The Chicago kid is visiting for 10 days. Here are the essentials that she packed. When I snapped this picture, she was reading book #7 on the deck fueled by a latte brewed just for her. She plans on going to Browsers if she runs out of essentials. Begs a few questions. Is she afraid of interacting with her Momsie and Dadsie? Are her claims of reading non-fiction exaggerated?
From MacRumors.
“Warren Buffett held 245 million Apple shares as of the end of June, representing a 5.7% stake in Apple as a whole. The stock price of Apple has soared by over 57% to an all-time high this year, boosting the value of Berkshire’s Apple holdings by more than $40 billion to around $113 billion as of yesterday. Apple is by far the largest investment held in Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio, worth more than four times as much as its second-largest holding, a $25 billion stake in Bank of America.”
Try connecting these “dots”. Because individual companies inevitably go through boom and bust cycles, conventional wisdom is that you should never have more than 5% of your total wealth tied to any individual stock. Conventional wisdom is that Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors of all time. Buffett’s AAPL holdings represent nearly 25% of his Berkshire Hathaway portfolio or 5x more than “experts” recommend.
I’m guessing Buffett has no regrets, which begs a question, when have you benefitted in life from consciously ignoring expert opinion?
From Tatsuya Tanaka.
1. They’re Teens Biking Across a Turbulent Country. The Lessons Keep Coming. Coolest pandemic punch imaginable.
“Having almost finished this, they are wondering now what other big things they can do.”
2. He Needed to Train. David Duchovny’s Pool Was Out There.
3. How to Add More Play to Your Grown-Up Life — Even Now.
Where should drivers store their fishing poles?
In the (dis)United States, politics has become an intense, zero-sum competition. No one is ever changing their mind again. Neighbors signal their team affiliation with signage like TikTok’s Tony and Ezekiel.
We’ve become way too competitive for our own good, and yet, to differing degrees, we’re wired for competition. So what are we to do?
There are lots of different non-political ways to get our competition fix. We should turn our attention to them.
Professional soccer is alive and kicking. As is professional basketball and golf. Maybe we should argue about the Lakers and Clippers chances of winning it all. Or Milwaukee’s? Or be like the young dude on Harrison who when he saw Blanca and me ride up to him Tuesday morn, dug down and rode especially hard to make sure we knew he was faster. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. That’s the spirit.
Psychologists refer to it as displacement.
Or compete with those closest to you. Who does more of the household work or runs more of the errands or listens better? That always ends well. Or see if you can choose the fastest check-out line at the grocery store like me. Or be the driver who gets the most miles per gallon for your model of car like me. Or see who can save the most money in a month by not eating out and other self-imposed austerity measures. Or see who can collect the most masks. Or see who knows the most people at the farmer’s market.
If we just turn off the cable news and unplug from our devices, the possibilities are endless.
I’ll start. No more politics for me. For at least a few hours.
“These families are pooling resources together to pay for private teachers responsible for a handful of students, and even physical learning spaces. While that may sound like a safe alternative to in-person learning, critics suggest it’s likely to increase the already stark inequalities in our education system.”
Learn more here.
The Good Wife astutely speculated on the probable drama that will ensue. “Why weren’t we included in that pod? Aren’t we good enough? Do we really want that family in our pod? Their kids smart enough?”
In Hollywood, television writers perking up.
Many of these parents are no doubt liberals known to talk the talk of equality. Walking it. Not as much.
Sometimes I amaze myself.
In April 2016, before the tournament began, I picked a no-name European player to win the Masters, the first of professional golf’s annual four major championships.* When I was at a professional conference in Las Vegas in March I shoulda, coulda, woulda made some serious cash money if I had the courage of my conviction because Danny Willett shocked almost everyone with his win.
Last Saturday night I picked Collin Morikawa to win the first major championship of 2020, the PGA at Harding Park in San Fransisco. At the time, Morikawa was in a 7 person tie for the lead, so not quite as impressive. The youngest of the seven, he shot 64 and won by 2.
All of which prompted this text from a friend:
Now for better or worse, I feel like a shorter, whiter Steph Curry Devin Booker crossing the half-court line. I know I can jack it up from anywhere and hit nothing but net. So to save you lots of time and nervous energy, I’m calling Biden-Harris the winners in the 2020 Presidential Election. I’d also like to predict one of the November 4th headlines, but a FiveThirtyEight podcast I just listened to convinced me that a clear outcome is likely to take all of November. I’ll predict this though. Whenever Biden-Harris’s victory is official, some headline writers will refer to a “new dawn in America”.
Which will be pretty damn funny given the fact the President-elect will be 78 years old.
* Watched Willet in a few tournaments in the preceding months. He was playing great golf, even won, but more importantly, his body language conveyed supreme confidence, as in, “No one can touch me.” I took a flyer on that continuing. Golf is a cruel mistress though, 39th in the world, he’s grinding to regain some of that magic. Bonus prediction—President Biden will play considerably less golf than Trump.
From the same Perry Bacon Jr. article on FiveThirty Eight.
You can take this to the bank.
“. . . in the 2020 election, expect Trump and his campaign, who have had a hard time casting Biden as an extremist or a radical, to make attacks on Harris with sexist and racist undertones, cast her as an ultra-liberal Californian out of touch with Middle American values and suggest that voting for Biden in November means that Harris will be running the country for 12 years.”
This too.
“The biggest unknowns are around Harris herself and her electoral skills. Harris is a good politician based on these facts alone: She was elected senator in the nation’s most populous state and in a country with a lot of race and gender discrimination, Harris is the second Black woman ever elected to the Senate, and arguably the first to be a serious presidential candidate. That said, it’s still not clear if she is a particularly strong politician on the national stage, and therefore if she will be that helpful for Democrats in the No. 2 slot in 2020 or as the main candidate in a future presidential election.”
Here’s hoping she surprises on the upside.
From FiveThirtyEight.
“Harris’s selection is the latest sign of the increasing diversity of the Democratic Party. Democrats last had an all-white, all-male ticket in 2004, with then Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards. This vice presidential process, with Biden committing to choosing a woman fairly early on and then choosing a Black woman, suggests the Democrats may rarely in the future have a ticket of two white men. They may also rarely in the future have a ticket of two white people (as in 2016 with Clinton and Tim Kaine) or two men (as in 2012, with Obama and Biden).”
“May rarely” is the cautious, prudent phrase. I’m throwing caution and prudence to the wind, and saying again, I do not expect to ever see two white men on a Demo ticket. That ship has sailed.
Pressing Pause 