A trip to the west. Bitcoin, gold and silver. Banks. Rival Covіd theories

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Over school vacation the family took a trip to Uzhgorod, on the western border with Slovakia. There were two objectives. Eddie's best friend Yarema lives there, and Oksana adores the thermal baths.

Oksana found out too late that it is served by a roll on roll off automobile transport. If she had acted in time we could have had our own car with us. In my opinion it turned out for the best. We rented a Volkswagen Polo, more modern with more amenities. The car changed the whole complexion of the vacation.

Oksana uses her smart phone as a navigator. I had not appreciated how sophisticated the software is. She drove twice to the Kosino thermal complex an hour away over secondary roads and made it just fine. We used the car for everywhere we went – never taking a bus or a taxi.

Oksana, Eddie and Zoriana left on Friday night leaving Marianna and me behind. Marianna was a bit sick, and I am simply not enamored of steaming like a lobster in hot water and saunas.  We came on Tuesday night. We were lucky to get any place at all on the train during vacation week. We shared a berth. Marianna slept just fine, I not at all. I was dragging all day Wednesday; glad we had nothing planned.

Our return was also staggered. Marianna, Eddie and I left on Saturday night so he would be ready for school on Monday. I was once again exhausted, glad to have nothing to do on Sunday except pick Oksana and Zoriana up at the station.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that in my opinion Bitcoin had gotten ahead of itself and that other precious metals would catch up. That is exactly what has happened. First gold and then silver have popped. Before we left I had looked for books on precious metals investing and bought How to Invest in Gold and Silver: a Complete Guide with a Focus on Mining Stocks. 

The book was rich with information about mining geology and techniques as well as the financial stuff. I got engrossed. It pointed me to a series of videos on YouTube entitled Ore Deposits 101. Among other things, it describes how metal deposits are created, located and exploited.

I expect that Bitcoin is only taking a bit of a breather. Here is a link to as good of an article as I have seen briefly comparing the virtues of gold and Bitcoin. 

Curious about what was going on in Ukraine, I found that we have a single gold mine under development. It takes heat and water to move the gold to the surface, and the mine is only about 10 miles from the Kosino thermal baths. I read the extensive information on the website for the Avellana company and wrote to tell them that we would like to visit next time we are in the West.

I have spent this week dealing with money issues. Since Janney Montgomery Scott told me a couple months ago they can no longer service accounts for people living overseas, we chose to open an account with Interactive Brokers, which has no problem. It took a while to get through their Know Your Customer requirements, but it is up. It is time to reassess our portfolio, in light of the new account and my recent reading.

United States regulations have caused problems with our local banks. They demand that we provide our Social Security numbers via a form W9. Unfortunately, Ukrainians are not familiar with the W9 folderol. The first bank rejected the W9 at least four times because first the name on the W9 did not exactly match my passport, secondly the date was computer printed and not handwritten, third they didn't know the difference between a Social Security number and an employer identification number, and I forget what the fourth was. At any rate I got to know the bank clerk pretty well straightening that one out.

I am on my way to the other bank this morning with the same skein of papers. The bank clerks are all very pleasant. All it takes is a lot of time.

In Covid news, Katelyn Jetelina, a reliable source for the government's position, continues to offer her opinion as to why the Covid vaccinations were a wonderful thing and have caused only minimal problems. Here's one claiming that the jabs had nothing to do with sudden deaths and another lamenting the fact that people have lost faith in the health establishment.  You true believers out there – and there remain a few – may want to see what she has to say. I was going to refute what her articles line by line, but at this point anybody who still believes the government narrative is beyond hope.  I have other things to do.

Going the other way, you recall The Indoctrinated Brain, the book review that got me kicked off Amazon. It is going mainstream. Tucker Carlson had an interview with the author, Michael Nеhls, this week.  I'm giving a speech on the book this Saturday.  Write to me and I will send you a transcript of the Tucker Carlson interview. Or, you can watch a video of my speech.  Nеhls' thesis is that the generation of new nerve cells in the hippocampus is correlated with the size of the hippocampus. These new nerve cells are essential to our thinking.  The size of our hippocampus should remain at 10 cm³ all of our lives if we are living appropriately, but most modern people shrink to half of that by the age of 80 due to a lack of diet, exercise, and environmental factors. His most explosive contention is that the jabs are adding to the problem. He theorizes that the powers that be want to make us more docile, less questioning.

That's the belated news from Lake WeBeGone, where at long last the whole family is more or less healthy. It was a rough winter – the strong man is way off his pace on the exercise bike.

Graham