 20% for future-you) against 10 of the country's most expensive cities and 10 of the cheapest.

A single adult can clear the bar in one Texas city on about $83,000. In a certain Northeastern metro, you're looking at nearly double that. And families? The numbers get genuinely cinematic.

Previous Results

On Friday, we shared one author’s theories on the five best breeds of dog to model your leadership style after.

What sort of canine do GOOD readers fancy themselves to be? German Shepherds, Alaskan Sled Dogs, and Dobermans all made notable appearances in the write-in section, but almost 45% of you see yourself as Border Collies.

• Golden retriever (please like me, please) (15.4%)

• Border collie (I have ideas and they are correct) (44.9%)

• Newfoundland (I will absorb everyone's stress until I collapse) (14.1%)

• Greyhound (I look productive, nap 22 hours a day) (16.7%)

• Something else (share your answers) (9.0%)

GOOD reader Leslie Law pointed out the issue with this result. “Now I see the problem in the workforce everyone thinks they are the border collie.”

Society

Two researchers, 723 teenagers, a stereotype that does not hold up

Adults have a picture of teen disengagement, the data paints a different one.

Picture, if you will, a teen. Phone in hand. Capable of little more than monosyllabism. How socially engaged is the kid in your mind's eye? Barely? A bit? Research says you might want to sit down.

Kimia Shirzad and Jen Agans surveyed 723 American teenagers about how they show up for the world around them. The "checked out" group, the ones matching the stereotype you just conjured, only accounted for 21%.

The rest fell into three other profiles, and the differences between them have less to do with who the teens are than with what the adults around them are doing.

On May 11, 1927, Louis B. Mayer gathered Hollywood's elite at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles and founded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. His pitch was straightforward: the film industry needed a respectable body to handle its internal squabbles. Douglas Fairbanks Sr. was elected the first president, and 230 members signed on that night.

The awards were almost an afterthought. Mayer's real goal was keeping labor unions out of Hollywood, and he was refreshingly honest about his strategy for the awards themselves: "I found that the best way to handle filmmakers was to hang medals all over them. If I got them cups and awards, they'd kill themselves to produce what I wanted."

The unions came anyway. But the Oscars? Those stuck. Today the Academy has more than 11,000 members worldwide, and the ceremony draws tens of millions of viewers. Not bad for a labor-relations strategy that didn't work.

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💬 From the group text…

It’s that time of year, and this is one of the easiest and most fun ideas I’ve ever seen for capturing the vibe. Pro-tip from the comments: try to find biodegradable confetti.

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