Some financial commentators are suggesting that the hit to the economy from the new tariffs will push the Fed to lower interest rates, but I don’t see it. The tariffs will push up prices, so the Fed will feel it needs to stick with higher rates for longer.
The result will be exactly as I forecast months ago: the coming stagflation.
Some months ago my elbow started hurting. (The little bump on the inside of my elbow joint was where it hurt.) I don’t think it was a sword-fighting injury; I think it was a dog-walking injury—but the sword fighting seemed to aggravate it.
So I did less sword fighting. I switched from three times a week to just twice, and then just once, and then I quit going altogether. Then last week I traveled to Amherst to visit my brother and my mom, and just about didn’t exercise at all while I was on that trip. My elbow got steadily better, so that for about a week now, it hasn’t hurt at all.
So yesterday I went back for a sword-fighting class!
The class was kind of abbreviated. At the beginning of class we did a bearpit for a member’s birthday, so I got to do three passes at longsword. Then we did an actual class on rapier fencing. Then we were going to switch to longsword, but there was a tornado warning, and we all stopped to stare at our phones, looking at weather radar and texts with friends and relations in the area, making sure we were all okay.
Turns out that’s just a well. My elbow seemed to hold up fine during class, but today it’s a bit twingey again, so I’m glad I didn’t aggravate it more.
This pretty clearly means I’m not ready to go back to three-times-a-week training, but maybe it doesn’t rule out once-a-week training.
I’ll see how my elbow feels over the next few days.
“total abortion bans come at the cost of more than 36,000 residents per quarter.”
Source: Are People Fleeing States with Abortion Bans? | NBER (Link to page that links to the pdf of the study.)
Via Emily Peck, via Slate Money.
It’s warm enough that Ashley’s place in the sun is almost entirely in the shade.
Daffodils and squills! The squills were my idea, but Jackie did most of the work in our little flower garden, except that the lilies, which won’t bloom for another couple of months, were left by the previous member.
“… food delivery giant DoorDash announced a deal Thursday with buy-now, pay-later outfit Klarna, offering hungry consumers “the added convenience of Klarna’s seamlessly integrated, flexible payment options while shopping.”
Source: Almost Daily Grant’s Commentary
Of course. Who doesn’t think it’s a good idea to spread the cost of your lunch over a few weeks or months?
Outside a Chinese restaurant near the Big Y, a big ol’ flock of (I think) Black Vultures. (Not Turkey Vultures, which are the only kind I can recognize.)
The first crocus, the first squill, and the soon-to-be first dafodills.
Ashley likes nothing better than tussling with another dog. In this case, with Roxie.
I’d like an app that could take my various social media feeds, the RSS feeds I used to follow (until my feed reader broke), and the various news sources that I subscribe to, and find all the articles that I really want to read, and present them to me in a useful order.
Of course it needs to do a lot more than that. It should watch me read them, pay attention to which posts I linger on, which ones I follow internal links in, etc., and try to learn what I actually want to read. (And then give me more of that stuff in the future.)
It would also be nice if it noticed when I read something by a new person I don’t follow (because it was boosted by someone I do follow), and consider following that person as well.
And by “in a useful order,” I mean the AI should understand which articles are full of background information versus covering the latest breaking news, and present the background information first—unless it’s background information that I already know. In that latter case, it should just offer a link to the background information, in case I feel like I need a refresher. It should also present the information grouped by topic (so, news first, then economics/business news, then science news, then the very narrow sorts of cultural news that I want to read).
