Notes From All Over, Part 2 -- October 22, 2019

First things first: World Series -- first game tonight. 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

The market, before the opening --

• AAPL remains on a tear; up a bit in pre-market trading; now over $241 with upgrades from analysts
• UNP: no trading yet, but was up 3.45% yesterday; jump $5.57 yesterday
• TSLA: down a percent yesterday; getting some of that back today
• F: most interesting automobile company right now; up slightly in pre-market trading
• GM: will start building premium electric pickup trucks and SUV's starting in late 2021
• PFE: up slightly in pre-market trading

Ex-Div today: 53 (filtered from 80 today entries) -- nothing of interest.

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The Word For The Day: Gabion

So much is packed into this article, and there's even a tie-in with Fargo, ND, over at wiki:

The HESCO MIL is a modern gabion primarily used for flood control and military fortifications. It is made of a collapsible wire mesh container and heavy duty fabric liner, and used as a temporary to semi-permanent levee or blast wall against explosions or small-arms. It has seen considerable use in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was developed in the late 1980s by a British company of the same name.

Originally designed for use on beaches and marshes for erosion and flood control, the HESCO MIL quickly became a popular security device in the 1990s.

HESCO barriers continue to be used for their original purpose. They were used in 2005 to reinforce levees around New Orleans in the few days between Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. During the June 2008 Midwest floods 9,000 yd of HESCO barrier wall were shipped to Iowa.

In late March, 2009, 11,700 yd of HESCO barrier were delivered to Fargo, North Dakota, to protect against floods. In late September, 2016, 10 miles of HESCO barriers were used in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for the fall flood of 2016.

Specifically, the brand name for the barrier is "Concertainer" (a portmanteau of "concertina" and "container"), with HESCO Bastion being the company that produces it.

I was reading The Ancient Celts, Barry Cunliffe, c. 2018, page 329, when the author discusses Caesar's use of the word oppidum, briefly, a large Celtic settlement in Gaul in the middle of the first century BC.

Oppidum was distinguished from:

• vici: villages
• aedificia (edifice): farmsteads
• civitates: towns within the provincia
• urbs (urban): specifically for a few larger residential sites

The author considers oppidum to be a portmanteau word but I don't see that. Latin op might be construed to mean "work/works" such as a settlement, but that's a stretch. And the Latin pid doesn't exist except as a derivation of ped, feet, or similar.

Oppida were not Celtic capitals. There were too many of them to be capitals, although they may have had "regional authority."

There really is no connection between the HESCO MIL and oppidum but simply due to the peculiarities of a google search, the former popped up which then led to gabion.