MacGyver

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.

Covid-19 passed cancer and heart disease as the leading causes of daily deaths in the US yesterday: https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1727839/ We need more and better testing.

Second Harvest is feeding a bunch of kids right now. Likewise Room In the Inn is doing some heavy lifting among vulnerable populations.

When I die let my ashes float down the Green River. Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam. I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin' Just five miles away from wherever I am. Godspeed, John.

Going back to your comments about the fabric weave being too small to keep a virus out - that would necessarily mean it’s also too small to keep it in. Maybe it would limit the distance cough droplets might travel? I’d have to see test data.

Marking this for later comment when I’m not on mobile.

As of last week, Iceland was doing wide scale testing - but had only tested 17,900 people. 1% have come back positive. I have no know where that 46% came from - but I have seen data from Iceland suggesting that roughly 50% of those positive cases were asymptomatic. Mind you 1% of 17900 is 179 cases with roughly 90 being asymptomatic. It’s not a large sample group.

I read something the other day that’s stuck with me for a bit. The essence of it was, “turns out Atlas can’t really shrug after all.” The rich, holed up in their enclaves - depend on the masses to bring them their groceries - and then fearfully wipe them down wondering if they might be infected. A lot of us are lucky to be able to work remotely. I know I designed my firm that way. That’s a luxury. But this whole system depends on people showing up and doing jobs that have to be done live and in person so to speak. In remember reading a few years ago that, “if you can’t find a dog, or a cat, or a snake doing you job in a Richard Scarry book, it might not be a real job.” If anything, I think that’s why it’s critical for folks like me to do my part and stay home - so that people who can’t aren’t unnecessarily affected by my carelessness. I hope that when this is all said and done that people will have a better appreciation for all the folks who keep the wheels on this economy. If I’m making wishes - I might wish that we find a way to decouple the 70-80% of our economy that depends on consumers continuing to buy stuff. I appreciate you guys.