MacGyver

I've got one with a filet blade, and it is hands down the scariest, sharpest, fastest filet knife I've ever used.

I could use a wizard to pick my tori wrenches for me. Seems like I always pick the wrong one first.

Oh yeah. They did two runs of that one - and another with the PM3 in the same configuration. If you wanted one, you pretty much had to be on the site with your finger on the ‘Complete Order’ button when they dropped. They were literally gone in minutes.

You’ve got a problem that a survey is unlikely to solve. Good luck.

I was wrong - it does have a Taiwan stamp. I still have a bunch of Seki City, Japan knives, and a few Taiwanese ones. Honestly, there were some years where both of those beat our domestic made ones on fit and finish. It’s been several years since you could say that, though. I prefer US production, but I’m not going to be exclusive when I know Sal and Spyderco have built and supported some of those relationships over a long period of time. Sal himself once said, “The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s trade.” BTW, if you’re going to pull the trigger on that BladeOps PM2, I wouldn’t wait on it for too long. That’s a sprint run that may last a bit longer than normal, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t last the weekend. That saber grind is interesting.

You can get a good deal on a Nikon scope right now - but the buyer needs to be aware going in. Nikon is known for their glass and has made some great optics - but they’ve announced that they’re exiting the scope business altogether. Getting scopes repaired under warranty claims may be an issue.

I don’t know that you can truly appreciate a screwdriver with good tool steel that’s been appropriately hardened until you’ve used one.

Whia makes excellent tools. You’ll not find a better quality set.

I’ll have to check. I think mine has a Golden, CO stamp.

If you’ve never had a knife with Emerson’s Wave feature, you should.

I don’t know that my pockets are big enough for that thing. The Spyderco Smock may be my favorite Wharncliffe style blade: https://www.bladehq.com/item--Spyderco-Smock-Flipper-Knife-Carbon--81450

I prefer a compression lock, too. I’ve carried a PM2 EDC for years. While I can’t speak for every maker - I’m fairly certain that on a Spyderco you’d damage the knife before you get the lock to give out. You should always use the right knife for the job, and there’s a reason I carry a fixed blade in the field. But for EDC, Spyderco has had a place in my pocket since I got my first Rescue model in 1991. CPM S30V is a great value in steel. I can remember just a few years ago when it was the super steel. It’s easy to maintain and carries a great edge. My current PM2 is in M390, and I can’t say enough good things about it. The fact that this sprint run was in Swiss Army red was kind of a must have for me: https://www.dlttrading.com/spyderco-paramilitary-2-red-g-10-m390-blade

As labor costs in China go up, among other things, you’re starting to see some of this happen already - especially with smaller companies. Unless you’re huge like Apple and can really exert control on your supply chain - you’re simply at their mercy. And you’ve got no clout. Add in transport costs, shipping times at sea, and port delays - and you’ve got a bunch of firms deciding it’s just not worth it. There are certainly a bunch of ways to skin a cat - but I’d argue that when corporate CEOs who make tens of millions of dollars annually pay less taxes than I do - people are going to notice.

They are. Companies that are procuring PPE (and that's what most of it is - middle men trying to leverage existing relationships in China to get product) are making a bunch of money. Your home state of Illinois gave a check for $3 million to a guy in a McDonalds parking lot to try to get some masks before they went to a higher bidder. But, even with the government paying - the typical business school model isn't going to support building new lines. Because when this is done - you'll have excess capacity and shareholders wanting blood for spending money that could have gone into their pockets. Now, I would fully support something I think you'd agree with - and that is building capacity to make critical PPE onshore here in the US. But, you're going to have to pay for that somehow - and this is a case where the market probably isn't going respond appropriately. To any company - masks or gowns or whatever are essentially fungible commodities. That is, they're going to consume them from wherever they're cheapest regardless of the origin. They'd be hugely penalized for building at higher cost here what they could simply buy somewhere else. To get it balanced out - you're going to have to have the government declaring it critical, and entering into a long term contract to get them produced here - probably at a higher marginal cost than in China. Problem is, the market simply isn't going to correct for times like this where there is a spike in demand - and "oh we've sent all of this offshore with our blessing because it looked cheaper." They're too short sighted - or rather - they don't care. You're going to have to have someone step in and say, "no, we need to retain some of this capacity here."

Yeah, any case study in any business school would say they were good decisions. Here's basically where we are in 2020. Let's say I walk into a boardroom with a big pile of cash that our business has made. A big pile - let's say a $7 trillion dollar pile. And I ask the board what they want to do with that money - we could invest in new factories, we could acquire competitors, better benefits for workers, whatever - maybe some combination of the above. But, since my board is filled with 'investors' - who really want to take money off the table and "invest" in some other stuff - they see my big pile of money and my suggestions and say, "what if we gave a chunk of that money back to shareholders?" "We could do a share buyback and make everybody's investment more valuable." That hypothetical $7 trillion is the amount of share buybacks that the S&P 500 has undertaken since 2009. Put it another way - it's more than 90 cents of every dollar in profit they've made. I'm not saying it's right or wrong - that's just where we are right now. So, look at another example. We bailed the airlines out after September 11th. We bailed them out in 2009. We just gave them another $50 billion bailout. But, since 2009 - they've spent 96% of their free cash flow on buybacks. They could have their own rainy day fund well funded. But that's not where the money has gone. It's gone straight into the pockets of their majority shareholders - knowing that the taxpayers will dump another big pile of cash into their coffers when it's needed because they're "too big to fail." There are a lot of ways to address this problem. I could list a bunch that would be palatable to people of different political tastes. Unfortunately we don't seem to have an appetite for any of it. And so here we are.

The free market really only works when failure is an option. We've removed a lot of the risk associated with failure once you're big enough. The thing that really galls me in so many of these cases is that we're actually rewarding the people who made the poor decisions in the first place - and in doing so incentivizing the same behavior in the future.

Up until about 6 weeks ago, America did about 40% of their pooping at work or at school. Now they're doing all that at home. Same with eating out. The week before March 11, Americans ate more than 50% of their meals outside of their homes. Supply chains in America have optimized for efficiency - and they're rewarded mightily for that by shareholders. That's the behavior they've optimized for. @Erik88 could probably go into more detail - but those production lines at Charmin, Cottonelle, etc are running 24/7 churning product out that goes directly from the production line into trucks and straight to your local grocery store's shelf. There's not a giant warehouse of excess toilet paper somewhere. The kicker is, that it's going to take the supply chain some time to readjust. They're also not going to go out and invest in new production lines - because it would be a stupid investment. At some point you're going back to work and that capacity would be wasted. The interesting detail in all of this is what's become of the commercial toilet paper makers - the Georgia Pacifics of the world. They have plenty of product - but it's not in a form that consumers usually consume. It's rougher and usually packaged in single rolls shipped inside giant boxes. They don't have the relationships with grocery stores to get it onto shelves - because most of the time the consumer isn't going to want it. Uline - one of the major commercial distributors has all you could possibly want right now: https://www.uline.com/BL_1106/Toilet-Tissue-and-Dispensers I've noticed some more enterprising restaurants using their ability to simply up their regular order of toilet paper to make available to their customers. Toilet paper, meat, PPE - we're seeing where the assumptions built into the normal operation of supply chains and logistics really break down. The free market doesn't really care if you live or die. At the same time - it should be recognized that it's only because of the "essential" folks like @Chucktshoes driving the trucks that continue the illusion of normalcy in these strange times. You can look at all of this in one of two ways. Either, you can look at our supply chains as a marvel of modern efficiency and financial engineering. Or, you can look at it and realize that this whole facade has duct tape and bailing wire holding it together in some key places. Actually, both can be true at once.

Here in Nashville proper, my regular Publix has been pretty well stocked. Assuming you don't need flour, yeast, or toilet paper - you should be squared away. Those things have been hit or miss. I went to Target yesterday morning. They were well stocked on toilet paper.

20 trucks in my neighborhood today. Out of state crew set a bunch of new poles. Still no power - but it’s looking better than it did. I bribed a union crew (my kids) with Sonic to help with the tree that we lost. They took a bunch of breaks but got the job done.

We took a pretty hard hit in Brentwood Lost my kids’ favorite tree. Power poles snapped on the nearby street. Worse, the fire department hit the live lines with their truck as the we’re racing down the street. They whipsawed the attached transformer about 100 yards down the street. Wildly, they didn’t seem to notice. They never stopped. I expect it’s gonna be a minute before the power comes back.

This is wise. Others may have a wildly different worldview. Who knows how their opinions were formed - or what their lived experience has looked like? There was a time when we could engage with differing worldviews and debate them on their merits. Unfortunately those times seem to be behind us for now. Most are quite content to be spoon fed their beliefs. -- I'll leave you with this image. I was waiting in a coffee shop not too long ago to meet someone to discuss some work related stuff. About 0900 on a Friday morning, suburban Nashville. Brentwood. 6 people walk into the shop - several wearing apparel that would mark them as 'conservative' - one with a Nine Line shirt, one with a Gadsden Flag on his. They were talking about getting to a state with better politics. Turns out they were on an organized tour. Two of the couples were from Colorado. One was from California. They had literally booked a trip to come here - be taken around the city by a guide - and look at houses that they would buy to move into at some date in the future. But, in the meantime, they were going to be using those houses as short-term rentals. They stopped for coffee before continuing to look at a few more neighborhoods before their flights. None were concerned about the prices. They were looking at some nice neighborhoods - and were talking about the value compared to 'back home.' All that to say - Nashville is probably due for a property tax hike - the money has to come from somewhere. And, we seem to have a bunch of folks moving here who can probably afford it. I hope that we'll continue to make avenues available for long time residents who can't. But, for all these folks moving in - whether they have a conservative or liberal view of the world - or somewhere in between. They're not stupid.

I guess it’s worth noting that this virus - in a little more than a month - has killed more Americans than we lost in Vietnam.

Those of us in Nashville have been expecting a property tax increase with or without the virus. I don’t necessarily like it, but that can has been kicked down the road for a few years now.

Hmm, that’s a question for David. I know we’ve been having issues with some of the big email providers letting our stuff through lately.

Another 4.4 million first time jobless claims last week. 27 million Americans have filed since March 1. That puts us just shy of 20% unemployment - or double the Great Recession. For perspective, we were at 3.5% at the beginning of March. And, Congress is out until May 4.