monadnocks

Even something as basic as aluminum has already had pricing go up substantially over a year and I expect it to soar even more. Intellectually, it's going to be very interesting watching this all play out. As a consumer, it's going to change some things. As an investor, I wish I had more time to really inhale all the data and analysis.

Last winter we bought a Bolt (yes, the halt and catch fire car). This fall, with no indication that energy prices would be any weirder than they were then, I locked electricity rates in for three years. At the moment, we're trying to try drive it most of the time. The whole solar panel idea is also good but not sure given our location if it would be truly useful in terms of generation, never mind ROI.

That works too. Putin's history, the history of being overrun., etc.

SANS webcast on Ukraine and cybersecurity: Realistically, looking for lack of traffic from notable cybersecurity firms / people might be a better indicator of how bad it might be. There's a lot of vulnerabilities out there. Anyone remember the Bangladesh and SWIFT hack? It's not just the financial sector either. There's a ton of issues in other sectors.

Money. Ukraine has resources Russia wants: Black Sea resources, factories, rail lines, transportation systems, agricultural commodities. And history. And the fact that Putin's beyond terrible.

Works for me.

It's -4 already here. -2 is the predicted low. heat goes brrrrr

I'm still in an online meeting. Drinking sounds like a good option.

There are still events that will be re-scheduled: school games, for instance.

I hadn't realized that he had passed away until I read your post. I don't know much of what he's taught but the little I do resonates.

I'm so sorry. It's unbelievably difficult to go through. If you can try to take care of yourself too.

Yes! I am looking forward to fall, even though it's going to bring a lot more work and stress.

I can safely say that we got torrential rain tonight. It’ll be interesting tomorrow to see the extent of the erosion, etc.

I was at Costco today along with what felt like half of New England. I'd say about 90% of the people were wearing masks. And given the wide range of people - elderly man slowly making his way through the bakery all the way down to the couple with their two very young children - I'd hazard a guess that at least some people there either were ineligible for vaccines or had immune systems that weren't in the best of shape. (Or had family members with the same constraints and were trying not to bring home something besides beer and burgers.) Remember going to large conferences and expecting to get Con Crud? Either from the plane, the dry air, the crazy hours and bad food or just being mashed in with 25K people? Maybe it won't be so prevalent if there's some basic hygiene like hand washing and limiting the number of people completely mashed into a space. I'm looking at you DefCon in 2019 - minimum of ten minute waits to ride the freight elevator because the regular elevators were so overloaded. Or my last robotics conference where one of the ballroom talks was so full that people were literally sitting on the floor so that they could hear it.

Small world! My parents used to live on Plumtree Road in Springfield. Their neighbors called to tell them about the tornado coming; they had seen it from their attic windows. My old high school got hit that day. That neighborhood (north side of Plumtree Rd.) definitely took some damage. Luckily my folks were OK and stayed with my sister for a while. I think their power was out? The house was fine, thank goodness.

Unlike many of you.. I never met James in person. And in one of those strange Internet ways, I do feel like I knew him in some ways. As so many said, his energy and positivity for so many things was such a hallmark. Even though many of James' blockbuster storms never came to pass, I did read his posts, cheering him on, hoping that he'd get the snowbanks he wished for. Rest is peace, James.

On Friday I was driving through upstate New York and it was pretty toasty. The car thermometer read 91-94 for pretty much until we got close to Albany. As a northern New Englander, I'm completely OK with the Memorial Day weekend forecast. It'll be terrific for doing hours of work in the garden.

One of our local towns is having town meeting outside, Saturday at 9 AM. Want to bet it goes quickly?

Thanks! I’ll take a look in the morning.

Thinking about industrial metals tonight. I don't know much about that sector so just learning. Brief Google search for ETFs doesn't seem to have a lot of promise. DBB holds a lot of an Invesco mutual fund - AGPXX - and a fair amount of treasuries. JJT did well but the structure isn't one that I feel like I have a good handle on predicting its future success plus its focusing on just tin. What's a good way to get some exposure to this sector? Any ideas?

We've got thunder now.

We have a light coating of snow with a mix of rain and flakes at 33.5.

Thinking about a June road trip to the mountains of Wyoming. Maybe there will be snow there...

I also got the Pfizer vaccine on Wednesday. Like others, my arm hurt but not too much. I did have two days of less than 100% but I also didn't slow down either. I felt worse with the shingles vaccine.

Agreeing the response by @Whineminster here. It does seem like this is a trend to make money capitalizing on publicity. A brief search of "reddit.com ARKX" yields a fair amount of interest there. I wonder if this will effectively be a meme ETF? I'm not interested in playing the momentum game now so I'll bail on it. I do believe that there's room for space-focused active management funds to do well. And thanks for the information.