The romantic conundrum of SJW women

 

Fifty second run-time 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNL9oljAFqM

This is how Social Justice Warrior women see themselves. The Dark Rider is the white-privilege, cis-male hegemony. The dragon he rides is Corporate America. The hobbits and the fallen king are the little-people and the helpless who can only be saved by a woman.

13 second run-time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtH8qOl3T2g

This is how rest of us see her. She gets in between the camera and the reporter, interrupts the reporter and squawks something unintelligible because she can.

SJW women have a major disconnect when it comes to finding romantic partners. They see themselves as warrior goddesses who deserve Aragorn as a soulmate...and they insist that Aragorn  defer to her because...well, because she is a Social Justice Warrior Goddess.

But more likely she will not find an Aragorn who wants to put up with her BS. Why should he put up with the woman from the fish-market when he can date cheerleaders?

Perhaps that is why Trump infuriates them. He is a heroic Aragorn type and he DOES NOT defer to them.

Vitamin D, Zinc and Baby Aspirin

 *** I am not a doctor in spite of what I tell Mrs ERJ. Consult with your personal doctor before doing anything related to your health ***

As information started seeping out regarding the possible advantages (with regard to Covid-19) of taking supplemental Vitamin D, Zinc and low-dose aspirin, I did what any forward thinking prepper would do.

I bought a few extra bottles.

Then, when the bottles in the corner cupboard in the kitchen ran out I went looking for those bottles I bought.

And do you suppose I could find them?

Fortunately, Puritan's Pride was more than happy to sell me some more. It took about four days for them to show up on our doorstep.

This time I was smart. Mrs ERJ was more than happy to stash them somewhere where SHE will be able to find them.

Good managers are smart enough to delegate to the best person available.

Vitamin D

Let me repeat...I am not a doctor.

This webpage suggests that 1000-to-4000 IU of Vitamin D "...should be enough to ensure optimal blood levels for most people."

Zinc

I am currently taking 50 mg/day. 50mg is 455% of the RDA minimum.

Zinc balance is quite robust in the human body. Our guts do not absorb zinc when it is not needed.

Low dose Aspirin

There is not much down-side if you tolerate it well.

Low-dose aspirin is linked to reduced risk of heart attacks, lung embolisms, ischemic strokes and other issues associated with excessive clotting. It is also linked to reduced risk of bowel cancer. Many of the potentially fatal manifestations of Covid-19 spring from death of red blood cells and the excessive clotting that can result.

Audience

I trust that my readers are adults. Read this blog for entertainment purposes. Do your own research. Talk to your own doctor. Make your own decisions.

Farm Economics: Part IV (Guest Post by farmer friend0

 

Farming has a systems engineering aspect to it.

You have to look at your operation as a complete system.

As an example, I'll use our farm, during harvest.

Start with this concept...

The Combine is the most expensive piece of hardware on the farm, so you want to keep it running, you don't want it sitting idle during harvest.

Therefore you develop as system approach to harvest

1. The combine picks the corn in a non stop operation...
• In our case, on our farm, with a 6 row corn head.
2. The grain cart pulls up beside the combine to let him unload his grain internal bin on the fly, while still picking.
3. The grain cart then unloads twice into a semi trailer before that semi departs
4. The semi then travels to the bin site.
5. If it's a dump pit, he turns on the leg, dumps his entire load into the pit, and leaves, letting the leg catch up automatically
6. If it's an unloading pit, he has to slowly unload, matching the leg's immediate capacity, so it takes a longer time 
7. Semi driver then returns to the field, just as the grain cart finishes filling the 2nd semi, so he swaps trucks and leaves with the next load.
8. To allow for problems at the bin site, or a slow leg, you add a 3rd Semi truck and trailer to serve as a buffer in the field
9. The driver will have a chance to catch up, when the combine stops mid day for a 30 minute maintenance stop.

So what I've tried to capture, is a balanced, optimized system.

So what happens if you purchase or rent more land.

You might decide you need a bigger 12 row combine.... which picks more acres per hour...

....... however, that would only be true if he's running all the time....

That's where you've upset the cart by changing only one part of the system.

1. The combine is now picking twice as many acres per hour.
2. So one grain cart can no longer keep up
3. So you get a second grain cart, and 2nd tractor, and 2nd grain cart driver.
4. But now the semi driver can't keep up, so you get a 4th semi, and a 2nd semi driver
5. But now the leg at the grain site can't keep up
6. So now you have to upgrade you bin site, or least convert your one unloading site to a dump site, and then have drivers deliver to both bin sites instead of just one.  Which isn't ideal, because you like to have all your harvest from one field in the same bin, or at least at the same bin site

The point being, that you can't just change just one facet of your harvesting system.... you need to address all aspects, otherwise, you just move the constraint to another location.  And spending big money on a bigger combine that sits half the time waiting, and in the end only harvests the same number of acres per day as your old combine because of other constraints..... is a bad investment.

Have fun Joe.

The problem your looking at is a whole lot more complex than you might imagine.

There are just so many variables.

And a key issue is that today's money isn't tomorrows money....... i.e. Money does not equal Money..... which makes it hard to grasp.

Risk takers can win big

Risk takers can lose big

• Some will succeed
• Some will fail
• Some success is good business planning
• Some success is luck
• Some failure is bad business planning
• Some failure is bad luck

i.e. If there is a major crop failure that hits 70% of the farmers, (hail, wind, fungus, blight)

   - Price of crop goes up because of the reduced overall crop

   - If your part of the 70%, the increase price doesn't help..... you have none

   - If your part of the 30%, the increase price gives you a banner year.

I've tried to touch on what I consider important aspects of the problem, but I'm sure there is much more.

Presented without comment

 

Farm Economics: Part III

Tallgrass Prairie is the fair-haired child of the "carbon" crowd. The deep roots deposit carbon into the soil profile. In theory, it is possible to economically convert cellulose to ethanol. Tallgrass prairies can be ecologically diverse.

 "Farming is the only business where all inputs are purchased retail and all output is sold at wholesale"    -Unknown

Q:"So, Zeb, whatchyer boy going to college for?"

A:"I am sending him to school to become a 'middle-man'."

At $6 a bushel, a $3.69, 20 oz loaf of whole-grain bread has approximately ten cents of wheat in it. That is roughly 6% of the cost of that loaf.

A $4.29 bag of Doritos has $0.035 of corn in it.  that is about 0.8% or about 1 part in 125.

A $22 bottle of Tito's Handmade Vodka has $0.14 of corn in it. That is 0.6% or one part in 160.

The point is that prices farmers receive could quadruple (+300%) and the price of a loaf of bread would move up thirty cents or approximately +20%. That bag of Doritos would increase rise about 10 cents or by 2.5% and the bottle Tito's would rise by about half a dollar or by about 2%.

Carbon

Suppose you were the Ghorka Gola Corporate Food company and were interested in investing farmland in Outer Midwestlandia. That is brain-dead at today's prices BUT has potential if legislation shrinks the acres in production by reverting substantial portions of it back to prairie to sequester carbon.

That would shrink supply.

Then, if Congress were to suddenly discover ethanol as a "carbon neutral fuel", then that would sink over-supply.

Ghorka Gola can easily absorb the increased cost in raw materials because they are such an inconsequential part of the total cost of putting product on the shelf. The pretty bag costs more than the grain and the advertising costs more than the grain and the bag combined. In the over-all scheme of things the price of corn and wheat are "noise" and rising crop prices can even be used to justify increasing prices of the finished product.

From Ghorka Gola's standpoint, a two-step process would be most desirable. First, the old farmers who are holding out for $15k an acre die off and land floods the market, depressing prices.

Then GG buys the land just before Congress passes legislation "blessing" ethanol and carpet bombing the sunny west with incentives/subsidies to install solar and sequester carbon.

The small farmer will get elbowed away from the feed-trough as the Ghorka Golas of the world have full-time legal staff to fill out paperwork.

Life as a Guy

A crudely made video with about a two minute run-time.

"Life as a Guy"

The amazing thing is that these girls probably wonder why nobody asks them out any more.

The third girl is my favorite. I could take her cutting wood.

Farm Economics: Part II

 

This essay will be from the perspective of Fundamental Analysis.

Suppose your family owns a small, 1000-acre farm in Outer Midwestlandia. Furthermore, suppose your thumbnail accounting suggests that your "break even" is $3/Bu corn at 200 bushels to the acre. In other words, a gross of $600 an acre.

Let's zoom in closer to that $3/bu-200bu/acre cell

What is worth noting about this table is the non-linearity. Suppose you have a terrible year and you only get 200 bushels per acre and the price is $3.25 a bushel. Your family only netted $50,000. Hardly worth staying in the game.

Now suppose you get one more inch of rain in early July which adds 25 bushels to the acre and the price is a measly fifty cents a bushel higher. Your family nets $243,750 for the year representing a +$193,750.

An additional 25 bushels per acre and additional fifty cents a bushel over the scenario in the previous paragraph nets $525,000 for the year representing an additional +$281,250 over the previous.

Let me be a bore and repeat that. The first jump of +25bu and $0.50 added $193,750. The second jump of exactly the same size netted an additional $281,250 over the previous jump. That is a gain of 45% with exactly the same sized jumps.

The magic is that numbers rise more quickly when you are multiplying large numbers by large numbers, more quickly than they drop on the other side of the break-even price where you are multiplying smaller numbers by smaller numbers.

So in the farming business, one really good year can make up for three mediocre ones.

Inside that $3/bu break-even price

The unmentionable is that that break-even price excludes a huge, implicit fixed-cost. Most of that $3/Bu is "variable cost".

An economist would include the opportunity cost represented by the current mortgage rate-times-the current assessed value of the land.

Suppose a major food conglomerate bought the tiny, 1000 acre farm for its current assessed value of $13.5 million. How much profit would they require to justify that investment?

A big part of what makes this family farm viable is that fact that family members are willing to perform high-end mechanical work...essentially for free. A corporate farm might have to pay Union scale.

Assuming the corporate farmer's economies-of-scale offset the family farm members' willingness to work "for love" and that yields still hover around 200 bushels per acre, the price per bushel would have to rise to about $5.70 for the corporation to "break-even".

So why the huge difference: The family farmer thinks he is breaking-even at $3/bu and the corporate farmer needs $5.70/bu?

Equipment is another hidden fixed-cost. It is easy to not fully comprehend the costs associated with a piece of equipment that is "paid for".

The family farmer treats the cost of the land as a sunk-cost. He does not emotionally treat the land as a fungible unit of production.

The corporate farmer's perspective is that he will send "the next dollar" to the investment that promises him the greatest, sure return. If a risky investment cannot match the rate-of-return of the sure-thing, then he is losing money and exposing his investors to needless risk.

Back to my farmer friend

The farmers of America are getting older. Much of the farm property is already held by trusts and by absentee owners who have no particular attachment to the land. As the sixty-and-seventy year-old farmers "tag-out", more of the land is likely to be farmed by highly leveraged, corporate-type farmers.

In the absence of stronger crop prices, it might not farmed at all.

Dropping farmland out of cultivation will have two consequences. The price of farmland which has been driven up by speculation will tank. Farmland that is not cultivated is, by definition, surplus. Surpluses cause prices to drop. The second consequence is that crop prices are likely start to creeping up as the system seeks an equilibrium.

Fundamentals of profitability can be ignored but they cannot be ignored forever.