His story is very similar to mine

...but mine did not result in anything that could be considered as a success. The difference is that he picked up the guitar again, and I really did not.

Is there a moral to that story? Maybe... Some may wonder if I would take up the guitar again, but I dunno.... (lol).

There are so many resources now available on Youtube and perhaps elsewhere, which did not exist for me in the '70's. That may sound like an excuse, and perhaps it is.
Anyway, he has an explanation for why he became more successful with his guitar growth, and that is what the video is about.

Shy/Forget/Naive & Invincible by Caryl Archer aka CarylCake

8/13/26:

Ah, a name from the past! I got curious, what happened with her? Well, I clicked on the video, and it returned a new name. OK. So, it isn't CarylCake anymore? It's something else?  ( after a pause to check it out... Same person!)

Here's a video I found with a catchy tune. To my recollection, she once had another tune that thought was catchy back then. Then one has a bit of that, too.

7/6/11: The original post is below:

This is a live performance. She has an equipment malfunction several minutes into the video. No interruption of the performance at all, while she continues singing, she fixes the microphone. I guess you could say that was professional.

Kudlow discusses economic news

8/13/26:

This is a fairly recent post to be doing this for. But it is getting some attention. Why?

The last GDP report was not that great. It was about 1 1/2 per cent growth. That is below what Kudlow is talking about in this video.

Could that be the reason for the interest?

I have this suspicion about the Federal Reserve System. Indeed, the Fed can induce recessions through tight monetary policy. The Fed can also induce growth through a loose monetary policy. Don't believe that? It is implied in the Humphrey-Hawkins law, which provides guidance for the Federal Reserve in its policy making.

Consequently, if there's inflation, the Fed is causing it. If there's a recession, the government is causing it. That may be an over-simplification, but there is that implication in the law that the Fed does have a say in how the economy peforms.

Therefore, when Trump says the interest rates are too high, he's saying that the Fed is sabotaging the economy. Think about that one for a moment, if you please.

As for the statistics, it was once said that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. You can get stats to say whatever you want them to say. Just sayin'.

5/9/26: The original post follows:

"Lefties will be disappointed." Doomers and gloomers will have nothing to talk about. Maybe they'll invent something, eh?

Jon Matonis on Bitcoin and crypto-currencies

8/12/26:

Here is an AI discussion of crypto-currency:

Discuss the history of "crypto" currency. Also describe what it actually is, please.

Cryptocurrency: What It Actually Is

At its core, cryptocurrency is digital money that operates without a central authority like a bank or government. Instead of relying on an institution to verify transactions, it uses cryptography and a blockchain — a decentralized, distributed public ledger.

Here's the breakdown of the key pieces:

- Blockchain: A continuously growing list of records ("blocks") linked and secured by cryptography. Each block contains transaction data, a timestamp, and a cryptographic hash of the previous block. This chain of hashes makes tampering practically impossible — alter one block and every subsequent block's hash breaks, alerting the entire network.

- Decentralization: Copies of the entire ledger are distributed across a network of computers ("nodes"). No single entity controls it or can censor transactions.

- Consensus mechanisms: The network agrees on the valid state of the ledger without a middleman. Two dominant models:

- Proof of Work (PoW) — Miners compete to solve computational puzzles to add blocks, consuming significant energy. This is what secures Bitcoin. It's slower but battle-tested.

- Proof of Stake (PoS) — Validators lock up ("stake") coins as collateral to propose and validate blocks. Much more energy-efficient, used by Ethereum and many newer networks.

- Supply control: The issuance of new coins is governed by protocol rules, not central banks. Bitcoin, for instance, is capped at 21 million coins — a feature designed to mimic digital scarcity.

- Currency properties: Cryptocurrencies are fungible (each unit is interchangeable), stored in digital wallets using public/private key cryptography, and can be transferred peer-to-peer nearly instantly and cheaply across borders.

Critically, cryptocurrency has no intrinsic value — it isn't backed by gold or government decree. Its price is determined purely by supply and demand, the quality of the underlying technology, and investor sentiment. As Schwab notes, it's a non-fiat medium of exchange that functions independently of government.

A Brief History

The idea of "digital cash" predates Bitcoin by decades. The key milestones:

1. The Precursors (1980s–1990s): In 1983, American cryptographer David Chaum conceived of ecash, an early cryptographic electronic money. Over the following years, various attempts emerged (e-gold, b-money, bit gold), but all were centralized or flawed. The unsolved problem was the double-spend issue — how to stop someone from spending the same digital coin twice without a central authority.

2. Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto (2008–2009): In October 2008, an anonymous individual or group under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin whitepaper. In January 2009, the Bitcoin network launched with its genesis block. This was the first successful solution to double-spending via a decentralized consensus mechanism (PoW). Nakamoto vanished from public view shortly after, leaving the network to run itself.

3. Altcoins and Early Exchanges (2011–2013): Rival coins (altcoins) like Litecoin emerged. Exchanges like Mt. Gox (which later collapsed due to theft) made trading possible. Bitcoin's price history became increasingly volatile.

4. Ethereum and Smart Contracts (2014–2015): Vitalik Buterin proposed Ethereum, which launched in 2015. It introduced smart contracts — self-executing code on the blockchain — and decentralized applications (dApps), massively expanding what blockchains could do beyond simple payments.

5. The ICO Boom and Bust (2017–2018): Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) let startups raise money by issuing tokens, driving a speculative frenzy and subsequent crash. This cycle established crypto's reputation for extreme volatility and scams.

6. DeFi and NFTs (2020–2021): Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications — lending, borrowing, trading without intermediaries — exploded. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) brought blockchain to digital art and collectibles. Institutional interest grew, and El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender in 2021.

7. Crypto Winter and Mainstream Validation (2022–2024): 2022 saw the FTX collapse, wiping out billions and exposing rampant fraud. Markets crashed. However, 2024 marked a turning point — spot Bitcoin ETFs were approved in the US, giving mainstream investors a regulated, easy way to gain exposure. This was followed by ETH ETFs and increasing institutional adoption.

8. The Present (2025–2026): Crypto has moved firmly from fringe to mainstream finance. Regulatory frameworks are being built globally (including US state- level initiatives like Bitcoin reserve legislation in some states), and the technology itself — blockchain — is finding applications in supply chains, healthcare records, identity verification, and even voting systems.

The bottom line: Cryptocurrency is a genuinely new form of programmable, decentralized value transfer, born from a failure to trust central institutions. It's revolutionary in its architecture but carries real risks — extreme volatility, regulatory uncertainty, scams, and energy concerns (for PoW). It's not a get-rich-quick scheme, nor is it "fake money." It's a technology with a 15-year track record, evolving rapidly, and its ultimate role in the global financial system is still being written.

5/31/26:

Bitcoin didn't seem like a durable thing. A small investment back then may have appreciated a lot, so I may have missed an opportunity. What problem does Bitcoin (crypto) solve? Maybe the same ones that paper currency does. But it has the same problems that paper currency has. Perhaps even more problems. Security would seem to be a problem with crypto. I don't trust it.

4/4/13:

GoldMoneyNews


Quote:

Published on Mar 29, 2013

Subscribe to our newsletter at http://www.goldmoney.com/goldresearch. Episode 118: GoldMoney's Andy Duncan talks to Jon Matonis of the Bitcoin Foundation who is also a contributor to Forbes Magazine. They discuss Bitcoin's latest price spike and whether crypto-currencies are a credible alternative as a medium of exchange.

Comment:

GoldMoney is a gold vault operation, for want of a better term.  This is their communication, which is amongst the ways in which they communicate with the world.

You can buy and sell gold there, with what they call gold grams, which represent 1 gram of gold.  In comparison to an ounce, it takes about 30 grams to equal an ounce.  GoldMoney's vault is located in the Channel Island of Jersey, near England, if memory serves.  I traded with them there, on the internet, in 2007.  I stopped fairly quickly that year when the US government started interfering, to my displeasure.

My contribution to the thoughts on this matter on the video is that since BitCoin is peer-to-peer, and a value is needed to establish what a BitCoin is actually is worth, then all is needed is some agreement amongst the BitCoin community as what that value of a BitCoin actually is.  Now, if BitCoin is pegged amongst the community that it is worth so many gold grams, then you have achieved an objective value of a BitCoin, in my opinion.

Real currencies are set up by governments.  A government is a group of people who exert authority and operate according to some kind of mutual agreement amongst them.  In comparison, you would need to have a way to police a system, amongst the participants in that system.   Now, a group of people can set this up and run it according to a charter they agreed upon.  It can govern the system.

The video doesn't cover this, by the way.  It is my own thought on the matter.

Anyway, here's the video

Welding the Starship together, the concept matures over time

TechMap channel

Nerd alert! A technical deep dive or sorts in these next two videos.

The video above abruptly changes topic in the middle of the video. If it whets your appetite for more, the following video may be of interest to you. A nerd's delight...

Another technical deep dive into Starship manufacturing

Bongino Show, 8/11/26

Was Bongino really getting some negative feedback because of this show? In my opinion, he is really cooking here. There's an explanation for all of this. It is in the Gospel of John.

What's that, you might ask... It's actually in more parts of the New Testament than that... But it comes down to the fact that the world loves a lie because the world is in darkness. It's a spirtual thing, but the world has forsaken that. You can see it every day.

Battle of Midway, WWII

8/11/26:

Did Nimitz set a trap for Yamamoto at Midway? The following video makes its case that he did.

12/14/13: The original post is below:

At the end of a film on that subject, the character for Adm. Nimitz asked if we were better than the Japanese, or just lucky.

Well, our side had a few things the Japanese didn't have.  We had radar.  We cracked their codes.  We had better reconnaissance, as we had more planes than they had.  We were also in our own backyard, so to speak.  We had other advantages, too.  Like better fire suppression in ships.  Better armor on our planes.

But we had some disadvantages.  There were few battleships available because of the successful Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor.  These battleships could have provided greatly needed cover.  The Japanese had them and it was almost decisive.  We were nearly out of attack planes when the final ones came in and caught the Japanese by surprise.  It was a surprise because they didn't expect a third carrier to be available.  Yorktown was damaged at Coral Sea.  Emergency repairs made her sea worthy, and this wasn't expected.  Three Japanese carriers were knocked out with that last blow.  That final carrier was decisive.  Game over.

No, the Battle of Midway wasn't all luck.  There was some luck involved.  That luck could have been decisive as well.  But it wasn't all luck.  If that third carrier wasn't available, even this wouldn't have been good enough.

The moral of the story.  Don't count on luck.  You should strive to be good enough to take advantage of what luck you may get.