Longevity in a community and "pests"

Yesterday, as I was dropping Quicksilver off at her play-date, I approached one of the young lasses who is the mother of one of the tots who Quicksilver has taken a shine to.

"I think I met you about seven years ago" I started out.

Recognition flashed across her face.

"Oh! You are Kubota's dad" she finished my sentence for me.

"And Quicksilver is his niece" I added. 

"I LOVE Kubota. He is so funny. I follow him on social media" she gushed.

I expect Quicksilver's aristocratic connections (to Prince Kubota) to make the rounds with the moms of the other kids a play-date. I know the young lass is friends with several of the other moms, so I expect that they went to high school together and they all know Kubota.

Musk oxen closing ranks to protect the calves

Southern Belle left Eaton Rapids in early 2009 and didn't move back until the middle of 2023. Most of the moms at the play-date were in second grade when she graduated from high school. 

Eaton Rapids is a small town. It can seem close-minded and rigid if you are an outsider. The view from the inside is very different. On Wednesday, Quicksilver was just another, anonymous kid. On Thursday she became "real" to the rest of the moms. As a sprout from a multi-generational Eaton Rapids family, she is safe to invest in emotionally because she probably won't move away in a year or two.

Cool-amp

Back in my days in the factory, we used a product called Cool-Amp to silver-plate the ends of copper welding bus-bars and jumper cables.

Copper oxide has a high resistance. Silver oxide has relatively low resistance.

The powder is silver nitrate combined with a pH buffer and a mild abrasive. The copper ions are more reactive and rip the nitrate anions away from the silver cations. That deposits elemental silver on the surface of the copper.

Zinc is even more reactive than copper, so it would be very easy to apply a thin wash of silver metal on top of the zinc-copper alloy used by Rocky Mountain bullets.

Since the bullets don't need to be solid silver to kill juvenile were-wolves and other common, paranormal varmints, the thin wash of silver should be sufficient for most of your pest-control needs.

Speaking of pests

We have mice in the attic.

I am catching one-a-day and am not sure that I am keeping up with their reproductive capacity.

It is odd that I am catching so many with foot and tail catches. I am not sure what is with that. I have been euthanizing them by dropping the trap into a bucket of very cold, soapy water. They only struggle for about a half minute.

I may have to resort to placing several adhesive traps out to get ahead of Malthus. 

More pests

A black walnut root sitting on a 2-by-4 for scale.

I was cleaning out a nursery row and planted a couple of pear rootstock in the Hill Orchard. I hit this root three inches down. The flap of bark sticking out on the left side of the root is where my shovel hit it.

I excavated three feet in each direction and cut the root out. I removed it so it wouldn't leach toxins into the soil beneath the pear as it decayed. 

Seven-year mortgages

If the average marriage only lasts seven years, wouldn't it make sense to offer seven-year mortgages as the default? 

A leopard cannot change its spots

 

A-a-r on the funeral and a short, palate-cleanser video

 

 

I went to the funeral of the 102.4 year-old man today.

There were about 80 people attending, which is a really good show for somebody who has outlived nearly all of his peers.

I was surprised to learn that the man was baptized at the age of 84. Please note that I am NOT recommending that you put it off that long if you feel called to get baptized. 

 

Job categories that will shrink during hard-times

Jobs that won't fare well during hard times:

Personal Fitness Trainer

Reason: People will be walking six or more miles a day. We won't need the gym to get exercise. We will not need a "cheer-leader" to motivate us.

Exception: Massage specialists. There will be boatloads of people with sore muscles.

Internet Influencers

Internet Influencers exist to goad people in to spending more and consuming resources that the viewer didn't know existed. The tide will be running in the opposite direction during hard-times.

Event Planners

Events to commemorate rites-of-passage in our lives will no longer be a competitive sport. Weddings might be a handful of friends and a few family members from each side. Graduation parties might be playing disc golf in the park.

Lawncare specialists

Large lawns that are professionally cared-for are a historical anomaly. Some of the lawns will likely be turned into gardens or orchards. Some will be abandoned and allowed to revert back to native scrub or prairie. 

Please feel free to add to the list. 

Shorts

Today's goal is to get to a funeral in downtown Lansing.

My friend's father died. It was not unexpected. His father was 102.4 years-old.

Investing in semi-precious metals

A pretty good price for a good product. 

An even better price but they might not work for you. 

The word of the day

The word of the day is "eye-ballie". 

Used in a sentence: Bucks use their nose to explore the world. Does are eye-ballie and will bust you in a tree-stand quicker than a buck will.

The iron law of supply-and-demand

It is my perception that women often do not feel "valued" by men. They complain that men treat them as a fungible commodity like nose-tissues (aka Kleenex).

It is also my perception that most of the women making those complaints are in areas that have a gross over-supply of women vis-a-vis men. To be specific: College campuses are now dominated by women. Large cities are magnets for women. Some professions like HR, education, advertising and the social "sciences" are dominated by women.

If you are a woman and do not feel "valued", consider finding pockets within your society where women are not in over-supply. Adapt, improvise, overcome. Leave your comfort bubble. 

Women start looking like this when they are competing with other women.

No man ever looked at this and swooned "OMG! She is gorgeous."

Nope. We are far more likely to say "Do you need your EpiPen or should I call 9-1-1?"

Warren Buffet's thinking on "quality"

Warren Buffet was famous for his annual letter the the shareholders of Berkshire-Hathaway. He used those letters to explain his thinking in various investments.

In one of those letters, he explained why he opted for "quality" especially when the economy seemed to be hitting a rough-patch. Even though I present the following in quotes, they aren't actual quotes. Rather, it is my best remembering of his logic.

"I bought shares of Coca Cola last year and I was asked why I didn't invest in companies with stronger positions in the lower market tiers...companies like Shasta, Faygo and companies that bottled 'house-brand' soda-pop."

"The logic my questioners bring up is that people change their consumption habits when money is short. They expect consumers to shift to cheaper products and the "quality brands" to take a beating."

"My logic is that the pricing power of premium brands means they have a much greater margin for price decay. Coca Cola doesn't pay more money for sugar or flavoring than commodity brands yet it can command twice the retail price. That difference in pricing power falls directly to the bottom-line."

"Yes, they spend a lot more on advertising, but that is a discretionary variable-cost that they can temporarily economize on."

"When the price of a house-brand drops by a dime a bottle, they lose money. When the price Coca Cola can command at the cash register drops by a dime a bottle, they are still very profitable."

"The same thing can be said about Hersey candy bars, Marlboro cigarettes, Dior lipstick and a host of other comfort/luxury items."

Economic lessons from Bullwhip Griffin

---Disclaimer: I am not a Professional Investment advisor. This blog post is offered for entertainment purposes. It is your own money. Do your own research.--- 

In 1967 a movie that supplied profound insights into economic booms was released by Disney Studios. The title of that academic study was The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin. The book that was released was simply titled Bullwhip Griffin. The book is better than the movie.

The story is set in California in the early days of the 1849 Gold Rush. The underlying message is that the surest and most durable path to wealth is not the obvious path. For every miner who struck it rich in the gold fields there were 99 that could not pay all of their bills. Nope. The surest path was to supply the miners with tents, shovels, pans, apple-pies, pants, shirts, alcoholic beverages, fried oysters, quick-silver, lumber, barbering services, a hot bath and so on. 

A conversation with a friend

My friend is a pretty sharp guy and he shared a few investment insights with me yesterday.

Like me, he sees inflation as a major threat to the wealth he saved up through his working years. Unlike me, he can afford some very high-end analysis people to sort through the details.

The obvious AI plays, NVIDA, Microsoft, Open-AI, Oracle are over-bought and have very high Price/Earnings ratios. The every-increasing revenue that is reported by those firms is reminiscent of the washer-women in Hooverville who survived 1932 by taking in each other's laundry. The speed-of-money between those firms is an ever accelerating merry-go-round. 

Another complication is that it can be difficult to determine if a firm is a viable concern when capital is flooding into it. Large volumes of incoming capital will mask structural flaws and weaknesses in organic demand.

The less obvious investment plays are to buy stock in companies that mine or smelt copper. To buy stock in companies with proven reserves of rare-earth metals. To buy stock in utilities that serve states with a permissive, regulatory environment toward nuclear or fossil-fueled plants. Even if AI collapses, there will still be markets for copper wire, rare-earths and for electricity.

If you aren't comfortable buying individual stocks then another way to balance your investment risk is to move some of your savings into a mutual fund that focuses on "Value stocks". Value stocks are typically boring, mature (i.e. not rapidly growing) businesses that generate profits the old-fashioned way. 

Why not sit on cash?

Well, that would be a great move if you could predict if/when the stock market will crash.

But history tells us that inflation and deflation can exist within the same economy and that the inflationary parts of it will vaporize the wealth that is stored as "cash".

Wait a minute. How can an economy be both inflationary and deflationary at the same time? 

Consider the Wiemar Republic in the early 1920s. The nominal value of a producing apple tree or garden full of potatoes or a cord of firewood sky-rocketed while the nominal value of certain luxuries like musical instruments, fancy clothes and pensions dropped to zero. Some sectors went up (way up) and other sectors collapsed.

The ones that preserved wealth were assets that served the lower levels of Maslow's Hierarchy. The assets that collapsed were ones that invested in the higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy.

Even if you lose money investing in productive assets, you will lose even more buying power if you squirrel away all of your assets as cash.

This observation comes with a caution. You need to have enough cash-like assets on-hand to pay your taxes and currency-denominated debts like your mortgage. 

A final word

The movie contains a "fight" scene where (seemingly) prissy "Bullwhip" Griffin beats the hell out of a street-brawler. Hence his new nickname "Bullwhip".

There are times when the only viable coin-of-the-day is to be able to vigorously defend what is yours, your honor and the honor of your woman.