Entertainment

Elon Musk provides endless entertainment.

Who could have guessed that all it took censor strident, deep-state actors would be to simply identify their communications as "Government Funded Source".

No additional manpower or computer code. The Deep-State actors SELF CENSORED. They left the platform.

I think Musk should do something similar for content suppliers who have outstanding student loans. Seen from one perspective, the pause in student loan paybacks is a $300 a month stipend to write propaganda for the Deep-State.

Social media is the new mainstream media. Transparency is good.

Vertical jump

Mrs ERJ informs me that I am "getting" the white area on the inside of the "D" on my vertical jumps.

Fiddle-frogging around by trimming the image, counting pixels and knowing that my standing reach is 7'-1"...it looks like I now have a vertical jump of 14"

Yeah!!!

I wish the walking track had banners at various heights so there was no guess-work involved. I have been told that it is common for volleyball players to practice their jumps and the height is calculated with optics (Lasers, maybe?) and the exact vertical height is displayed on a digital readout.

Planting trees

Today was a change-of-pace.

I planted some trees.

I think every orchard ends up with "holes" in it. It pays to plug them up.

I planted one Bluebyrd plum, one Potomac pear and two Liberty apple trees.

Holding plants while away

I think I figured out a way to avoid having somebody come in and water my seedlings.

I have a couple of 4' sleds that are vac-formed polyethylene. They are as waterproof as a canoe. My thinking is that I can put 2 cubic feet of potting soil in each sled, add about 1/2 cubic foot of water (25% by volume or four gallons!) and then settle the seedling cells into the potting soil.

The seedlings will push roots down, into the moist potting soil and there should be plenty of water there for their roots to mine. It should be plenty to hold them for the duration.

Dis an Dat

Concrete

Kubota is working in the concrete biz. He told me that the yesterday's first "pour" of the day was not scheduled until 11 in the morning. That seemed very late to me. Then the pour was cancelled and the second pour, scheduled for 1 in the afternoon was supposed to be the first pour. It was cancelled. The crew was sent home without putting a single yard of concrete being poured.

Driving around I see incredible numbers of orange cones and heavy equipment tearing up pavement, curbs, drainage ditches and so-on.

It is my impression that flat-work absorbs more truck-time-per-yard than footings and poured walls but I may be way out in the weeds. I am sure I have some readers who can chime in on the subject.

If I had to guess, I would guess that there are not enough trucks to support all of the scheduled concrete work. Kubota's crew pissed away a lot of money with nothing to show for it. Kubota's boss was not in a pleasant mood.

Potatoes

Another four rows into the ground. These were a mix of varieties we have grown in previous years. It is considered bad-practice to save your own seed because virus can accumulate. 

I could see somebody getting into the business of making "sampler packs" of some of the newer releases. Say five varieties and however many pounds you can stuff in an USPS flat-rate box. The cost of shipping seed potatoes is a killer if you want to try new releases.

Red Pontiac was the variety Mom and Dad grew. It resisted scab and produced well for them. The downsides were that it was low in solids (high in water) and it got deep dimples when it got large. Dad planted them on 3'-by-3' centers and tilled in both directions between the plants. We always seemed to have plenty of potatoes even though he planted them much later than is the current fashion.

I ate a lot of Red Pontiacs growing up.

Strawberries

Scheduled to be shipped April 19.

Streamlining the yard

I am removing the islands that were landscaped with flowers and such. It will make mowing simpler and a little bit faster.

Steer to market

I cancelled my slot to have my steer processed. I sent a text to the owner of the trailer and told her that life had become very, very busy.

It is better to do three things adequately than to fail four thing.

"Know when to walk away, know when to run..."

Organic/conventional, Hybrid/Heirloom debate

Late in my senior year at MSU (Making Sh!t Up) University I had a non-technical elective that I needed to fill to graduate. I chose "Small Fruit Production" taught by Stan Howell in the Horticulture Department.

Professor Howell's specialty was grapes. Most especially, wine grapes.

He was approached by untold, well-to-do retirees who wanted to start vineyards and open wineries. The well-to-do had been very successful at their profession and assumed it would translate seamlessly to the next stage of their lives.

Professor Howell radiated a gentle cynicism (if there can be such a thing). He had seen many wannabees reach for the stars and come crashing to earth.

The newbies always wanted to grow Johannisberg Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and other "classic" French cultivars.

And while it is technically possible to grow those grapes in Michigan it is very, very difficult to do it profitably. They are just exceptionally fussy.

It is also possible for a ten year-old child to drive an Italian super-car with a manual transmission.

Realizing that he had to deal with egos as well as the physical realities of site, weather, markets and the skill-level of the labor, he developed a "patter" that integrated needs of the clients with his need to be honest.

He said:

Plant a few of the J-berg Riesling or Chardonnay. Maybe 5% of your acreage. What he did not say was "You probably won't kill them TOO fast."

Then, based on the experience level of the retirees...some had never grown so much as a tomato plant...he would either say "Plant 25% of the property into Concord grapes (the non-tomato growers) or 25% of a French Hybrid like Marecel Foch"

Then he explained: The J-berg will win you Gold Medals when you can get a crop. You don't need many grapes to enter wine into county fairs. The Marecel Foch will produce every year and will pay the bills.

Since Michigan is automobile country, he would say "The J-berg's Gold Metal is the Corvette (or Mustang) on the showroom floor that brings in the customers. They end up buying an Impala or Taurus...but the Corvette brought them through the door. Your customers will read about your Gold Metals and will end up buying a case of your Marecel Foch and your blends."

The retirees would say "But you only told us what to plant on a third of our property!"

He would shake his large, bear-like head. "You are going to make mistakes. That is just the nature of trying to grow grapes. You are going to have vines die. Better to learn on 1/3 of your property and still have funds to replant than to blow your entire grub-stake and find yourself on the wrong end of the curve."

So why the long, shaggy-dog story?

Because I think new gardeners need every break they can get. In many cases the place they can garden will have poor drainage and not enough sun. 

Organic gardening is a higher art-form than conventional methods. Heirlooms rarely possess the disease resistance of modern hybrids. In some cases (sweet corn) they don't even taste as good. A good, solid gardener can be a successful organic gardener but there is more art-and-craft...and luck involved.

If I were approached by a new gardener, I would set him up with mostly conventional techniques. I think there is a huge place for mulch and compost for weed suppression and fertility but I think there is plenty of room for other methods, too. For something like tomatoes I would suggest two or three hybrids (like Celebrity, Jetsetter or "Mountain" hybrids to name just a few of the hundreds available) and one heirloom (like Brandywine or German Pink or Kellogg's Breakfast or Carbon of the thousands available). A cucumber plant. A zucchini plant (only one, OH PLEASE, only one). Maybe a pole-bean "tee-pee" for fun. Onion sets for green onions for salads. A few flowers. Then...whatever else they wanted to grow...although I would discourage full-sized pumpkins.

I would keep the garden small to keep the weeding manageable and the venture "fun".

The key to riding a bicycle is to get it rolling. If that means starting off rolling downhill AWAY from your final destination, then so what. You got it rolling.

The key to introducing people to growing food is to make their first effort (mostly) successful and to not micromanage. Even if they are sure they only want to grow heirlooms...try to sneak a few, bullet-proof hybrids into the effort.

Milgram

Suppose you were hired for a modest amount of money to assist in an experiment designed to fine-tune how well and how quickly students learned information. Surely that is a noble cause.

You showed up at the appointed time-and-place and there is another volunteer waiting for the experiment to start. A technician wearing a lab-coat shows up and asks for your names. He sorts alphabetically. The other fellow's last name is later in the alphabet than yours so he goes to the other side of a flimsy partition with a window in it.

You watched the technician hook some electrodes up to the other volunteers wrists.

Then he joined you back on your side of the partition.

 

You can see that the technician has a keyboard with very large dials on it. The technician reads off questions that the other volunteer must answer to the best of his ability. Your job is to depress the button (switch) on your keyboard when the technician indicates that the volunteer gave an incorrect answer.

The first time you do so, you hear a small yelp from the other side of the screen. The technician reassures you that the electric shock, although painful, is completely harmless.

***

You are involved in several sessions. Perhaps on one session the technician runs through some of the questions the other volunteer got wrong the first time and if he answers them incorrectly a second time the technician directs you to turn up the dial to administer more voltage for the corrective shock.

You comply. The dial is marked with green-yellow-red zones and the increased voltage is clearly in the green zone.

Perhaps the other volunteer answers a question correctly and the technician indicates the answer was wrong and tells you to administer a corrective shock.

You comply. 

***

Asking around, you learn that there are forty other volunteers from a wide range of ages and life-experiences.

Part way through the scheduled sessions, the technician (Larry) tells you that your team is not performing as well as the other teams. He suggests that it might be due to the lag-time between the wrong answer and when you push the key to administer the shock. Perhaps a shorter lag-time would result in better "learning". Larry also increases the voltage for all of the wrong answers.

The other volunteer not only yelps but is whimpering by the end of the "learning" session.

You need the money. You do what you are told to do.

***

In the final session, the other volunteer sounds very rattled and disoriented. The technician is also testy as the other volunteer's performance is very poor with few correct answers given. Out of what you think is frustration, the technician rapidly increases the voltage throughout the course of the sessions.

When he gets to the yellow, you don't say much but when he gets to the red you question him.

Do you push the key?

Perhaps Larry responds "We recycled the voltage dial from a different experiment and those colors do not mean anything." or maybe he says "The government makes us put those colors on the dial in case we get somebody who has a pace-maker." and the other volunteer is clearly a young and healthy looking fellow.

Do you push the key?

The volunteer is sobbing and shrieks when you push the key. Maybe you can see that he wet his pants when you look through the window.

Do you keep pushing the key?

65% of the volunteers did.

Yale. 1961. Stanley Milgram designed the experiment. The second volunteer was a paid actor. The keyboard activated a small light to tell the actor when to act shocked.

Milgram wanted to see if Americans were capable of committing the atrocities we saw in NAZI Germany. Nearly all Americans thought it was not possible. Remember, 1961 was a scant 16 years from the end of the liberation of the concentration camps.

We were wrong.

***

As a tiny bit of editorializing, one aspect of most social media and texting is that there is a "coolness" associated with rapid responses. It is inherent in how most platforms are structured. If you take the time to compose a thoughtful response then it is unlikely to be read. If you vomit strings of short, emotional posts then your "thoughts" will be near the top of the stack and are likely to be read and commented on.

Another thing about most social media is that the blizzard of calls for our attention makes "last week" seem like it was an eternity ago and therefore irrelevant. If last week is irrelevant, then 1961 must be Stone-age irrelevant.

Essentially, we are being shaped into a culture of mindless bots who are conditioned to inflict pain without thought or empathy; totally without connection to the past.

One of the things that I appreciate about the "blogging" universe is that people who want to think about topics for a day, a week or a month are not punished.

Potatoes and coffee

Four rows of potatoes in the ground yesterday. Freaky weather predicted with four days with highs of 80 in a row and dew-points in the 40s.

Staying off my feet for 24 hours seems to have helped my leg.

Every year I wonder why I miss the sucker run. I think it is because I am in the garden. I am planting a 2 ounce piece of potato for seed every foot of row. That is one pound every eight feet of row or six pounds to the 48' row.

Fifty pounds of seed should be good for about eight rows. Locally, a fifty pound bag of seed potatoes runs about $35 which is cheaper than potatoes in the grocery store.

I am growing Kennebec variety. It seems to be a well-balanced package and is reputed to taste good. The ground they are going into is slightly higher in clay than good potato ground. I guess we will see how they do.

Mom visit

I visited mom yesterday morning. A few days ago I was evesdropping on a phone conversation mom's roommate was having. She was lamenting the coffee that was served by the facility. It was spit-warm, weak and cheap coffee that had been brewed in an industrial sized urn.

Easy enough to pick up a cup of coffee on the way in. I got a Biggbee's 16 ounce brewed house-blend coffee. No flavors. Just coffee and water, fresh, hot and strong.

I think it was the high point of her day.

I don't bring this up to pat myself on the back. It is to remind us that small things done from the heart can throw a long shadow.

Tomato seedling update

Last week. Note the height of the seedlings relative to the straws. Click on the image to embiggen it.

 

More green. Capturing more light.

How to survive the US Dollar's loss of world-reserve status

---Disclaimer: This essay is intended for entertainment purposes. I am not credentialed to offer financial advise. ENTERTAINMENT. End Disclaimer---

One of the consequences of the US Dollar being the world "reserve" currency is that it is in high demand outside the US. Outer Elbownia needs dollars to buy goat curds from Beheffistan and Behefficstan needs dollars to buy hemp fibers from Outer Elbownia.

Loss of world reserve status for the dollar means that the dollars lubricating the wheels of world commerce will come racing back home like salmon swimming upstream to spawn.

Outer Elbownia and Beheffistan will race each other to spend the dollars while they still have purchasing power in the US.

The price of everything is expected to go up. This has investors rattled because they are scrambling to figure out the best speculative "play". It will be similar to when the Soviet Arme swept over NAZI Germany near the end of WWII like locust and disassembled entire manufacturing and power plants and shipped them back to the motherland.

This is what Outer Elbownia and Beheffistan are already buying from the US. Values are average US exports for 2019 and 2020 in millions of dollars. Categories are color-coded and aggregated at the top.

Capital goods, except automotive	504,117.00
Industrial supplies and materials	500,174.50
Consumer goods	190,271.50
Automotive vehicles, parts, and engines	144,837.50
Foods, feeds, and beverages	135,439.00
Pharmaceutical preparations	59,868.50
Crude oil	57,616.00
Industrial machines, other	57,256.00
Semiconductors	52,517.50
Other parts and accessories of vehicles	51,413.00
Passenger cars, new and used	50,163.50
Petroleum products, other	48,214.00
Engines-civilian aircraft	46,524.50
Electric apparatus	40,925.50
Medical equipment	37,707.50
Plastic materials	35,876.50
Fuel oil	34,264.50
Telecommunications equipment	33,413.50
Chemicals-other	33,223.50
Civilian aircraft	30,279.50
Computer accessories	27,865.50
Chemicals-organic	27,672.50
Other industrial supplies	26,653.50
Cell phones and other household goods, n.e.c.	25,842.00
Measuring, testing, control instruments	23,799.50
Soybeans	23,281.50
Industrial engines	23,150.00
Parts-civilian aircraft	21,944.50
Nonmonetary gold	20,973.50
Trucks, buses, and special purpose vehicles	20,399.50
Meat, poultry, etc.	20,382.00
Engines and engine parts	19,215.50
Finished metal shapes	18,874.50
Gas-natural	17,049.00
Natural gas liquids	16,874.00
Computers	16,144.50
Gem diamonds	15,866.50
Other foods	15,673.00
Precious metals, other	13,991.00
Toiletries and cosmetics	13,114.00
Newsprint	12,244.00
Laboratory testing instruments	12,068.50
Generators, accessories	11,886.00
Materials handling equipment	11,370.00
Artwork, antiques, stamps, etc.	10,483.50
Excavating machinery	9,833.00
Nuts	9,561.00
Corn	9,389.50
Chemicals-inorganic	9,251.00
Jewelry, etc.	9,172.50
Animal feeds, n.e.c.	9,091.00
Photo, service industry machinery	9,001.00
Toys, games, and sporting goods	8,699.00
Chemicals-fertilizers	8,491.50
Fruits, frozen juices	8,260.50
Pulpwood and woodpulp	8,060.50
Steelmaking materials	7,417.00
Iron and steel mill products	7,237.00
Nonferrous metals, other	7,102.00
Agricultural machinery, equipment	6,939.50
Vegetables	6,921.50
Aluminum and alumina	6,757.00
Copper	6,697.50
Other consumer nondurables	6,692.50
Apparel, household goods - textile	6,548.50
Wheat	6,440.00
Mineral supplies-manufactured	6,352.50
Manmade cloth	6,127.00
Cotton, raw	6,063.50
Metallurgical grade coal	5,994.50
Bakery products	5,993.00
Coal and fuels, other	5,975.50
Household appliances	5,961.50
Metalworking machine tools	5,795.50
Iron and steel products, other	5,783.00
Dairy products and eggs	5,207.50
Logs and lumber	5,036.50
Fish and shellfish	5,009.50
Furniture, household goods, etc.	4,531.00
Industrial rubber products	4,359.50
Shingles, molding, wallboard	4,326.00
Agric. industry-unmanufactured	4,158.50
Drilling & oilfield equipment	4,098.50
Books, printed matter	3,856.00
Wood, glass, plastic	3,810.00
Food, tobacco machinery	3,481.00
Agriculture-manufactured, other	3,430.50
Railway transportation equipment	3,352.50
Televisions and video equipment	3,314.50
Agric. farming-unmanufactured	3,254.00
Nonfarm tractors and parts	3,061.50
Automotive tires and tubes	2,977.50
Apparel,household goods-nontextile	2,865.50
Synthetic rubber-primary	2,834.00
Finished textile supplies	2,768.00
Oilseeds, food oils	2,610.00
Pleasure boats and motors	2,303.50
Stereo equipment, etc.	2,169.50
Pulp and paper machinery	2,143.50
Wine, beer, and related products	2,099.00
Business machines and equipment	2,064.50
Alcoholic beverages, excluding wine	2,048.00
Rice	2,007.00
Musical instruments	1,937.00
Cotton fiber cloth	1,674.50
Recorded media	1,444.50
Glass-plate, sheet, etc.	1,266.00
Numismatic coins	1,261.00
Marine engines, parts	1,159.50
Cookware, cutlery, tools	1,096.50
Wood supplies, manufactured	1,058.00
Sorghum, barley, oats	1,046.50
Specialized mining	1,002.50
Textile, sewing machines	950.00
Hides and skins	944.00
Rugs	827.50
Sports apparel and gear	760.50
Tobacco, unmanufactured	709.50
Nonmetallic minerals	705.50
Tobacco, manufactured	698.50
Nuclear fuel materials	687.50
Bodies and chassis for passenger cars	668.00
Leather and furs	662.50
Hair, waste materials	539.50
Glassware, chinaware	517.00
Nontextile floor tiles	479.50
Nursery stock, etc.	442.50
Nonagricultural foods, etc.	418.00
Commercial vessels, other	341.50
Electric energy	316.50
Spacecraft, excluding military	143.50
Tapes, audio and visual	129.50
Vessels, excluding scrap	85.50

The problem with speculative plays is that they tend to be one-of with little possibility of repeats.

My advice is to think on a smaller scale. Think of something you can make using locally abundant materials and labor. Then procure the skills and basic equipment needed to manufacture that product.

To make the idea a little bit more concrete, you could make tool holsters or knee-pads by vacuum forming material cut from the sides of five-gallon buckets. You could repair clothing with thread-and-needle (loss of value in US Dollar means the third world will no longer give us clothing for little more than the cost of shipping it.) Being able to heat, form, cut or cast metals might be useful. Anything related to security will be valuable. 

That is one reason to garden. Seeds can be saved, even hybrid seeds. When replanted they will produce something edible, even if every tomato or carrot is not identical. Once started, a garden can remain productive with very few external inputs (outside of the owner's sweat) for centuries.

Breeding dogs or sheep or cattle...those are other options.