Let’s begin by reading from the book of Job. 

No, silly, not the biblical.  The data book on jobs over at the Labor Department server farm.  Because it looks like this:

While the press release looks like this.

Total nonfarm payroll employment edged up by 115,000 in April, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in health care, transportation and warehousing, and retail trade. Federal government employment continued to decline.

If it doesn’t seem to fit, that’s between you and your ophthalmologist. 391,000 jobs were estimated into existence by the CES Birth-Death model.

Boom Times? Maybe

But not like economic boom times.  More like the Daily War Score:  U.S. launches “self-defense strikes” on Iran, says warships came under fire in Strait of Hormuz.

For details of how war front #1 is rolling, see Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 7, 2026 | ISW.

Trump Trade Troubles

Meanwhile, Trump isn’t doing very well on his global tariff plans.  Trade court strikes down Trump’s latest tariffs – The Washington Post.

At the broader Supreme Court level, the earlier major tariff ruling in February 2026 was a 6–3 decision against Trump’s use of emergency tariff powers, with an unusual coalition:

• Roberts
• Sotomayor
• Kagan
• Gorsuch
• Barrett
• Jackson

in the majority.

So politically, this is not shaping up as a simple “Democrat judges vs Republican judges” story. The trade courts and Supreme Court have both shown cross-ideological skepticism toward expansive executive tariff authority.

What bothers us is who IS looking after incentives to keep American business, oh, you know – In America?  (crickets)

A Weekend Worry

Since we’ve been posting prepping notes for well over 25 years now, and EMP and loss of electronic infrastructure is a common thread, here’s a story to disrupt your sleep-cycle: Harvard Canvas Site Goes Down After University Listed in Instructure Breach | News | The Harvard Crimson.

For now, it looks like a single software vulnerability. But the larger question is when will this kind of thing really scale up to banks, phone systems, and transfer systems?

Ready for More Freedom?

Second Amendment fans will be pleased: USPS proposal would allow handguns to be sent through the mail for the first time since 1927.  We see the statistical problem, though.  Average IQs are little changed.  More tech, sure.  But going up?

For now, we’ve shelved our plans to buy a pawn shop with an FFL ticket.

Oh Rats!

Or is that “Oh ship!” Spain readies for evacuations as a hantavirus-hit cruise ship heads for Canary Islands.  Bring your own canary. The story kind of haunts us in a 12 Monkeys way.

[Yes, it used to be 13 Monkeys but that was before the latest Mandela Effect from the time-change month or two back.]

Tornadoes and T-Storms Loom

That time of the year: Showers and thunderstorms are due across the Southern Plains and Gulf Coast through the weekend, with locally heavy rain possible. Above-average temperatures are forecast for the West, while a stalled front keeps rain chances high from Southeast Texas to the Florida Panhandle.

Somewhere — over age 50 usually — you’ll run out of weather-rescue story reruns. Same plots. And if they don’t impact you personally, why bother, right?

If you’re under 50 and don’t have the template yet, here’s more training material on how Reality fills in the blanks: Mississippi tornado: Storm chaser digs through rubble to rescue tiny kitten.

Around the Ranch: Intuition Works, Again

The secret to a long, happy life is learning to work with, not against, your intuition.  It has been proven to me as recently as the past day.  But before I “regale with a tale,” here are a few ways intuition works. Or at least seems to. These examples give you some understanding of how “intuition drives” – if you let it.

Flying across the country in our old Beechcraft, 15 years or so back, I had an urge to drop altitude by 50 feet. Not five minutes later, a tad under our assigned flight level, another light aircraft descending whizzed by. Passing from ahead right to lower left.  Listening to the quiet voice of intuition resulted in a word or three with ATC about idiots in the sky with transponders off. Intuition had spoken. I’d listened.

Sailing on Puget Sound, many times back in my live-aboard sailing days, it was my weekend with the kids and we’d sailed to Poulsbo, WA.  Coming back across the Vessel Traffic Lanes, I had an urge to keep the portable VHF; just in case.  Just as we entered the southbound VTS lane, the formerly reliable Yanmar four-banger cacked an oil filter gasket.  Which would have been a “no big deal” except there was an Evergreen container ship southbound two miles north coming right at us.  A radio call to the bridge of the southbound (while hoisting the furled jib as quickly as possible) and the container ship passed about 150 feet away.  Without intuition (and monitoring VTS) who knows, right?

And then there was the Sunday morning on Texas 155 when I wanted to “open it up” on my old 930 wide body.  Over 150 MPH just after sunrise on a Sunday morning. Odd thing, though.  After “getting it out of my system” I was coming down the single-lane oil sand road toward our place in the woods.  Intuition went off like a klaxon.  “Slow down – deer around next bend.”  I did. There were – a parade of three or four of them.  Intuition turned a potential problem into sightseeing.

Now the Tale Part

Better part of two years ago, I got this crazy design idea to build an outdoor vegetable washing station by the northwest water faucet outside the grow room (greenhouse 1).

I’d picked up an Amazon deal on a stainless bar sink, the outflow plumbing, and a really nice pull-down, commercial grade rinser/sprayer.

Then for the longest time…it just sat there.  See, I have a roll-around shelving unit in the shop where project materials come in, land, and wait until they move up to the top of my Kanban list and get knocked out.  This way, I am  always productive, always have something to do, and no waiting on supplies. I just go.

So this bar sink, plumbing parts, and a really good-looking rinser/sprayer faucet have been sitting in my projects queue for just over two years.

But for some reason – every time it got close to installation – something else with a higher priority would overtake it.  Now, with me in serious gardening mode, I was just thinking while writing ShopTalk Sunday last week about moving it forward just…well…because.  

Honestly, I didn’t know why, but intuition was saying wait a few more days.

Then yesterday?  In comes an email from Amazon.  My rinser-sprayer was recalled!

“Dear Amazon Customer,

We write to notify you of a potential safety concern with a product that you purchased on Amazon.com. Please review the Recalls and Product Safety Alerts page for further details: https://www.Amazon.com/your-product-safety-alerts

Product: HGN Kitchen Faucet with Pull Down Sprayer,Commercial Single Handle Kitchen Sink Faucets for Farmhouse Camper Laundry Utility Rv Wet Bar Sinks Brushed Nickel
Order ID: 114-9688926…”

Leaving me to “take a moment” to ponder how intuition operates. Down at the Reality Hospital layer.

Not an hour later, Elaine reminded me “My sink in the master bathroom is running slow…”

With the rinser/sprayer gone, I just happened to have a flexible sink tailpiece in exactly her sink’s size – which is the same as the uninstalled bar sink.

All that was left was to connect the dots.  “Scrub that garden sink idea…for now.”

Not sure what the Universe (or THE DUDE) has in mind, but I’m sure it will be OK.

Like we have a choice?  Could “going with your intuition” be the hidden key to life extension?

Write when you get rich,

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