321 goes from ok to great

Getting your news off the chrome browser on your phone is a scary prospect. The little bugger listens to you all day long, then feeds you more of what you want to hear. 

This is great, except for one thing: you're going to think that the shit you care about is somehow important, on the big picture, because you keep seeing it again and again.

It's like confirmation bias gone haywire.

My google feed is all about EVs and SPACs these days. Is everyone's? Hell no. How do I know? I also get lots of stories about sailing, and I know for certain that's not big news. So yeah, distorted world view. 

As long as we're on the subject of investing in e-mobility, here's a look at the stock price of some of the leading ebike component makers.

Brose, a German company that makes the top mid-drive motor, is family owned.

Bafang is their Chinese equivalent, who make the best selling cheaper hub motors, but are also getting into mid-drives.

More than doubled last year.

Shimano is a Japanese company. They make mainly traditional bike parts, but ebikes have plenty of those, too.

And they've had a pretty huge year.

Panasonic, another japanese company, makes the guts of most of the batteries.

Maybe a little more room for returning to a previous high, but this year has still been good to them. Not exactly a bargain.

So let's dig a little deeper. Here's a French car parts maker who announced an innovative mid-drive motor.

That news hasn't exactly rocked the market. Could it be because they're a French company involved with bikes? 

A few years back, when I was building my own bike at the DIY Bike Kitchen, one of the volunteer mechanics said, "Being a bike mechanic would be easy, if it wasn't for the French." Basically, they do everything a little different. Which means, you have to have a whole other set of tools. Which, for the buyer, translates to, "le skip."

And for shits and giggles, I looked at the S&P 500, the gold standard of invest and forget it, to compare.

Maybe your gains wouldn't have been as big this year, but generally, it looks like it did pretty well. It's no Bafang, but it's not Valeo either.

File under: more e-mobility, duh

The e-trucks are coming. Above, a Rivian being road tested, passing a Tesla. And below, the Tesla semi is getting ready for production.

File under: poster boy

(That's me! On the FB homepage of the year's biggest sailing event!)

There's some stuff off the tablet I wanted to share, but Mercury is retrograde, so Blogger decided it didn't want to play with Android files, and I can't upload any pictures off that device. So I had to email them to this device.

In general, I have to say, I'm not super thrilled with Samsung's implementation of Android. Motorola's (lenovo) is way less buggy and quirky. It's almost like Samsung has a whole department whose job is trying to create some relevance for themselves, but really all they do is slow things down? Bixby? The Samsung keyboard? The Samsung store? These are all a waste of time.

Samsung Notes is pretty good though. If only they didn't make you confirm your color choice on the 2nd level picker by hitting a "done" button at the very bottom of the screen, when on the first level picker, all you have to do is click on the color. I can't tell you how many times I've had to go back and reselect a color because I didn't click "done." Well, I can. Almost every time.

Still, I was spent some time evangelizing the tablet over the old macbook yesterday:

I missed the fact that my shoulders aren't as sore.

So yeah, I watched more tutorials, and found more brushes. It's not like these brushes have been hiding, I just needed to click another icon. But I think in the learning process, I've been blocking out the extra details, to focus on practicing the little bit I've learned. 

I wonder how often this happens in general, where we sort of put on blinders to focus, but maybe miss out on some possibilities along the way?

Anyway, I found some opaque inks, more bleeding watercolors, and blendy oils.

Also, this guy is currently homesteading a backyard in Florida, living off the land of six front yard gardens.

Previously, he rode cross country on a bamboo bike. Three times.

And wore all the garbage he created for a month.

And he doesn't even call himself an artist! He's an activist.

I'll just call him a bad-ass.