Over the past year and a half, new cars have become dramatically more expensive. While changes in product mix, constraints in part supplies, and overall increases in quality have played into that, dealer markups have also become a prominent factor - especially with highly-demanded models.

Economic Background

With exciting cars like the Ford Bronco and new Corvette having hit the market, dealers have found themselves in an interesting position - sole vendors of an in-demand good, with limited supply. It doesn’t take an Econ major to see the outcome here -> dealers have been able to apply “market adjustment” fees on top of MSRP (crucially - which enough people will still pay!) to maximize their earnings per sale, much to the chagrin of their OEMs.

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I recently took a trip to Europe - an amazing time - but with the long flight to and from the West Coast, found my body really paying the price in terms of jetlag.

One of the nights after my return to California, as I lay awake at 5 am, body still mostly on Spain time, I realized that professional sports teams are doing a small-scale version of this every few days: flying from Oakland to Houston to Seattle and back, then hitting the road again.

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In the first 111 games of the Yankees’ season, Aaron Judge has played in 107 games, walked into the batter’s box 475 times, and taken an MLB-leading 44 nice, slow jogs around the basepaths.

That astounding production has put Judge into rarefied air, as a strong contender to finish the season with 60 or more home runs, and a chance at beating Roger Maris’ long-held AL record. If Judge can hold pace through August, the final month of the season may turn into appointment viewing as he closes in on his 61st and 62nd homers, tying and surpassing Maris, respectively.

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With inflation continuing to run hot across many sectors of the economy, the Federal Reserve has begun to raise interest rates, and seems set to raise them another 50-75 basis points in the coming days.

The purpose of these rate hikes is to kickstart the cooling process within the economy by constricting capital expenditure, which slows associated business and consumer spending, which then (hopefully) begins to restore price stability - all without (the Fed hopes) impacting the labor market too much. It’s a super delicate needle to thread, and it will be fascinating to see whether or not this approach ends up being an effective one, or if it becomes increasingly clear that the Fed’s response to inflation has been too little, too late.

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If you’ve driven your car at all over the last few months, you may have encountered some shockingly high numbers at the gas pump. I know I certainly have - take a peek at this bill I paid last month at a particularly pricey gas station in Brentwood!

While I don’t drive enough for these prices to be materially painful, it is still no fun to pay a bill of that size!

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It’s been another painful year to be a Washington Nationals fan. Fresh off a 3-0 series drubbing by the red-hot Atlanta Braves, they lost again today to the Philadelphia Phillies, leaving them with a 2-8 record in their last 10 games, and 19.5 games back of the Mets for the NL East lead.

I write, however, prompted not so much by the continued pains of the Nats (though each Corbin start does wound me deeper and deeper), but by the clearly evident skill of the Atlanta Braves - who hit thirteen home runs in their three game sweep.

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In the leadup to Opening Day, Fangraphs published a series of “Positional Power Rankings”, which sought to measure how each team’s roster stacks up against others in the league, at each position.

The final rankings were computed two ways:

1. Creating an ordinal list of teams, sorted by projected WAR at that position (ie. 1, 4, 12)
2. Creating a z-score for projected WAR at each position (ie. +2.35, -0.76)

While method one is handy to quickly check relative position in the rankings, it doesn’t do a very good job of capturing how significant the differences are… For example, Juan Soto isn’t just the best right fielder, he is projected to be a lot better than the second best right fielder. As such, visualizing this data with z-scores of projected WAR gives us a more intuitive sense of the spread of the data, in addition to the ordinal rankings.

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Today, I finally got around to migrating my website to use HTTPS and SSL - something that will go under-the-hood to nearly everyone, but is becoming more and more important to do as a foundational internet thing.

Here’s a blurb from Namecheap in response to the question “Do I need an SSL certificate?”

We’ll just say it: yes. Your website needs any SSL certificate If you’re asking for any personal information. But that’s not all there is to it. Search engines are cracking down on perceived ‘non-secure’ websites. Any websites without the SSL certificate will remain http while those with encryption will show https in users’ browsers. Chrome, Firefox and other browsers have began issuing warnings that non-https sites are insecure. Additionally, Google recently announced SSL is a ranking signal, so unless you have SSL your site will be harder to find, impacting on your traffic and revenue.

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Last month, the Senate passed a bill intended to end the jump forward / jump backward era of Daylight Savings Time, and align on a year-round implementation of the summer “daylight saved” hours.

Besides showing that at least something can pass the Senate with bipartisan support, this bill gives hope for everyone who struggles to adjust their sleep cycles that an end may finally be in sight!

It’s important to note that there is healthy debate over whether or not Permanent Daylight Savings time is better or worse than adopting Permanent Standard Time… Permanent Daylight means that the sun will rise and set an hour later in the day, which certain people prefer, while others would rather preserve morning light.

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For about the last month, there’s been a new addition to my daily routine. At some point in the afternoon, I find a comfy spot to sit, fire up Wordle, drop in a first guess, and then let my mind slowly run through vowels and consonants…

Delightfully low-tech and easy to play, yet occasionally fiendishly difficult, it’s easy to see how Wordle quickly became a phenomenon amongst the NYT Crossword and Trivia Night set.

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