Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Dumps Entire Position In OXY, Dumps All Of Goldman Sachs -- August 10, 2020

First things first: number one high school football player in the entire United States -- quarterback from local area high school, Southlake,TX; from high school where our oldest granddaughter plays water polo; pretty exciting; signs early with University of Texas Longhorns; stories everywhere; one link here;

Buffett, quarterly update, more on the previously reported story; link here:

• dumped entire stakes in Goldman Sachs; OXY; 
• I wonder if he kept his OXY warrants (link here);
  
• completed exodus of airlines, including American Airlines; United Airlines; Delta Air Lines; and Southwest Airlines;
• sold more than a quarter of its stake in Wells Fargo; ownership decreases from 5.3% to 3%;
• sold about 60% of its position in JPMorgan Chase; now represents only 1% of entire Berkshire holdings; down from 3% in previous quarter;
• also reduced positions in PNC Finanacial Services; cut position from 0.5% to03%;
• acquired a new position in Barrick Gold Corp; $563 million (small potatoes as my dad would say);
• represents 0.3% of Bersire's holdings:
• increased position in Kroger
• no changes in AAPL holdings

Renewable energy: reliance on wind and solar will lead to blackouts -- Xcel Energy; link here.

Blackouts in CA: google PG&E starts rotating power outages impacting up to 250,000 customers at a time; unable to warn customers in advance;

Sleepless in Seattle: REI leaving. Google REI to sell brand-new headquarters outside Seattle, embrace 'new normal' of remote work.

Lowe's new beginning: will add fulfillment centers, large-appliance sites for fast delivery, link here. If Lowe's customers like this, thank Amazon.

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Covid-19
For The Archives

A East Coast friend asked me whether folks "in the west" were taking "masking" seriously -- LOL, as if that's the key to beating this thing. LOL. Whatever. This was my response, somewhat superficial, somewhat exaggerated but these were my observations and I'm sticking to them. On my recent cross-country trip:

• New Mexico was really, really serious about masks; they have a serious problem with Navajos and coronavirus (and Corona beer for that matter, I suppose);
• Utah, rural areas: I don't think they have heard of Covid-19; no one wore masks; I didn't stop in Salt Lake City area;
• Idaho: not there long enough to really know how they feel; I doubt they were taking it very seriously;
• Oregon: I didn't go anywhere while visiting, but service stations suggested they were taking it very seriously; masks required; and my wife and daughter are very, very concerned, mostly due to the new twins and May's asthma, and May is now older; she says she is now over 49 years of age; she was 29 years old for many years;
  
• Montana: plus/minus serious about Covid. The bars were packed based on cars in parking lots. One favorite spot was closed for "deep cleaning." I did not go inside to see if patrons were wearing masks. I doubt it.

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The Literature Page

From Bettany Hughes' Helen of Troy: The Story Behind the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, c. 2005, p. 318.

The Cretans (inhabitants of the island of Crete) invented the first-ever script in Old Europe, 'Cretan Hieroglyphic', around 2000 BC, closely followed by another, Linear A; to date both remain undeciphered.

Evidence of these two scripts was uncovered by Arthur Evans when he excavated Knossos on Crete in 1900.

But Evans also discovered another script -- Linear B -- that would prove not quite so elusive. 

Twelve years after Evans' death, in 1953, Michael Ventris, an architect who had worked closely with the brilliant, chain-smoking American scholar Alice E. Kober (the 180,000 rectangles of graph paper that represented much of the leg-work necessary for cracking Linear B were filed in old Lucky and Fleetwood cigarette boxes), deciphered Linear B and showed it to be an early form of Greek. 

Inspired by the innovators to the south, it appers the Mycenaeans took the idea of swriting from the Minoans (island of Crete), but used it to express the early form of Greek that htey spoke.

So, Cretan hieroglyphics, the first-ever script in Old Europe followed by Linear A, both remain undeciphered, and pretty much limited to Crete and where Cretans may have sailed. Then came Linear B, early Greek, and deciphered. How cool is that?

I still marvel at biologists who try to show how "smart" non-human animals are, pointing out the tools that ants and ant-eaters use. For me, the development of language and writing is almost unexplainable, a huge jump from the "language" used by non-human animals.

The jump from animal-grunts and sign language to true "human language" is simply amazing. Think about that. Say "mama" and "papa" over and over and over again, very slowly, and feel the very, very subtle difference. The placement of the lips in both cases is almost identical but the latter ("papa") requires a little "pop" not needed to pronounce "mama."

Pronounce the diphthong "th" and the word "the" over and over and over, maybe a hundred times, and get a feeling for the subtle difference. Again, in both cases, the tongue/upper teeth placement is identical but they part company at the "end" despite "the" being a single syllable, just like "th."

Now, think about that next jump: from oral language to actual writing. How would one even begin to think about writing the representation for "the" and "th." Or "is." How would you think about writing "is"?