Truth be told?  I must have been the guy in the back alley behind a diner in the thirties who ran the floating craps game.

This week sets up like the classic “could go either way.”  As I showed you Friday, we’d get to the resolution of a bounce in our state-variance extremes modeling – and by, oh, maybe noon tomorrow? – we should be there.

As you can see (red dashed line bottom and dashed green overhead) we COULD break higher, but it won’t be clear for a little while.  The blue-dashed line shows where a downturn was averted last week. A rally at the close today?  Bets down?

We’ll be watching The Economic Fractalist’s site later this week.  (He doesn’t write or post obsessively.) Hopefully he will find something a little more up-tempo than Chet Atkins, though!

If you like to write your own version of what markets should do, guess that would be like Picking Your own Poisson – as in distribution! Which reminds us that rare events don’t “owe” you anything.

Forgot school?  Poisson models how often a specific event happens in a fixed stretch of time or trials when the average rate is known and events occur independently — like how many times a roulette wheel might land on a single number over many spins.

The key takeaway: outcomes cluster randomly. You can get streaks, droughts, or back-to-back hits purely by chance, even when the true odds never change. A long dry spell does not increase the probability of the next hit —  the process has no memory. The only thing that matters is the underlying rate (?), not how “due” something feels.

Sometimes you get “runs.” Other times, you get run over!

CFNAI Reading

While we await TTT (Trump Tariffs Three) it’s entertaining to see what the Chicago Fed is tracking in its National Activity Indicator:

“The Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) increased to +0.18 in January from –0.21 in December. All four broad categories of indicators used to construct the index increased from December, and two categories made positive contributions in January. The index’s three-month moving average, CFNAI-MA3, increased to –0.06 in January from –0.29 in December.

The CFNAI Diffusion Index, which is also a three-month moving average, increased to –0.06 in January from –0.36 in December. Forty-seven of the 85 individual indicators made positive contributions to the CFNAI in January, while 38 made negative contributions. Fifty-seven indicators improved from December to January, while 28 indicators deteriorated. Of the indicators that improved, 20 made negative contributions.”

The BIG inflation reality will be underscored in tomorrow’s Housing data (Case-Shiller, S&P, CoreLogic, and a pizza guy – PR folks gotta get all the players named).

For now, TEF’s fractal call looks good with the Dow futures down more than 200.

MexRev: Leadership Failure Pending?

Here’s the latest flare-up we’ve been anticipating on the Peoplenomics side for literally years now:

Could the P.V., Jalisco violence spill over into the U.S. in coming weeks?  You bet.  The successor isn’t clear and the messaging in gangland wars can be particularly brutal.  And the Capos may try to clean house up north – meaning possible spillover into Los Estados Unidos.

Already, Glen Beck is credited by one reader with proposing the US Congress issue Letter of Marque to prevent things from getting out of hand.  We were very disappointed (but somehow not surprised) to read how it feels the U.N. is inserting themselves: UN Chief Warns of Deliberate Pushback Against Human Rights.  We admire the “turn the other cheek” notions, but we wryly notice that it’s usually not the cheeks of the promoter of pacifism that get slapped.

Sometimes, lines harden and wars happen. Cheek-turning hasn’t worked in Ukraine or the whole of the Middle East, near as we can figure.  There’s a historical rhyme to the weekend violence.

Gangland wars happen when economic uncertainty is in the air.  Right now, you can cut it with a knife.

Let’s Zoom-Out and Flash Back

What made Al Capone dangerous wasn’t just violence — it was parallel governance. Capone was jailed in 1933. Not the same as the weekend in P.V./Jalisco, but there’s a rhyme here.

In Depression-era Chicago, organized crime didn’t simply sell booze; it provided jobs, credit, food baskets, and “protection” in neighborhoods where formal institutions were weak or distrusted. When the economy cracked, legitimacy fractured with it. Capone’s genius was understanding that if you control distribution — alcohol then, narcotics now — and you redistribute a slice locally, you become less a criminal in the eyes of some and more a shadow mayor. That dynamic thrives wherever economic stress outruns lawful opportunity.

Modern cartel structures in places like Jalisco (and more generally Mexico) operate with a similar template. Beyond trafficking, they fund festivals, hand out aid after storms, sponsor local projects, and embed themselves socially. The result is a blurred line between outlaw and provider. When formal government feels distant or ineffective, the group that delivers work and security — even coercive security — can build a base of reluctant loyalty. The public narrative shifts from “criminal” to “necessary evil,” especially in regions where poverty and limited state capacity create fertile ground.

History’s rhyme isn’t about romance; it’s about vacuum. When uncertainty rises, parallel systems fill the gap. Capone rose in a moment when Prohibition created massive black-market profit and the Depression hollowed out trust. Today’s drug lords operate in a globalized version of that same incentive structure: high margins, weak enforcement seams, and communities looking for stability wherever they can find it. The personalities differ, the commodities differ — but the economic physics look uncomfortably familiar.

AION (and, in other news)

Weather in East Texas continues dry and unusually warm.  Seem the east coast isn’t going to be as lucky this week: N.J. weather: Early snowfall totals hit 8 to 9 inches, with blizzard set to ramp up overnight.  A few flurries for our consigliere up in Columbus.  But it looks worse the farther east you go.

The South, meanwhile, is in heating mode: Moderate to Severe Drought Raises Fire Risk as Warm Windy Week Sets in on Louisiana.

Today, class, we learn trying to see the President without an invite isn’t too smart. Man killed after entering secure perimeter of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, Secret Service says

AI isn’t the problem – it’s always the back room: Scoop: Hegseth to meet Anthropic CEO as Pentagon threatens banishment. Some senior perspective here: “Clod hoppers” was old American slang for heavy work boots — the kind farmers, laborers, and small-town kids wore. The phrase later became a mild insult meaning country bumpkin or unsophisticated person (“big feet in the dirt”). Claude hoppers today means something else, we’re sure.

Around the Ranch: Pancakes, Wire, and Africa

Winter finally took a swipe at the wire. One good blow and the antenna came down like a tired campaign promise. No drama — just weather doing what weather does. This week I walked the line, checked the feedpoint, reset the supports, and got it back in the air. The apex now sits about 25 feet up, with the far end — the long leg — stretched toward Europe at roughly 60 feet. Ran a clean line to the distant support, snugged everything just-so, and on first sweep the SWR came in right around 1.2:1 on both 20 and 15 meters. That’s cooperative physics.

With the wire behaving, the bands rewarded my minimal effort. Europe rolled in steady on CW at 100 watts: in quick succession it went Serbia, Germany, Ireland, Croatia, Italy, Hungary — solid copy, clean exchanges. For antenna testing, you can’t beat an “international CW contest weekend.”  Like having your own (personal) global sensor network.

Bored with “shooting fish in a barrel” on 20, I popped up to 15 meters  just as TT1GD out of Chad popped up from Central Africa. From a modest apex and a higher far end, the new pattern must be throwing just enough useful lobe to double or triple-tap the F2 layer down the continent. No tower. No amplifier. Just wire, trees, timing, and knowing when to move up-band.

And here’s a little Ten-Tec Omni-VII arcana for the older-ears crowd: there’s a tiny sweet spot in the bandpass where, if you tighten the DSP in a particular way and set the noise blanker to “2,” the contest hash almost evaporates. The background grit drops away and the call signs jump out like they’re lit from inside. Not like a fast-enough squelch circuit to handle 30 words a minute contesting, but nearly that.   It’s not magic — it’s knowing your cockpit. Between that receiver trick and riding the QSB peaks, 100 watts is plenty.

One chuckle for the Northwest contingent: when TT1GD came up over in Chad, I managed to edge out K7SS — at least for a few minutes — he’s been a DX fixture in Seattle ham circles nearly forever. Folks outside radio ops might not know he (Danny) was one of the early “inventors” of the “retro clothing” look in the PNW years decades ago.

I remember dodging Dan’s big signal on 20 meters while trying to work DX from my sailboat out at Shilshole Bay Marina. After bomber and pea jackets back when, Dan moved into used denim so the “coder class” could buy some “street look” to pose in coder Nirvana.

Past several years, Dan’s creative genius showed up in another form — the World Famous Big Shoe Museum tucked into Pike Place Market.  It’s impressive the back-stories of people who show up on 15 meters during a CW contest. And enjoyable when – for the first time in memory I was first to snag Africa DX with a hundred watts and a still-too-low wire.

Radio operators on the same frequency are like sailboats on the same tack, if you hadn’t figured it.

Remember, I told you long ago in one of my ShopTalk antenna diatribes that OCFD antennas get a bum rap. People refer to them as “off center fed dipoles.”  But, the secret sauce is on multiples of the antenna’s primary resonance, they become end-firing.  And – oh – did I mention with 7 – 9 dBd off the end-firing  pattern? A typical 92′ x 46′ OCFD isn’t directional down on 80 meters.  But it’s a gunslinger up over the poles on the third and fourth harmonics which is how I play ’em.

Winter knocks down antennas. I put ’em back up – dial ’em in – and they rock once more. Problem?  Working into Europe is actually too easy.  See, the real sport half a century into brass pounding (of a key) is this:  “What’s your personal best “Watts per Mile” contact?”  Chad penciled out to a mere 69 miles per watt.  100 watts and a nearly 7,000 mile path.

That’s like CB radio power in San Francisco getting reliable comes into Los Angeles (or Thousand Oaks).

My goal now? To beat my own best: 700 miles per watt on a low power 3-watt radio over 2,060 mile path…

Write (or send) when the band’s not open,

[email protected]  (ac7x)