Tape Painting Alert, Blinking New Vectors, and One for the Kids

Today’s UrbanSurvival column begins as a piece about information overload and “News Rehab,” but underneath it is really a piece about attention economics. That’s a much bigger subject.

Paint The Tape!

Dow — and the rest of the market — finally broke Bull Fever Wednesday as the Belief Wave that has been setting statistical records in state variance and our “Magic Ovals” market system began to fade. Today, the Bulls are running the Dow futures up early, but the S&P along with techs continue grasping for a lower reality from here.

Sure, we have a few economic dribs and drabs, but right now, it’s feeling like risk-off time as the House has voted to hog-tie Trump from additional Iran strikes. Meanwhile, a Lebanon-Israeli ceasefire is game-on again — set a stopwatch. While Ben Netanyahu plays “beat the clock” with elections shortly. You may have noticed the Knesset has already advanced legislation to dissolve itself, which could move the election forward to September 2026, or even earlier, if the process is completed.

Let’s Blink The Day

[If the coffee uptake is slow, remember: A Blink is not a prediction. A Blink is simply a pattern that keeps showing up from unrelated directions at the same time. Most disappear. Some don’t.]

Here are today’s candidates:

MARKET BLINK:
Risk appetite appears to be weakening even as the Dow is being walked higher. Watch whether tech and the broader market continue diverging from headline optimism. When belief and money stop moving together, something usually gives.

WAR BLINK:
The Iran-Israel-Lebanon story refuses to leave the stage. House efforts to limit further military action, renewed cease-fire chatter, election maneuvering inside Israel, and overnight attacks all suggest the region remains unstable despite periodic declarations of calm.

ELECTION BLINK:
Netanyahu is increasingly running against the calendar. Whenever political leadership becomes focused on election timing rather than strategic timing, unexpected actions become more likely.

WATER BLINK:
Everyone watches oil. Hardly anyone watches desalination. Yet a major disruption to Gulf water production would ripple through energy, food, agriculture, shipping, migration, and political stability almost immediately.

FOOD BLINK:
The New World screwworm detection in a Texas calf may turn out to be a small and contained event. Or it may be the first headline in a much longer agricultural story. Livestock health events deserve more attention than they usually receive. We eye a hindquarter of locker beef and watch.

HEADWORM or WOO BLINK: Two days after writing about “headworms,” the worm meme returns in a completely different context. Coincidence? Almost certainly. Still, the universe occasionally enjoys a good joke.

ATTENTION BLINK:
Reader behavior continues shifting away from browsing and toward navigation. More people appear to be checking bearings rather than consuming endless streams of [useless, bullshit] content. If that trend is real, it could become one of the largest changes in media since the arrival of social networks. (Are they gone, yet? Please…)

Nothing in the Blink screams “panic.” Nothing here says “all clear,” either.

The emerging pattern looks more like a civilization trying to maintain forward motion while several unrelated systems simultaneously move from stable to sketchy.

Thursday It’s Data Roulette!

Ready to play? Today’s first spin? Challenger Job Cuts.

AI DRIVES MAY CUTS TO 97,006, HIGHEST MAY TOTAL SINCE 2020; TECH CUTS HIGHEST SINCE 2023; AI LEADS REASONS FOR THIRD MONTH IN A ROW
U.S.-based employers announced 97,006 job cuts in May, up 16% from the 83,387 job cuts recorded in April, and up 3% from the 93,816 announced in the same month last year, according to a report released Thursday from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

May’s total is the highest for the month since 2020, when 397,016 job cuts were recorded in May at the height of the pandemic. It also marks the third straight month that cuts have risen, climbing from 48,307 in February to 97,006 in May.

Our second spin? Labor Productivity and Costs.

Productivity increased 0.3 percent in the nonfarm business sector in the first quarter of 2026; unit labor costs increased 1.8 percent (seasonally adjusted annual rates). In manufacturing, productivity increased 3.2 percent and unit labor costs increased 2.2 percent.

And our third go-around? Unemployment filings.

Yep, just like Las Vegas — everyone’s a loser, eventually. Which is why we decided to quit while we were ahead and hang out in the woods until the Big Casino finally burns it all down. Still pending, but summer in the woods is just fine, thank you.

Drought and About

We got a wet spot!  (Not bragging or complaining – just celebrating the rains are here this weekend.)  Here’s how the rest of it lines out:

Depending how you map things, just over half the country is in drought. The rest are on lawnmowers.  Not seeing the real progress there, but maybe it’s just too early.

Around the Ranch: Send This To Your Kids

Elaine and I had a good laugh at breakfast Wednesday. She (83) and I (77) were trying to think of ways to communicate across the gerontological frontier with children.  Under say, 50, or so.

Because many don’t understand expressions among the “survivor class” that are still commonly used.

Dad Gummit!
A softened version of “God Damn It” from a time when many people avoided direct profanity. Americans became masters of linguistic camouflage. An alternate theory suggests it was from the age when dentures were rare. Back then, when an oldster went to  “chew on something” they would have to “gum it.”

Dagnabbit
A cousin of “Dad Gummit.” Yet another profanity bypass invented by people who had church on Sunday and temper problems the rest of the week. If your children remember that this was most famously associated with the hot-tempered cartoon character Yosemite Sam from the Looney Tunes, you were an overly permissive parent. And are therefore responsible for why the world is going down the shitter now, by golly.

Cattywampus
Something crooked, out of alignment, or diagonally positioned. Nobody knows exactly where it came from, which somehow makes it even more American. Usage example: “The toilet is all cattywampus and doesn’t line up with the dishwasher anymore, dagnabbit.”

Sic ‘Em! (Siccum, etc.)
Short for “Seek Him” or “Sick Him,” depending on who you ask. Usually directed at a dog when chasing varmints, raccoons, or neighborhood troublemakers. Today mostly heard at sporting events.  Pappy always asked “What does a dog do when he manages to catch a car?” I did that science project once, only to discover its bite was worse than its bark.

By Golly
A substitute for “By God.” Another example of Americans wanting emotional force without committing blasphemy. In fact, “Golly” is what linguists call a “minced oath”—a polite, sanitized alternative to a stronger swear word. Like “Oh fuck!”

Knee High to a Grasshopper
Meaning very young. Originates from rural life back when everybody understood exactly how high a grasshopper sat above the ground. Unless you were a bad parent, who aligned toilets to dishwashers and watched too much Kung Fu.

Don’t Know Whether to Scratch My Watch or Wind My Rear End
Meaning thoroughly confused. A favorite expression from the mechanical-watch era. This is linguistically related to the firehouse term “Sitting on your thumbs and changing hands now and then…: But the latter remains banned from public use by the SJW Language Imprisonment Act. §133.6.

Happy as a Clam
Originally “happy as a clam at high tide.” Clams are safest when the tide is in because people can’t easily dig them up. Late Seattle restaurateur Ivar Hagland used the variation “Keep Clam” to great effect.

Fine as Frog’s Hair (Fur)
A joke because frogs don’t actually have hair. Usually meant as “excellent.” This is a distant metrology extension from “an RCH” (or a BCH). These definitions are available from some of G2’s ironworker pals. (Civilian use is forbidden under the SJWLIA as noted above.)

Busier Than a One-Armed Paper Hanger
Originates from the era when wallpaper was commonly installed by hand. Possibly an origin slur related to Hitler and losing WW2. As a kid I heard the one-nut paper hanger version more often. The phrase refers to someone so overwhelmingly occupied that even basic tasks become heroic undertakings. Modern workplace compliance departments have naturally outlawed all further discussion under § 8821(c) of the SJWLIA.

Colder Than a Well-Digger’s Belt Buckle
A rural expression from the days when wells were dug manually. Nobody wants to imagine the circumstances too carefully. Over time, apparel drift became anatomy drift and the well-digger’s butt and other appendages were sequentially cited. Witch appendages were also occasionally cited for thermo-referencing measurement.  As, for example, when home-clothes-cleaning-appliance risks couldn’t be avoided.

(Thus, a poor humorist invokes a wringer, now and then.)

Madder Than a Wet Hen
A wet hen becomes surprisingly irritable. Farmers knew this firsthand. Because its use includes an implicit sexual preference Identifier, refer to §5402(b) of the SJWLIA as above for limitations on its invocation.

He Doesn’t Have the Sense God Gave a Goose
A concise rural assessment of someone’s intellectual shortcomings. However, under §2053 of the SJWLIA this saying remains banned for referencing a supreme being who apparently likes geese. Refer to the Act’s animal gender citation use rules.

That’s the Whole Ball of Wax
Meaning “that’s everything.” The origin is disputed, but likely comes from the old practice of storing items in wax or referring to an enclosing wax casting. Melted wax (later paraffin) was used for sealing jelly and jam jars for homemade spreads through the sixties.  Today, melted wax paraffin) applied to a morbidly obese person for cosmetic purposes is not to be called a “whole ball of wax” under the SJWLIA as it’s a section §9312(v) shaming infraction.

Heavens to Betsy!
Nobody knows who Betsy was. Yet generations invoked her when surprised. Well, except in the Scottish tribes of the Dakotas where this was known this was an honorarium to Betsy Ross who we’re sure went to Heaven for the field of blue (heavens) on which the stars repose, until needed to protect free speech.

Except under §4789(j) of the SJWLIA, of course. Thursdays remain exempt pending further review by the Department of Historical Feelings.

ShopTalk Thursday: Understanding Hank

The problem with a good memory is that it comes-a-calling at the most odd of times.  Like Wednesday – there I was looking at reorganizing my (office, electronics bench) tools.  Which presently fit in two hard cases, a roll-around, a hanging tool roll, and on every inch of shelf space.

Suddenly, I remembered reader Hank (out on the Big Island) who retired as a TV Engineer from one of the Honolulu stations. And – gosh, was it a year or two back? – he mentioned he had a Jensen electronics tool kit.

I never understood that – until Wednesday.  While drooling all over the monitor ($2,500 tool kits have that effect) I noticed the higher-end Jensen’s had tool wings.  In other words when you open one up, you flip open (from the top) a left and/or right tool wing which has more pouches and holders for indispensable stuff.

“Ah…Hank begins to make a great deal of sense…” I found myself thinking.

Now, I don’t know if his kit had the “wing walls” or not, but I found a used Jensen hard case – with wing walls – on eBay for a hell of a lot less than $200 so, it’s inbound now.

By the way – the critical matter of how to organize your tools will be in an upcoming ShopTalk Sunday episode. But if you haven’t gotten into having tools right at hand, I’ve been very happy with a door mounted hanging tool roll which was an entire penny under $20 bucks at Amazon.

By the way, Elaine’s already into this kind of space utilization around here.  She took one of those “back of the closet door shoe organizers” and hung it in the kitchen pantry. It’s been her vitamin storage area for years.  I’m allowed to keep chocolate chips and one or two spice containers that overflow from the stove area.

Now, repeat after me: “Where there is no Standard, there can be no Kaizen.” – Taiichi Ohno

[Taiichi Ohno (1912–1990) is generally regarded as the principal architect of the Toyota Motor Corporation Production System (TPS), which later became Lean Manufacturing.

His core idea was deceptively simple: Most work isn’t work. Most work is waste. Which explains why Mind Amplifiers are useful, too…but that’d be another column. One that would do 5S and more.]

Whew.  Busy morning staying oriented.  But now, driver’s meeting over, it’s time for us to all go out and run into our own brick walls.  Ready, Set?

Write when you survive impact,

George@Ure.net