“It is better to report someone who’s innocent than to not report someone who’s guilty.”

My mole at Penn State was sentenced to attend a mandatory-for-all-students sexual assault training program. After being shown this video (try to guess the skin color and gender ID of the perpetrato… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Life on campus during the plague

From a mole inside Penn State… Email to students from a dean: In response to reports of large gathering of students in off-campus apartment complexes in State College during this past weekend… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Diversity and Inclusion Training for MIT Students

One of my MIT undergraduate moles shared with me a September email from the Administration: We are writing to you regarding the important topics of sexual assault prevention and diversity, equity, … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

As American as Apple Pie: child support litigation regarding children age 34, 39, and 42

An all-American story from MarketWatch: My children’s father recently pledged to pay $10,000 of $20,677 in child-support arrears. … he said divide it between our three adult children. Our adu… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

When someone pleads ignorance regarding the Holocaust, fire him twice!

“Florida Principal Who Wouldn’t Call Holocaust ‘Factual’ Is Fired Again” (NYT): A high school principal in Florida whose refusal to acknowledge the Holocaust as a “factual, historical e… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Social media will shift the age of the American electorate?

What happened with the age of the average American voter in 2020 versus 2016? Was it younger due to the hourly nagging of the typical young person by various social media platforms? Separately, is … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

How could the U.S. election results ever be verified?

Trump and Biden are both claiming victory in the most recent election. I tend to believe Biden because this is consistent with my prediction regarding how a timid cower-in-place population would vo… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

KitchenAid tries to burn our house down a second time

From 2016: High-end KitchenAid range with burner stuck on. It happened again! The burner controls fail such that the gas is stuck on. Fortunately the burner happened to be lit so the house didnR… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Time for graduate school in Trump hatred

If we regard the lead-up to the election as a Bachelor’s degree in Trump-hatred, can the post-election activity be thought of as grad school? From “Voting Trump Out is Not Enough,”… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Electric AWD implemented by Toyota for the 2021 Sienna minivan

Back in 2019 I wondered Why aren’t AWD cars half electric? The latest 2021 Toyota Sienna, redesigned with a grille large enough for a 400 HP diesel Freightliner truck, works this way (as does the T… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Is it possible that a COVID-19 vaccine won’t be lucrative?

Just as Big Pharma’s worst enemy in D.C. is on his way out, we have “Pfizer says early analysis shows its Covid-19 vaccine is more than 90% effective”. In a world where a lot of p… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

What did Return from the Stars get right?

I’ve been listening to Return from the Stars, which Stanisław Lem wrote in 1961. The book is set in approximately 2088 when a 40-year-old astronaut returns to Earth after 127 years of high-sp… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Explaining the election outcome to a 7-year-old

Conversation today: 7-year-old: Who won the election?Adult: Joe Biden7-year-old: Why?Adult: He promised to stop the coronavirus from infecting Americans.7-year-old, bewildered expression: How?Adult… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

When someone complains about wearing a mask…

… show them this post from a Facebook breed group: I am extremely allergic to my golden too. Three or four times a year I was getting sinus infections that turned into pneumonia and kept me s… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

What can we appreciate about Trump?

Now that Donald Trump appears to be definitively headed for retirement from politics, maybe it is worth revisiting a question that a negotiation expert asked a group of Harvard alumni: What can we … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

American health insurance as understood by a licensed health insurance broker

From an email exchange with our aviation insurance broker, regarding why he uses an agent for his own small business’s health insurance plan, rather than going direct to an insurer: I would s… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Alexa and Google Home have proved that home automation is useless?

Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, a pioneer in minicomputers, disparaged microprocessors for controlling houses back in 1977: In 1977, referring to computers used in home aut… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Optimum COVID-19 American lifestyle: Florida in winter; Maine in summer?

covidexitstrategy.org is the web site that our governor uses to adjust his travel order as to which states are so plague-ridden that a quarantine is required on arrival in our righteous disease-fre… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Californians vote against government sorting by victimhood status

In How are Californians doing in restoring their race-based university admissions scheme? I predicted that Proposition 16 would get 45 percent of the vote from people in victimhood categories (Blac… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Win or lose, should Trump hand over everything COVID-19-related to Biden and Harris?

“With Winter Coming and Trump Still in Charge, Virus Experts Fear the Worst” (New York Times): Regardless of the election’s outcome this week, President Trump will be the one steering t… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Blame Libertarians for election confusion?

We’re celebrating here in Massachusetts because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib have been reelected by the wise American people (USA Today). Here in Ma… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Biden wins Massachusetts with 2 percent of the vote

The New York times reports: “Joseph R. Biden Jr. won Massachusetts’ 11 electoral votes”. I read a little more of the page and learned that this fact was reported with 3 percent of… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Election outcome prediction?

A Dutch friend asked me, during a weekend WhatsApp, to predict the election outcome. (He also asked “Why couldn’t the Democrats have run Tutankhamun or Elvis? They’re at least as … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

My election prediction: Democrats will be flummoxed

An April Facebook post from a friend with a Ph.D. in engineering: Folks, regardless of your specific political orientation the choice in this year’s presidential election could not be more cl… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Safe to predict a defeat for Senator Susan Collins of Maine?

Susan Collins was the only Republican who voted against the beloved-by-Honda-minivan-drivers Amy Coney Barrett. Collins was already hated by everyone in the greater Portland, Maine region (nearly h… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

The Coastal Elite’s pain at sharing a country with Trump supporters

“How Will I Ever Look at America the Same Way Again?” (NYT, October 29) beautifully summarizes the pain that coastal elites suffer because, by an accident of geography, they are sharing… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Invest in Ireland ahead of the Biden-Harris Presidency?

A signature campaign promise of the Biden-Harris campaign is to raise the U.S. federal corporate tax rate to 28 percent or 31 percent on corporations that “offshore manufacturing and service jobs t… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

How to spot a Trump voter by hairstyle

A likely deplorable… Remember to vote tomorrow! Unless you’re one of the hundreds of millions of people who live in a state where the outcome was determined several years or decades ago… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

COVID-19 survivors speak

Kellyanne Conway and Melania Trump, both recent victims of COVID-19, managed to recover sufficient lung capacity to speak in Pennsylvania recently. The video is on PBS and a transcript on Rev. I ha… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

What jobs could Biden and Trump do if they fail to win?

Within a few days we will know whether Biden (78 later this month) or Trump (74) will be available to work in the private sector starting in January. According to the American voters, whose wisdom … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Sean Connery as an inspiration for American suburban life

From one of our Facebook friends: RIP, Sir Sean Connery. Your impact on my childhood and becoming a man cannot be understated. Thank you. This led to a mystified chat discussion. The guy who posted… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Fears in the 1990s versus fears in the Age of Corona

Happy Halloween! Let’s consider how our fears have evolved. In the 1990s, we were afraid of the following: The government would invade our privacy via CCTV cameras when were out walking aroun… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

A 2016 Volkswagen e-Golf interfaces with the American used car market

A friend spent $10,000 on a 2016 Volkswagen e-Golf via Carvana, a fixed-price car delivery service. The vehicle arrived in beautiful cosmetic condition, but with a Nissan-brand charger that did not… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Bloomberg tries to buy the elections in Ohio and Florida

From last month, The absurd conspiracy that Wall Street elites are manipulating American politics: My Facebook friends like to conjure a bogeyman somewhere in the South or Midwest. He is wearing ca… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

How is my prediction about COVID-19 therapy by October looking?

From April 6, Best guess as to when the first successful COVID-19 therapy will be widely available? Keeping in mind that it took months for coronavirus tests to be invented, approved, and manufactu… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Mark Zuckerberg uses his $110+ billion wealth to lobby for a tax increase on people other than Mark Zuckerberg

“California Tax Revolt Faces a Retreat, 40 Years Later” (NYT): The new initiative, Proposition 15, would amend the state’s Constitution so that properties like offices and industrial pa… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Why is it okay for adults to brag about having voted?

Voting is supposed to be simple enough for roughly 130 million Americans to do. Yet my Facebook feed is packed with people bragging about having accomplished this act, almost always in non-swing st… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Who is the Big Money candidate this year?

Hillary was the candidate of Big Money in 2016: “Trump won with half as much money as Clinton raised” (Politico). Trump and “allies” raised only $600 million versus more tha… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Elite coastal Jews advocate discrimination against white and Asian males

Let’s look again at White men correctly perceive American Jews as their enemies? Here’s the latest from our Jewish-owned media elite… “Californians, Vote Yes on Prop 16̶… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Post-election Deplorable hunt enabled by mail-in voting?

I finally dug my way through the two ballot questions (see Should I vote for ranked-choice voting?) and am ready to vote here in Maskachusetts. The instructions that came with my mail-in ballot: Pu… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

The CDC and our state public health department tell us how to trick or trick

From mass.gov, “Halloween During COVID-19” (“Consistent with the Halloween activity guidance released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention”). First some Dos: A … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Tcl for Web Nerds (2011)

Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Heated eyeglasses for Age of Faith (in masks)?

We in the American Church of Shutdown put our faith in masks, for they shall preserve us from the coronaplague, even as they have preserved those in Peru, Spain, France, and other countries with st… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Free to identify as Albanian American or a Girl Who Codes at GWU

From my beloved alma mater, George Washington University, “Student groups required to update bylaws to meet GW inclusion policy” (The GW Hatchet): More than 20 student organizations wer… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

How is the Amy Coney Barrett vote going?

One of my Facebook friends is featured in this image from the Maskachusetts State House (source of more than 50 governor’s orders this year): My favorite part of this is the Statue of Liberty… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

What were Jeffrey Toobin and New Yorker friends doing on their Zoom call?

The righteous Trump-haters at New Yorker magazine have been in the news lately, but not for their four years of anti-Trump journalism. The story that has excited public interest is mostly about Jef… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Do lobbyists support Biden-Harris or Trump-Pence?

On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., I drove through Bethesda, Maryland on my way back to the airport. In the neighborhoods where successful government workers might live, Biden-Harris, BLM, and r… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago

Rainbow flags for our prisons?

Here’s a luxury resort in the Catskills that you might not want to visit… Federal Correctional Institution, Otisville: As we looked down from the Cirrus SR20 (IFR training), it occurred… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 4 years ago