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In this post: the Madoff documentary, Elon finally dials it back, and two nutjob comics shout at one another.





A few pics from holiday travel.





This post is kind of hefty, so let's start with a couple of adorable pics from the zoo.





A few of the world/economic news storylines that I've been following seem to have intertwined. Or at least the twines are quite close to each other.





Video games, wood preservation, PC hardware, and a quick trip to Las Vegas. Read on.





In this post:





It's been a busy week for F5 keys across the country. Monday morning greeted me with this:





After fourteen years of service, my Hayward 0.75 hp pump died. It wasn't an especially dramatic malfunction - the pump would pull water slowly but then trip the heat switch. It may be a repairable problem (e.g. seals) but I decided to go nuclear. I was concerned that the pump was fine but my intake lines were leaking, causing the pump to suck mostly air. With no small effort, I ran a separate pipe directly to the pool to all-but-confirm that it was the pump that needed replacing.





Whether or not covid is truly in our rearview, everything has returned to the pre-2020 norm (more or less).





The plan for this month to rave about Horizon: Forbidden West and Elden Ring. The Ukraine crisis was an ominous but interesting situation three weeks ago. Sadly, now people are fighting for their country and seeking refuge and having their lives destroyed by a pointless invasion.





Here we are on day whatever of this eastern Europe thing. It's kind of interesting though, here's what I'll talk about:





Is this yet another reason to go cash/oil gang? The Ukraine saga has taken a few interesting turns since last time.





This one is all about plateaus and precipices. And other things.
...
I remember this came up during that Maria Butina thing. And bringing it back to current events:





Changing the calendar number from 2021 to 2022 means there's data to be analyzed.





I know what you're saying, "cool portmanteau". Thanks. Time for another installment of the covid saga. We're getting a little more clarity on Omicron; more transmissible, maybe less severe (to vaccinated people?), the cause of a measurable bump in cases and professional sports cancellations.





Huh, no posts about covid in months.





I tried to think of a better title - I really did. It's bad now, but in a couple years I'm going to say, "A portmanteau *and* that word we no longer use, spluh". But, like, that's what it was. Memorial Day weekend and then the memening of GME, AMC, and BB. There's no other way to describe it. I'm sorry but I will not apologize.





The WSB v. hedgie class war briefly took a back seat last week as an unrelated institutional investor caused Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to do a Margin Call LARP.










Failing miserably is something that everyone does from time to time. They either obsess over it or pretend to grow from it while quietly obsessing over it. Sometimes the fails aren't of the "I did the right thing and didn't succeed" flavor but more of the "I know better but still did it" flavor. The beginning of February has been pretty faily in kilroysville, but I see it as an opportunity to grow.





Wednesday saw GME go mainstream after being largely contained in Reddit, financial news, and specific social media streams. The latter half of the week was all about the "retail traders who took on Wall Street". Chief among them is DFV himself:





On Friday, Gamestop had rocketed to the 70s and closed the week more modestly. I decided to fomo in; if the millennial traders were going to yeet the rich, I had better join them in case I end up against the wall some day.





Today in the Financial Times of Kilroy: what the heck happened on Friday and what's going to happen Monday?





The last two weeks have been... strange. Since the controversial stuff seems to have finally burned out, I'll do what I can to recap the lunacy and the memes. For posterity.





Vanity Fair is running an article about the perverse and dichotomous laissez-faire economics dealing with government contractors. Specifically, they take an accounting of the relationship between SAIC and the federal government as it influences the readers' moral center and income tax statement.





Back when the Cedar Fire happened, Rob and I went to scope out the scene.