“Huh?  What About the Markets?” I’ll get to that in a second.  But, I woke up this morning at 3 AM with a terrible knowing that the world’s treatment of cottonseed oil represents the crystallization of everything that is crazy in the world today.  Time for a little “long-chain-thinking” exercise. To begin, a long-ago article in Bon Appetit pointed … Read More

Confessions of “A Battery Slumlord.”  As  our “superior prepping” for whatever comes has evolved, we began with a survey of  basic energy economics in a society that literally would starve without lots of power. After that, we ran through the process of “Scoring Power Sources” in chapter two.  On Wednesday, we rolled out some of … Read More

Sure! Nachos and dips, beer, jerky, in fact, you could go through your entire prepping kit and try out all those things this weekend. After all, since SB is the quintessential do-nothing weekend, what better time to pop open some Mountain House Beef Stroganoff 10 Can Freeze Dried Food – 6 CANS per Case.   OK, … Read More

Football in a sec.  Jobs Out: Trump Bump Toast: We’ve been thinking things were headed this way for several weeks, but here’s the data hot off the BLS website: Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 304,000 in January, and the unemployment rate edged up to 4.0 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. … Read More

We can begin with markets, which put on a rousing show yesterday as the Federal Reserve decided to “talk nice” and hold off on raising rates. This was taken as constructive by most.  Except for one thing:  If the Trump Bump was continuing, there would be no doubt about it..markets would be zooming ahead. They’re … Read More

Lifestyles and Load Sheets is  our next topic as we roll through a complete (in advance) book that should help you plan for a “better Depression” if there can be such a thing… Next to food and water, nothing is more important to human existence that some form of energy which can then be transformed … Read More

Why the very thought of Starbuck’s former CEO Howard Schultz running – as an independent (sick of both parties) – speaks volumes about here in the “Land of Losing It.” We’ll skip the politics. part.  What concerns me is that as of 2018, Schultz had a net worth of $3-billion 300-million bucks.  Sprinkle of gold … Read More

Just out from Case-Shiller, S&P/CoreLogic: YEAR-OVER-YEAR The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index, covering all nine U.S. census divisions, reported a 5.2% annual gain in November, down from 5.3% in the previous month. The 10City Composite annual increase came in at 4.3%, down from 4.7% in the previous month. The 20-City Composite … Read More

Writing UrbanSurvival means never having to say you’re sorry.  At least, not too often. That’s a point I take some pride in because if there’s one thing 50 years of chasing down news (*among other exploits) has taught me, it’s to take the longer view and do so in a measured way. To review:  When … Read More

This week would normally be full of reports from various federal agencies.  But, with the shutdown “just over” we don’t know what the lag times will be in getting out delayed data. Some of scheduled economic news – like the Chicago Fed outlook, which we’ll get to in a second –  hasn’t been impacted by … Read More

In the Saturday report we got into the basics of restoring an old transmitter.  Like restoring an old car, what could be so hard, right? Well…Let’s sit back and take a look at the radio chassis after taking off the front panel: This is after taking the sheet metal off from around the “tuning knob” … Read More

Scoring Power Sources is our topic heading into my “Useful Book of Emergency Power” for subscribers. The whole matter of picking your power sources is vastly more complicated than people give it credit for being. This morning, after the headlines and charts, we’ll scale a number of sources against a wide range of threats that … Read More

My late friend and colleague, Don Stoner (W6TNS, sk) had a marvelous saying about ham radio.  “Ham Radio is the King of Hobbies….” There was a good deal of truth to that.  Few realize, for example,  that King Hussein of Jordan was a very active ham and if you snoop around YouTube, you can find … Read More