I've Been Robbed

Some floral visitors collect nectar by piercing flower external whorls, acting as nectar

robbers. They leave robbery vestiges, which can cause changes in floral characteristics,

including physical and chemical signals that may influence flower recognition by

pollinators. If...

Wait, is this about plants? Plant fitness? Plant-animal interactions?

Whoa is THAT a rabbit hole. Absolute floral larceny!

Glad that's out of the way early! No amounts of nectar could make up for that.

Okay, where was I?

Oh yeah! Done with the flower jokes.

No more nectar exploitation here.

A 76-year-old robbing victim is warning shoppers to be careful after she and a 90-year-old

woman both had their purses stolen at West Town Mall.

Wait a minute...rustle papers.

Yeah, okay, ordinary citizens, that happened, but that's not what I mean to be talking

about.

What is the crime of theft? What can I do if I have been robbed? What kinds of theft are

there? What if there is limited nectar availability? Sorry. What are the penalties for the

crime of theft? How can we achieve adequate security for our actions?

Should I be concerned if Robin Hood and Little John disguise themselves as women in

order to steal Prince John's gold coins? Is that the sort of thing a leader would do in

pursuit of national unity or is this just animal behavior?

I guess you should, if you believe that sort of thing. We're not talking about tubular flowers,

after all.

I'm not saying that real crime is not real.

It is. Civic leaders tell us that it is.

Listen as I transition to the point, which is when people say they've been robbed in

reference to some opportunity they had which turned out great except that they didn't take

it.

Others took it.

People who didn't take it say they were robbed.

They weren't. No exclusive nectar-robber visits requiring a police officer or a police report.

Let's look at that in the investment business for a minute.

The way some people talk, you'd almost think there was a repressive leader at the top

demanding a crackdown by security in military uniforms after a narrow election.

It's not uncommon to hear people bemoan missing an investment opportunity the way

they might bemoan the ouster of longtime grandparents.

Sometimes it's a very specific and recent situation, like when Tesla split 5 shares to one

last year, then promptly went up some more.

Sometimes it's a lot less specific and more whimsical, like when someone wishes they'd

bought Microsoft back in 1985 when it was a primary attractant.

I was robbed a tiny bit when fuel prices, which had been so low in the late 1980's, went up to what was really just normal.

Occasionally people will say they were robbed, or that the system was "rigged". They have

expectations for truce.

People have spent days in protest over lesser behavior.

Only very rarely will people acknowledge, up front, that maybe they should have acted on

their thoughts when they first had them.

They might get there eventually, or if pressed. But up front is pretty rare. I'll give bonus

miles, even 3X miles, for that.

Sometimes people will dumb down the situation, not realizing that this will cause them to

miss out on dramatic increase.

I heard a person earlier today says that she "also was confused and took months to figure

out" a pretty common situation which really happened in early 2021.

This of course was not true but made her and her product more approachable. A kind of

insurance.

Are you ready and willing to stand up?

To not hide. To be in the international community of success?

To not give visual signals pretending you have a broken spine.

Oh, don't worry, I'm not trying to rally you to invade a neighboring country.

Just take responsibility for yourself. Give us a honest signal.

That includes how you invest.

It's not limited to that.

But it includes how you invest.

I’ve Been Robbed

Once upon a time, our heroine Sophie Stevens was robbed.

Not in a literal sense, fortunately for us and especially fortunately for Sophie.

It seemed to her that "everybody" was in on the latest thing.

And what was the latest thing?

It was iron bars.

No really, it was buying stock shares in the thing that had been the latest thing until the

latest thing became buying shares in the latest thing.

Got it?

Great.

Since that's how life works, I mean.

Let's hear some loud cheers for that.

Unless you'd rather cheer for the internet, or for internet shutdowns.

Sophie was confused on the first mile.

A really common thing was going on.

A thing which happened all the time.

It wasn't experimental design, but

Sophie did NOT do the thing.

Not displaying the proper floral traits, she was robbed.

Or anyway, that's how the saying goes. I think. A least that's how it goes on some of the

better-paying teams where not everything is a human rights watch.

Calmly, carefully, Sophie rubbed away the blinders keeping her from seeing the humor.

Sophie had not been robbed. There were no rogue elements here.

Unless, well, you were thinking that she'd robbed herself, had cut her own fuel lines.

Which she had.

And now that she could see this, she was better able to take responsibility.

We can all do that when we know that someone else knows.

We can also do that when we get started.

When we build our confidence.

A little bit at a time.

Then, none of us ever get robbed. There is no fear of retaliation.

At least not for what we didn't do.

What we didn't control.

Cool, huh?

People say they've been robbed in reference to some opportunity they had which turned

out great except that they didn't take it.

Others took it.

People who didn't take it say they were robbed.