Our loyal reader and thoughtful commenter Alex Kowalski died of cancer two years ago (see Rest in Peace, Alex Kowalski). A few of us got together on some memorial tiles at the National Corvette Museum. One of Alex’s skills was dealer-level car maintenance and he rebuilt the engin … | Continue reading
Instead of reading guidebooks and working my feeble brain, I let ChatGPT do the planning for our shore time in the various ports that Norwegian Joy brought us to. I cut and pasted the itinerary, said that we preferred to just walk off the ship rather than get into some other form … | Continue reading
The New York Times repeatedly informs us that we are currently facing a Climate Emergency, that our democracy is being eliminated by Donald Trump (the 2026 elections will, presumably, be suspended indefinitely; also it would be a tragedy if this #1 threat to our democracy were to … | Continue reading
Tomorrow is the big America 250 celebration. Perhaps today could be dedicated to remembering the Loyalists. A good place to start is by reading Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World by Maya Jasanoff, a teacher of the Queers for Palestine (i.e., she’s at … | Continue reading
New Yorkers pride themselves on being smarter than other Americans. Now that NYC is out of electricity (Ayatollah Mamdani has instructed his subjects to set their thermostats to 78), folks are reminded that NY’s best and brightest affirmatively decided to shut down Indian Point, … | Continue reading
Tou Lue Vang, an immigrant to the U.S. from Laos, pled guilty to having sex with a 10-year-old girl. Under Minnesota law, this was apparently not a serious offence that would justify prison time, so he never went to prison and was thus free to maximize his reproductive success. M … | Continue reading
A walk through the Hoh Rain Forest, part of Olympic National Park, starts with a pool that looks like something the late great Takashi Amano might have designed (see Summer travel idea: the public aquarium in Lisbon to see the Takashi Amano show and Return trip to the world’s bes … | Continue reading
New York City (the “Mamdani Caliphate”) is not the only American city with a Socialist mayor. Katie Wilson has been running Seattle ($9 billion/year budget) for six months now. How’s socialist governance working out? It will be ironic if she does a better job than her liberal Dem … | Continue reading
Just a few more minutes of Pride and there won’t be any 2SLGBTQQIA+ holidays until Nonbinary Awareness Week begins in 13 days. Here’s a typical celebration in our neighborhood: “Congratulations to Rice-Bound Britton”. Separately, does it make sense to congratulate Bitton for c … | Continue reading
A report based on an end-of-May 2026 trip on Norwegian Joy out of Seattle. This report will cover the on-ship environment and I’ll do separate posts for the ports. We picked this particular cruise because it was one of a handful that visited Glacier Bay and that went round-trip r … | Continue reading
A lot of Democrat officials have said that the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings are illegitimate and should not be followed, e.g., the recent ruling that allows temporarily protected Haitians to be sent home after 16 years in the U.S. Example from a Democrat thought leader: “it’s not … | Continue reading
Word games this month in the New York Times: Shake Shack, Palm Beach Gardens, promotes “Pride” and “Dubai” (Arabic-inspired script) simultaneously: Dubai follows Sharia law and, in theory, people with too much Pride could be executed, but more likely “under Article 409 of … | Continue reading
Europeans object to being mocked for their lack of air conditioning on the grounds that, pre-Climate Change, there were at most a few weeks per year when they would have wanted to use it. Note that this is partly due to European tolerance for a wider range of indoor temps than we … | Continue reading
A year ago: This month: Filter inflation rate: 40 percent. (Amazon sells some Chinese purported equivalents, but are they truly MERV 13?) The post Filterflation appeared first on Philip Greenspun’s Weblog. | Continue reading
Back in 2023 I wondered Where are the gardens and museums created by the Silicon Valley rich? That’s still a good question, in my opinion. Elon Musk is a trillionaire. In addition to voluntarily paying whatever taxes Elizabeth Warren deems fair, why hasn’t he built off-the-charts … | Continue reading
No more performative empty words for me while Europe suffers through temps over 100 degrees (in the units that God prefers). There IS a sacrifice that we Americans can make and be part of a global solution. With the help of graphic artist N. Vidia, I prepared posters and distribu … | Continue reading
My last visit to Ruby Beach and the western side of Olympic National Park was 1993 and is described in Chapter XIII of Travels with Samantha. Ruby Beach is the traditional headline attraction for this part of the park: Due to the government’s refusal to charge market prices (s … | Continue reading
I hope that everyone enjoyed the Iran v. Egypt Pride Day soccer match yesterday in Seattle. “Minneapolis City Council votes to repeal ban on adult bathhouses, sex venues” (state-sponsored public NPR): Adult bathhouses are community spaces that were historically frequented by … | Continue reading
The Trump administration has sent the U.S. military to Venezuela (“hundreds of personnel, two warships, fixed and rotary-winged aircraft, and search and rescue teams”), which will, I hope, help with immediate problems. But what about supporting long-term rebuilding of this frenem … | Continue reading
Today is the Pride Match in Seattle, which “features a globally controversial matchup between Iran and Egypt, two countries where homosexuality is heavily criminalized. Despite objections from both nations’ football associations, FIFA is permitting rainbow flags and human rights … | Continue reading
After two nights in Rainier National Park, we stopped in Olympic, Washington. The town’s passions are summarized beautifully on State Ave. Stonewall Youth, a group that hosts “drop-ins for queer+trans youth 12-21”, is surrounded by unhoused neighbors (the encampment in the photo … | Continue reading
The forecast high for today is 104 in Paris, part of the predominantly Muslim region of Europe (measured by hours spent in religious observance). It is supposed to hit 106 in Berlin on Sunday using the temperature units that God prefers: The most popular outfit for women in … | Continue reading
June is National Safety Month (also, for maximum safety from Mpox (not to be confused with “monkeypox”), Go to the Bathhouse Month). Should we protect ourselves via outdoor masking as part of our celebration? Let’s check “Does mask usage correlate with excess mortality? Findings … | Continue reading
Alan Greenspan died this week at 100. Let’s look back at Alan Greenspan Explains Modern Economics, my 2009 review of his fall 2007 book (i.e., he wrote it just as the U.S. subprime collapse was beginning). Here’s a cautionary for folks like me with portfolios that are 100% invest … | Continue reading
Established in 1899 by President McKinley, Mount Rainier National Park was the nation’s fifth. It is today surrounded by signs informing visitors, who’ll pay almost nothing to enter ($80/year for an annual pass), that they might have to wait 3 hours in a car line-up (engines and … | Continue reading
White-collar men in the 1950s often characterized their world as a “rat race”. If college-educated, they competed with only a small subset of Americans for high-paid desk jobs. Men in the 50s did not compete with immigrants because substantial importation of humans into the U.S. … | Continue reading
Here’s a chart from an X post charting answers to the question “The only acceptable religion is my religion” (perfect for Pride Month!): Iranians living in the Islamic Republic of Iran are, according to this chart, much more likely to tolerate non-Islamic belief than, for exam … | Continue reading
The latest from the Scientists, “To My Daughter, My Gender Was Never Complicated”. The daughter is named “Elliot”, which in no conceivable way could encourage her to think that maybe her sex was incorrectly assigned at birth: (Also, how was a child produced if there aren’t an … | Continue reading
It’s Father’s Day. For those handful of American men who have any control over their kids’ lives, a suggestion…. If you’re anywhere near Tacoma, Washington and haven’t been carjacked yet (Tacoma is “safer than 1% of U.S. cities), the LeMay car museums are well worth a stop. The p … | Continue reading
What do the taxpayers of Sitka, Alaska get at their local public libary? Here’s a report from a May 2026 visit. (Alaska has no state income, estate, or sales tax, but residents of Sitka pay property tax and also a sales tax of 6 percent (summer) or 5 percent (winter).) It’s a bea … | Continue reading
Did anyone go to Target yesterday to purhcase Pridewear for a beloved 2SLGBTQQI+ canine? It seems that Target is the ultimate example of Juneteenth. Elite white corporate executives at the headquarters in Minnesota, a state in which slavery was never legal, get a paid day … | Continue reading
It’s Juneteenth and Black Americans are celebrating the end of slavery. (Except, of course, for the millions of Black Americans who are immigrants and who have no relationship to the roughly 400,000 African slaves who were imported to British North America/the U.S. And also not B … | Continue reading
Social Security’s impending insolvency is in the news lately. The system that provided Ida May Fuller with benefits that were 1000X what she paid in tax was apparently not sustainable (even Charles Ponzi couldn’t keep a scheme like that going forever!). We were previously informe … | Continue reading
We’re informed that a peace deal with Iran is coming any day now. Some of the terms seem worse than what Carthage had to give when they surrendered to Rome. For example, “Trump’s $300 billion problem on the Iran agreement”: In an interview with CBS News Monday morning, Vice Pres … | Continue reading
If you want to delight a modern child, take him/her/zir/them to the “Six Seven” restaurant next to the Norwegian cruise pier: We sailed away from Seattle on May 22, 2026 under the kind of weather that makes summer tourists say “I’d love to live here.” Note Mount Rainier (14,41 … | Continue reading
In the spirit of “Go To Statement Considered Harmful” by Edsger Dijkstra, renowned sourpuss… “Hundreds of Billions in Loans Didn’t Make a Dent in Global Poverty” (Wall Street Journal): Microfinance, loans issued in communities not served by traditional banks, would help poor peo … | Continue reading
How’s SpaceX doing on its second trading day? The most expert experts on stocks in the United States work at Morningstar. They value the company at $63/share and say that if everything went perfect, it could be worth $154. From last week: We value SpaceX SPCX at $63 per share, a … | Continue reading
Readers are likely aware of my fondness for whole-house audio and, since 2005, Sonos, a company that has roots in Santa Barbara, CA and Boston, MA. The company went public at $15 per share almost exactly eight years ago. How’s the stock done? If you don’t adjust for inflation, it … | Continue reading
Next stop on the Seattle Trip was the Asian Art Museum, $18 for admission or $0 if you have organized your life as an economist would predict: “This program provides free admission for up to five people. In-person verification of SNAP, EBT, or WIC card is required.” One of my … | Continue reading
Projects show that about 55 percent of Swiss voters have rejected a proposed population cap of 10 million for a mountainous territory that currently has 5X the population density of the U.S. Lower 48. The population of Switzerland has doubled within the lifetimes of its older cit … | Continue reading
Our precious children apparently cannot be exposed to reality and, therefore, our trip to Seattle skipped the parts of Seattle that have made the news recently. We stayed at an elite Courtyard by Marriott next to Lake Union in hopes of avoiding some of Seattle’s, um, more colorfu … | Continue reading
A righteous neighbor here in Abacoa (not everyone in Florida is Deplorable, especially here in Palm Beach County, though it is rare even for the Righteous to have a political/social justice bumper sticker), this afternoon: I asked Grok to redo it to read “I bought this before … | Continue reading
Most air and space museums, including the Smithsonian, are primarily about showing artifacts and make little attempt to educate visitors. Seattle’s Museum of Flight is a notable exception and, thus, could easily occupy a nerdy family for a day. Here are some snapshots from an ear … | Continue reading
After about 15 minutes of trading, 155 million SpaceX shares had already traded. The total size of the IPO was roughly 555 million shares (plus the underwriters have the option of buying another 83 million). I don’t think that the pre-IPO investors have the ability to sell their … | Continue reading
As an index fund investor, I used to buy stocks that had been public for a while and only of companies that made a profit. The rules have apparently been tossed so now I will be a(n indirect) SpaceX shareholder. NYT: Nasdaq, the exchange where SpaceX plans to list its stock, ann … | Continue reading
Our government has provided us with a fresh fictitious inflation report today (the fiction is that a person can rent the same single-family home in the U.S. for 20 years and do so at a cost lower than mortgage, property tax, maintenance, insurance, etc.; “owners’ equivalent rent” … | Continue reading
We’re informed that Americans who are currently receiving an entirely taxpayer-funded lifestyle (housing, health care, food, smartphone) would prefer to work and be self-sufficient (“strong and independent” if female; “just a man” if male). We’re informed that there is an afforda … | Continue reading
Happy Pride [the “Month” is silent] again. Here’s a Florida-based hockey team that claims to be “Playing with Pride”: Playing with Pride 🏳️🌈#TimeToHunt pic.twitter.com/O7zUfcqGqt — Florida Panthers (@FlaPanthers) March 31, 2026 But wouldn’t the players hav … | Continue reading