A Home Where The Bison Roam

About a year ago, after a trip to the mountain west region of America, I mentioned I'd been to all but two U.S. states -- North Dakota and Alaska.  The North Dakota deal is a little crazy really, since I grew up only about a half-day drive from its southern border.  But I never got closer than northern South Dakota.  (Is everyone keeping up directionally here??)

So now an update...I've only Alaska left to visit, after taking a side trip earlier this summer from Minneapolis to Fargo, North Dakota.  What did I miss from a life having never seen North Dakota?

It turns out, not a lot.  Typical upper midwestern landscape of farmland and prairie grass.  Also: Flat.

I did find the city of Fargo to be quite pleasant.  I was there on a Sunday, and the downtown area was modern and vibrant.  It even looked like one establishment was setting up for an early-evening outdoor concert.

Fargo is also the home of North Dakota State University, which I'm sure is a great economic engine for the city.  Lots of school colors (green and gold) and school mascots (bison) to be seen.  And don't forget the Fargo Dome, which predictably had lots of hotels and restaurants around it.

Remember now, this was summertime.  I can only imagine, and hope never to see, what the city looks like when it's a snow-covered, below zero temperature climate.  I guessing no one would describe the downtown area as 'vibrant' then.

Be that as it may, I'm glad I visited, and glad to have only one more state to go.  Alaska seems like a great place for a retirement cruise sometime in the not-too-distant future.....

RAGBRAI - 2023 Edition

I last rode my bike on RAGBRAI in 2017, after coming out of a self-imposed retirement for the second time.  I didn't ride in 2018, and drove a support vehicle one day in 2019.  There was no ride in 2020, and I've had no desire to ride, nor fear of missing out, the past two years.

2023, however, marked the 50th RAGBRAI.  In conjunction with that, the route tried to follow the original route, staring in Sioux City and ending in Dubuque, with larger overnight towns in between.  So yeah, I had to come out of RAGBRAI retirement for the third (and final?) time to ride another day.

Compared to most segments, the one I rode this year from Ames to Des Moines was easy.  It was flat, with little climb, and under 60 miles total.  I can only think of one prior day of RAGBRAI I ever rode that was less strenuous.

The one big negative was the heat.  It was a sunny, humid, near 100 degree day, with little wind.  Water and shade were at a premium.  I can only thing of one prior day of RAGBRAI I ever rode that might have been as uncomfortably warm.

But forget all that.....here are this year's observations:

* There were an estimated 60,000 riders on this day, probably a one-day record.  Consequently, the roads and stops along the way were jam packed.  The number of cyclists also meant it was more dangerous than usual, as you were constantly surrounded by riders on the road.  And some of them hadn't spent much time handling a bike on their own, much less a bike in a crowd.

* An unfortunate RAGBRAI tradition continued, as the first town from the start simply wasn't big enough to handle everyone wanting to stop there for early morning food/beverage nourishment/elimination.  (The elimination part is true for all towns; there are never enough portable toilets.)  To make matters worse this year, due to the number of cyclists, most had to walk (rather than ride) for the final 1/2 mile into the town.

* Pie report: Had some good church-lady berry pie.  Didn't find pineapple pie, but did find a delicious peach-pineapple slice at a corporate stand.

* Demographics report: The ride continues to age.  My estimated ratio would be 10 age 50+ people for every younger one.  Virtually no one under 30, and this on a day the ride went from a college town to a nightclub area of a large city, when you'd think a younger person my be more interested.

* I was pleasantly surprised to see almost no E-bikes on the day.  I counted two.  Let me be clear, unless you are a special needs individual, nobody on RAGBRAI should be allowed to use an E-bike, it's already dangerous without them.  If you feel you need one, the ride isn't for you, go ride it somewhere else, except on a trail because motorized vehicles aren't allowed!

* A quintessential RAGBRAI moment happened during a rest stop, when among the 60,000 riders, I asked a random person next to me where they were from.  Turns out we unknowingly grew up about three miles from each other in NW Iowa.  Amazing.

* Did not see any memorable new team names, but I did see a group with jerseys that said  'BILLSTEAM - Ratifying It Since 2017 - Where's Logan?'.  That had to be something, but I don't know what.

The View Isn't Improving

I spend a fair amount of time on my back deck in the summer, and over the years I’ve used this time to make observations on my neighborhood/neighbors.  Lots has happened since my last update, but the more it’s changed, the more it’s also stayed the same…..

Starting with my neighbors to the northeast, they still have their adult (early 20s), high-school dropout daughter living with them.  Over the past few years, she’s cycled through a couple of boyfriends, and apparently a couple of very part-time jobs.  Earlier this year, I thought she may have moved out, but it turned out she was in some type of rehabilitation facility for a few weeks.

So much for the rehab, because police and ambulance vehicles rolled up to the house one recent Sunday morning, as she laid on the front lawn in some stage of unconsciousness.  My neighbor will gladly tell me what happened the next time I’m outdoors, but I’m sure it will be only a minor variation from all the past substance abuse-related emergency vehicle visits.  He’s embarrassed by his daughter’s behavior, but never enough to make her accountable, so nothing changes.

Meanwhile, my widowed neighbor to the east said goodbye to her delinquent granddaughter long ago, but now has her grandson living with her again, after his stint of more than a year in prison.  I was led to believe his incarceration was due to multiple impaired driving convictions, however, there’s more to it than that.  I know this because a couple months ago, in a strange Google deep-dive, I discovered he is currently on the state of Iowa sex offender registry!  It’s not great to have your neighbor’s house as a dot on the sex offender registry map, but that’s where we are.

Upping the ante, he now has a less-than-fully employed girlfriend and her five-year-old son living with him in the house as well.  It doesn't seem like a great situation, living with grandma, but the worst of it is that yard has become trailer-trash central.  The widow is rarely seen outside these days; she doesn’t really know or care about the property condition, and neither does her son who lives nearby.  Meanwhile, the grandson and girlfriend just leave everything outside (bikes, coolers, chairs, toys) where they last left it.  Alas, the grandma doesn’t make them accountable, so nothing changes.

Unfortunately for me, the lack of accountability by my neighbors does change one thing – it keeps my property value below where it should be. 

The Complexities Of Persecution

When someone constantly feels they are being treated unfairly, with no objective evidence to support these beliefs, I consider them to have a "persecution complex".  In some cases, such people perceive themselves as victims to the point of being oppressed or targeted, and even interpret benign situations as evidence of deliberate torment.

Persecution complexes are often manifested in simple ways.  For example, that person we all know who agrees to perform tasks, only to incessantly complain about it.  Or how about the person who doesn't get invited to an outing they wouldn't have been able to attend, yet complains about that.

We've all been around people like this, and it gets worse all of the time, thanks again to social media as a handy device to use for the complaint.

No one may know what personal insecurities or past traumas or politics leads people to this place.  We just know it's awful to be around them, be it friend or family.

Unfortunately, there's no absolute cure for persecution complexes.  Silence, avoidance, and confrontation all work to a degree, but also have their downsides.  Regardless, anything done to appease them will suck.  Why should those who deal with the afflicted also suffer?

So, my coping mechanism is to write this blog entry about them.  It's no extra work, I needed a topic anyway.  And there's virtually no chance they'll read it, much less internalize it.

Or maybe they will -- after all, they have a persecution complex.

Dear Graduating Class of 2023

Welcome to this year's high school and college commencement address, an annual tradition since 2012.

Congratulations, Class of 2023!  You've reached the summit -- at least in terms of a simple and carefree life.  Now you have to go out there and fix things, er, I mean, change the world, and no amount of bingeing on food, beverages, or social media will accomplish that for you.

Let's face it, a lot of things need to be fixed / changed, so you have many choices.  I have one in mind today, something that requires no manual labor, so I consider it an excellent choice for you in which to ease into adult life....

There are fewer things more trite than to make a point by starting with the words, "The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines such-and-such as...."  But since it serves my needs I'm going to do it.  The word 'woke' is defined in that dictionary as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).”  That dictionary also defines 'woke' as 'not sleeping', but let's explore that former definition for now.

A little more research will tell you the word 'woke' originated in African-American English in the 1940s and 50s, referring to being aware of instances where discrimination was happening, either covertly or overtly in the form of Jim Crow laws.  The word 'woke' was put back on the radar around 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.

But in less than a decade, political conservatives have turned 'woke' into a slang word, applying it to show disdain for anyone or anything opposing their views.  Their favorite targets these days include tried-and-true things like gun restrictions and climate change, but most recently have been focused on the LGBTQ+ community.  If a person or company shows support for them, they may well be ridiculed by being labeled 'woke'.

My fix / change for you is, go out into the world and embrace your woke-ness!  Now don't be offended.  I just gave you the actual definition -- it means you are aware of important facts and issues.  Why the hell did you spell all of that time in school if not to be aware of facts and issues?  I mean besides the parties.....

Being woke will be easy for you, too, it won't take much effort.  All you have to do is get your information from a wide variety of sources, right, left, and center, and make up your own mind.  Read. Listen. Watch.

Another way to put this is, under no circumstances should you let somebody else tell you what to be pissed about.  Others want you angry because that generates engagement which, thanks to the mighty social media algorithm, manifests itself in monetary revenue to those who espouse it.  Ignore them, and decide for yourself if you want to be pissed about something!

And while you're at it, you should make it a stretch goal to reclaim the word 'woke' as a non-pejorative.  It's bizarre that the far right has co-opted this word from black America to show contempt for other opinions.  Do they feel it would be better to be asleep instead of alert to the things happening around you?  Maybe you aren't the best audience to answer that question, since as students I know the value you put on sleep -- but you damn well know what I mean.

To recap for you graduates in a more understandable, abbreviated way:  Woke = good; extreme political views = bad; informed opinions = good; social media algorithms = bad; sleep = good at night and bad other times.

So to the Class of 2023.....WAKE UP and get out there.

Misbehaving

Almost six years ago, I wrote about my interest in the behavioral sciences, especially behavioral economics and finance.  I further mentioned books I'd read on the topic, notably a book titled Thinking, Fast and Slow by Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman.

Since then, I've read many other books related to behavior, including three by former poker player Annie Duke (Thinking In Bets, How To Decide, and Quit), and another by a journalist who became a poker player for a year, Maria Konnikova (The Biggest Bluff).  On the more data driven / less fuzzy side were books by Robert Cialdini (Influence) and another co-authored by Kahneman (Noise).

Now I've just finished a book on this topic that I've enjoyed probably only less than Thinking, Fast and Slow.  It's not a particularly new book (2015) by another Nobel prize winner, Richard Thaler, titled Misbehaving.

Thaler was an early collaborator with Kahneman and his longtime research partner, Amos Tversky.  Misbehaving reviews the early, largely ignored stages of behavioral science, and how it eventually grew to become accepted by all but the most hardcore intellectuals.  

Thaler is more widely known now for a later book he co-authored with Cass Sunstein, called Nudge.  While I also enjoyed reading Nudge (to the point I gifted it to clients), Misbehaving provides many more examples of how people will respond differently to a given set of facts, depending on how those facts are phrased.  This was a prime writing / teaching method of Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Here's one example:

600 people are sick from a disease, and a choice has to be made between two policies:

Would you rather take

A) policy will save 200 people for sure

B) policy will offer a 1/3 chance at saving everyone, but a 2/3 chance of killing everyone

Alternatively, would you rather take

C) policy where 400 people will die for sure

D) policy where there's a 1/3 chance of killing no one but a 2/3 chance of killing everyone

Logic demands that we take either A and C, or B and D, because they are effectively the same thing. But in group tests of this, we don't always do that, because we are not always rational beings.  We also care about things like what seems right, instead of just the logical.

The book reviews the decades-long conflict between the data-only 'econs' and the non-conforming behaviorist 'humans'.  Knowing about this conflict, and the sometimes illogical 'misbehavior' that humans follow, can be a very important advantage to those in a particular field.

Misbehaving has a large section on how this applies within the investing world, so if you're interested in that sort of thing (like me), read it!  Or as I said six years ago, don't read it, and I'll use it to my advantage.

Berky Meeting Nuggets 2023

This year's Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting in Omaha, was very similar in structure to last year, when the event returned in-person post-pandemic.  A crowd said to approach 40,000, including corporate celebrities like Bill Gates and Tim Cook, gathered to listen to Warren Buffett (age 92) and Charlie Munger (age 99) answer questions again for about five hours.  Vice-Chairs Greg Abel (future CEO) and Ajit Jain were also on stage to answer questions in the morning session.

A summary of some items that stuck with me:

• While the 2022 crowd seemed smaller, perhaps due to people getting used to streaming the meeting post-pandemic, the 2023 was as large as I've ever seen it.

• Early on, when discussing the quarterly results that had been released that morning, Buffett showed a chart showing that over the past 5-10 years, Berky has held about $125 billion in short-term U.S. Treasury bills (cash).  Until last year paid at little as 0.04% interest, generating about $50 million a year.  Due to last year's interest rate increases, that same amount of cash this year is projected to generate about $5 billion a year!

• Buffett noted the recent regional bank failures, and said that while the law says the FDIC insurance limit is $250,000 for accounts, that isn’t how America is going to behave in a banking crisis.  If the contagion would be too great, the federal government would bail them out.  So as a practical matter, there is no FDIC insurance limit for depositors, especially in larger banks.

• Jain took a few insurance operations questions, and mentioned how GEICO is doing better, but still has a long way to go to catch up to Progressive in telematics technology.  Abel took a few utility and railroad questions, and is clearly ready to become the next CEO.  In fact, the company movie included videos from prior meetings where the question about succession was asked -- a question no longer asked.

• Both Buffett and Munger saw the enormous potential in artificial intelligence, but didn’t see it ultimately replacing human intelligence.

• Buffett quote of the day:  "What gives you opportunities is other people doing dumb things."

• Just before the lunch break, some too-smart-by-half dude quoted Munger from prior meetings / interviews to question whether he still believed it was 'stupid' and 'ignorant' for people to not get the "untested mRNA" COVID vaccine.  He simply replied, "Yeah, sure."

• Munger had lots of other memorable quotes as usual, but it was his term 'diworsification' that most won't remember.  He used it to refer to those who preach investing 'diversification' at all costs.  Munger and Buffett have long stated that if you only have a few good ideas, you should concentrate on those instead of hedging your bets on a bunch of other things that aren't as good.

As usual, there was so much more.  Here's a link to this meeting and others.