Screwball

I saw that too. Still don't know how that idiot can still be in front of a TV camera. Well, yea, I do.

Recent bond and T-Bill auctions from Tresury Direct - T-bills first;

This is all true. Really ticks me off that yields are so low. I'm old, I don't want the risk of the market, especially as bloated as it is now, so bonds are the way to go. Short term bonds were a great play. Yields were good and you could get liquid in a short time and go into something else if you wanted. Has been getting less profitable for some time now. Spit! Here is Silver today once the market opened. A longer range chart to see the hockey stick. 10 year by month chart.

I go by charts. It's hard to explain in a short paragraph what they mean. Using charts, known as technical analysis, is a long time science that started over in Japan many years ago. Charts are a visual history of how "things" trade - price. One of the main things they do is give the people in the market entry/exit points to trades. They talk about this every day on the business channels. It helps both institutional and retail investors. The best computer geeks on the planet who work for the pigmen of Wall Street write their HAL 9000 trading algorithms on this stuff. My point, some charts look normal, and then there are some that don't. Gold and Silver look like hockey sticks right now - that isn't how it works. They are going up way to fast way too quick. It kind of reminds me of back in...2007 ish... crude oil did the same thing. Went from..don't remember, around a hundred maybe to $147. It looked like a hockey stick on the chart. It became exponential. Then it was 2008 and we know what happened. Some economists think the oil shock started the credit/housing mess. I think they are right. The gold/silver thing is different. American's sucks up 20% of the worlds crude, which is our lifeblood of growth. Gold and silver isn't near as important of commodity. But a message? The gold/silver (they usually trade about the same way even though silver has industrial value) thing is about our currency. The value of the dollar trades on the world markets each and every day. Like going to Canada and the exchange rate you get. So many dollars buys so many CAD. One might say (well, many) going long Gold is shorting the currency of the United States. This topic has been argued forever in the political realm between the Keynesian's and Von Mises wings of monetary policy. The "gold bugs." Some say this is all retail moving the price. I don't know. The old intrinsic value of an asset or "specie" as they said before that kind of thing. What I do know, this ain't normal.

As I type this at 9:03, Gold is $5072 and some change, and Silver is $107 and change. This is nuckingfuts.

Ha! That's a great story. Thanks for sharing. It's also a blast from the past. I guess we are dating ourselves, but "chains" and "Pinto's" are a blast from the past. I almost mentioned chains in my post above but I didn't think too many would know what they are. There were studs too. In 74 the car shop I worked at used to put studs in tires for the winter, and sold chains. The Pinto. I'm sorry, and this is coming from a guy who worked on them - were a piece of **** - not to mention the gas tank thing... Sorry. But I will make up for it. When I go to my little ****hole bar I pass a house that has a Pinto sitting in the driveway. It hasn't moved for years. Faded blue paint and the back end of the car facing the street. I laugh every time I see it and say "piece of ****." Next time I go by, and I'm itching to do so since stormageddon has set in and I've been stuck in the house - I will get a picture for you. It's butt ugly. 🙂

We had many people on snowmobiles, 4 wheel drive things, whatever could get through, get people to work and back so they could provide groceries and medial care for those who needed it. It was really scary.

As someone who is scared ****less of heights - this is nuts. If you have a Netflix account you can watch it.

Of note on this day in history. I dispute the date by a day, but doesn't matter. Anniversary of the Blizzard of 1978. The link is from 2022 but that's not important. Funny, we are getting our butts kicked right now if you live in Ohio or Michigan. I remember the one in 78. It was wild.

I understand. It all depends on the person. From the money/investment standpoint, is the coin worth more for the value of the coin vs. the amount by weight. For example, I have a penny worth 100 bucks. Not enough metal to get to that price, so it's the coin, or what someone will give you for it. On the other hand, I have a bunch of silver coins I inherited in the same collection that are only worth the silver value. Since the prices have went nuts on silver, I gave my collection to a couple of coin collectors to see what it might be worth. One guy doesn't want them, but he knows coins, and good with Canadian money, which I have quite a bit of. The other guy is young and has a bunch of money and wants to save them for his kids. He is really into this stuff. Both great guys who I trust. I'm about at the end of the line here, so one less thing for my kids to **** with if I belly up some day in the chair, so why not liquidate. Goes to them anyway. Depends on the person, nothing wrong with that. I was talking to both of them at the ****hole bar the day silver went over $100. They both use coin brokers, and the young guy talks to them frequently. That is what our old dear friend Rhino that posted here did I believe. Since silver has traded in a range for many years, that we are now way out of, how do these brokers price the metal. Do you want to pay spot at 100 bucks knowing it has traded between 10 and 50 bucks for the last 20 years? Other than between 2010 and 2013, it was under 30. He said they just lower the price to you under spot. Instead of 3 bucks below spot, they offer you 6. I wouldn't want to be holding the bag at these levels. But that's just me. Then again, between some things China did with silver, and the AI/data center thing (read electronic parts), who knows? Silver is an industrial metal, and unlike gold, some gets thrown away.

Chart porn of the day. Silver - one year chart by day. The $27 dollar low bubble was April 7, 2025. 103 - giddy up. Natty gas mentioned above, should have jumped on this - dumbass. This is a 3 month chart I narrowed down to the last month. The last week has been quite profitable if you got in on the action - which should have been obvious. Could have got in a bit over 3, and now it prints around 5 and a quarter, in 7 trading days. That's a quick...well you can math. Natty doesn't usually trade like this, so only those who trade the short term stuff got a piece of this, and no doubt the pigmen of Wall Street. This is one of the in your faces trades that is so obvious - and you missed it. $10k gets you $5k in a week - or more...

Interesting. I did a quick Google search, and the link below is their "What we do" link on their website. What we do I started at their main page and ended up with this one because the first rule of investing is to understand how a company makes their money. After skimming this one, I still don't know. After searching some of their claims this might be a technology kind of thing for drone telemetry. That said, what they really seem to be good at is spitting out a bunch of word salad that sounds like it came from a breeding mistake between a used car salesman, a marketing shyster, and enough tech words mixed in to make it look legit.

Today at Davos Larry Fink's comments should be of note.

Funny, as we speak, our future is being planned over in Davos, Switzerland by the people who run the world.

More on AI in schools. I ran across this at another site and found it interesting. Video from a teacher, and a test from 1895 to compare to today. The test below is from a page at NASA. Title; Eighth-Grade Final Exam from 1895 Eighth-Grade Final Exam from 1895

Electric is one of those FAFO kind of things.

This could go here or the AI thread, but I'll go here. I was at a party last night and talked a good buddy who lives around Columbus, Ohio. He's in the cement business, and one of their projects right now is a data center. He's not at the site, but did visit so he did see the operation. I didn't get as many details as I would like... it is after all a party. What I did find out, and found interesting, he said they had 8 class 8 size trucks (semi's you might call them) that were diesel powered generator's running 24/7 to power this puppy. I don't know how big, and don't remember if I asked. What we don't know, and he wouldn't as a concrete contractor, if this power was an addition to what might be Ohio AEP, who might supply power as well. I think that's pretty wild. I would like to know more so you could calculate, or make a SWAG (scientific wild ass guess) how much it costs to to power all this stuff. Related, and I live in Ohio. I just made a deal with a couple of energy companies (gas & electric) in the attempt to save a little money on those bills over the next year. I have 4 years of electric bill data broken down by kWh in a spreadsheet. It has only gotten more expensive (in various ways) but the basic price per kWh has been on a steady climb. These things are part of the reason why. Energy. It's what makes the world grow. Then there is the EROEI thing.

More on this from Bloomberg Law; Trump’s 401(k) Home Buyer Idea Requires Retirement Rule Shifts

The funny part is people arguing they shouldn't be able to do this. It's your money, you should be able to do whatever you want with your own money.

It seems one of the new things here in Cornhole is trivia. Couple of different flavors, one in the middle of the town that has now grown to ballroom size with over a hundred people doing general style, or in my case, a ****hole bar doing music trivia. You get a team (no money involved) and each team puts an app on their phone. You create a team name and get hooked up with the trivia guy who keeps score. You get points for a correct answer, and more points for being the fastest. The trivia guy sits somewhere with a mic and speaker. He plays a song over his speaker and through the app you play the game. It loads a full screen of the alphabet. This competition was based on 70s, 80s, 90s music. He would play 15 seconds of a song, and as soon as you know who the artist is, you hit the letter of the first letter of the name of the band. After the 15 seconds, he would tell how many teams got it right, who the band was, and who was the fastest. He did around 25 songs, took a ten minute break (bathroom, cig, joint :-)), then did another session, this time one hit wonders. Another break, then you had to do the first letter of the name of the song. That was tough. Then one more for band name. Probably total close to 80 songs over the course of the night. Started at 6:30, done by 8:30. They had around 40 people, and 10 teams or so teams. I sat with a couple musician buddies of mine, who both played in bands over the years. We got smoked. It's amazing how fast some of these people were. No matter, it was a ball. I haven't had that much fun since the hogs ate my brother.

I'm working on an art type project where two of us are trying to combine a 2D etching type thing and 3D printing. We have made some parts and proven the design enough to go forward. It's just like bringing products to market as a manufacturing company, just a smaller scale. I used the AI stuff to help me with things that are not in my wheelhouse. I was impressed with what it came up with, especially if I gave it better instructions. Then, after we did some testing, we found out what AI told us (my Aussie buddy) didn't work for ****. I immediately told it so, and we went a different direction. We will see going forward. I have really tried to give it as much information up front so it can give me better results. At the end of the day, I see this as nothing more than a souped up search engine.

Coming from someone who just left the academic field and fully retired, did your school have any rules about how to use AI? I think the type of class matters, so there is that. Mine was no way no how AI was going to do it. But we had meetings and emails about how to handle AI in the classroom. They still let us teachers do their thing unless they did something stupid. So I could control my classroom. As far as how to grade - that's easy. I went with a simple A-F thing. 100 to 70. Below 70, you flunk. Simple, easy, and at the end of the semester you know what they can do anyway, and if they can't, or can, you give them the grade they deserve. They know this up front, from day one. I also weighed the assignments (16) to be more punitive later in the semester. That said, our educational system is a ****ing joke.

I think he left because he knows he can't fix things. Their OL sucks. Their main WR is a head case. They spend too much money on an over-aged defense that didn't perform, and likely won't in the future. The OC play calling is awful. Their QB if he comes back, is over the hill and can't move behind a line that can't block. Tomlim probably knows next year will be worse and so will the boo birds. I don't blame him.

I don't have the exact size of the track, but based on what I have found, the size is around 1/6 mile, and given the lap times it averages out from mid-sixties to mid-seventy MPH. They keep a board somewhere that keeps track of "flips" which are many. They also have a designated fighting area for those who wish to partake. Busy place. Ages range from 14 to 70 for the competitors.

I'm not sure what this poly market stuff is and how it works, but I've heard about it. It appears to be another way to bet/gamble on "things" and it also seems to be used as a predictor of some sort type of thing. I wonder if the fact we've wanted attack Iran since at least when John McCain was a singer is priced in?