As I retire from mapmaking, I’m taking up #music via the alto recorder. This baroque-style instrument is my laboratory for creating short melodic pieces. I finish pieces in #MuseScore and give them virtual voices like flute, recorder and other instruments. Come listen!

Thanks for posting this. I like “data” rather than the opinions we get in media.

Good comment! Yeah, ransomeware…exactly. Maybe that’s why the Administration is so interested in a federal reserve of Bitcoin.

It’s not Trickle Down Economics but Trickle Everywhere Devastation.

Welcome to blackmail. Question is when? When a Democrat is elected President (someday)? Or when MAGA turns on Musk or the Administration? It’s a definite risk.

The 40s who approve of the President is shocking, like seeing Godzilla rising up out of the bass pond where I’m fishing (for photographs). Seriously, it’s shocking to me.

Gottschalk's works are great, his biography quite interesting.

Frederick Delius was making his way north from Florida and was trying to find some of Gottschalk's music. He could only find was The Dying Poet. This was 20 or more years after Gottschalk died. He would've liked this piece and others.

Anything Tchaikovsky is lyrical and beautiful.

I also like Alexander Glazunov, especially his symphonies (the beginning of #4 in particular) and the Raymonda Ballet Suite. The "Russian Sound" is where I gravitate, mostly.

If I was in a neighboring state, use this to sell my state to a business considering expansion. Economic development teams from #Georgia & #Tennessee take note—this guy as #Alabama governor may sabotage a business knowingly or not. States are competitive, too. Sell your state.

Small businesses, start-ups, entrepreneurs all are affected by the Cost of Tools. Tools can be pipe wrenches for plumbers or desks for digital artists. Tools affect business success. And they may become too expensive for business success.

I think it's all about entertainment (a distraction that secures votes), vainglory (himself first, his family second), and making money (the only metric he feels at home with). For MAGA, it's entertainment first and only. They're not interested in improving their lives via political effort.

Is there a metric measuring the cost of tools? I mean the tools that businesses require to operate--pipe wrenches for plumbers, desks for digital artists. Their costs impact productivity, esp. for small local businesses, start-ups, entrepreneurs--a big piece of the national economy.

Maybe the shock, besides the personal rebuke, is the realization that the vision being sold to MAGA is of an America that can't exist in the world economy of the 21st Century. It's a world where China is ascending and the U.S. contracting.

Besides which...a deal is marketed to us as if it's a permanent fix, a big "win."

Could be temporary relief for the negotiating country until they put into place the economic logistics of getting a better deal--from China and/or BRICS. Then they wave goodbye to us/U.S.

Note that I'm pointing this economist out for his analysis of modern and historical trends--a forest for the trees look--and not his prescription to fix capitalism or our mixed-capitalistic economy in the U.S. That's up to every one of us to study, discern and act on.