Fly the Empty Skies

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I haven’t been in an airport for seven months. As some of you know, I used to travel with annoying regularity. I haven’t missed the routine. Anyway, we made our way to San Jose International on Thursday, and I wanted to show you what it was like, since I know the culture around here is a little more cautious than some other parts of the country.

Here’s the bustling, rambunctious main hall of the airport.

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Buying Their Own Pencils

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This is one of those instances where I have to preface my post with “I am not bashing ______________” In this case, the noun is “teachers.”

I went to public schools my whole life, prior to college. My teachers, collectively, could be put on a bell curve. 20% of them were terrific. 20% stunk. The other 60% were competent but not memorable.

I was intrigued to see this………..

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Meat Firming Up?

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We haven’t mentioned Beyond Meat (BYND) in ages. This company had a spectacular IPO, then it flamed out. It flopped around at its lows, but then, much like with Zoom, Covid saved the day. The last time a saucer pattern like this formed, it was quite a fake-out. And, frankly, even in oh-so-hip Palo Alto, I see very little of this product at Whole Foods, and it’s just kind of buried next to Kim Chi and other stuff hardly anyone purchases.

slopechart BYND

Oh Hi Mark to Market

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I penned a recent post describing how the good people at Zillow had slashed the ostensible value of my lovely private residence from $8.4 million to $4.8 million (maybe they just like flipping digits?) Given the relatively smooth sailing of Zillow data, this was curious to me, until I stumbled upon an event that might have jostled their statistics: the sale of the home of my next door neighbor:

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Black Girls Code!

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One recent morning, I was driving home from a nearby errand on El Camino Real, crossing from Menlo Park into Palo Alto, when a bus rumbled past me. It was one of those double-long buses and, as usual, there wasn’t a single soul on it. Well, obviously there was the driver, probably paid in the six figures thanks to overtime, but otherwise it was, as is always the case, utterly empty and unused.

On the side of the bus, as there usually was, a large advertisement was affixed. These ads normally encourage the onlooker to drink milk, or sign up for online courses at De Anza College, or go to the Stanford Shopping Center.

However, This was one I had never seen before. There was a stylized photo of a young black woman’s face, and next to that were the giant words: “It isn’t a question of if she will change the world. But when.”

Centered beneath all of this were the words: Black Girls Code.

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