Tariffs

The US has a terrible imbalance in trade with Europe, Mexico, Canada, and of course China. Much of this is largely due to the fact that these other countries impose severe tariffs on American products, and so these products don’t get sold there.

What Trump is doing by imposing tariffs is to even the trading field so that the US doesn’t have these terrible trade imbalances. In a real sense, that these other countries are using punitive tariffs on American products forces Trump to do what he is doing.

Trump is a businessman, and businessmen want lots of international trade. Given his druthers, I actually think Trump would prefer entirely free trade — no tariffs at all. But what he will not tolerate are these trade imbalances because, in the end, they make the US poorer.

Trump is known as a deal maker. He sees himself in that light. His book is actually titled “Art of the Deal”. Imposing tariffs is his first move in trying to lower or neutralize foreign tariffs against American products. The second move will be the negotiation with each country on setting up equitable or no tariffs.

Trump

Cuts

In the last 12 years — retired — I’ve learned how to cook, mostly getting instruction from Youtube videos. To my surprise, I love cooking — just love it. I spend a lot of time each day planning the OMAD meal of the following day, and use cronometer.com to do that.

But what I now know about cooking is there is a lot of dicing of food with sharp knives — an incredible amount of chopping for every meal. So the question I have is to what extent the best chefs of the world suffer from cuts, probably some cuts that can be severe, given the sharpness of their knives and perhaps the need for haste for food preparation in a restaurant?

I suspect that getting cut is a very common occupational hazard for the top chefs, and something that happens on a fairly regular basis. Just speaking from my own experience.

Tasty Veg Casserole

Suppression

I felt a wonderful sense of relief and gladness the other day. It was so strong that it was almost alarming.

What I realized when this happened was that for the longest time, perhaps forever, I’ve kept my emotions so in check that it amounted to suppressing them constantly.

That raises the question to what extent one should restrain one’s emotion. Restraint means acting more rationally in the face of adversity, but it also means, to a certain extent, not really living.

So it is a dilemma. My constant suppression means that I have been able to navigate difficulties with rational reactions, but have I really lived? Not really.

Discipline

Hardest Part

Hardest part of growing old is maintaining one’s strength. You need weight training/resistance training to maintain your muscles. And you need to do that with discipline.

Many older people either don’t know that or they don’t have the discipline, so they end up feeble in old age.

95% Do This

No Salt

Stop using salt in your food and you will start to really appreciate various tastes. Your pallet will become much richer for it.

Those cooking instructions that tell you to add a “pinch of salt” to your recipes are very unhealthy, as you get enough sodium from the food you eat and don’t need any additional salt. That pinch of salt just means you are raising your blood pressure a notch, and so welcoming heart issues.

Don’t add a pinch of salt to anything.

Tasty Veg Casserole