Consumer Prices have just been released by Labor. And it’s not surprising to see claims of lower prices – from an incumbent administration just before an election, right?
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis, the same increase as in August and July, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 2.4 percent before seasonal adjustment.
The index for shelter rose 0.2 percent in September, and the index for food increased 0.4 percent. Together, these two indexes contributed over 75 percent of the monthly all items increase. The food at home index increased 0.4 percent in September and the food away from home index rose 0.3 percent over the month. The energy index fell 1.9 percent over the month, after declining 0.8 percent the preceding month.
We are aghast at the numbers, but that’s the claim. All Items, less food and energy ws up 3.3 percent, so again, Fed lied about “2 percent target.” Obviously.
Unemployment Numbers are also just updated for the week.
And on a states with big changes reported, we see:
Fed Balance Sheet coming this afternoon. (Who has time to read confessionals, though, right?)
After data, stock futures were down, but just a bit. “The Illusion has Survived! Let’s rally this Pig!”
Milton Came…
…and Milton went.
For the conspiracy minded, the passing of Milton is very significant. Because IF you believe that weather warfare has been involved, and IF you believe that the emergent drought over CONUS was because of atmospheric heaters used to pump up high pressure and push the low pressure onto a desired track, then with the passing of Milton ain’t it peculiar (for example) that suddenly overnight, three days of rain popped up in our drought-impacted weather outlooks in this part of Texas?
Yeah…from non-stop heat and dry, we now show showers due the 20th through 22nd. Just the kind of thing that would be consistent with turning off scalar atmospheric heaters and dialing back the chemtrails. Oh, but you’d have to be crazy to believe that kind of thing, right?
Meanwhile, open air baseball may be ahead: Roof ripped off Tampa Bay baseball stadium as Hurricane Milton tears through Florida – LBC. And the mess is going to drag out for months as More than 3 million without power as Hurricane Milton slams Florida, causes deaths and flooding.
We made several calls to G.A. Stewart this morning, but no answer so far, though with power down, cell towers won’t last usually more than a day or two. If that.
Meanwhile, we have been waiting to see how the (liberal) press will attempt to play “Pin the Hurricane on the Orange Man”. Sadly we didn’t have long to wait as North Carolina Man Blames Trump For Hurricane Misinformation (mediaite.com). All this hype off one (unverified) caller into XM/Sirius talk? Leverage, buddy, it’s all about leverage…and working the hate. For clicks.
But the left leaning media are running stories along the same line: The MAGA Maniacs Are Going All In on Deranged Hurricane Conspiracies | The Nation.
For now, it MUST be purely a coincidence that MJTruthUltra on X: “There it is folks… Hurricane Helene was about cheating in the Election ? The North Carolina Board of Elections Changed the Voting Rules in the Counties Affected by the Hurricane 10 Days before Early Voting Starts ? RULE CHANGES • Easier access to Absentee Ballots.
Now let’s hear from “Wrong Way Tim.” Walz Dismisses Swing State Voters By Opposing Electoral College (thefederalist.com). Say, rum for breakfast is looking pretty good, today.
And in the “vote early and vote often” folder: Texas AG Ken Paxton, secretary of state clash over handling potential non-citizens on voter rolls.
War and PR Shaping
OK, we all know that the Israeli cabinet will vote today (coming up on night there, shortly) on how to hit back at Iran for lobbing missiles into Israel. Which means that there will likely be something happen tonight or this weekend.
But what’s interesting is the media steering (thought control) at work in background. Take for example CBS News staff told not to refer to Jerusalem as being in Israel: Report. Huh?
The foregone conclusion is that after Biden and Netanyahu speak, Israel vows lethal retaliation against Iran, tonight or tomorrow night should be a good bet. We wonder how Biden will play it IF Israel skips bombing Kharg Island and goes right to a nuclear bunker buster because they likely have enough material already for 2-4 low enrichment (heavy, but flyable if you have a transport plane) bombs to use in return…
On the Street Beat
Do you trust the Courts? Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ Lawyers Accuse Government of Leaking 2016 Cassie Video to ‘Savage’ His Reputation Before Trial. Well, yeah, trust in the Courts and federal prosecutors could maybe do with some time in the shop.
Apple and Amazon are hooking up – Apple TV Plus is coming to Prime Video – $10 bucks a month for those who can’t stop spending.
Permanent bloatware? Maybe not, but…Microsoft seemingly makes deleting 8.63GB impossible after Windows 11 24H2 update – Neowin. Not an issue here, being on geezerly reprobate 23H2.
Ciggies are still killing people – since American smoke companies went offshore to hook people outside America: The Lancet Public Health: Accelerating action to eliminate tobacco use could help increase life expectancy and prevent millions of premature deaths by 2050, modelling study suggests | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (healthdata.org). So, the country that funded COVID, invented nuclear weapons, overthrew an elected government in Ukraine, and spies on its own citizens would let American domiciled corporations kill people overseas? Why sure, WTF not? Same folks that rolled out of smokes and into foods and hooked America up on dangerous levels of carbohydrates…you betcha!!! Whee!
(pause for a blood pressure break)
One more “recreational screwing of taxpayers” for you? How about Exclusive | NYC seeking 14,000 hotel rooms to shelter migrants through 2025 Sheesh. If we migrate from Texas, maybe?
Around the Ranch: Measuring Work
It was 4 AM when I rolled out today; unable to sleep there are just too many thins to do. Which is fine when you’re 50 or even 60. but isn’t “work fever” supposed to break in your 70s somewhere?
Fired up (on Brisqi) the Master Project List (MPL) kanban board reminded me that even if I put down the keyboard, there remains about 4 solid months of “things I want done.”
Son G2 and I were talking about it the other day. He reminded me there are two kinds of people in the world in his experience: the transactional people and the emotional people. So today’s “research question of the day” was “How does this relate to work output?”
A reread of a few pages of Cal Newport’s book “Slow Productivity“ brought things into focus. Seems there are – in work studies – people who simply generalize their mission and those who quantify and measure while “on mission.”
And this leads to an interesting inspection of self. Because A.I. then explained that in my line of work (nominal work, anyway)…
“A professional writer typically aims to write between 10,000 and 20,000 words per week, depending on their genre, writing style, and publication deadlines, with some writers potentially producing even more depending on their workload and writing pace.”
Writing is like playing a musical instrument; to be any good at it, you need to practice. So I ran a self audit today to see how many words have been cranked out in the past seven days, measuring Thursday to Thursday because it has been a typical week.
- Last Thursday 1,855
- Friday 1,384
- Saturday 2,210
- Sunday 2,483
- Monday 2,071
- Tuesday 2,132
- Wednesday 5,127
The total number of words (mind you, this does not count any office/website overhead or emails – like reading comments to approve them and such – comes to 17,262 words. 897,624 words per year or about 15 novels of 60,000 words (roughly) each. Been working at this rate for 25 years now. Although, I don’t have the 89-novels and 14 short stories that Louis L’Amour produced in his writing career. I specialized in “disposable words” (a bad decision on my part!) based on highly perishable “news” content.
With this, we get to the first point of this: People ask me, now and again, “How do I become a writer?” Well, the simple answer is “Write! Write lots!”
But I wanted to circle-back to G2’s observation (transactional versus emotional people) because it ties in with Newport.
Transactional people are (more or less) naturally inclined toward self-measurement systems. The other sort – emotional people – do all kinds of screwy things because they don’t measure themselves well -if at all.
What’s more, Newport explains in his book words to the effect that “successful companies often simply have more productive people than their competition. It also follows that measurement is STILL one of the main functions of Management. Which includes self-management.
What’s changing in America – and it’s been slow, but very damaging – is the slow slide from critical, measurable work to a new realms of emotional soft work. DEI, SJW causes and the “reinvention of (reverse) racism” into the corporate world is to my view quite specific evidence that people have lost their ability to self-manage — because they no longer can count.
Well, obviously, if you can’t count – or in many employment settings, you have no idea what your metrics of success are (that is, the required activities for success) then guess what? Success will be elusive.
No matter how busy you are.
First CEO I worked for directly, fellow named Brock, ground this into me. “Make your list, do your list, without stopping, hesitation, or second thought.”
As a direct result of this experience, it was easy for me to slide into my “corporate troubleshooter” role at the time. If someone wasn’t making their numbers, a hard-nosed numerical approach to their planning process always found the problem.
Because if you aren’t getting a task done, it’s because you either don’t know the required sub tasks (or the right order) to get the task done and off the list successfully (which means with good metrics).
America, sadly, has become the Land of Innumeracy. Because Numercy – the skill to work with numbers – includes:
- Mathematical operations: Understanding basic arithmetic operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division
- Data interpretation: Being able to interpret data, charts, and diagrams
- Problem solving: Being able to solve problems and check answers
- Logical thinking: Being able to make decisions based on logical thinking and reasoning
- Spatial information: Understanding shape and space, measuring time, weight, height, or amounts, and determining location and direction
The emotional train wrecks spew forth that math is racist. But the data don’t support that. The data, however, escapes people, who are too lazy to use the tools at hand. Math. Counting.
Remember above all, “What gets measured gets done.” In a world where “Everything’s a Business Model” doing is what matters.
Oh, and pass on to your children and the grand kids: Don’t waste your time with “perishable work.” That’s what Content Creation largely is, anymore. Because doing so runs counter to the concept of durability I laid out in my book “The 100-Year Toaster.”
Write when you get rich,
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