Stats on my Content
Any familiar reader knows I'm semi-obsessed with statistics, whether we are talking poll numbers or content platform statistics. Now if you remember past post discussions (e.g., I have a once-monthly "my greatest hits" segment where I sometimes comment on pageviews.
There have been times over the periods where it seemed Google Analytics' statistics seemed implausible. I would refresh the post statistics and see post reader literally go up say 25 pageviews every rime I refreshed the page, and apparently all from Russia (bots or whatever). There were steps I did to try to address what were clearly phony statistics. And then Google Analytics would send me a monthly notification like "Congratulations! 23 users visited your website last month" while I'm seeing 3000 pageviews. I'm not sure what that means; even if the 23 went to my blogger site daily to catch my daily miscellany post, that would explain less than a third of pageviews. Not to mention, unlike Twitter, I only have 1 official follower to this blog. Of course, it's probably easier to follow my Twitter account than my blog. Every once in a while I do a facelift of the blog, and I'm thinking of revamping the design and adding some new gadgets, including a follower gadget and maybe an email one.
But something has changed significantly since roughly my blog stats hit the 200K level a few weeks back. Somewhere around mid-month I went from a fairly consistent post pageviews ranging from the mid-teens to the 50's to single-digits (except for 3 posts, and 2 of those were my more popular social media editions). I can only give a rough estimate, but it looks like my daily pageviews are down at least 60%. I can only speculate on what's happened:'
- Google has made changes to its statistics gathering, say filtering bots or whatever which were inflating my "real" statistics. There is some collaborative evidence of this in the sense I've seen my mostly dubious Russian stats have gone way down since mid-month (although I had a burst of readers from an "unknown region" over the past day). I have no idea why Russian hackers or others have targeted my block--I've always been suspicious of how I would see more Russians than Americans in my daily stats, not an uncommon occurrence. But really that doesn't explain my individual post states. For example, I had a burst of 142 from "unknown" yesterday, but I really didn't see any obvious patterns in individual post pageviews.
- Google is resuming what I suspected was a variation of shadow banning. This is intrinsically difficult to prove. I have gotten incidental complaints (e.g., by relatives) reporting they couldn't access my content. Maybe my posts are buried in related searches.
- Maybe it's a seasonal factor. For example, many families vacation during the summer; my own Mom won't check it on my blog when she goes to visit my siblings or has house guests. But I don't recall seeing this happen in the past.
- It's always possible I've said or done something which has turned a large segment of my viewer base.
But it's still dramatic; over the last month or so I've seen monthly pageviews drop from say 2300 a month down to 1700 and I've seen daily pageviews drop from 40 or so down to 17, give or take a few pageviews. Since I started writing this segment, I had a freakish 2600 pageview burst over 1 hour, apparently from the US, and overnight I had a 142 pageview burst around 3 AM.
On Twitter, there's been a more positive trend; I've been at a 2.5K daily impression trend over the past month, probably the strongest since I joined. My followers are back up to 66, and I added a second 1K+ viral tweet. I've added Amash, Rand Paul, and Massie to sources I'm following.
On Facebook I've been added as a Top Fan to the Being Libertarian group.
Bruce Breeding Update
For readers unfamiliar: Bruce Breeding was my best friend from the University of Houston, where I earned my MBA and PhD in MIS; we shared an office with Minnie Yen. The last time I had been in touch with Bruce and Susan was back around 2014; I had listed Bruce as a reference on government paperwork, and an investigator had implied he couldn't get in touch with my references. I think Bruce had relocated for some position in the Atlanta area with a nonprofit. Bruce is a quiet guy and rarely discusses details, but I think he discovered some impropriety and left his position. Since then he and Susan returned to the southern suburbs of Austin. (When I earned my Master's at UT, it was a sleepy college town with an anti-growth agenda; it has changed since I lived there in the 70's.) I don't know much about his current work, but Susan recently mentioned his co-workers affectionately call him "Mr. Bruce". I had to smile because my nickname at my last job was "Dr. Ron".
About 3 weeks back, Bruce had a mild stroke at home and later a major followup stroke at the hospital. For the first couple of weeks, Bruce was in an ICU; he had some brain procedure to ease swelling, and for the next several days, he was in a coma. (I've mostly been following a daily blog update from Susan or one of her kids.) I don't think Susan officially wrote he was out of the coma, but she started mentioning signs of consciousness, including eyelid fluttering in response to the presence of familiar contacts, responding to suggestions to move his foot or blink his eyes, squeezing the hand of a nurse, tracking someone moving around his room with his eyes, etc.
So a week ago they had moved him out of the ICU and prepared him for transport to a nearby rehabilitation/long-term care facility. He's had some issues with digestion from the feeding tube contents. Susan was impressed that one of the first things they first did was get him, at least for exercise or related purposes, into a wheelchair (and change his clothes for workouts). Mostly, she's been positive about the staff, but she had some concerns, like when she found him one day in the wheelchair, slumped over sleeping, unattended. One amusing thing was something I never knew about Bruce: he loves his ice cream. It seems he's ambivalent about squeezing a big red button, unless it was in response to ice cream and whether he loves Susan. Working with a therapist, he's been able to trace out some characters, etc. What particularly impressed Susan was when his nurse said goodbye and he raised his right arm and hand to say goodbye.
I'm a little confused what a speech therapist does. I think one of Bruce's upcoming milestones is to get his swallowing reflexes up to speed, and he still has a tracheotomy (sic), so I think he's still a while away from oral communication. But she is working with him on other behaviors..
[As an aside, I had a huge crush on a speech therapy major in undergraduate school; I think she, a petite, sweet, thin lady, had a boyfriend and probably knew I was interested but didn't want to encourage my interest. I think Linda graduated the year before I did. I was sitting in a dorm lounge between the men's and women's dorm, when Linda warmly greeted me graduation day, and introduced me to 3 huge, beefy big brothers who looked like football players or bodybuilders. What had she said to them? I sure the hell didn't want to get beaten up by them. But they politely shook my hand. I guess I was impressed she thought enough of me to introduce me to her family]
Susan does say Bruce is doing a lot of napping and sleeping; no doubt his brain is continuing to mend.
An Unexpected Visit to the DMV
For a while I was expecting to relocate, most likely this month, basically one month before my 2-year auto registration was due to expire. So when I got an email notification from the DMV about renewing my registration came, I initially balked, not wanting to spend another $70, only having to register my car in another state barely into the new renewal. But basically figuring in a month for moving logistics, I decided to go ahead to do the renewal.
Only when I clicked on the Internet renewal, I got a message that my car wasn't eligible for it, that I would have to go to a full-service DMV. WTF? I recall I had also gotten a similar reaction when I went to a self-service vehicle emissions kiosk a while back.
Long story short, the MD DMV still showed my old unreturned tags from when I moved out of MD in 2014. (God knows where the old plates are--probably in some unpacked box in self-storage--when I had to replace them in WV.) So MD has a rule if you have multiple tags for a vehicle in their system, you aren't eligible to renew registration by Internet for your latest tags.
So, not counting my commute time, I had to endure about an hour at the DMV vs 10 minutes on the Internet.
Investments In the Age of Trump
My retirement took a major hit last month over Trump's tariffs roiling the market, roughly 4%. That might sound modest, but there are years I didn't make that amount of money. I did prune some holdings during the May slump but I avoided the temptation to throw the baby out with the bathwater. A good thing because I would have missed the bounceback to within a half percent or so of my April/May high. Now part of that is the Fed suggesting that they won't be raising rates anytime soon; in fact, the next step is likely a cut. All eyes are on Trump's trade talks with China at the G20. The market could be roiled by no news of progress or a selloff on the news, depending on how the markets in trade priced in expectations.
In theory a weaker dollar might be good for foreign assets and emerging market debt, and lower interest rates could be good for bond prices, gold and stocks (higher earnings with lower interest expenses).
However, potential conflict in the Gulf Region and an escalation of Trump's trade wars could trigger a correction. Not to mention that politicians, particularly Democrats, are targeting the crown jewel of our economy, high tech, talking about breaking up big tech companies, etc.
I will say that I'm particularly interested in closed-end funds trading at a discount to NAV and in certain sectors of high tech. I'm also looking at any confirmed uptrends in biotech and semiconductor stocks. I also consider solid companies which have sharply corrected, like Boeing, looking for signs they've bottomed out. I still hold a significant percentage in cash.
However, keep in mind I'm not a financial adviser; invest at your own risk.
