The investor Sam Zell passed away recently. I can’t say I know much about him but the few things I read about him indicated that he had a somewhat unique astuteness when it came to investing. Some good quotes from 25iq.

A Dozen Things I’ve Learned from Sam Zell about Investing and Business

The Texas Legislature is in session and, as Molly Ivins used to say, no one is safe. This latest bill seems to make local governments unable to make laws. All laws will be state laws. If this sounds crazy to you, you haven’t been paying attention.

Texas passes bill stripping authority from cities

Noah Opinion collects all the EV misinformation in one place and refutes it. Yet see the exhausting comments by people (trolls? Chatbots? Oil industry employees?) repeating mostly the same claims refuted in the article. As I told an old friend once, EVs are just faster, quieter, cheaper with less maintenance. And they don’t smell bad with exhausts that will kill you, quickly and slowly. But mostly they will win because they are cheaper. Did I mention I bought my second Tesla yesterday? As much as I dislike their management, I cant see going back to gasoline.

All the arguments against EVs are wrong

Near the turn on the millennium I was the lead on a project called JBits. It was a full end to end software development environment for Xilinx FPGAs. It was very unusual at the time and supported high level language design as well as run time reconfiguration, things still difficult to do today.

The project was never commercialized, mostly due to the bad economic environment after Y2K and then 9/11. But over the years I have run into people, mostly at technical conferences, who were fans. Odd to see a 20 year old software project getting recognition, but this week at FCCM JBits received an award for contributions to the field. Nice to be remembered especially in a field that changes so fast and where so much gets forgotten.

Drove the Tesla from Austin to Phoenix to attend the ASU graduation. Used superchargers along the way, mostly on I-10. Spent the night in El Paso. Pretty much 1,000 miles in two days.

Somehow this wasnt in my news feed. From the BBC. Maybe include this in discussions about inflation?

ExxonMobil reports record first-quarter profits of $11.4bn

Texans can expect more expensive and less reliable power in the future. From Mother Jones.

Texas Is “Fixing” Its Power Grid in the Most Texas Way Possible

A good read from Narratively.

My High-Flying Life as a Corporate Spy Who Lied His Way to the Top

Got a call a couple of days ago. Seems I passed the one million mile mark with American Airlines. Took me over 30 years. Funny thing is I had no idea I was even close. Don’t ever recall seeing a total. If you had asked me I would have guessed 250k or so. My wife still thinks it could be a mistake.

As a kid I was fascinated by Leonardo da Vinci. Still am, I suppose. I knew that despite his vast output there was little known about his personal life. This is a small, but interesting piece of the puzzle.

Leonardo da Vinci Was Jewish