In today’s, “everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works”, Elon and unemployment.

My job is not generally to write code, but sometimes that’s the job. I wish I was better at it. I am so susceptible to the puzzles. I got an itch to deliver something I know is needed at 4pm yesterday. Thought I had it 95% licked by 5pm. But then it turns out the very last step has something devilishly complex.

It’s not an issue of understanding the data or what needs to be done. Instead, I’m in a complex area of code we all desperately know needs to be refactored. I now can choose to spend days in a fraught rewrite, abandon this effort for later, or spend hours making tiny tweaks to find the exact right incantation to pile on more technical debt but get it working.

The problem is I’m a dog with a bone. I thought about it most of the night. I will end up working on it at least a little this weekend. As a quick win, totally worth it. As an all encompassing energy suck— probably not.

Yesterday, after putting away my laundry, Elsa asked me “Did the stain come out?”

I replied, “What stain?” She sighed.

“Last weekend, when I wore your shirt, you were upset because I got some grease on it and you were worried the stain would it come out. Sometimes I wish I had your brain.” She knew I had completely forgotten about the stain and didn’t even check on it.

Then she saw my far off stare. She realized I was already thinking about something else. She said, “Wait, what’s wrong what are you thinking about?”

And I said, “This thing at work I was convinced I understood, but turns out that there’s something hard there I didn’t realize.”

She smiled and said, “I take it back. You can keep your brain.”

I own almost no individual stocks anymore. But I have a little bit of Apple stock, worth about $5,000 that I’ve had in one of my retirement accounts for a long time. I’ve often thought of selling just to get things simpler, but it always performed well and it was such a small portion of my portfolio it didn’t seem worth it.

I came close last week, but reminded myself that my whole investment philosophy (pretty close to straight Boglehead), is that I don’t know anything everyone else who is investing doesn’t know. And without special information, the trick is pretty much hold and stay the course. If you miss just a few of the best days trying to time the market, you can really harm yourself.

So I thought, sure, I have every reason to think these tariffs are real, the recession is coming, the dollar is weak, Apple’s China market is dead, and things will be bad. But everyone knows that, and everyone sold on that. I don’t know anything new, so I’d just be selling low.

Today, it turns out Apple products will pretty much be entirely exempted from the tariffs. I still think they’ve got no more Chinese market and we’re gonna hit a recession. But I bet I’ll be happy on Monday I didn’t sell all that stock at the bottom.

In the end, it won’t matter. But the unpredictable circumstances just reinforce my belief I know nothing and a recession is inevitable.

Popular opinion: pre-boarders should be required to deplane last.

Grocery stores on LI are so much better than anywhere else I have lived.

Unpopular option: every cheesesteak sandwich is between a 7 and an 8.5. They’re almost impossible to do poorly, but are almost never great— it’s just always a good choice.