Decoding the News Media

The news media has its own agenda. Sometimes you have to read between the lines to understand what is really going on.

A reader writes, remarking that they have been interviewed by the media over the years, and in nearly every case, the resulting story is usually "superficial, selective, and sometimes downright inaccurate."  I feel his pain, having given interviews before and the resulting story sounds like they interviewed someone else.  You can't win at the interview game, which is why a lot of people refuse to give them.  It is only on live television that you can control the narrative, and even then, if you are having a bad day or not prepared for the "gotcha" questions, you can end up being roasted alive.

There is an old saying that you really don't understand how inaccurate the news is, until you read an article about something you know about and see how painfully wrong it can be.  For example, I took a piss on The New Yorker, which used to have a famous fact-checking department, for confusing trademarks and copyrights:

In a recent issue of the New Yorker, this boner jumped out at me:

"When he comes to Las Vegas himself, he is Farmer Lee, and wears a uniform he has trademarked with the U.S. Attorney General's office...." (August 16&23, 2010 issue, page 45, col. 1, lines 11-12, emphasis added)

Nice try, New Yorker. How about the Patent & Trademark Office? The "U.S. Attorney General's Office" does not grant Trademarks. Seems kind of simple. The USPTO even has the word "Trademark" in its name. How hard is that? 

UPDATE: Apparently the New Yorker read the letter I wrote to them and still got it wrong. The phrase in the article online now reads:

"He wears a uniform he has trademarked with the patent’s office" 

Here is the correct wording: "He wears a uniform he has trademarked registered as a trademark with the patent’s U.S. Patent & Trademark Office"

Of course, the real boner about that article - and a slew of others that appeared around the same time, was that they all were reporting breathlessly about how great Las Vegas was, and at the same time, featured a several-page "advertising supplement" in the middle of the magazine, touting - you guessed it - Las Vegas.  No conflict of interest here!  And the New Yorker used to be a decent magazine, too!

But in a way, I can't blame them.  They are running a business - one that is dying.  Print media is dead, and its online equivalent struggles to make money.  We tend to eschew news sites with paywalls or even asking for cookies or to set up an account.  So we go to "free" sites which are crowded with ads and of course, cater to the click-bait crowd.  We have met the enemy and he is us.

Of course, my disillusionment with the news media goes further back than that.  I once wrote an article for the school paper at Syracuse - a daily paper for all the "Newhouse Fags" (as we un-ironically called them back then) to work on.  I wanted to expose the Dean of Students who - at a campus retreat - dismissed concerns about a football player who was convicted for date-raping a student on the grounds that "the football program brings in a lot of money to the school."

The resulting article was titled, "Student leaders meet, discuss issues."  It was watered-down to nothing.  But what was worse was the editor I worked with explained how the system worked.  You can print a "quote" of someone in the article that isn't exactly what the person said.  So long as it sort of had the same meaning, it was fair game to say someone said something when they never said that exact thing.  It is one thing to paraphrase what someone said, another to make it a quote!

So, for example, if your interview subject said the chancellor of the school was a rat bastard, you might paraphrase this to, "Mr. Jones made some disparaging remarks about the chancellor." That's paraphrasing, and in this instance, saves face for both Mr. Jones and the chancellor.  But when you say instead, "Mr. Jones said, 'The chancellor is unfit for the job!'" then you are literally putting words in Mr. Jones' mouth, even if the message is somewhat similar.

The media has been referred to as the "fourth estate" and indeed is a power unto itself and is interested mostly in accumulating that power and maintaining it, by shaping public opinion, influencing policymakers, and of course, making scads of money, if possible.  They are interested in selling newspapers, Nielsen ratings, and today, click-through revenue.  The main idea is to get a lot of readers, viewers, or listeners.  You want audience share - otherwise you have no influence over people, politicians, or your bank account.

So it behooves them to publish controversy - which gets people to read, watch, and click.  It doesn't matter whether the subjects you are reporting on are heroes or villains, so long as people click.  In recent months, it has been Elon Musk as the villain du jour - and the media gets far more clicks about him as villain that they did as Space Jesus.  Similarly, the media loved Donald Trump as he created headlines daily (by intent - to distract us from what was really going on).

And yes, mea cupla, I have been caught up in these click-bait controversies, feeling the need to comment on them, when in fact, they sort themselves out without my input.  It never pays to disseminate your emotional energies over the crises of the day.  But we all do it anyway, right?

It is why, more than 70 years later, we are still obsessed with Hitler - one of history's greatest villains.  You put up a video or article or whatever, about Hitler, and it will get clicks.  Go on YouTube and you will see anything related to World War II is a big hit.  If you have some "Hitler's secret bunker" nonsense, it will sell like hotcakes.

But what about Roosevelt?  Or Churchill?  Surely they deserve equal time and equal attention.  Sadly, we tend only to watch videos about the "good guys" when they explore their dark sides - Roosevelt's affairs and his polio, or Churchill's prodigious drinking.  We want the dirt!  And the media gives it to us by the wheelbarrow load.

So what does this mean?  I'm not saying anything you haven't heard before - or knew about at least subconsciously.  It doesn't mean the world is going to end or go to hell in a hand-basket - or already is.  It doesn't mean the media has recently gotten worse - far from it.  "Yellow Journalism" is something that goes way, way back.

It doesn't mean it is going to change, either - soon or ever.  As I noted above, the problem isn't the shitty journalists - we will always have those in droves - but the fact that "We The People..." click on this shit while at the same time moaning about it.

So the media will always be the media, catering to the lowest common denominator and offering up sensationalized dreck.  But there are ways of reading between the lines to really understand a story.  And the first and easiest way is to not obsess about keeping up with the news.  This is hard to do in a society where "news channels" are plastered all over the place - in bars and restaurants, airports, and even on your gas pump screen.  And of course, on your phone.  You want to read the "latest headline news!" doncha?

And yet, it leaves us feeling empty, depressed, and uninformed. So consuming less news is the first and best thing any of us can do.  When camping, we go "off the grid" for days at a time, and sometimes it is interesting to see, after we get cell service again, the "story arc" of a news story - the first ill-informed and sensationalist stories, then the facts as they come out, and finally the actual story which really isn't as interesting and alarming as first reported.

For example, some heinous crime is committed, but the Police reveal few details, as it would jeopardize their investigation.  So the media speculates and people online start trying to "solve the crime" by using Google - which is about as smart as "doing research" on vaccines by reading some anti-vaxxer site. Days or weeks later, they finally arrest a suspect and we discover most of what we "knew" or thought at the beginning was entirely wrong.  This sort of obsession with crime and criminal trials, sadly, often results in the wrong people being wrongly convicted and the right people being wrongly acquitted.  It is how OJ got off - making a spectacle out of our legal system.  Let the justice system do its thing.  Obsessing about the "news" isn't helping much.

I noted before that sometimes the best way to get the "news" is ten years later. The "story" of the Columbine massacre, for example, is still stuck in people's heads - the wrong story.  The "story" of the McDonald's $5M cup-of-coffee lady is also stuck in people's heads - again, the wrong story, or stories.

No, there was no "trenchcoat mafia" involved - but what a great headline-grabber!  And no, they didn't target "jocks" or "bullies" or "Christians" - they just shot people pretty much randomly.  The boring story was these were mentally-ill teenagers days away from graduation who decided to throw away their lives and lives of others.  The story no one wants to talk about, particularly the 2nd Amendment freaks is why parents who knew their children were mentally ill, kept firearms in the house and let their children have access to them.   BORING!  Next page!

Similarly, the "cup-o-coffee" case isn't as interesting as it first seems.  No, she did not "win" $5M but actually closer to $600,000 which, given the medical bills, was no win at all.  Second, the coffee served at McDonald's wasn't "hotter than normal" as you have to boil water to make coffee.  The coffee McDonald's serves today is the same temperature as before (180 DEGF) and the same temperature as served at Starbucks or any other coffee shop, or indeed at home.  The only difference is, today, cars have ten cupholders, whereas back in the day, they had none.

The realities of these "stories" are not as interesting as what the media told us.  Yes, mass-shootings are horrific, and having third degree burns on you vagina is horrific as well.   But apparently that was not enough to "sell" the story to the plebes.  And sadly, I read online comments from people who believe the media story and not the real story - because the media story caters to their preconceived notions.

So, the bullied teen wants to believe the Columbine massacre was the result of bullying.  The folks who hate "goth" teens want to believe the "trenchcoat Mafia" story. Fundamentalist Christians want to believe the "targeting Christian teens" story because it fits their narrative of a world of good versus evil.  No one wants to talk about the issues of mental illness or gun control because those are complicated stories that are hard to tell, hard to digest, and hard to solve - if they ever will be solved in our lifetime.

Ditto for the cup-of-coffee case.  Young leftists will use it as an indictment of "The evil corporations, man!" who heartlessly fling hot coffee in the faces of their drive-through customers because you make more money by burning your customers and that's a valid business model.  The rightist will use the same story as an indictment of our legal system and lawyers - illustrating how tort law cases have gone off the rails!  Neither are right, of course.

So the second thing to think about, in addition to "less news" is to read the news without letting your preconceived notions shade your thinking. Try to realize when you are letting your own prejudices influence your perception of the story.  That is the problem today - news outlets cater to left-leaning and right-leaning audiences, and never the 'twain will meet.  As a result, the leftist tends to read stories that slant left, while the rightist looks at a version slanted right.  Both are the same story, just pitched differently.

The media may have an agenda, but then again, so do we.  Granted, it is damn near impossible to avoid projecting one's personal prejudices onto a story.  But it's worth a shot!

Christmas Nightmares

Why do people torture themselves over a holiday?

Christmas has come and gone, and once again, I hear the same old sob stories about how "stressed out" people are over Christmas.  It's enough to make you renounce Christianity.  Well, that and all the other things.

But seriously, it seems every year, people freak out over what is a manufactured holiday.  If you really want to celebrate Christmas, go to a Christmas church service and be done with it.  It is a religious holiday and less important, really, than Easter.  But since it was bootstrapped with the winter solstice holidays of many prior religions, it has become primary - and secularized.

So what sorts of things do people freak out about?  Lurking on the Internet, I see the following scenarios repeated time and time again:

1. Travel Nightmares:  People feel they "have to" travel sometimes thousands of miles, to "see family" for the holiday (and apparently no other time will suffice!).  Of course, since everyone is doing it, and it can be a time of year when weather is nasty, it is a setup for failure.  This year was particularly bad, and yet I know people who refused to make adjustments or cancel their travel plans, even as blizzards buried their "home towns" the were returning to. Many ended up spending Christmas in an airport, motel, hospital or the morgue.  Just a suggestion, but why not spend Christmas at home and see "family" some other time of year when the weather is nicer and there is less of a mob scene?  Radical thought, I know!

2.  Family Issues:  The second largest complaint encompasses all sorts of family issues - and by the way, this encompasses Thanksgiving as well.  You travel to "family" in late November and then, since you are indeed a masochist, do it all again in December.   The well of abuse is not deep enough!  family issues are many.  Mom or Dad is a drunk (BTDT!) or Brother or Sis are drug addicts or insane (ditto) and drama ensues.  Or adult children are forced into separate sleeping arrangements than their fiancee, significant other or even spouse because of Mom and Dad's "religious convictions."  Why would you even bother with such annoying people?

3. Present Tense:  The giving and receiving of presents is a difficult thing to navigate.  In Japan it is considered a high art - and so tricky that Americans are encouraged to just not participate as they will likely embarrass themselves or their host by giving an inappropriate gift.  There are stories galore about people receiving the wrong gift, or the gift is not perceived as appropriate, or worst of all, some crass people make loud noises as to the relative value of "exchanged gifts."  The whole thing is, of course, encouraged by commercial interests.  And the easiest way to deal with it is to simply not deal with it.  Gifts are for the kiddies - toys and trinkets they might enjoy.  But as adults?  Bring a bottle or wine if someone invites you to their home or bring nothing at all.  I can honestly say that getting off the "gift" bandwagon was the greatest gift I could give myself  - and others, too.  So many have told me they were relieved when I said "no more!" to the "gift exchange" as it was one less damn thing they had to do for "Christmas."  Why not cut to the chase and do nothing?

4. Work Issues:  Folks complain they had to work Christmas or the day after - or their requested "leave" is rejected at the last minute - after they made expensive plans!  Others complain when suckered into "Secret Santa" gift exchanges at work, which I believe are usually organized by some busybody in the office who is probably going through the "gifts" and then rearranging them so they end up with the one of most value.  A more recent trend is someone in the office collecting money to buy a gift for the boss (his Ferrari and Yacht are apparently not enough!) and again, I wonder how much of this cash is siphoned-off by the busybody organizing this crap.  Then there is the office party, which is just an awkward nightmare or a way to end your career if you have too much eggnog.   Just say no to "Secret Santa" and office parties. Work is for working, and socializing with your workmates never ends well.

5. Perfect Christmas:  So many folks turn Christmas into an endless list of tasks that, no matter how perfectly performed, will always come up short in their own mind.  The house must be decorated, a tree set up, and presents bought. Cookies and cakes must be made, the perfect Christmas dinner (which takes a whole day to prepare) must be made.  Carols must be sung, Christmas parties attended to, sleigh rides arranged, and the kids must see Santa at the mall!  How anyone could do all this, in this day and age, and still hold down a job is beyond me.  And since no one can physically do all of this stuff and do it "perfectly" there is the inevitable letdown, which can be exasperated by alcohol or mental health issues.  The post-Christmas depression is inevitable.

6. Financial Nightmare:  In January the snow falls, it is cold as hell, and the credit card bills come due.  It can be a real let-down.  Since you are "shopping" at the same time as everyone else, there are few bargains to be had.  And since you "have to" get "home for Christmas" you pay the highest rates for airfare and hotel rooms.  No one in their right mind would intentionally do this, if they sat down and thought about it logically.  Financial ruin and depression set in, post-Christmas.  The brief rush of the holidays are simply not worth the cost.

So what's the alternative?  Well, the best Christmas gift you can give yourself is to get off the Christmas Bandwagon.  It can be done, and worldwide, most people don't celebrate the holiday as we do (but many are sucked into other holidays of their own countries and cultures, with similar results).  You can approach Christmas on your own terms.  You can do your own thing.  There is no need to bankrupt yourself flying to a remote town to see hateful relatives and have an awful time which, at best, is merely boring.  At worst, a nightmare.

So why do people do it?  Why do they intentionally engage in behavior that they know will result in discomfort, confrontation, awkwardness, unnecessary expense, and depression?  It is an interesting question - it seems most people feel obligated to do what society "says" they should do - without questioning why these "traditions" are in place.  Few people have a personality strong enough to question orthodoxy and then act on their own conclusions.  Most people are sheep.

In many cases, these "traditions" are not very old.  Today, many consider "Elf on a Shelf" to be a traditional Christmas thing, and yet it was created from whole cloth only a few years back, by an author who wrote a book (which came packaged with said elf) and on the cover were the words, "A Christmas Tradition."  Frosty the Snowman?  Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer?  Modern Santa?   These are things that have been created within my lifetime, or that of my parents or grandparents.  They don't hark back through the ages - they are relatively modern "traditions."

You can manufacture this crap in wholesale lots.  If you are a musician, you will have perpetual royalties if you cut a Christmas album.  This year, it was "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree" that was in endless rotation ("You Really Must Stay" fell from grace after being accused of being a date-rape song).  "Santa Baby" was a big a few years ago.  Next year, I predict, "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" will rise back to prominence.   Again.

You can create your own traditions - or have none at all.  You can use Christmas as just another day off or a time to catch up on your laundry.  I give you permission.  What I find that makes me happiest is to not have to deal with the stress associated with the holiday. We decide what we want to do, up to and including nothing.

This year, we found 400 feet of lighted garland in the dumpster behind the Club Hotel "Casino" (an archaic term for an exercise and changing room - no gambling involved) and we dragged it all out, fixed the broken strings and put it up along the eaves of the house.  It was a fun way to spend a day and just about all we did in terms of decoration.  No tree this year - last year we put it out on the lawn, sans ornaments.

There are no rules when it comes to Christmas - but many folks seem to think there are.  "You have to.." I hear from folks, about Christmas tasks.  But you don't have to.  You can do whatever you want to.

Sad, but most people don't feel that way about life.  They feel life is just one obligation after another, and that they have no say in the matter.   No wonder so many people suffer from depression!

Stop Trying To Time the Market!

Trying to time the market, without a time machine, will end in tears.

A reader writes asking me if I think whether Tesla would be a "buy" if the P/E ratio went down to 10, which is a more common level among "normal" automakers.   The short answer is, NO. Not just because of that.

It is a question I see being asked online on sites like the aptly named Wallstreetbets - where people gamble away their life's savings and then commiserate with each other.  They cling to slogans which have been proven wrong time and time again. "Buy on the dip!" the ringleaders say - and these ringleaders go out and place an option, betting the price will go up, which it will, because they hyped the stock to their followers.

Don't be a follower.

But why would Tesla be a bad buy at a P/E ratio of 10?  Well, it might not be. It might be.  There is no way of telling based on the reading of this one flight instrument, which itself may be faulty.  If you are going to fly a plane in IFR and look only at one instrument, you will crash.  Sure, airspeed might be useful to prevent you from stalling. But if you ignore altitude, you'll fly into the side of a mountain.  And say, that artificial horizon sure comes in handy as well!

Not only that, but such readings are historical in nature.  We had a few boats and they had depth finders as well as GPS navigation systems.  The depth finder sensor is mounted on the back of the boat and is really handy (as I discovered the hard way) of telling you how deep the water is where you just were.  It doesn't tell you how deep the water is ahead of you, which the GPS can do, provided the maps are accurate and up-to-date.  At 30 MPH, you need to know this in a real hurry, lest you run aground.   Granted, you can sort of project what is happening by monitoring how quickly the depth is decreasing - if so, you may be headed for shallow water.  What does this say about a rapidly decreasing P/E ratio?

Similarly, P/E ratios can't predict the future.  They tell us what the ratio is between stock price and earnings yesterday but not tomorrow.  And a falling P/E ratio may mean the stock is undervalued or that the company is headed for more trouble down the road.  Without a working time machine it is hard to tell the difference.

For example, I recently noted that Ford's P/E ratio was at a very low 9.  I thought, "Maybe I should buy Ford stock!"  Well, since then, the P/E ratio has dropped to about 6 (today 4.5 or so!) which is scary.  What is going on?  Well, I looked this up and a lot of stock analysts think we are headed for a huge recession in 2023 and the "car shortage" that allowed car companies to charge premium prices for vehicles, will evaporate very quickly, as people run out of money to spend on $80,000 pickup trucks.  That, and the cyclical nature of the car business (it seems every 3-5 years, people go nuts buying new cars, and then are satiated for a few years - sales go up and down in a cycle).  That and higher interest rates and inflation are taking their toll on everything from housing to groceries.  Eventually, people will stop spending - but not quite yet!  There are still idiots ordering $12 McDonald's food and paying $18 in delivery fees.  There are still idiots renting AirBnB's and paying $300 cleaning fees.  People are just racking up credit card debt and hoping it all works out somehow.

It takes a long time for behaviors to change - but 2023 may be the year we change our behaviors, at least for a while.

With regard to Tesla, you have to look at the overall picture, not just the P/E ratio. A P/E ratio in the hundreds (or close to 1000 at one point) tells us the stock was overvalued - but doesn't tell us if and when it will go down in value.   Similarly, a ratio below 10 tells us Ford may be undervalued, but doesn't tell us whether it will go up anytime soon or whether something bad is about to happen (like a massive earnings drop next year).

Tesla, in particular, has a number of systemic issues:

1.  Politics:  I have developed the habit of giving the Nazi salute to every Tesla car I see and shouting, "Hey, nice car there, Hitler!" Just kidding, but there is a real blow-back between Musk's politics and sales of Tesla - prices of used Teslas are in free-fall, falling four times faster than any other brand.  I noted before, I saw a man at a Gay campground with a new Ford Mustang Mach-E electric vehicle.  He also put an order in for a Tesla Model Y and a Nissan Leaf, but Ford delivered first (and at $20,000 less than Tesla!).  But the main thing, he said, was he felt he "dodged a bullet" as he felt as a Gay man he would feel awkward driving a Musk-mobile, given how unhinged and far-right Musk has gone.   Given the politics of most EV owners (and how the far-right hates EVs!) how is this going to play out?

There are other reasons the price of used Teslas is dropping, however.  One is flippers - there was a "shortage" and backlog of new cars from Tesla, so many people were getting on the waiting list, buying the cars and then selling them at a profit to people who "had to have one right now."  The same was true with a lot of products that were in short supply during the pandemic.  Graphics cards for computers were in short supply because crypto miners were using them in bulk.  Today, they are a drug on the market,as the cost of mining many cryptos is less than their market value - driving many "miners" out of business.

So it is hard to tell if the used car price drop is due to liberals dumping their Teslas or a sign of success for Tesla as their production reaches an all-time high (still a negligible amount compared to Toyota or GM) and thus reduces the used-car shortage, thus depressing used-car prices.  The same could be said to be true for other used cars, which are falling in value - just not as fast as Tesla!

2. Service Woes: I saw - oddly enough at another Gay campground - some fellows with a very early Model-S (this was a couple of years ago, before Musk went insane) and they said it was holding up well.  I have heard noises that getting parts and service for older Teslas can be tough.  Then again, BMW and Mercedes play this same game - making servicing the cars so expensive that the cost of repair exceeds market value fairly quickly.  You can repair an old Camry because aftermarket parts are dirt-cheap from China - who is willing to tool up to make parts for a car that sells in the millions every year.  But boutique brands?  Often the dealer is the only place to get parts.  So an older 7-series BMW with all its gadgets and toys, goes to the junkyard when it needs a valve job or a transmission repair - and resale value plummets rather quickly.   I think BMW and Mercedes prefer this, as they don't want older ratted-out examples of their cars on the road - it detracts from the cachet of the brand.

So maybe Tesla is going down this same road, if you'll pardon the pun.  I suspect most will be junked by the 15-year mark, particularly if they need a new battery pack. That's about the design life of most cars, anyway.  But if Teslas acquire a reputation as being hard to repair out of warranty, that could also spike resale value.

3. China:  Like GM, Tesla makes the bulk of its money in China, and sales there have gone down to the point where they are slowing down production.  Why sales are slowing is a good question, but I suspect it is because there are other options for Chinese buyers as China has produced a number of EVs at far lower prices than Tesla. Patriotism and Nationalism are taking hold there as well, which I think spells trouble for all "foreign" brands (Ford is probably happy their efforts there never paid off!).  So sales will probably continue to stagnate.  This spells big trouble for Tesla's profit picture.

4. Competition:  For the most part, Tesla had the entire market to itself for a decade (The Model-S was introduced in 2012).  And at first, they were high-end "luxury" cars sold to the rich at high prices.  I noted before we were in Winter Park, Florida many years ago, and out front of a tony restaurant was parked - behind the velvet ropes - a Bugatti, a Bentley, and a Tesla.  Teslas were considered a "high end" luxury car at one time!  But for the EV to succeed, it has to move down-market and other manufacturers are coming out with competitive vehicles at lower prices.  I noted before my friend bought a Mach-E for $40,000 versus $60,000 for a Model-Y.  That's a 50% price difference.

Ford also has a dealership in nearly every town in America - not that they are of much use most of the time, but that beats a network of none.

Worldwide, it seems everyone is jumping on the EV bandwagon - except Toyota, which has not only held back from EVs (and instead sticking with hybrids) but is also the largest lobbying group in Washington against global warming initiatives. I think this will hurt Toyota more than Musk's switch to far-right politics.  But every other automaker has some sort of EV in production or will introduce one in 2023.  It might be enough to dampen enthusiasm for Tesla products.  You had to have a high threshold of pain to own a Tesla - the mass-market doesn't tolerate that.

Not only that, but both Ford and Chevy have introduced EV pickup trucks.  Meanwhile, Tesla's embarrassing "Cybertruck" (who names these things?  A third-grader?  Oh, wait...) is promised next year after next year after next year.  The rest of the product line is aging horribly - and needs a refresh.  Most cars are redesigned every 3-5 years.  Tesla has done a model "refresh" on the S and X models, but usually that sort of thing is done between model overhauls, every 2-3 years.  Tesla's designs are old, and a new bumper strip isn't going to change that.  It screams "we're short of cash" to me.

5. Recession: 2023 is poised to be a recessionary year.  1/3 of the world is already in recession as food prices soar in many countries and most of Europe shivers in the cold due to the energy crises created as a result of Russia's war.  So who's buying expensive EVs during a recession when even regular vehicle sales are slacking off?

6. Musk Stock Sales:  Elon Musk has sold a lot of stock in Tesla to shore up his ill-fated Twitter adventure.  It appears he will have to sell more to keep Twitter afloat as he isn't paying rent on any Twitter facilities, paying severance pay for employees, or even buying toilet paper for the bathrooms.  He is basically saying "fuck you" to every supplier.  He needs $3B a year to keep Twitter afloat.  It was losing $1B a year before he bought it, and in one month he tripled those annual losses.

It also appears that Musk pledged nearly half of his Tesla stock in a loan agreement he used to avoid paying income taxes.  A keen move, if your stock keeps going up in value.  A shitty move if your stock is over-valued.  If the share price falls to a certain level, the banks will call the note and demand sale of the shares to pay back the loan.  This, in turn, could lead to a further drop in share price.

Once again, we witness that share price is based on perception, but also supply and demand.  If you dump a million shares on the market, there may not be enough buyers to buy them.  And it doesn't require a big delta between buyers and sellers.  Even a one percent lack of buyers means share prices would drop ten percent as otherwise those shares would remain unsold.  This is why, if you want to "cash out" of a company, you have to sell in dribs and drabs over time, not in big chunks, all at once, which banks may force Musk to do.

Even then, it always concerns investors when the "founder" (and we use that term loosely!) sells his shares.  What does he know about the future of the company that we don't?

Then toss in a recession - who's buying stocks when they can't feed their family?  A lot of the retail "stonk" investors who were propping up the share price are starting to realize they have been snookered.  Fear not, in a few years a new generation of idiots will decide they can "beat the market" and the whole thing will start over again.

7. EV Saturation:  There is a distinct possibility that while EVs may be a "thing" they are not everything.  It could be that once everyone who wants one has one, demand will drop off dramatically.  And even if sales remain steady, it is possible they may remain a minority of vehicles sales.

In the 1950's each carmaker sold basically one car.  If you wanted a Chevy, you bought the Chevrolet car.  They came in one size and the only difference was body style and trim.  By the mid-1960's, carmakers had at least three sizes of cars to offer - the traditional "full sized car" and the compact and "intermediate" (which was a stretched compact).  So you could buy a Bel Air (full sized) or a Chevy II (compact) or a Chevelle (Intermediate).  The vast majority of sales were still for full-sized cars.

So it is entirely possible that the whole EV thing may be overblown, and while they will still be a "thing" they won't replace IC engine cars at all, and in fact may represent a fraction of the market going forward.  This may be particularly true due to the costs involved.  You can still buy a functional IC car for under $20,000 new (some as low as $15,000) but the cheapest functional EVs start at $30K (although a Chevy Bolt can be had at $25K, if you can find one stripped).

Maybe that explains why Ford's P/E ratio is so low - analysts are skeptical that the ten billion dollar investment in Kentucky EV plants will pay off.  Again, we need a time machine to be sure - and time machine investments are a bad idea all around.

So what does this all mean?  Well, only that there are so many variables surrounding any stock that looking at pricing trends, price, or just P/E ratio (or EPS) isn't enough to divine whether an investment is good, or it is "time" to buy.

Timing investments is impossible to do, as there are people much smarter than you or I who have much more information at their disposal, who will outwit us at every turn.  I am sure there is at least one person at nearly every investment house whose only job is to analyze stocks in the EV market, or indeed, just Tesla.  He isn't the guy you see on television - that's just a guy trying to manipulate share prices.  And right there is why we can 't win at this game.

Buying some dumb boring mutual fund or EFT and just holding onto it might seem like a stupid choice, but when you are investing for the future, you can't afford to be gambling.  And trying to time the market is just gambling.

As I learned the hard way, over the years....

The Technical Problems With Colonizing Mars

The people problems are enough to sink the idea.  The technical problems are staggering.

In a recent posting, I wrote a short story about what would happen if we had a colony on Mars and they had a child from hell.  It is not an absurd proposition - we have crazy people and plenty of them, here on Earth.  All it would take is one malcontent on Mars to destroy the entire colony. On Mars, you could not have 9/11 truthers, incels, proud boys, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers and other delusional people.  No crazy billionaires - or even capitalism!  Even 2nd Amendment nuts and "Free Speech Absolutists" would not qualify, as the environment would be so harsh as to require that everyone follow orders and work like dogs in a military-style dictatorship.  And you have to hope the dictatorship doesn't go off the rails, either - as they tend to do.

No, we are not cut out for Mars.   Maybe that is why robots do so well there.  Maybe our robotic AI descendants will settle there - it is a perfect environment for them, I think.

But this is not to discount the technical problems involved.  And to begin with, we have to define what a "colony" is.  It is some outpost that is constantly resupplied by rockets from Earth, or a self-sufficient closed-loop system that can survive on its own?   Many posit that colonizing Mars is essential to the survival of the human race, as we have screwed up things here on Earth so badly that it is only a matter of time before Putin, Kim Jung-Un, and/or the Iranians start WW3 by throwing a few nukes.

And statistically speaking, they are right.  The probability of a nuclear war starting in any given year is a finite number.  The more nations that acquire nuclear weapons technology, the higher this probability becomes.  But for any finite probability, integrated from 0 to infinity, the probability turns into a one - a certain outcome.  It is a matter not of "if" but "when" someone gets desperate and decides that maybe "a little nuke" won't be so bad.  Perhaps soon - if Putin feels backed into a corner.   Potential successors are just flying out the windows - he realizes his days are numbered anyway.  Why not go out with a bang?

I digress yet again.  But the "people problem" here on Earth is the same "people problem" on Mars.  Could we have a Martian colony with people believing in end times theology?  Or even religion of any sort?  Because when rational people base their decisions on irrational beliefs, all hell breaks loose.  The people problem won't go away by colonizing Mars - even if it was technically feasible.  And it isn't technically feasible.

NASA is making noises that the Chinese are going to colonize the Moon and lay claim to it.  No doubt this is an angle to get additional funding - staring a new "space race" to land on and eventually establish an outpost there.  Note I said an outpost and not a colony.  It would be at least a little more practical to establish an outpost on the Moon, as opposed to Mars, as the cost (and time needed) to hoist supplies out of our gravity well and to the Moon would be far less than the cost of sling-shotting mass to Mars.

But couldn't such a outpost become a colony and become self-sufficient?  Maybe, after hundreds of years and trillions of dollars - trillions of trillions in fact (we need a new big number for this stuff).  I was discussing this with a reader, and tried to illustrate the difficulty of making even one simple thing on Mars (or the Moon for that matter).   I have a background in manufacturing and Engineering, so I understand firsthand all that is needed just to make one simple little thing that would be needed for an extra-planetary colony.  And given the harsh conditions on both the Moon and Mars, there would be a huge need for an awful lot of technology - from lighting for hydroponics, to power plants, to plumbing, to recycling, and so on and so forth.  We would be 100% dependent on our technology at all times.  It is not like Earth, where you can just camp out under the stars on occasion, and the air and water are free - and you can just shit in the woods.

To be a truly self-sufficient "colony" they would have to make everything locally as the cost of shipping would be outrageous and the colony would have nothing to export to Earth to offset the costs (unlike the American colonies or any other Earthbound colony in history).

Think of something simple - electrical wire. You'd need it to run the hydroponics, LED lighting, pumps, fans, and other equipment needed to insure survival.

Simple copper wire. You have to find copper ore first - does that exist on Mars? Our liquid core and huge moon mean we have tectonic plates and volcanic action - which tends to concentrate certain materials in a density enough to make them worth mining. Mars? I am not so sure.

But assuming you find copper ore - you have to dig it out, smash it up and then refine it, which requires a lot of water. Then you have to smelt it, which requires a lot of heat and precious oxygen. Oh, and all the machinery to do this - imported from Earth? Or do you make steel first and then build machines to mine and refined copper?

Once you have copper ingots, you have to use a wire-drawing machine to make the wire - and then a braiding machine if you want braided wire. Then there is insulation - usually rubber (which I guess you could get from a rubber plant) or plastic (using soybeans, which they do on Earth today, which is why mice eat the wiring harness on your car). Lots more hydroponics to grow those plants! Hundreds of acres, just to support a few people.  All underground.  Start digging!

That's just wire. Now add in all the other things you'd need. Those LED lights - semiconductors? Better get some silica, melt it down and "draw" a crystal, slice it into thin sheets, etch and sputter it into a workable chip and then cut it up.  Where do you get the machinery and electricity to do all of this?  You could also make solar panels this way, too, I suppose. Storing power - I wonder if there is lithium on Mars?  I hope so - otherwise your solar energy is of little use. And importing heavy lithium-ion batteries from Earth would be prohibitive.

What about simple things like lime? Need that to make cement, and we get it from limestone which is fossilized seashells. No life on Mars, no seashells, no limestone, no lime.  Maybe no cement?

And no oil. So no plastics, unless you could grow a LOT of soybeans. Even then, we'd need a vast manufacturing plant to make various rubbers and plastics. Polycarbonates for space suit helmets? Good luck with that. Cotton for clothing? It could be done - but it becomes clear that the colony would need thousands of acres of agriculture, all underground, to avoid the searing radiation. Keep digging!

Some argue that robots could be sent to Mars to start building infrastructure for a colony. Some people have made nice videos about this - and about as real as "rotating skyscrapers" or "the air powered car". They claim that martian soil could be "3-D printed" by robots to build underground lairs. I am not sure how that would work, but even assuming they could do that, creating all the manufactured goods needed to survive would be challenging. In order to 3-D print something, you need raw materials to print with.  Well, that, and a 3-D printer.

Don't get me started on forging steel, hardening furnaces, making ball bearings - or any process that produces noxious fumes, such as plastics, fiberglass, adhesives, paints.  That would all have to be done in an isolated manufacturing area, because once you have solvents in the air, they would be damn hard to get rid of - sort of like when someone farts on the ISS (can you imagine the smell there - or on any spaceship?).

And then there are the biggies, such as a power plant.  With enough energy you can do almost anything, and a "Mars Colony" would require staggering amounts of power.  In what form?  An array of solar panels is appealing - but you'd also need battery storage.  Importing these from Earth would be staggeringly expensive.  You'd have to set up production on Mars and hope the raw materials are available and can be refined.  Nuclear power is the only other option, but requires a lot of cooling water (I suppose a liquid sodium reactor could work) but again, a heavy and bulky thing to transport to another planet.   There are no easy answers.

So how did we do this on Earth?  Well, our technology took millennia to develop.  We had a stone age, a bronze age, and and iron age.  In each instance, small industries sprung up that lead to larger and larger industries.  The big projects we have today could not have started from scratch with one guy, some iron ore, and a hot fire.  It certainly helped that on Earth, oxygen and water were freely available, and as I noted, highly concentrated ores were relatively easy to find.

To set this up on Mars could be done but at a staggering expense.  And we've already seen, in the past, how people get fed up with space exploration when the bills come due.  "If they can put a man on the Moon," they used to say, "Why can't they feed the homeless?" - or whatever other need here on Earth is perceived as more important.  Now take the moon program and multiply the costs by a trillion, factoring in inflation as well, and you've got an idea of the cost of "colonizing" Mars to be self-sufficient.  Taxpayers would revolt.

The people problem - again!  People on Earth would see little benefit to them directly from a Mars colony.  They might not see the benefit to overall mankind.  In fact, there may not be a benefit to mankind, in the long run, if such a colony doesn't "take hold" and become self-sufficient.  Even then, the only benefit is to the colonists, other than some abstract benefit of "survival of the species" which posits that we will destroy the only planet really suitable for colonization - Earth.  What's to say the same won't eventually happen to Mars?

It isn't as simple as just getting there. You can build a rocket to Mars tomorrow, but a colony could take hundreds of years, thousands of rockets and a lot of effort to become self-sufficient. It would be easier to colonize the Moon, or at least establish an outpost there.

Really, even visiting Mars has little real practical or scientific value.  To do so, would mean supplying a team for at least two years (the cycle between conjunction and opposition) and require a heroic amount of materials and supplies, not only for the months-long journey, but the two-year stay.  And what could "boots on the ground" accomplish better than another unmanned rover or probe - in terms of scientific exploration?

People say "Oh, Mars has water!" - as if that solves the problem. A pitiful amount of water, sadly. Our huge oceans are another thing that made life possible on Earth (until we kill off all the algae and plankton, that is).  And no, "terraforming" is not a thing, Without that magnetosphere, any attempt to create an atmosphere (how?) on Mars would be futile.  Where do you think Mars' original atmosphere went?  It didn't help that they have a much lower gravity there as well.

I think, like the moon, at best we might send some people there, but they will come back. It will be a stunt. Colonizing the Moon may be more immediate, and even then, not a self-sufficient colony, but one supplied daily from Earth at great expense. And the only reason we will do it, is to make sure the Chinese don't do it first..... which they might do!

Hmmmm..... Maybe we should let the Chinese bankrupt themselves colonizing the moon.  Or maybe the whole paranoia NASA is creating of "Chinese Hordes" taking over the Moon is just as much bullshit as the prospect of a Chinese aircraft carrier fleet (they have two, one a used Russian carrier that they finished, and a copy of that they made themselves.  Both diesel powered.  We have 11 - nuclear powered).   Maybe we are over-estimating China's capabilities?  I mean, it is a large country, but they have a lot of catching up to do.

I would love to be proven wrong about this, but right now, a Mars colony is wishful thinking and nothing else.  And I doubt the guy who is running Twitter into the ground is going to get us there.

Partying For Charity (and Status)

If you are wealthy, you can afford to give to charity - and have a good time of it, too.

We get these upscale magazines from rich people's island (they have stacks of them at the hotels) and it is interesting the vibe they give off.  There are plenty of ads for the soap-and-candle shops, as well as the high end clothing boutiques that show incredibly skinny (and apparently pissed-off) women in slinky gowns.  No one actually looks like that, of course.

But what is interesting is that the articles deal mainly with the various charitable fundraisers they are constantly having for one cause or another.  In the back are "mugshots" of people awkwardly standing at an event, holding a cocktail and pretending to have fun (or, after several cocktails, actually having fun).  And yes, Mark and I have appeared on these pages on one or two occasions.

But as I read the latest issue of the magazine, I could not help but think that something was off.  I could not put my finger on it, but it was there.  Go on the 5K "fun run" to raise awareness for our local hospital!  Collect shoes for the poor in West Virginia!  Attend a fundraising dinner and eat and drink your way to saving the planet!  It struck me that this was a fun hobby for people with a lot of money and a lot of time on their hands.  It was not something the poors can do - although they will trot out a "poor" at some event to show where the money is going.

And yes, we do this sort of thing too, by volunteering at the gallery.  My contributions are a little more basic, though, such as vacuuming up little old lady poop when the toilet clogged and flooded the basement.  I could think of better ways to spend Christmas eve.

I pointed this out to Mark and he said it was a Southern thing - doing whatever for a noble cause.  Maybe it is tied to religion, I don't know.  I realize these people mean well, but of course, while they are willing to collect shoes for the poor, they are the same people who will vote down expanding Medicaid for the poor, or decry raising taxes to pay for Social Security or Medicare or Food Stamps (SNAP).

Say, that's an idea! The government could make these various entitlement programs a lot more palatable to the rich if they held a reception or event to sponsor it.  "Come to the SNAP reception - honoring our donors who have contributed so much of their tax dollars to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program! We'll have an actual poor on display for you to meet and talk to, and of course, take a selfie!  Be part of our adopt-a-poor program!  Learn firsthand how your SNAP dollars are going to help some young child get good nutrition, do well in school, and be less likely to carjack you when they get older!"

Or how about the "Social Security 5K Fun Run! Come get some exercise or just have fun! Wacky costume contest, too!  All proceeds go to funding Grandma's Social Security!  We'll have an actual old person there for you to meet and talk to!  Do good for society and have fun at the same time!  Be there!"

It just might work. And hey, maybe the Pentagon could do the same thing, too. Cruise Missile Fundraiser.   Maybe people would bitch less about taxes if we gave them a banquet of rubber chicken and cheap white wine once in a while.  Of course, you have to have a photographer there to capture everyone's picture for the magazine!

OK, start the flames and the "how dare you!" shaming. I'm a bad boy.  Or am I?  Because when a person makes a big show out of giving to charity, maybe there is more at stake than merely giving to charity - there is something in it for the person donating.  There is something in the Bible about that.  Of course, there is something in the Bible about everything - it is, as some wags have noted, the world's greatest multiple choice question.

I noted before when Mark worked at the lighthouse, there was a big deal about the "wall of donors" and the annual dinner they had for them.  My parents liked to go to the symphony and wanted their name in the program under "donors" and a plaque with their name on it, on their favorite seats.  I had friends who bankrupted themselves donating to a church so their name was on a plaque beneath a stained glass window they paid for.  Yes, status rears its ugly head once again.

Real philanthropy should be anonymous - the donor gets nothing out of it other than the satisfaction of giving.  But that's no fun at all.  And maybe that is why people bitch and moan about paying taxes (which is not voluntary and not directed by the donor) while at the same time they love to participate in a charity event.  Not only do they get to pick the charity, they get street cred for being a decent human being.

The next day, they can go to work at the payday loan company they own, knowing they spent the weekend raising money to help the poor.