You know, supposedly market timing is impossible. But it’s so impossible that I do it all the time. I sold all sorts of stocks before the latest market calamity. Evidence is right here.

I’m also short for the first time in a long time, and have been for weeks. Normally, I do not recommend shorting but I wanted a hedge and now I have a hedge to trim one day. (I don’t do options, these days.)

I think in general people should not try to time the market. You have to be a pretty fucking cool cucumber to do it. Once your emotions are in the market, your money’s gone. That’s not a problem for me, though. For most people, panicking is the order of the day and they will emerge poorer at the end of it all.

No, I don’t know when the market is going to bottom nor do I care. No one can sell at the exact top (though I came pretty damn close with many stocks) or buy at precisely the bottom. The important thing is to have capital available to latch onto opportunities when they present themselves. And they have been, and will more so in the future.

My advice in general is not to do what I do, as it probably won’t work. But it works for me.

Remember, most financial advice wants you to be anxious and is designed to make you be poorer and to keep money in the hands of investment advisor and financial types so they can fritter it away. When you mentally move past this propaganda, thinking clearly becomes easier.

This is not a bad list. Some that I’d add to it:

• Fourier Transform
• Lithography
• Bellows
• Perspective painting
• Needle
• Nitrogen fertilizers
• CAD (and related programs)
• Assembly line
• Modern statistical methods
• Industrial/Factory robots
• Glass
• Selective breeding
• Calculus
• Balloon framing
• Plastic
• Information Theory
• The turbine
• Sodium benzoate
• The loom

Shit fire, I hate these clueless numpties. It makes me angry that “education” so often produces negative value and spits out endless cavalcades of people who are dumber than rocks because rocks never do anything actively stupid.

Government should own all or nearly all housing, in cities especially. Why are we even letting private corporations seeking only profit make decisions about how we live, and who can even afford to live?

I’m not in favor of rent control, either, because I am in favor of NO FUCKING RENT.

This doesn’t mean that I am full-on communist. There is a place for a cash economy and some forms of capitalism, but housing definitely is not that place.

Nikki Haley ditches her Twitter account — and nearly 1.7 million followers — and the real question is why.

So since she’s definitely running, where’s all the Hillary die-hards who are here to tell me that we should vote for a woman because she’s a woman? Where all ya’ll at? Haley arguably has about as much experience as Hillary Clinton (state House Rep, governor of a medium-size state for six years, U.N. ambassador for ~2 years), so Hillary rules apply, right?

Ok, now that I’ve got that out of my system, Haley is not the worst of the likely Republican candidates, but that’s not saying much. She’s anti-abortion and in favor of lowering taxes but she doesn’t seem as willfully cruel as some of them. That’s about the nicest thing there is to say about her.

It’s weird that people feel anxious or out of sorts without their smartphone. I feel relieved when I’ve misplaced it. Kind of like when I lost my hearing. I was glad it was gone.

So many people trading in the stock market and other similar markets are so worried about what will happen in the future while almost none are concerned with what’s really relevant, and that’s not doing something stupid now.

Avoiding immediate stupidity is far more important than an unknown and unknowable future.