"No reason to die all tensed up." - damn, I have mixed feelings when a blog post I wrote 5 years ago does a better job on themes I mention now, that the idea that fear and anger are only good so far as they are utilitarian, otherwise they should be avoided as much as possible.

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So I'm pretty sure we've been in a kind of white collar recession for a while, and now we're are poised to get a new, "big, beautiful" real one with the upcoming Trump Slump from all these dumb ass tariffs

This article points out the main calculation has been on other countries running a trade surplus "Most obviously, the tariffs don't appear to be based on actual trade barriers, which undermines their entire justification. Contrary to White House messaging, the formula for determining the new rates turns out to have been based simply on the dollar value of goods the U.S. imports from a given country relative to how much it exports. The administration took the difference between the two numbers, divided it by each country's total exports, then divided that total in half, and slapped an import tax on countries at that rate. The theoretically reciprocal tariffs are not, in fact, reciprocal."

But that's just the baseline: "Trump imposed 10 percent tariffs even on countries, like Brazil, that import more from America than they export to it. The only thing the White House has made clear is that any decision to remove or raise tariffs will be made by Trump himself."

Which of course is the real point - this whole thing is just "suck up to Trump", who in a kingly way will decide if you're in his graces or not. He will wackamole some tarriffs down based on the amount of sucking up folks in that industry do, or in some cases when the stupidity of a specific one becomes too blatantly obvious.

I'm sure Trump fans will say, oh it will increase American manufacturing and will make jobs. This is delusional. Nearly every manufacturing supply chain you can think of has aspects that are hit by these tariffs, and the retribution tariffs we are going to get are going to make it harder for American companies to sell.

(LOL, so maybe this is some of why Trump suggest Constitution breaking ways for extra terms. International companies are going to batten down the hatches and wait til more sane policies get restored after future elections. There will be no sudden boom of domestic production, just lots of job loss as we "America First" our way out of productive trading relationships)


amazing tuba spinning

When I was a freshman in high school, some of the upperclassman would do at least the first part of the spin (off the shoulder, behind the back, on to the next shoulder) but I never got the knack. And I assume it's even less likely with my 25-lb+ brass sousaphone. And being 35 years older. Trying to mix the metaphors of inbox zero (or nearly), my condo right after the cleaners are done with it, and my newly detailed (yet still 20 years old) car.

Like in both of the latter cases, it is just that duality of "clean" and "uncluttered". It does feel empowering. And a nearly empty inbox feels the same way.

I want to double down on daily rituals of cleaning both personal and work email out on the regular.

Being born on the 31st, or even 30th is rarer than being born on any other day of a month.

Only those Feb 29th-ers have it weirder.

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I've been thinking about curating emotions again. Sure it's well worn territory for me, but just been on my mind this week - this idea that we don't really have a moral obligation to live in stress and worry. I mean, to some extent we usually don't have a much of a choice - and we definitely don't want to start a snowball of self-recrimination for feeling worried. But more so than many people I seem to have an ability to shift my mood-focus a bit, at least temporarily, and most often it doesn't seem like worrying about something is getting me to be more proactive about trying to materially improve the situation. But sometimes I feel guilty about that - like I'm obliged to feel worried. That I'd just be a grinning idiot if I focused on all the OK and good and seemingly stable things, rather than thinking how things may go from middling to worse. And/Or that I'll just become to blasé about the world, but I don't think that's too likely an outcome. (missed a day again... maybe it's the proximity to my birthday that makes this day more miss-able?)