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John T. Reed’s news blog

Super book on baseball pitching

Posted by John Reed on

I have read a zillion books on baseball—maybe more than any other subject other than real estate. And there may be more baseball books than real estate books. One of the best is one I am now reading: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches by Tyler Kepner. It is a bad title. The book is about the grip and other techniques and actual performance details and mostly mental aspects of pitching each of those pitches. Also, the basic idea of what pitchers are trying to do and what batters are trying to do. For example, I couldn’t find it...

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Tucker Carlson and the “isolationism without limits is no vice” crowd

Posted by John Reed on

I highly praised Tucker Carlson here in the last year I think. . But I noted he has some blind spots. Nowadays, he is essentially an absolute isolationist, a believer in the notion that we must retreat from all nuclear weapons owners who threaten to use them against us..By definition, if all nations were absolute isolationists who would only fight when they were invaded, evil dictators could take over the world one county at a time by the salami-slice gradual divide-and-conquer approach. . He acknowledges that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is totally wrong, but rejects doing anything to stop or reverse...

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Get multiple bids and go with the lowest qualified bidder. Don’t be distracted by smiles, etc.

Posted by John Reed on

We got AC work done today. One estimate was $17,767. The other was $9,142. This was to replace the heating and air-conditioning for the first floor of our two-story home.  The second-floor systems were replaced about seven years ago. The third company we asked for an estimate was the one who replaced the second floor HVAC seven years ago. They charged us over $12,000 then, so it is not likely that they would would have made a competitive bid this time. They promised to give us an estimate this time, but did not. This got us a 3-ton, 14 SEER condenser and...

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WSJ say real estate not aways in inflation hedge. Actually it pretty much is.

Posted by John Reed on

‘Real Estate Isn’t Always a[n inflation] Shelter’ is the headline in a WSJ article from yesterday. Excuse me. Real estate is not a dollar-denominated asset. ALL assets that are NOT dollar-denominated ARE inflation hedges. What is the author Carol Ryan talking about? When inflation accelerates, as in WW II and the 1970s, it is common for the federal government to enact price controls including rent controls. NYC still has rent control left over from WW II. But Ryan manages never to mention rent control in an article about inflation other than mentioning that already existing German “government regulations cap” residential...

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H&D photo

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