In Search of the Perfect Investment

It’s a quiet day. But Amazon, Square, Nvidia, Facebook, Alibaba, Apple and Priceline are up. The usual FANG suspects. I suspect that money on the sidelines is now inching into popular name tech stocks — like the ones above. Remember, many “gurus” (including myself) predicted a 20% market decline if Trump were elected. And many investors went to cash. The market didn’t fall. I stayed in. And I believe many of my readers did also. Now, we’re looking super-smart (or, more likely) super lucky.

Don’t do stupid

+ Don’t do what your trainer said. He’s younger, fitter and stupider. He’ll hurt you.

+ Don’t eat more than half the food you get at a restaurant. Take the rest home. Eat it another day.

+ Don’t “upgrade” to Windows 10. It’s not an upgrade. It’s ruse for Microsoft to get money out of you. Remember: If it works (like your computer), don’t mess with it.

+ Check that your company’s website works on an iPhone. Some look really horrible. Some you can’t even read.

+ When you’re working, always hit the “Save” button every few minutes. Your computer can crash. Your network can crash. The cloud can die. You can drop electricity. Usual bad stuff.

+ Don’t close the lid of your laptop without saving everything. Sometimes your laptop goes to sleep. Sometimes it just crashes. It’s only software. It’s uppity.

Don’t even think about visiting Turkey.

A dozen Americans have now been jailed by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and face long prison sentences for allegedly playing a part in a failed coup last year. They appear to be bargaining chips in order to get the U.S. to extradite exiled preacher, Fethullah Gülen, 76, now living in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.

The New York Times reports that moore than 50,000 Turks have been imprisoned and 150,000 more have been suspended from their jobs since the attempted coup in July 2016, which killed 249 people. The crackdown has stretched far beyond the immediate culprits and has swept up people with vague links to the Gulen movement.

U.S. officials appear powerless to secure their release, and the dozen detainees may be (according to the New York Times) bargaining chips in Turkey’s attempts to have Fethullah Gulen extradited

I’ve been twice to Turkey. It was a nice place. I went once to check out some real estate investments. Boy, am I lucky I didn’t invest. The Turkish Lira has done awfully. For more, click here.

Save your cellphone data charges

+ Use Wi-Fi instead of your cellular data plan. Don’t ever download large files or large photos without being on Wi-Fi.

+ Close your mobile apps that use data whenever you are not using them. WAZE is a data and battery hog. Close it when you don’t need it.

+ Turn off unnecessary notifications, since each notification uses data. You don’t need the NYTimes, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and others all telling the same depressing thing.

Please store these emergency supplies in your basement

+ Water

+ Food

+ Batteries

+ Generators to charge cell phones

+ Extra gas for the generators

+ Flashlights

+ Blankets

+ Tools — can openers, knives, swiss army knives, shovels, screwdrivers

+ Clothing — sweaters, jackets and rain gear,

+ Hygiene products. Toilet paper, feminine products and toiletries.

+ First Aid Kits

+ A refrigerator for storing medicine

The happiest mistake — from Quora

What was the happiest mistake you ever made?

from Rupali Wadekar, M. Tech. Digital Systems

I sent this to my mother in law instead of my hubby.

“Love you for no reason “

She got so emotional, she happily sent me “love you too beta (daughter) ” in return.

After this, every conversation between us ends with saying “love you” to each other.

Guns and the Soul of America by David Brooks

This is the best explanation of guns in America:

The pattern is by now numbingly familiar. A lone lunatic murders a mass of innocent people in some public location. There is a heartfelt cry for tighter control on gun ownership. Then state legislatures swing into action. They pass a series of laws loosening controls on gun ownership.

As David Frum points out in The Atlantic, the five years since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School “have seen one of the most intense bursts of gun legislation in U.S. history.” More than two dozen states have passed new gun laws. And in almost all cases these laws have made it easier to buy or carry guns.

Wisconsin eliminated its 48-hour waiting period to buy handguns. Ohio allowed concealed-carry weapons to be brought into day care facilities and airports. Florida changed its “stand your ground” law to make it harder to prosecute gun owners.

The expansion of gun rights is directly related to the epidemic of mass shootings. A study by Michael Luca, Deepak Malhotra and Christopher Poliquin of Harvard Business School found that a single mass shooting leads to a 15 percent increase in firearm bills introduced in the same state’s legislature within a year.

In Republican states, they found, a mass killing “increases the number of enacted laws that loosen gun restrictions by 75 percent.” In Democratic states, mass shootings have no significant effect on laws passed.

So why are lawmakers responding to mass killings by loosening gun laws? The wrong answer is that the N.R.A. is this maliciously powerful force that controls legislators through campaign dollars. In fact, the N.R.A. spends a minuscule amount on campaign contributions compared with the vast oceans of dough washing through our politics.

The reality is that in some places people want these laws. It’s true that individual gun control measures, like banning bump stocks, have popular support, but, over all, the gun rights people are winning the hearts and minds of America. In 2000, according to a Pew survey, only 29 percent of Americans supported more gun rights and 67 percent supported more gun control. By 2016, 52 percent of Americans supported more gun rights and only 46 percent supported more control.

This gigantic shift in public opinion hasn’t come about because the facts support the gun rights position. The research doesn’t overwhelmingly support either side. Gun control proposals don’t seriously impinge freedom; on the other hand, there’s not much evidence that they would prevent many attacks.

Besides, better facts tend to be counterproductive on hot-button issues like gun control. As Tali Sharot notes in her book “The Influential Mind,” when you present people with evidence that goes against their deeply held beliefs, the evidence doesn’t sway them. Instead, they invent more reasons their prior position was actually correct. The smarter a person is, the greater his or her ability to rationalize and reinterpret discordant information, and the greater the polarizing boomerang effect is likely to be.

The real reason the gun rights side is winning is postindustrialization. The gun issue has become an epiphenomenon of a much larger conflict over values and identity.

A century ago, the forces of industrialization swept over agricultural America, and monetary policy became the proxy fight in that larger conflict. Today, people in agricultural and industrial America legitimately feel that their way of life is being threatened by postindustrial society. The members of this resistance have seized on issues like guns, immigration, the flag as places to mobilize their counterassault. Guns are a proxy for larger issues.

Four in 10 American households own guns. As Hahrie Han, a political science professor, noted in The Times Wednesday, there are more gun clubs and gun shops in this country than McDonald’s. For many people, the gun is a way to protect against crime. But it is also an identity marker. It stands for freedom, self-reliance and the ability to control your own destiny. Gun rights are about living in a country where families are tough enough and responsible enough to stand up for themselves in a dangerous world.

The populist revolt is about halfway through taking over the Republican Party. It is winning victories on gun, immigration and trade policy. The way to fuel this populism is to feed the elites-versus-common-man narrative, as so many have self-righteously done this week.

The only way to make progress on guns control is to forge some sort of synthesis on the larger postindustrialization/populism war. Over a century ago, industrialization brought on a culture clash between agrarian populists and the genteel Victorian aristocrats. Theodore Roosevelt transcended the fight by inventing a new American nationalism. Meanwhile, the progressives cleaned up elite corruption and nurtured a square deal for those being left behind by technological change. Cultural leaders introduced new institutions and community forms, like the Boy Scouts and the Settlement House, that drew from both cultures and replaced them.

Today we need another grand synthesis that can move us beyond the current divide, a synthesis that is neither redneck nor hipster but draws from both worlds to create a new social vision. Progress on guns will be possible when the culture war subsides, but not before.

You can find the original article and the wonderful photo illustrating it here.

Harry Newton, who keeps pinching himself. Our stocks continue to rise. Why? Please read Friday’s column. Click here.