MacGyver

This is wise. Others may have a wildly different worldview. Who knows how their opinions were formed - or what their lived experience has looked like? There was a time when we could engage with differing worldviews and debate them on their merits. Unfortunately those times seem to be behind us for now. Most are quite content to be spoon fed their beliefs. -- I'll leave you with this image. I was waiting in a coffee shop not too long ago to meet someone to discuss some work related stuff. About 0900 on a Friday morning, suburban Nashville. Brentwood. 6 people walk into the shop - several wearing apparel that would mark them as 'conservative' - one with a Nine Line shirt, one with a Gadsden Flag on his. They were talking about getting to a state with better politics. Turns out they were on an organized tour. Two of the couples were from Colorado. One was from California. They had literally booked a trip to come here - be taken around the city by a guide - and look at houses that they would buy to move into at some date in the future. But, in the meantime, they were going to be using those houses as short-term rentals. They stopped for coffee before continuing to look at a few more neighborhoods before their flights. None were concerned about the prices. They were looking at some nice neighborhoods - and were talking about the value compared to 'back home.' All that to say - Nashville is probably due for a property tax hike - the money has to come from somewhere. And, we seem to have a bunch of folks moving here who can probably afford it. I hope that we'll continue to make avenues available for long time residents who can't. But, for all these folks moving in - whether they have a conservative or liberal view of the world - or somewhere in between. They're not stupid.

I guess it’s worth noting that this virus - in a little more than a month - has killed more Americans than we lost in Vietnam.

Those of us in Nashville have been expecting a property tax increase with or without the virus. I don’t necessarily like it, but that can has been kicked down the road for a few years now.

Hmm, that’s a question for David. I know we’ve been having issues with some of the big email providers letting our stuff through lately.

Another 4.4 million first time jobless claims last week. 27 million Americans have filed since March 1. That puts us just shy of 20% unemployment - or double the Great Recession. For perspective, we were at 3.5% at the beginning of March. And, Congress is out until May 4.

I also learned that an order of hashbrowns is cooked with a full scoop of their low melt oil (basically butter flavored Crisco). Sadly, this has revealed the reason my hashbrown game has yet to rival Waffle House’s.

TIL that Waffle House uses dehydrated hashbrowns. They come in a shelf stable box and get hydrated as they’re needed.

The flu does kill a bunch of people every year. Some years are worse than others. And, that's with both vaccines and therapeutic treatments that greatly mitigate annual flu effects. Were those not present - you could have bad flu years that would kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of people worldwide. The deal with this novel(new) coronavirus - is that there are no vaccines or effective therapeutic treatments yet.

On a positive note - if there is one company in America that I would bet on to be able to look at it's supply chain and reduced capacity in its restaurants and just pivot to selling groceries - it would hands down be Waffle House: My kids saw this and we're like, "get in the truck - we're going to Waffle House."

Yeah, I think in a time like this maybe there’s a turn towards sharing stories of hope - that are always there. I wonder if sometimes our “normal” ways of living day to day are sort of an error condition where we just don’t notice much more than is right in front of us - and focusing on the bad is sort of a protection mechanism to convince ourselves that we’re okay. Humans are communal people. If I put a pastoral hat on, I’d say that “salvation comes to communities.” We need our people. I’m thankful that despite all of this we get the chance to see some folks just being kind.

There are lots of good people in this world. Sometimes I wonder if we’re all just too busy to notice.

You'd be surprised at the number of locks that can be opened with a good rare earth magnet. They'll also break your fingers if you're not careful - so consider that fair warning before you play around with them.

There are a bunch of families with old money in Texas having some really colorful conversations right now for sure.

It's probably worth noting as well the number of regimes in this world where their whole economies are banked by oil exports. All that is falling apart right now - and you may see some folks get awfully squirrelly.

We're getting to a place pretty quick where a whole lot of systems that have always been otherwise generally reliable - suddenly don't work anymore. The second and third order effects of all of this are unknown. And they're really scary.

Mind you - this is pretty much always true - but there are two groups of people from which you should never accept investment advice - politicians and people on the internet. This is a rare case where investing in futures could literally get you a lot more than you bargained for. That is - they're futures contracts and someone has to take physical delivery of the stuff. There are some edge cases here where that third Friday in May comes around and you have to figure out where you want to take delivery of your crude oil. Accepting delivery seems to be the major issue right now - everyone's reserve stores are basically at capacity - there's nowhere to put it.

A barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery settled at -$37.63 today. That is, a barrel of crude oil (42 gallons) which was around $60 in January - would now require a trader pay a buyer? $37.63 to accept it. It fell 250 percent today. I literally had a conversation with my wife last night to the order of, "there's no way we should invest in oil right now - but at $16/barrel - that's below anything we've seen in our lifetimes."

Zoom works better than most - it’s pretty much dead simple. That seems to be the best thing it had going for it.

My kids and I were walking in our neighborhood the other day. Being in Brentwood, the back of my neighborhood is home to a bunch of turkeys that no one seems to have told that spring turkey season is going on. They’re safe and fat. Anyway, my kids and I were walking and came upon about 30 hens and two big toms who were all out in full strut. My 8 year old gobbled at them - not expecting a reaction - and you’ve never heard such a ruckus. They were so mad at him. He was kind of hidden by a bush, and the toms came to investigate. It was great once he realized they were coming his way - at which point he lost his nerve and high tailed it down the street. His sisters laughed all the way home.

If they’d actually leave me alone, I might agree to it.

Any small business owner in America will tell you the economy wasn’t as rosy as everyone seemed to think it was. As to bailing out Boeing or the like - national security questions aside -$60 billion is a whole lot of money. For that same money, you could make $250,000 grants to 240,000 small businesses. I wonder which would create more sustainable value in the long run?

Seems fair.

My hands down favorite is a a 10/22 I machined from an 80% receiver and built specifically to shoot subsonics. It’s got a light Kidd trigger and a jeweled bolt - and it’s just a joy to shoot. Favorite pistol is a Ruger 22/45 - that maybe the only original part left is the mainspring.

150 members of the Saudi Royal family infected. That’s a big deal that could have lasting ramifications.

6.6 million new first time claims this week.