The Samsung UN55ES8000 that was state of the art in November 2012 ($2500) has failed after perhaps 2 hours per month of use. When it can be turned on at all, the screen is filled with a random patt… | Continue reading
From How to steal $billions (September 2019), regarding the combined exploits of Jho Low and Goldman Sachs as chronicled in Billion Dollar Whale: Despite connections to the Obama White House, thing… | Continue reading
Asking for a friend… Here’s a bar in Portland, Maine: Note that the largest and most prominently featured signs are a rainbow flag (in a city with 358 gay households) and a Black Lives … | Continue reading
I didn’t watch the debate (my vote is irrelevant here in Maskachusetts), but now it is time to look at the transcript… Trump and Biden on COVID-19: [1:03] Trump: So, as you know, more 2… | Continue reading
People buy snow tires because they are forced to drive in the snow, right? Workers have to get to work. College students have to get to school. In a cower-in-place Nation of Shutdown, however, we d… | Continue reading
A Russian IFR student told me that his parents back in Moscow are participating in a Phase 3 trial of a COVID-19 vaccine. I responded that I was informed by the U.S. media that this vaccine develop… | Continue reading
It isn’t obvious why rich white Americans should have become Mask Karens. All through the first half of 2020, the World Health Organization told humans that masks for the general public would… | Continue reading
My Facebook friends confidently say that Donald Trump is a dictator who will stop at nothing in order to hold onto power. In this, they are backed up by U.S. media. See “Will Trump Ever Leave… | Continue reading
From a single house near our local airport (in Lincoln, Massachusetts): One of my big concerns with the above is that the LGBTQIA+ rainbow flag, part of the Biden-Harris sign, is placed in an infer… | Continue reading
Catching up a bit here on the news… “Twitter Won’t Let The New York Post Tweet Until It Agrees To Behave Itself” (Forbes): Twitter TWTR +1.2% has kept the Post’s official Twitter … | Continue reading
We just wrapped up a three-session Zoom IFR training class and the learners (generally Private pilots, but some instrument-rated pilots getting a refresher). I thought that other CFIs might be inte… | Continue reading
From the folks who will, if all goes according to plan, eventually occupy what will be the most expensive (per-student) school ever constructed in the United States: Dear faculty, staff, parents, a… | Continue reading
Within my Apple News app: iPhone owners can make a difference, learn, give back, take action, and more! Let’s click and check the range of political opinion that Apple expects phone owners to… | Continue reading
A typical new car has a lot of driver assistance features designed to make driving safer. Examples from Toyota: (Blind Spot Monitor and Rear Cross-Traffic Alert are separate features, not on all tr… | Continue reading
One of my favorite businesses here in the Boston area has been shut down since March as part of one of the 50+ orders from the Maskachusetts governor: full-service interior cleaning at the Allston … | Continue reading
If there is a dispute in your household regarding whether a big furry dog is allowed to sleep in the bed… Togo is the movie for you! This is a fantastic (in all senses of the word) dramatizat… | Continue reading
“Chris Christie says he ‘was wrong’ not to wear face mask at White House” (The Hill): Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said Thursday that he “was wrong” not to wear… | Continue reading
A Boston friend who is about 60 years old recently shared that the 50+ shutdown orders from the Maskachusetts governor had resulted in the loss of her fitness habits, a cessation in her gym visits,… | Continue reading
Michelle Obama on Hamilton: “it was simply, as I tell everybody, the best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen in my life.” The proletariat seemed to agree with her, happily s… | Continue reading
One of our governor’s 50+ orders is banning likely-to-be-plagued visitors from other states from visiting Massachusetts (#3 among states ranked by Covid-19 death rate) unless these unclean in… | Continue reading
A friend who has been suffering through shutdown on an oceanfront estate in Maine mentioned that Acadia National Park has experienced record-breaking visitor counts. For the first time in history, … | Continue reading
From the local K-8 school… I am writing to inform you that a student … has tested positive for COVID-19. All families with students in the impacted cohort have been notified and their c… | Continue reading
My rich friends in the Bay Area are tireless Facebook advocates for more shutdown. Most of them live in spacious homes worth $2-3 million or more. Consistent with Your lockdown may vary, here’… | Continue reading
Readers: How are the Amy Coney Barrett hearings going? Did she truly sit through five (5!) hours of opening statements on Monday? Why couldn’t she have been resting at the Trump Hotel while t… | Continue reading
“Why Are Pandemic Sports Ratings So Terrible?” (New York Magazine) describes a fall in TV viewership in a country where millions of people are more or less locked into their homes, unem… | Continue reading
The first of my five mail-in ballots has arrived. 3 out of 7 candidates are Democrats running unopposed. The remaining 4 races are 100 percent guaranteed to be won by Democrats. A potential contest… | Continue reading
Despite having engineered the first two Middle East peace agreements in the 21st century, Donald Trump has apparently failed to qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize (maybe if he advocated for the depo… | Continue reading
A young Swedish scientist who predicted the worldwide shutdown of schools and universities as early as September 2019 and who has deep experience with the coronavirus has endorsed Joe Biden to be t… | Continue reading
The World’s Greatest Infrastructure (TM) met a cold front on the evening of the Vice Presidential debate (did the candidates talk about underground power lines or self-healing “smart gr… | Continue reading
As some of you may have heard, an epidemic of coronavirus has finally reached the rich and powerful in Washington, D.C. One infected soul (or soul-less?) is Donald J. Trump, age 74. The progress of… | Continue reading
Where can Americans find what had been regarded as their traditional liberties? Never-shut, never-masked Sweden, of course, but somehow it is tough to imagine them welcoming 330 million undocumente… | Continue reading
The New England Journal of Medicine has endorsed Joe Biden (without mentioning him by name) in “Dying in a Leadership Vacuum”. Once we get over the shock that a group of physicians supp… | Continue reading
A friend’s Facebook post: Nate Silver’s project 538 gives odds for Trump vs. Biden as 17 vs 82 … I am not a glorified data scientist with a bunch of other data scientists developing pre… | Continue reading
The World’s Best Infrastructure (TM) here in Maskachusetts was unequal to a cold front passing through and therefore we, along with 200,000 other residents, lost power prior to the Vice Presi… | Continue reading
From the New York Times: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the largest humanities philanthropy in the United States, has pledged to spend $250 million over five years to help reimagine the country’s… | Continue reading
From September 23: Teachers at our local high school may go into work soon: I am very disappointed to share that I learned this morning that there was a crowded indoor and outdoor student party Fri… | Continue reading
The good news is that everyone here in Maskachusetts is wearing a mask in nearly all indoor and most outdoor venues. Thanks to 52+ governor’s orders, much remains shut down and/or capacity-re… | Continue reading
“Biden Vows to Lock Down Country to Curb the Coronavirus if Scientists Say It Is Needed” (Slate): Former Vice President Joe Biden said he would not hesitate to issue a nationwide stay-a… | Continue reading
… more lockdown. Just off a WhatsApp call with a friend in Ireland. The mostly-island nation has been mostly locked down since March. After six months of lockdown and 14-day quarantine for an… | Continue reading
“The Case for Accepting Defeat on Roe” (NYT, Sunday, by a law professor): Maybe it is time to face the fact that abortion access will be fought for in legislatures, not courts. In “Unpr… | Continue reading
“Are School Reopening Decisions Related to Union Influence?” (SSRN): The COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread school closures affecting millions of K-12 students in the United States in … | Continue reading
From the country’s loudest advocates of shutting down schools… “Mother’s Little Helper Is Back, and Daddy’s Partaking Too” (NYT): After the kids go to bed, the grown-ups are… | Continue reading
A friend’s high school-age son recently earned his driver’s license. He already has an idea for improving the family Tesla 3: a rotating license plate, like in the old James Bond movies… | Continue reading
Donald Trump has given us additional evidence that the Swedish MD/PhDs were correct when they said, back in March, that nearly everyone in western countries would eventually be exposed to coronavir… | Continue reading
We’re just coming out of what would be the Southern Hemisphere’s winter. How is Africa doing with coronaplague? A European friend offered a theory that the countries with the highest de… | Continue reading
“A Detailed Look at the Downside of California’s Ban on Affirmative Action” (NYT, August 21): Twenty-four years ago, California was consumed by debate over affirmative action. A charism… | Continue reading
My Facebook feed is alive with gleeful Democrats posting about (a) their hopes that Donald Trump will die, (b) their satisfaction that Trump’s actions have led to his downfall (i.e., infectio… | Continue reading
In “History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective”, Gregory Aldrete translates the name for the legislature of Ancient Sparta, the Gerousia, as “the old guys.” Membersh… | Continue reading