CPI Blues

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks the month to month change in the price of a basket of goods, 80,000 items, everything from apples to unleaded gasoline to men's underwear, funerals, from coffee to cadillacs. Each month BLS issues a Consumer Price Index report. Until lately. The report for the past 2 months has been withheld due to 'staff shortages' and the ‘government shutdown’. But as you must realize, this is all about controlling the optics. Apparently, we, the manipulated, don't deserve the truth and this government prefers to just tell us what to think. Yet another instance in a long line of gaslighting America.

So it's a huge mystery whether the CPI is going up or down. Not. Anyone who does their own grocery shopping, buys a Big Mac, pays property taxes or rent realizes which direction the CPI points.

It turns out I don't actually need the CPI to know which way the scales are tilting. I have my own personal CPI. This is a bit OCD but I track spending in a financial app on my Mac. It is quite easy to capture and categorize expenses. Not quite as easy as back in the days when every payment was by check. Now, I rarely write I check, it’s all auto-pay and credit card. The process does require decompiling the Visa bill and remembering what was in the Costco cart, so there's an ε on precision, but it's good enough to show trends. Once captured, the app aggregates and reports year-to-year comparisons by category.

So here's some 2024-2025 year-over-year statistical comparisons for one household, a fairly typical old urban couple.

I think you can probably make conclusions without my assistance. Note: The leap in medical expense is accurate but a bit inflated as our pill trays become ever more colorful. 

A trip to the grocery in 2025 was significantly more expensive than 2024. We dine out less frequently and yet have spent more. US cattle inventory is the lowest since the 1950's so those $18 hamburgers plus the tab with the 25% tip suggestion induce sticker-shock indigestion. An 8 oz filet at a well-known steakhouse goes for $60, ribeye for $85, so we eat less beef, rationalizing it's a healthier. So, alas, we must assume partial blame for all those restaurants shuttering.

This is a first-world problem but my favorite Cadbury chocolate bar has gone from $2.79 to $4.29. I fear I may be forced to Twix bars. Chocolate, as you know, is one of the 5 main food groups. A bag of Sun Chips is now $22/lb.  A box of Cheerios is $6. A can of Folgers is $16. The Christmas ham was $80. 

A diet of tea and rice cakes holds no appeal.

This report, of course, is in no way scientific. A sample size of one is not representative and a one-dimensional Bell Curve does not illuminate. 

So - not statistically significant - except to me.

Copyright © 2025  Dave Hoplin 

Best of 2025

In what has become a year-end tradition for me, I offer up my favorite reads of the year. In my twilight years, I read mostly novels plus a good bit of non-fiction, usually history or biography. And I confess I do enjoy a nice murder or a visionary SciFi. I have been a member of a novel book club for lo onto 25 years. We almost always come up with a selection that is entertaining, thought provoking and discussable. Here's the list of the 200+ novels we have consumed if you're interested.

But back to the mission. The 10 books that most engaged me in 2025 in no particular order. 

I'm a sucker for year end book lists so it would be fun if you would add your own best of the year in the comments and together we could create a viral crowd-sourced list. Or just (see #1) write me a letter. I'm always looking for books to add to the stack. 

1. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.  Novel. Have you ever reached the end of a book and felt sadness?  Not due to content but rather that you've reached the end of something remarkable and want it to continue and perhaps head back to page 1 for a re-read. This is such a book for me. It documents the life story of 80-ish Sybil, a retired law clerk, in letters, both sent and received. Sybil is a master of the lost art of letter writing, authoring eloquent and self revealing missives. She writes to everyone and they write back: her family members; authors with impressions of a book of theirs she has just  read, (Ann Patchett, Joan Didion, Larry McMurtry, Diana Gabaldon, ...; a Syrian immigrant customer service rep for a genealogy app; a young bullied mathematics savant son of a friend; her late in life discovered half-sister; a life-long friend with whom she can share her deepest feelings. A tour-de-force in my view.

2.  The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides.  History. The final voyage of Captain James Cook and his death in Hawaii in 1779. Imperialism, exploration and exploitation among the Pacific islands and the failed search for the Northwest Passage.

3. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.  Novel. Milkman Dead's 30 year spiritual and physical journey to discover his roots.

4. The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin. (Carnegie Medal) History. Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the yellow journalists of the early 1900's. Fascinating history of the Roosevelt & Taft administrations, their close relationship and breakup leading to TR running in a 3-way race in 1912 as a 3rd party (Bull Moose) candidate and thus assuring Wilson's election - from perhaps my favorite historian.

5. Orbital by Samantha Harvey. (Booker Prize 2024).  Novel. A day in the life of a multi-national crew of 6 astronauts circling the earth.  A meditation on life and space. It's a lot more interesting than that summary implies. A love letter to earth.

6. Every Valley by Charles King.  History. The creation of Handel's Messiah and the troubled times in which it was written.

7. James by Percival Everett (Pulitzer Prize 2025) Novel. Mark Twain's Huck Finn from the perspective of the slave Jim.

8. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. (National Book Award)  Novel. 4 generations of a poor Korean family, their emigration and the discrimination endured in Japan.

9. Bog Queen by Anna North.  Novel. Agnes, a forensic pathologist, investigates a perfectly preserved 2000 year old body exhumed from an English peat bog. Two threads - the life of the woman druid who ended up in the bog and the modern day investigation for clues on who she was and how she ended up there.  

10. Crying in H-Mart, A Memoir by Michelle Zauner. (American Book Award) Memoir. The story of an American-Asian life, growing up Korean in America. Food, family and a daughter's relationship to her mother, who is dying from cancer.

Bonus books just for fun

A novel?
The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell.  Every sentence is a question. Thousands of them.  Read my post Ponder These Things for a sampling.

2 good murder mystery series
Renee Ballard mysteries x6 by Michael Connelly  

DS Cross, Bristol detective with Aspergers by Tim Sullivan

And a bit too believable near future SciFi. Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, an award winning SciFi writer. It is about what you think it might be - how climate change in the near future will affect us all and the desperate efforts to combat it. Can the world survive? 

I know, that's 14.

Copyright ©  2025  Dave Hoplin 

Deep Thoughts Vol 11

Edition #11 of my musings from the deep.  A few thoughts, some information, some opinion, a bit of commentary, some trivia, some attempts at humor and some nonsense.

Now that I see more clearly, I’d like a bit more time.

I fear we are witnessing the death of civility.

The best thing for being sad… is to learn something.  T.H. White

Make more use of the Del key in your emails and posts. Less is more. And yes, I should take my own advice.

X now has an about this account feature exposing the source of messages. Surprises? Not really.  You are being deluged by South Asian, African, Eastern European impersonators.

Gambling in households increases the odds of domestic violence by over 10x, and gambling has the highest suicide rate of any addiction. And now there’s a casino in everyone’s pocket. Disaster looms.

In the MLB, you can place a bet on whether a particular pitch will be a ball or strike. Who knew? A couple Cleveland pitchers for sure.

Spahn and Sain and pray for rain.  

Willie, Mickey and the Duke.

How to become a millionaire.  Become a head football coach. Get fired.

Voter fraud in the USA is minuscule. The Heritage Foundation, the Project 2025 folks, have data to prove it. 

Rural hospitals and clinics are going the way of high schools. Consolidation and elimination. Mayo Clinic is closing 6 rural clinics and “The Area Hospital” is becoming the norm, meaning long drives for primary/emergency care for rural folks.

Have you had the misfortune of being hospitalized lately?  Look around, immigrants do most of the dirty work.

VA lost over 600 doctors and nearly 2,000 nurses this year.

Have you tried to make an appointment at your primary care clinic lately? Urgent Care is the new primary care clinic.

The most private thing in the world is pain. You experience it alone.

Cars are getting too complex. If you see me coming on a sunny day with my windshield wipers flapping, know that I am about to make a turn.

Have you ever changed a tire out on the road? In the winter?

On a snowy freeway, 90% of the vehicles passing you at speed are RAMs, F250's, Sierras or Silverados. 

Technology advances are quickly perverted - literally so with AI porn.

Drone use is mainly militarily. Who would have predicted that?

Given that there are an estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the universe, it seems improbable to me that Earth is the only planet hosting life. 

Round up the usual suspects.

Brazil's Bolsonaro has started a 27 year prison sentence for leading an attempted coup. Former Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra was sentenced to 14 years in prison for corruption and accepting bribes. Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for drug trafficking. He received a Trump pardon.

Time wounds all heels.

Who was it that thought women's high heels were a good idea?

We now get our news out of the Pentagon from My Pillow TV

Voice of America has gone dark .. in so many ways.

I am old. I have 2 versions of the Lutheran Book of Worship: one Red, one Green. And a third, a paperback sized Black Hymnal with just text, no scores.

Stashed in barrels, Martin Luther smuggled 11 nuns out of the convent of Marienthron in Saxony, one of whom was Katharina, who he promptly married and fathered 6 children.

In this era of mega-disasters, does anyone really accept that FEMA is unnecessary? No one imagines a catastrophe could happen to them. Until it does.

Half a million Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical expenses. For every other developed country the number is 0.

Medicare for all.

If you had the money, would you pay $236 million for a Klimt portrait?

Does anyone walk around on stilts these days? I made a pair as a kid with foot supports about 16" above ground.  Gary walked around 6' off the ground - had to get on a step ladder to board.

I think I have a hula hoop out in the garage somewhere if you're interested.

Genocide against Afrikaners?  Theater of the absurd. They’ve got it backwards.

We trade F-35's and military bases for golf courses and an ancient 747.

At some point the Venezuelan boat strikes will bring the US to The Hague. The second boat strike was murder. So was the first.

I'm pretty sure the US Navy is capable of interdicting, boarding, searching, confiscating and arresting? If not, call in the Coast Guard. They do it on a daily basis.

Body art is hazardous. Tattoo ink travels the body and kills immune cells.

Clark Gable appeared bare-chested in the 1934 film It Happened One Night. T-shirt sales plummeted.

Your cat is likely obese.

My new economic indicator. Count the day-to-day increase in pages of foreclosure listings in the daily paper. 

Economic storm front brewing. The Chinese are rapidly switching from US to their own products. (You might want to reduce your Nike & Apple holdings).  America is no longer in vogue. Chinese products and marketing are vastly improved but I think there might be another factor in play.

Tough job market for new college grads these days. AI is taking entry-level jobs. Is a college degree worth it? For those with a bachelor's degree, versus those with a high school diploma, median annual earnings are 59% higher, life expectancy is 6 years longer

“Profoundly underprepared".  UC San Diego assessment of incoming college freshmen

Epstein had a ranch in New Mexico. I doubt he was raising Herefords.

2 basic freedoms. Freedom from violence. Freedom from lies.   Chekhov

It used to be that Supreme Court justices did not wear team jerseys under their robes.

People will believe anything and rarely, the truth. Just because you believe it doesn't make it true.

Most demonstrations are parties. People party, feel good and then go home. Nothing changes.

Your Anglican God? He’s too soft, too reasonable and understanding, doesn’t really want to interfere—more like the ideal next-door neighbour than a deity. I need to feel God’s terrible wrath, his retribution waiting for me. My Anglican God will just look sad and give me a ticking off.    Forgotten Brit

As he grew old, all Montaigne asked for was an old age free from dementia.

Can a country built on Native American genocide and the backs of slaves be called exceptional? That is, in a positive way?  Nikole Hannah-Jones

Musk “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper”.  [a quote from Elon] 

And now 600,000 people—two-thirds of them children—are dead, mostly in the poorest of countries.

The super rich are sociopathic. Almost always. Almost always men.

Huntley-Brinkley News was 15 minutes long - and I believe I got more relevant news content then than today's 24 hr news cycle.

This administration's recently released "America First" strategy means abdicating our role in the world and abandoning our allies. See National Security Strategy 2025.  Russia is a fan.

American History professor, Heather Cox Richardson, publishes a daily current events newsletter, Letters from an American, providing commentary, insights and historical context. 5 stars.

For you’all who are old like me, where were you on November 22, 1963?   January 28, 1986?   September 11, 2001?

The Republicans are the party that say government doesn’t work and then get elected to prove it.   P.J. O’Rourke

Can I bum a scroll off you?

10 million Iranians may need to evacuate Tehran because there is no water for the tap. The words ‘climate change’ have been purged from every government publication and website. God help us. (Read Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future.)

One of life's few mandatory rules. In a men’s restroom, incoming traffic has the right-of-way.  Hugh Leonard

Over or under?  The correct answer is over, unless you have little kids or a cat.

Day after Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year for plumbers — so busy they call it “Brown Friday.”

"Things happen" is all you need to say these days to dismiss most any transgression.

Copyright ©  2025  Dave Hoplin 

Hold That Line

 

"Convinced that the safety of otheir families and the health of their land was disregarded in favor of the gluttonous energy consumption of cities, the farmer-led revolt began as questioning and escalated to rampant civil disobedience, peaking in 1978 when nearly half of Minnesota’s state highway patrol was engaged in stopping sabotage of the project."  

Powerline-“The first battle of Americas energy war by Paul Wellstone & Berry Caspers. Carlton College professors, 

In the late 1970's, Lowry Minnesota, my home town, was the epicenter of the country's first energy protest. The electrical co-ops, United Power Associates (UPA) & Cooperative Power Association (CPA) obtained permits to construct a high-voltage power line across 430 miles of farmland from the Coal Creek Station near Underwood, North Dakota, conveniently built next to a lignite mine, through Central Minnesota to the Dickinson Station in Wright County near the Twin Cities. That the protest was about the hazards of coal burning power plants might be a bit of hyperbole - this was the 1970's after all.  The term 'Global Warming' was first used in 1975 and did not gain traction until the late 1980's. There were of course environmental activists who were vehemently opposed to burning coal to produce electricity - and nuclear power for that matter, although the Three Mile Island disaster was still in the future. Environmentalists way ahead of their time. But the main points of grievance were farmer protests over eminent domain taking their farmland for towers, the decrease of the land value and safety concerns surrounding a high voltage line running overhead. And the fact that the beneficiaries of the power were "The Cities" amped up the anger.

Pope County is home to many small farms owned by families for a hundred years, growing mainly row crops. So you can imagine the problems faced when fields are "interrupted" by 150' high towers. In addition to the resentment over lost productive land to these towers seen as a land grab by the co-ops, there were also concerns over potential health hazards. It will cause cancer. Your cows will lose all their hair and won't reproduce. You'll be electrocuted while driving your tractor ... The fact that the State of Minnesota refused to allow the towers on state land due to concern for wildlife habitat only reinforced the protesters position.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources claims that the line might “affect the behavior of animals and change wildlife habitat and affect the physiological state or conditions of plants and animals." Harrumphs Farmer Art Isackson:  “I guess a skunk is worth more than a farmer."  

Inside the red brick town hall in Lowry, a hamlet of 257 in west-central Minnesota, angry farmers talk bitterly about Governor Rudy Perpich and his "invading redcoats” and vow never to give up the fight.

Time Magazine Feb 1978

So the protests began, at first following the Civil Rights example of non-violence:  sit-ins, obstruction of the building equipment, road blocks, and on a particularly windy day, driving a manure spreader past surveyors at speed. When power-company survey crews invade their fields, farmers harassed them with onrushing snowmobiles. They blocked construction machinery with pickup trucks and boulders. They shoved welding rods into the radiators of the power companies’ tractors, sprinkled sand and gravel into gas tanks. Four masked men on horseback menaced one work crew. 

Arrests followed. More than 40 farmers were arrested for vandalism and interfering with construction. The Pope County attorney resigned rather than prosecute his friends and neighbors. 

In point of fact, the cooperatives were pretty inept at explaining and defending the need for this line and quite arrogant toward the rebelling peasants. At one meeting, a co-op rep said “I don't know what you're making such a fuss about this for, it's going to go through no matter what you say”, which of course was true but it didn't improve the relationship between UPA/CPA and the farming community.

"The hated line is a 400,000-volt power transmission cable. After a two-year court fight, the line is beginning to slice a 160-ft. wide swath through the dairy and grain country.   ...  As the line’s intimidating 150-ft. tall towers (every quarter mile) march through relatively small family farms, a landowner can find his hard-won acres chopped up. The high wires also discourage pilots from doing increasingly important aerial spraying and seeding. Besides, Minnesota farmers are fully aware of the experience of people living near similar high-voltage lines elsewhere. The lines literally snap, crackle and pop, and they set up electromagnetic fields that can produce jolting, if nonlethal, shocks in anyone touching ungrounded machinery and other metallic conductors within 200 ft. 

Time Magazine Feb 1978

In 1978 I was teaching school in Hastings, but we generally spent a good deal of the summer back in Pope County. The anger was palpable. Pope County (also Grant & Stearns County) residents were pretty universally opposed to the line with the most heat of course coming from those farmers where the towers would be erected. There were a few farmers, generally those unaffected by the route, who rented out some of their land for use in the construction of the towers, being paid handsomely. This did not sit well and in some cases friendships were destroyed.  

Tensions were high. At some point, a faction of the protesters turned to sabotage. From 1978 to 1983 16 towers were toppled by cutting the legs and thousands of insulators were shot out. A $100,000 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest of tower saboteurs. Many people certainly knew or suspected who the perpetrators were but ... there were no takers.. 

I worked in Hoplin & Nelson Hardware, a traditional farm focused hardware but also - second only to Lee's Barber Shop & The Dahl House - a gathering for "discussions" about the situation. We at the hardware were in a bit of a quandary. Yes, the protesters had our sympathy but we also sold dynamite and guns and ammunition. Dynamite was used frequently by farmers to blow stumps or rocks in their fields and ditching dynamite quickly produces a nice drainage ditch when a line of dynamite sticks detonates in rolling wave. It's quite a sight. We recorded every sale - purchaser name, dynamite type and amount. Same with ammunition purchases. We made a show of doing this so the buyer would know if a tower was dynamited they could expect a visit from the authorities. As far as I know, no explosive was used to knock down a tower.

In May, 1978 a protest march was planned, covered by national media.

Governor Perpich (at the request of the Pope County sheriff) sent in over two hundred state patrolmen. On that first morning (it was a Monday morning) it was like going to work, everybody went to Lowry and that was with the national press. Everybody was there, nobody knew what was going to happen, and there had been some activity out at the construction site west of Lowry, about three miles west. There they were to build some of the towers. So everybody got in this big caravan and went out there, but what they decided to do was a big media stunt and it worked out pretty well. They took out coffee, cookies and flowers to all the state patrolmen (about 150 of those guys) and it was twenty below and the wind was blowing like crazy and everybody was just freezing his hind end off. But everybody stood out there in the cold and they handed out the coffee and the cookies and the patrolmen kind of laughed and were at ease and stuff.

George Crocker, protest organizer oral history

In 1980, Alice Tripp, a Stearns County farm wife and protest leader, ran a surprisingly successful campaign for Governor largely based on opposition to the powerline and advocacy for alternative energy plus support for the rights of women and minorities . She lost but amassed 20% of the popular vote, leading to Perpich's defeat and the election of Al Quie - and as a side effect, launching Paul Wellstone’s Senate bid. Alice ran a true grass-roots campaign - she spent but $5000 on her campaign.

Despite the efforts of Tripp, the protesters and area farmers, the CU powerline became fully operational in August of 1979. The protest activities diminished but litigation continued into the 80's. The last tower to topple was in 1983.

And a listen. The powerline spawned a protest song  - Larry Long's “Pope County Blues".

Copyright ©  2025  Dave Hoplin 

Come the Revolution

I know in your heart you believe you could do better if you ran the world. And if you can name that tune in 10 notes,  I might just agree with you. You certainly must have a list of things you would change ... come the revolution.  

Here's a starter list. Pile on. 

Add your nominations in the comments and I'll take them under consideration.

No lawn mowing or leaf blowing on Sunday morning.

Retinal scans will replace passwords universally.

e-Bikes with throttles relegated to streets.

The Heritage Foundation - you know, the Project 2025 folks - will be required to publish their voter fraud data annually and news outlets will headline the results.

Every citizen will vote. Election day will be a national holiday. The Electoral College will be disbanded.

Everyone will have access to affordable health care.

Private jet subsidies will be eliminated and owners will be charged $10 million annually for airport landing fees. Same for yachts. Port fees.

Churches will lead a compassion surge.

We will all eat strawberries and cream.

Vikings will win the Super Bowl. Twins will win the World Series.  Gophers will beat Ohio State.

Justice will roll down like waters.

Slow traffic stays right. Super-speeders and lane weavers will be jailed.

Lane splitting law will be repealed.

35E speed limit between St.Paul and the river will be 55 mph.

Rendition only meaning will refer to musical performances.

A chip in your forehead will flash when you lie.

Apple pie for breakfast will be found to deliver significant health benefits.

Book reading will once again be a popular leisure activity.

Zuckerberg will give us all sound suppressing headphones.

Crypto will collapse.

Education will include a thorough knowledge of history.

Oligarchs will pay reparations and their New Zealand redoubts will be confiscated.

School lunches will be free.

USAID will be restored and again save lives world-wide.

Anything produced with AI will have an embedded watermark indicating that fact.

USA will stand up to Putin. Ukraine will be free and independent.

Climate action will be funded and celebrated. Antarctica melt halt will be a priority.

Plastic chairs will be banned.

Vehicles will have sensors to automatically activate turn signals.

The ballroom will become a hockey arena and the donors will pay for the renovation.

Airline CEOs will have to book their own flights using their company's app and fly middle seat tourist.

Gutters will come pre-installed with leaf guards.

People will be themselves, except nicer.

Non-slip sidewalks and curbs in bright neon will be mandatory anywhere that has winter.

RFK heresies will be purged.  No, God is not an anti-vaxxer. Vaccines will again be recognized as life saving.

Minimum wage will be sufficient to support a family.

PACs will be abolished. 

Electricity will be wireless. No more cords.

Congress will once again be the country's law-making body.

Common courtesy will become common.

Charitable contributions will leap. The homeless will be housed.

The next Presidential race will match two women.

We'll take away your Rolls Royce, mate.

Copyright ©  2025  Dave Hoplin 

Crypto

One of my favorite novels is Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. The book has 2 interconnected threads. The first centers on the WWII cryptanalysis efforts by the British at Bletchley Park and the American code-breakers against the Japanese.  The second is the prescient concept of modern day crypto... computer technology to build an underground data haven in the fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta, interestingly termed "The Crypt", with the goal to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money 

The read is a commitment - over 900 pages - but if you start it be prepared for trading sleep for reading. The book was published in 1999 and presages the cryptocurrency craze we see today.

While on this topic, do you understand cryptocurrency?  If so, please explain the value prop to me. Admittedly, I am a curmudgeon, but I fail to see the benefit. Does the world really need another currency and particularly one without any regulation behind it at that. Cryptocurrency is decentralized, meaning it's distributed and not controlled by one central authority.You can’t jingle bitcoins in your pocket. It is a virtual currency and the foxhole for greedy manipulators. It is a way of transferring “funds” quickly and anonymously, which plays perfectly with criminal types doing transactions on the dark web in weapons, human trafficking and other nefarious practices which I can only imagine. But if that is prevalent, perhaps we have gone astray and "regulation" should be considered. 

How does it work? A crypto transaction uses blockchain technology utilizing a network of computers (nodes). Each node independently performs some role in verifying, recording and validating the transaction. The result of a cryptocurrency transaction is "simply" an unchangeable data entry on a ledger - a blockchain. These blocks are permanent making it impossible to change the information in the completed transaction, and also impossible to trace the source.

These transactions consume enormous compute resources as each node needs to solve a "puzzle" as part of its role. This demand has led to the explosion of data centers to support it - AI as well - and is overwhelming our electrical grid. Prepare for brownouts and kerosene lamps.

In my view, this is yet another way to try to get rich without having produce anything or work too hard, a swindler's paradise that includes the Grifter in Chief. Many crypto users shun it as a transaction tool, but rather use it as as an investment vehicle, a digital bank like gold in a vault. Your digital wallet is an app (don't forget your password). So as you watch your crypto wallet fatten day by day, beware. This is reminiscent of 1929 Wall Street.  

If this all sounds pessimistic, it's because I am. What ever happened to entrepreneurs? In my career I was involved in 2 startup companies and the goal each time was to actually produce something beneficial to mankind.  How we have fallen, where threats and bribery and phantom money pass for normalcy.

Copyright ©  2025  Dave Hoplin 

Deep Thoughts Vol 10

           Another issue of my random ramblings.

NFL kickers are too good. Rotate the goal posts 45°

Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” - Warren Buffett

To some we matter greatly, to most not at all. Treasure those who do.

If every state offers blackout license plates, how will I identify the getaway car?

Finance is the art of passing money from hand to hand until it finally disappears. - Robert Sarnoff

For better and worse, people who grow up in small towns get to know each other so much better than they do in cities.

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, nor will we proceed with force against him, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice. - Magna Carta 1215

.. no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law - 5th Amendment to the Constitution

For signs of trouble, keep an eye on the Pentagon Pizza index.  (or Apex IV usage)

AI depends on massive data centers that consume enormous amounts of electricity and water.  Apple invested $1 billion in a North Carolina data center which resulted in fewer than 100 permanent jobs. Huge infrastructure investments, environmental impacts and little economic benefit to date. And your electric bill is trending upward.

When you tip over a glass of milk at the dinner table your reach to grab it will knock over a half-dozen other things

I had many problems and disasters in my life; fortunately at my age, I don't remember what they were.  - Bel Kaufman

The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough. - Louise Erdrich

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all. - John Maynard Keynes

The rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion. - Adam Smith

I sometimes think: Wonderful children instead of hard liquor. - Louise Erdrich

The East Wing of the White House is the perfect metaphor for the state of the country.

History is not what happened, but what survives the shipwrecks of judgment and chance  - Maria Popova

For all those screaming “Socialism” at everything that helps people, why the silence over government control of US Steel / Nippon Steel? How is a 10% government interest in Intel not government confiscation?

Strategists and military planners always warn, the “enemy gets a vote.”

I’m aging like that $3 wine from Trader Joe’s

I read 'The Delights of Growing Old' by Maurice Goudeket Really?

The problem with wisdom is that it tends to come slowly, if it at all.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - A. Huxley

Why do ‘valuable’ and ‘invaluable’,  'flammable & inflammable' have same meanings but accurate/inaccurate, active/inactive etc .. have meanings you expect.  An invaluable insight.

In my experience consultants are like seagulls. They flap in, makes a lot of noise, sh*t over everything and leave.

Your memory is an unreliable narrator.

When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just .. say something! Do something! Get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble. - John Lewis

80% of the population consider themselves above average drivers.

If you drive or walk by a high school parking lot when classes let out, you are risking your life.

Lincoln’s personal secretary was named Kennedy.  Kennedy’s personal secretary was named Lincoln. They were both succeeded by a Johnson.

From 1840 to 1960 on 20 year intervals, the president elect died in office.  In 1980 Reagan survived a gunshot wound.

Long words are kind of fun. Sesquipedalian is a good one.

A politician is a person who must sacrifice their character in the service of power.  - Unknown

Life is so dear, I can’t imagine what we’ll do when it’s over.  - Garrison Keillor

When you pray, move your feet.  - John Lewis

Shutting down a nearly operational wind farm. Turning off climate monitoring satellites. These are crimes against humanity.

Who's idea is it to drop Russia monitoring efforts? 

How is receiving $15 donations a path to heaven?  I don’t think that’s a viable strategy.

.. the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.  - H.L. Mencken on Puritanism

Inconvenient facts on extremist killings. Anti-Defamation League report from 2015-2024 76% were right wing, 18% were Islamic, 4% were left wing. Cato Institute report politically motivated killings are 6 times greater by right wing vs left wing actors.

The Minnesota Strib's 2 PM content cutoff so the paper can be printed in Iowa means you get day-old news. The crossword is now perhaps the only reason to get the paper delivered.

Bravery is not absence of fear, it is conquering it.

Vaccines have saved millions of lives. Let us not return to the bad-old-days of polio, smallpox, measles & thousands of infant graves

I love the sea as long as I am sitting at the beach looking at it.

Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary. 

After dinner, sit a while. After supper, walk a mile.

Qatar purchased military commitments and a base in Idaho from USA for a used 747 and a golf course.  Prove me wrong.

Irony. The German government is lecturing the US on the dangers of right-wing extremism.

Disconnect. The stock market flourishes. The real economy tanks.

Injuries in sports are unavoidable. But in the WNBA, the targeted, tolerated aggressive play resulted in long absences of the biggest stars due to injury, the most recognizable faces of the league. Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, Breanna Stewart, Sophie Cunningham, Napheesa Collier, Cameron Brink, Aaari McDonald, DiJonai Carrington, Courtney Vandersloot, Katie Lou Samuelson .. to name but a few.  It is destroying the hard-earned popularity of the sport. Protecting players from being mugged on the court seems like little to ask.

The worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades

Copyright ©  2025  Dave Hoplin