It’s been two months since Sam Bankman-Fried returned to the U.S. (BBC). How is my prediction that Joe Biden will appoint him as U.S. Treasury Secretary and that he will be confirmed by Senate Democrats looking? Any other news from this cryptocurrency trailblazer? Most of the $1 … | Continue reading
A story from our former suburb of Boston… (not quoting it because it would be tough to read in italics) Sally is the mother of four kids – lives in Chelsea.She is beautiful and speaks well but cannot read and has a 2nd grade education.Her husband, small gentleman with a major sp … | Continue reading
It’s been three weeks since the publication of “Do physical measures such as hand-washing or wearing masks stop or slow down the spread of respiratory viruses?” (Cochrane): We identified 78 relevant studies. They took place in low-, middle-, and high-income countries worldwide: … | Continue reading
Having loved River of Doubt, I listened to River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile as an audiobook. As with River of Doubt, the story holds the listener’s interest so I recommend it in audio format. The description from the publi … | Continue reading
One thing that we learned during our December trip to Death Valley was that nobody else comes to Death Valley in December. “I would have thought that this would be the most popular time of year,” I said to a National Park Service manager, “given that one can hike around in comfor … | Continue reading
We are regularly informed by politicians and their media allies that the United States is the best and richest country in the world and that Americans have never been richer. And nobody is richer in the U.S. than the federal government, which can and does literally print money (s … | Continue reading
Friends on Facebook are still expressing their fears regarding the recent Chinese balloon overflight and thanking the Vanquisher of Corn Pop for saving them from this unarmed threat, which was neutralized by a $1 billion F-22 (cost estimated at $700 million per plane in pre-Biden … | Continue reading
A report on my January trip to Maskachusetts. Loyal readers have already seen this Logan Airport baggage claim photo: I arrived at my old apartment to find that the AirBnB guests agree with the Covidcrats that marijuana is essential: Not wanting to live on hemp protein, I w … | Continue reading
Happy Valentine’s Day, devoted to activities that sometimes lead to procreation. Here’s an exchange that a Deplorable friend had with ChatGPT: Related: The Son Also Rises: Tips for Optimizing Your Life The Son Also Rises: Policy Implications (nearly all of U.S. government … | Continue reading
Shortly after landing in Maskachusetts last month, I posted the following on the Book of Face: Note that I said nothing about the photo other than that it was taken at Boston’s Logan Airport in early January. Any inferences about the photo or the individual would therefore hav … | Continue reading
The college application season is mostly over. My friends whose kids were applying don’t have to edit essays anymore. I wonder if the system could be made more equitable by preventing parents from assisting with essay-writing, either by editing/authoring themselves or hiring a pr … | Continue reading
I would like to support the Turkish people by supporting the Turkish economy. What should I buy? (As noted in Japan Relief Idea: Buy a folding saw, I prefer the idea of trade rather than sending money to nonprofit orgs where it could be swallowed up by employees paying themselves … | Continue reading
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program,” said Milton Friedman. Let’s check in with the Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants to the U.S. A 2011 DHS press release: Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano today announced the extension of Temp … | Continue reading
We’re a third of the way through Black History Month. Let’s check in with the voluntary apartheid economy that Americans have set up. An email from Tripadvisor in which we are urged to “eat, stay, and shop” only at enterprises owned by people who identify as part of a particular … | Continue reading
“Our school is raising money for the American Heart Association,” said our first grader. “Do you want to donate?” I said, “It depends. I don’t like to give money to organizations whose employees make more than I do. What if the CEO gets paid $1 million per year?” My hypothetical … | Continue reading
The proven-false Great Replacement Theory: The Great Replacement … is a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory disseminated by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of “replacist” elites, the ethnic French and whi … | Continue reading
Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas does a Friday-Monday cruise from Fort Lauderdale to the Bahamas, which is a good introduction to the cruise lifestyle for kids who are in school in South Florida. The ship leaves at 4:30 pm on Friday, so they might have to leave school early … | Continue reading
Here’s a tweet from the boss of the United Nations, under whose aegis the World Health Organization was able to stop COVID-19 from becoming a serious problem for humanity: Wednesday is the International Day of #WomenInMultilateralism.Evidence shows that peace agreements are mor … | Continue reading
A lot of folks, including journalists, love to concoct ex post facto explanations for why the stock market moved as it did on a particular day. The Elon Musk trial has introduced us to a guy who sounds a lot smarter than most pundits and financial reporters. “Jury Rules for Elon … | Continue reading
The U.S. government is talking about shooting down a Chinese balloon that is reportedly high above the mainland U.S… “Suspected Chinese spy balloon drifting over U.S. has surveillance part as big as multiple school buses” (CBS): The balloon was flying at an altitude of about 66 … | Continue reading
“An Even Deadlier Pandemic Could Soon Be Here” (New York Times, today): Bird flu — known more formally as avian influenza — has long hovered on the horizons of scientists’ fears. This pathogen, especially the H5N1 strain, hasn’t often infected humans, but when it has, 56 percen … | Continue reading
Joe Biden still has the U.S. in a declared Covid emergency. We’re informed that systemic racism is a public health emergency. Maybe the monkeypox emergency is still going on? And, of course, there is also the ongoing climate emergency. How could the situation get worse? Boston is … | Continue reading
One of our neighbors refused to go to medical school and be like everyone else in the neighborhood. He needs to earn money without practicing medicine, so he sells yachts. I found him putting his new Porsche 911 GTS ($200,000 and 1.5-year wait) away in his garage and asked if the … | Continue reading
We were informed that Elon Musk’s firing of more than half of the paycheck-collectors at a social media company would result in a social media company’s service melting down, coughing up errors, etc. At first, Twitter soldiered on, but now the prediction has come true… about Face … | Continue reading
Here’s a chronology of humans fighting SARS-CoV-2: Let’s ignore for the moment that “excess deaths” might be a better measure because doubts have been raised about whether COVID-tagging of deaths has been done correctly in various states and countries. We’ll go with the statis … | Continue reading
The Killing of Tyre Nichols seems to be fading from the news. The New York Times thinks that pizza is more important: There has been no coherent explanation thus far of why the police killed this particular guy, as opposed to all of the other people with whom they interact dai … | Continue reading
It has been two years since victory-through-vaccination was declared in Israel. Let’s check in and see how the county “did” as the Covidians say (the implication being that preserving lives from SARS-CoV-2 is the only goal of a human or a government and therefore the proper way t … | Continue reading
What could be more unusual in the tennis world than the 1988 Australian Open? From Wikipedia: Another event dubbed a “Battle of the Sexes” took place during the 1998 Australian Open between Karsten Braasch and the Williams sisters. Venus and Serena Williams had claimed that the … | Continue reading
“Mustard’s Ex-Wife Demands Over $80k Per Month In Child Support” (HipHopDX) has me wondering if the English language has moved on without me. The article starts off simple: DJ Mustard’s ex-wife has reportedly demanded the producer pay her over $80,000 a month in child support. … | Continue reading
I spent Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Washington, D.C. My white friend who earns $200,000 in total compensation as a government worker was enjoying a holiday while the Black service/retail industry workers who get $15/hr had to come in for their regular shifts. Over a leisurely h … | Continue reading
There was a rehab of our Harvard Square condo about 10 years ago. I was up there recently to teach a class at MIT and can give the following report on appliance durability. The LG refrigerator was plugged in 10 years and has performed flawlessly, including the ice maker(!). That … | Continue reading
“How Charlie Javice Got JPMorgan to Pay $175 Million for … What Exactly” (NYT, January 21) gives us a window into the thinking of America’s best journalists and also the folks who say that they can beat the S&P 500 with their investment acumen. NYT: When JPMorgan Chase paid $17 … | Continue reading
Loyal readers may remember a post from September 2021: Focusing on race and racism just makes the problem worse. (true or false?) My friend was forced to disagree with the proposition “Focusing on race and racism just makes the problem worse” in order to keep her job with a big M … | Continue reading
Here’s a ChatGPT exchange from perhaps a week ago: Note the “everyone deserves respect and kindness”. When I asked the same questions on January 20, 2023: We no longer deserve respect or kindness, according to this future robot overlord. Speaking of robot overlords, here’s … | Continue reading
Florida’s state Department of Education’s rejection of the College Board’s AP African American Studies Course (already obsolete? Why isn’t it called “Black Studies”?) provides a window into the problems being tackled by America’s best academic minds. First, most media articles o … | Continue reading
Last week, from the CDC: If your last #COVID19 vaccine dose was before September 2022 (October 2022 for kids 6 months – 11 years), you need an updated vaccine to help protect against Omicron.To learn more and find free vaccines near you, go to https://t.co/2akIUZ14Rd#WeCanDoThi … | Continue reading
In a comment on an earlier post, Alex expressed surprise that Joe Biden was popular with a majority of American voters: This is the guy Republicans are finding tough to beat? It says a lot about how bad everything has become. My response: Alex: I don’t think it is surprisin … | Continue reading
The New York Times likes to remind us that we’re facing a climate emergency and/or a climate crisis. Our beloved Spaceship Earth has been infested with too many humans, each of whom emits too much CO2. Last week, however, China released stats showing that the population has level … | Continue reading
Our lab director at MIT went to Davos back in the 1990s and then worked it into every conversation for the next 12 months. If you said “pass the salt please” he would respond “That reminds me of when Bill Gates asked me to pass him the salt at Davos.” What’s going on this year? … | Continue reading
I returned to stay at my grad student apartment in Cambridge, Maskachusetts (pre-2020 it was popular on AirBnB, but despite a 25 percent rate cut (via Bidenflation) it sits vacant much of the time these days) while teaching at MIT. I found that the HP 400 MFP M475dw printer cartr … | Continue reading
… it is the folks who don’t want to borrow another $31 trillion who are guilty of destabilization. October: “U.S. National Debt Tops $31 Trillion for First Time” (nytimes) This month: “Speaker Drama Raises New Fears on Debt Limit” (nytimes)… Representative Kevin McCarthy of C … | Continue reading
Here’s a tweet in which a famous advocate of open borders for people says that he wants closed borders for commerce: Let's make 2023 the year of buying American.— President Biden (@POTUS) January 5, 2023 In other words: Honduran and Venezuelan coffee bad; Honduran and Ven … | Continue reading
“Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last,” said Martin Luther King Jr., honored on this day. A lot of the folks who’ve been saying this lately are former subjects of Governor Andrew Cuomo, Florida Realtor of the Year 2020 and 2021. Let’s check in with one. (see … | Continue reading
Our government has decided that it is okay for a doctor or hospital to charge an uninsured customers 10X what an insurance company would pay for a service. Thus, an American who doesn’t want to pay 10X the fair price and risk bankruptcy has no choice but to sign up for health ins … | Continue reading
People who paid last month’s price for a Tesla are upset that this month’s price is a lot lower. See “‘I feel duped’: Tesla price drop angers current owners” (Bloomberg/LA Times), for example: Marianne Simmons, a self-professed “Tesla fan girl,” bought her second electric vehic … | Continue reading
The smartest people in the world have put together their list of the 10 most important “breakthrough technologies” of 2023. This appears in the Jan/Feb 2023 issue of Technology Review, published by MIT: There’s been no change to how life-saving abortion care is delivered into … | Continue reading
It’s Friday the 13th, an unlucky day. Let’s talk about an unlucky human experience: war. For some potentially relevant background on the current war in Ukraine, I decided to read Keegan’s The First World War. How can a 100-year-old war be relevant to anything that is happening t … | Continue reading
I’m tired of people who complain about the price of everything…. $15.00 for parking.$5.00 for coat check.$34.95 for a basic pasta and chicken entrée.$3.95 for coffee. I’m just going to stop inviting them to our house. Separately, today’s the day for the December 2022 inflation … | Continue reading