I ordered 900 plastic straws from Amazon just a few minutes ago. 500 are individually wrapped and 400 are loose.

Trying to work around the utterly moronic straw bans happening everywhere lately. I figure I use 3-4 plastic straws a week, and at that rate they should last a good while even if every restaurant bans them. The individually-wrapped ones are for keeping in the car or my bag so I can always have one. I would’ve ordered more but the plastic will start breaking down after about 10 years so it’s pointless.

What a waste of fucking time and money but I don’t like drinking without a straw, and any drink on the go really needs one.

Soon, I am going to take a week or so off from strength training. It’s necessary every few months to give your body time to completely recover and you’re usually stronger when you go back to it.

I’ll probably do one more hard deadlift session, one more vigorous chest/arms/back, and then take a week. It’ll be weird not working out but especially as one gets older that complete recovery time is important.

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