Here’s the flavor of the day so far: Cramming and Jamming morning around here.

Been up since the wee hours trying to escape the God-awful CenturyLate email system only to slam headlong into another modern disease: Cell Phone Arrogance.

You know the type. The growing institutional assumption — now embedded everywhere from WalMart to the U.S. Patent Office — that if you don’t own a cell phone, don’t text, don’t scan QR codes like a trained circus seal, and still believe a keyboard is for writing instead of thumb-pecking… then you are effectively a digital non-person.

A “nothing.”

It’s fascinating, really. The very people who lecture endlessly about “inclusion” have quietly built systems that exclude anyone who refuses to strap a tracking rectangle to their hip 24 hours a day.

And yes, before the younger crowd rolls their eyes, I know all the arguments:
“But it’s convenient.”
“So much faster.”
“Everybody does it.”

Fine. Everybody also once thought fax machines were the apex of civilization.

Which is why my last two patent applications went in through the mail like it was 1978. Not because I can’t use the modern systems — but because increasingly the modern systems seem designed around the assumption that all humans are permanently reachable livestock.

Still… don’t let my bile ruin the coffee, right?  We have a bubble to track, a life to hack and then to the sack for another whack, tomorrow.

Rolling a Number or Three

“Ricky don’t lose that number...” offered today’s guiding influence, if we may speak bluntly?  Three for the road on your way to the mines:  GDP, Durables, and UI Filings:  “Bartender, line ’em up and let’s pretend it’s Saturday!”

First shot (pretend it’s tequila, right?):  And don’t gd pee all over: It’s happy talk, you see?

Second shot is Durables:  (Have a lime with this one.)

Third glass is Disposable Income (this is where the BS meter pins)

Now have an unemployment back, shall we?

Now, turn them all up[side down on the bar – slug down another swallow of bean, and let’s blink.

The National Blink First

News Junkie Rehab time!  This is where we only think about change vectors because “same shit, different day, isn’t worth the emotional overload or time sink.  Here goes:

1. Camp David Was the Tell
Trump planned a rare Camp David Cabinet session, then moved it back to the White House, officially due to weather — but the timing lined up with Iran/Hormuz negotiations and fresh U.S. strikes, so the Blink is “crisis-management posture,” not picnic logistics.

2. Iran/Hormuz Is Back on the Front Burner
The U.S. sanctioned Iran’s new Strait authority while accusing Tehran of trying to control shipping through Hormuz. That keeps oil, shipping insurance, and military escalation risk in the “watch closely” box. War risk on-again play?

3. Fresh U.S. Strikes Changed the Tape
Reuters reports new U.S. strikes hit an Iranian military site and drones near Bandar Abbas. That means the ceasefire/peace-talk story is now mixed with active kinetic operations again. Also see the dLynne suggestion of which job opening NOT to send a resume on…

4. Oil Is Whipsawing, Not Calming
Oil plunged on peace-deal hopes, then rebounded after renewed U.S.-Iran fire. This is not price discovery; it is geopolitical roulette with gasoline, diesel, and freight attached.

5. Trump Is Accusing Iran of Waiting Out the Midterms
Trump said Iran is trying to stall until after the U.S. midterm elections, while insisting he can outwait them. That turns foreign policy into domestic political timing risk. But hey, maybe they just want more pallets of cash, right?

6. Oman Suddenly Matters
Oh man, huh? Trump publicly rejected any Iran/Oman control arrangement over Hormuz and issued a hard warning toward Oman. That is an odd but important Blink: a mediator/ally can become part of the pressure map overnight.

7. Markets Are Starting to Blink at War Risk
World shares slipped and oil rose after the strike headlines. Not panic yet — but the “AI makes everything fine” trade now has a serious energy-price adversary. The “ice” not to slip on is the RCVW – the relative currency valuation war.

8. The Dollar Caught a Safety Bid
The dollar rose on renewed U.S.-Iran tensions, which tells you global capital is still reaching for the least-bad shelter when the Gulf gets hot. Stock futures got softer here, and downright squishy in Europe.

9. Cabinet Optics Looked Bigger Than Normal
The Cabinet meeting covered Iran, domestic politics, fraud crackdowns, Trump Accounts, D.C. renovations, and immigration — meaning the administration is stacking war, wallet, and election narratives into one operating frame. Blink, but don’t blur CabOpts into…

10. “The New Normal” Now Includes War, Apps, Surveillance, and Gas Shock
The real Blink is baseline shift: Americans are being trained to live inside permanent friction — phone-ID bureaucracy, energy volatility, war-risk pricing, and political theater. Useful before running for cover: keep cash, fuel, food, comms, and your documents boringly redundant.

Regional Blinks

We’re going to do something abnormal (which, come to think of it does define us, doesn’t it?): We’re going to “slices and dices” the country into five parts: Northeast, Southeast, Upper Middle, Lower Middle, and Left Coast.

Northeast: Utility Bills Are Becoming Weather Bills
Connecticut’s Eversource rate story is the tell: “grid hardening,” storm recovery, inflation, and smart-meter costs are all becoming household line items. The Northeast Blink is that electricity is no longer just power — it is weather insurance – billed monthly.

Northeast: Farming Got Frost-Bitten
New Jersey’s crop disaster declaration after an April freeze reportedly put roughly $300 million in crops at risk or gone, with blueberries hit especially hard. The change vector is simple: spring weather volatility is moving from farmer problem to grocery-shelf problem.

Southeast: Hurricane Season Is Quiet — Until It Isn’t
The Atlantic basin has no active tropical cyclones right now, but the season opens June 1 and “homegrown” close-in systems remain the thing to watch because they don’t give much warning. Good news: no named storm today; bad news: Gulf humidity is already acting like it owns the lease.

Southeast: The Power Bill Rebellion Is Spreading
South Carolina’s Dominion settlement points toward another utility-rate squeeze, this time near 8 percent. The regional Blink is that the Southeast’s old cheap-power advantage is getting eaten by infrastructure, storm risk, and fuel-cost math.

Upper Middle: Farm Country Is Still in the Squeeze
Midwest soybean producers are getting pinched by equipment costs, soft crop pricing, and tariff blowback. The Blink is not “one bad season”; it is margin compression in the people who feed the spreadsheet crowd.

Upper Middle: Rain Risk Keeps Working the Soil Calendar
NOAA/NWS outlook material keeps pointing to repeated heavy-rain/flood risk across central U.S. corridors. That matters because wet fields don’t care what the planting schedule says.

Lower Middle: Texas Is Still the Weather Casino
Houston saw thousands of lightning strikes and widespread outages, while Texas remains under rolling hail/flood/storm risk. Around here, the Blink is not whether weather happens — it’s whether the grid and insurance books can keep pretending this is exceptional.  Meantime, at the Voter Casino which opened Tuesday, Cornyn is out and Republican nominee Ken Paxton will be senate-seat grabbing against Democrat nominee James Talarico. Which could aggravate the weather picture with even more hot air coming…

Lower Middle: Gulf Moisture Is the Guest Who Won’t Leave
South-Central Texas just worked through hail, damaging wind, and excessive-rain risk on already wet ground. Translation: saturated soil plus another thunderstorm complex equals “don’t drive through stupid.”

Left Coast: California Says the Budget Is Fixed
Newsom’s May Budget Revision claims California’s structural deficit is erased through July 2028 (uh-huh…) while protecting major spending priorities. The Blink is whether this is real.

Left Coast: Wildfire Is Becoming a Permanent Rate Case
California’s wildfire, utility, and budget fights keep converging into the same household question: who pays for living in beautiful places that burn? The Left Coast Blink is that climate, insurance, power bills, and housing are no longer separate stories — they are one invoice.

Drought and About

With the rain barrels nearly full here, we’re able to keep “dunkin tomatoes” (not doughnuts).  As the Food Sovereignty plan we’ve been working is coming up to the top of the Food Coaster lift tower:

The weather this year has been enough to drive us to drink – and it explains all the upside down shot glasses.

Around the Ranch: Aging and Yesterday

I spent several seconds of downtime this morning (2:34 AM) noticing a quirk about aging that Elaine and I are going through.  See if this sounds familiar – just four examples:

• Elaine has a half-dozen empty perfume bottles she hangs onto.
• E also washes out cottage cheese containers for possible future use. “Can you use them for painting?” 
• George has a huge archive of half-written books he’s promising to finish – just eating hard drive space.
• G also has more than two dozen HF ham stations in his collection that will never all be on their air at the same time.

As my meditation on point continued, it dawned on me that “things that surround us” may act as time anchors.  I’ve told you this (crackpot)) theory before.  That some of the “friction” that impacts us (visiting) World Observers on our present spins around the sun is excess “attachment to things.”  Not in the Asian philosophical view (which is largely emotive in nature) but more in the  “Look around the house and assess your life as an orchard.” Do you see fruits or frictions?”

Are empty bottles your fruit? Are we ever going to make cottage cheese?  Will I ever have time to finish writing even four or five more books?  And when will I admit that no, the Vintage Radio Museum may remain a ham radio  niche vacation destination dream forever?

Could it be that too many supplies, too many “saved things from earlier in our lives” may be an actual indicator of aging?  That could really change-up the priority list…

Thankfully, 2:39 AM showed up quickly, announced by a microwave ding telling me “You need more coffee.”

Write when I wake up,

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