My old friend Gabe Hamel who I went to high school with and was on the wrestling team with as well (he won State, I got 5th in Districts). He got into real estate as well and has done a fantastic job building a real estate investment company in Eugene, Oregon. He was recently interviewed on the BiggerPockets podcast, which I highly recommend checking out:

And if you want to check out my old interview on the BP podcast, you can see it here.

So I finally go around to watching the trailer for the next Star Wars movie and it sucks just about as much The Last Jedi did (although this guy seemed to think the trailer was OK...). 

Fortunately, The Last Jedi did spawn a massive amount of hilarious critiques that tore it to shreds. These were quite enjoyable to watch and read and actually make the movie's existence a positive thing. (I even took my own shot at it, which you can read here.) Indeed, I just came across a great Youtube channel called The Critical Drinker who has one of the better short takes on The Last Jedi. It's quite enjoyable.

So the top ten movies of 2019 are as follows:

1. Comic Book Movie / Sequel
2. Remake
3. Comic Book Movie
4. Sequel
5. Comic Book Movie / Sequel
6. Remake
7. Original Film 
8. Comic Book Movie / Sequel
9. Sequel
10. Sequel

And now, if we don't have enough proof already that Hollywood has all but scraped the bottom of the barrel and/or is desperate to squeeze every drop of profit possible out of recognizeable brands, we have this,

Sure, everyone died at the end of the last movie (which was made 17 years ago by the way) and it wrapped up the story and it completely sucked, but whatever. Milk it until it's dry I guess....

And their inspiring ode to high school bullies is pretty funny:

It just gets weirder and weirder (or perhaps more and more blatant):

And,

And,

And,

It started ridiculously suspicious and has only become more so. It all adds up to things that make you go...

So obviously we've seen some horrifying mass shootings lately, like the one in El Paso and the one in Dayton. And of course, there is an ever-growing hysteria over "white supremacist terrorism." And of course, this is a problem as the El Paso shooter was clearly a white nationalist.. But looking at the Mother Jones Database of mass shootings (counted by those with at least three fatalities that were not for criminal reasons), there have only been two from my count in the United States since Trump was elected; El Paso and Pittsburgh. That amounts to 34 deaths. 34 too many for sure, but we do need some perspective here.

It should also be remembered that the Dayton shooter was an Antifa-supporting leftwing terrorist. (Which would not ​be the first of his kind.)

Indeed, going off the Mothers Jones database, there have been 114 mass shootings from 1982 to 2019 with 934 fatalities, or about 25 a year. This number has been ticking up, but that still only amounts to about one sixth the number of Americans who die each year from peanuts.

OurWorldInData.org has a great chart that illustrates the difference in media coverage and actual risk from various causes of death. I should note that "mass shootings" doesn't even make the list while "homicide" can barely be seen.

And as far as the "white men do mass shootings" meme goes, that is just false and based on what appears the be stupefying inability to know what "per capita" means. 

From first appearances, it would seem whites are overrepresented in mass shootings in the United States. Here is Statista.com's breakdown of Mother Jones' database:

But again, what does "per capita" mean? 

If we drop the four mass shootings where the race is unknown, 64 of the 110 shootings have been by whites. 64 divided by 110 equals 58.2 percent. According to the Census Bureau, non-Hispanic whites make up 60.7 percent of the population. So whites are slightly under-represented. (And even more so since the country was more white back in 1982 when the database started.)

Finally, if you just count all mass shootings (counted as three or more injuries for any reason), whites made up only 29 percent of the 72 mass shootings so far in 2019. So yeah, white men do not do all mass shootings or even close. 

But regardless, while mass shootings are a definite problem that we need to work on solutions for, please calm down everyone.

For the second year in a row, Stewardship Investments, LLC has been named to the Inc. 5000 list. This time coming in just behind last year at a very respectable 3349th. 

You can check out our company profile on Inc.com here as well as our company website here and our KC rental website here.

Congrats team!

So I've spoken and written on the BRRRR Method of real estate investing a lot (The Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance and Repeat) method, but only with regards to investing in houses. In this presentation for the Kansas City Multifamily Investing Group I discuss BRRRR investing for apartments. It's very similar to investing in houses, but there are definitely some major differences. Check it out.

And for our other presentations on real estate investment, check out these videos:

​Me: BRRRR Investing for Houses
Me: Due Diligence (based on this article here)
My brother Phillip: Property Management

For any of you who enjoy this classic worship song, here is my acoustic cover of it. Enjoy!

I also have a few other acoustic covers you can check out too if you're interested:

​Hide Your Love Away: Beatles
With or Without You: U2
Is There Anybody Out There: Pink Floyd