Fed Chair Powell ~ "I won't see you next time."

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) cost approximately $3 billion over its nine-year run from 1933 to 1942. That's roughly $65–70 billion in today's dollars, depending on the inflation measure used.
For that money, the CCC employed about 3 million young men, who planted an estimated 3 billion trees, built trails and infrastructure in hundreds of state and national parks, and fought fires and erosion across the country. Enrollees earned $30 a month, $25 of which was sent home to their families.

Just saying, we could have done a new era of century lasting projects at home for our grandchildren to enjoy.

Saw this on Reddit and you realize that the math really is that simple. Yes, they just made the game twice as difficult and that has social implications.

Building a main street is local focused and a better choice for the community. They are more often to be locally owned and reinvest back into the business ecosystem in addition to just bringing more value and charm.

For the amount of money the US has spent on this war (~$39B), we could have paid in cash for 130,000 new construction single family homes instead. Wild.
https://iran-cost-ticker.com/

If you make it to Townsend, TN to visit the Smokies, treat yourself to a stop at Company Distillery, you won't be disappointed.

The powers that be really underestimated how easy it was to cancel the chatgpt subscription , delete the account/app from all devices and sign up with @Maple AI

Shoulda done it earlier.

"Furthermore, the incentive for these hardware companies to prioritize the average consumer is also dwindling. According to Western Digital, thanks to a surge in demand from its enterprise customers, the consumer market now accounts for just 5 percent of the company's revenue."
https://mashable.com/article/ai-hard-drive-hdd-shortages-western-digital-sold-out

Uh oh..... Do we have one of you guys building open source hard drives yet?

"Strong Towns has always started from a different premise. Durable affordability doesn’t come from crashing markets or imposing uniform outcomes. It comes from places that can respond to stress without breaking; from systems that can adjust incrementally without needing to override the people who live there. And it comes from building up more communities that can offer real opportunity and prosperity, so demand naturally spreads across many places, instead of being forced into a handful of superstar metros that buckle under the pressure." https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2026-2-9-the-housing-debate-is-finally-catching-up-to-reality

While this article is about housing affordability, this paragraph made me think of the people here who each day are doing some small incremental thing to make this and their community better, whether cutting soap, making shirts, incrementally creating technology to provide a freer and fairer world or posting memes to keep the vibes up.

GM all, have a good weekend.