People often are drawn to computer nerdism partly because they prefer interacting with machines rather than with other people. (James Damore made this point while working at Google and learned that… | Continue reading
A reader was kind enough to give me a hardcopy(!) version of Slide Rule by Nevil Shute. It turns out that the popular novelist was an aeronautical engineering during the golden age of aviation. One… | Continue reading
In one thing that seems to give Gillette a slight boost over the Korean-made Dorco blades is that flexible head on the Gillette handle. What if one could buy third-party blades and put them on the… | Continue reading
I’m digging into Bad Blood, the authoritative book on the rise and fall of Theranos. I would have thought that there were no lessons to be learned for those who toil in ordinary enterprises, … | Continue reading
The Art of Investing: Lessons from History’s Greatest Traders is a Teaching Company course by John M. Longo, a Rutgers professor who got a Bachelor’s in 1991 (so he should be 50 years old), h… | Continue reading
This is kind of interesting from a newspaper that prides itself on in-depth reporting… An article on furloughed NASA employees asserts without evidence that they could be making 2-3X more mon… | Continue reading
Continuing research in response to the controversy over Gillette’s recent “toxic masculinity” ad campaign … (see Test 1) Test 2: two days of growthshaving in the shower… | Continue reading
There is turmoil in our land: “The Chart That Shows the Financial Peril Facing Federal Workers: Just like many Americans, many government workers don’t have much emergency money set aside.… | Continue reading
From the Boston Museum of Fine Arts: Rich American actors take on-camera speaking jobs from poor refugees. Around the corner, Nan Goldin, who “immersed herself in urban subcultures and t… | Continue reading
If you’re not happy with the latest from Netflix and Amazon you’ll love our MIT Ground School course, streaming in real time and on-demand: Experienced pilots: Start with “Day 1-P… | Continue reading
…. or at least it doesn’t motivate them to use their bicycles. My 2013 post: “Danish happiness: bicycle infrastructure” From USA Today: “Fewer Americans bike to work d… | Continue reading
I recounted my Costco conversation (see yesterday’s post) about the Gillette ad on Facebook. A cousin in her 20s responded As someone with a daughter you should be happy about this. The whole… | Continue reading
If you have do-gooder friends that like to share their tales of helping the world’s woe-plagued, including their voluntourism trips to Haiti, you’ll get a lot of value from any cruise t… | Continue reading
The controversy over Gillette’s recent “toxic masculinity” ad campaign got me curious about the state of the art in razor blades. Test 1: three days of growthno shower beforehandw… | Continue reading
From Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer by Barbara Ehrenreich: Jon Kabat-Zinn, a Zen-trained psychologist in Cambri… | Continue reading
One of the luxuries of being out at sea in the old days was seeing stars that would never be visible from light-polluted cities. Cruise ships don’t offer this, though, because they don’t want peopl… | Continue reading
The second annual Women’s March is today. This raises a few questions… If the march is protesting female victimhood, when can victory be declared? When women have more income than men? … | Continue reading
My Facebook feed is packed with demands that the government be reopened from people who previously compared Donald Trump unfavorably with Adolf Hitler. Why do they want a government run by NeuHitle… | Continue reading
From an au pair host family group… 40-year-old mother of three: “Just wanted to give an update/get some advice on my ex-sleeping-with-the-now-former-au-pair saga. She left the US at the… | Continue reading
Regarding my equipped-with-active-suspension dream machine, from our reader/hero Scott Locklin: I rented a 2018 Audi A8 for 10 days on the Autobahn [459 euro through kayak, 19 percent of which was … | Continue reading
A Boston-based company is in the news: “Gillette #MeToo ad on ‘toxic masculinity’ gets praise – and abuse; Backlash includes call for boycott of P&G, complaining commercial ‘e… | Continue reading
“What a Top Income-Tax Rate of 70% Would Mean for the Economy” (Barron’s) is a bit surprising, considering that the publication is targeted at the same rich investors that would g… | Continue reading
The Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Small-Cap Index Fund shows that its fifth largest holding is Canopy Growth Corp. Some sort of real estate holding company? Wikipedia: “Canopy Growth Corporat… | Continue reading
“MACKENZIE BEZOS AND THE MYTH OF THE LONE GENIUS FOUNDER” (WIRED): Admittedly, MacKenzie’s role in the history of Amazon may not be as crucial as the existence of the World Wide Web. Th… | Continue reading
At one of our dinners-for-8 on Empress of the Seas, a lively fellow told us about his life in The Villages and how he could be more popular with women if he were a dancer. He said that he was just … | Continue reading
I am attending a meeting in the shining northern capital of California and had asked a business colleague who has experience with the location to recommend a hotel. His answer: [the meeting is] ins… | Continue reading
The government that says it is working to reduce inequality eliminates low-skill low-wage cashier jobs via touch-screen ordering kiosks… (Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex cafeteria): I po… | Continue reading
… but show that they don’t value marriage per se? The jointly signed tweet from the soon-to-be-divorced Amazon founder and wife is full of mutual praise. These two people say that they&… | Continue reading
From the Circle K near our Hampton Inn in Jacksonville Beach: (Note that “EBT” is a way of accessing SNAP, formerly known as “food stamps”.) | Continue reading
“Jeff Bezos, World’s Richest Person, Announces Divorce After 25 Years Of Marriage” (Forbes): The couple lives primarily in Washington State, which requires divorcing spouses to equitabl… | Continue reading
From an email discussion group of hedge fund/bond fund managers…. I get the Financial Analyst’s Journal as part of my CFA registration. The attached article [“Demystifying Buffett’s Inv… | Continue reading
Back in the 1970s and 1980s it was conventional for software and hardware companies to have research labs, modeled to some extent after AT&T Bell Labs and IBM’s various labs. This way the… | Continue reading
“The Economics of Soaking the Rich: What does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez know about tax policy? A lot.” (Paul Krugman, NYT): The controversy of the moment involves AOC’s advocacy of a tax… | Continue reading
I’d forgotten how prominent Cuba once was on the world stage, but our guide in Havana reminded us that Cuba and Israel are still on bad terms. Wikipedia notes that Cuba was a military ally fo… | Continue reading
Folks: I’ll be working in San Francisco Monday and Tuesday of next week (Jan 14 and 15). Please email me, philg@mit.edu, if you’re interested in getting together. One possibility is dow… | Continue reading
On the other hand, we already have 580 miles of “barrier” (Wikipedia), which includes parts that look like walls and parts that look like fences. About 35 seconds into this video (Guard… | Continue reading
A couple of items from the recent Miami and cruise trip that I decided not to post on Facebook. This was going to appear underneath the caption “Elizabeth Warren’s cousin lights the men… | Continue reading
Cuba was richer, per capita, than Singapore in 1959 (Forbes) and Havana was the richest part of Cuba. As such, the city enjoyed world class physical infrastructure circa 1959: roads, sidewalks, bea… | Continue reading
Apple is in the news for disappointing earnings growth. I wonder if this is due to lack of innovation. I’ve met a lot of folks who are still using their iPhone 5S and aren’t interested … | Continue reading
Back in the 1980s, you knew that you were in a Third World country when traffic congestion made daytime trips take 2-3 times longer than they would be on clear roadsyour driver had only a tenuous c… | Continue reading
… will the New York Times blame voters’ prejudice against women or voters’ prejudice against Native Americans? Readers: How do you think our Massachusetts Senator will do? | Continue reading
Hurricane season is over so perhaps it is time to plan that Caribbean vacation. If you’re curious to visit Cuba as a U.S. citizen, you can choose between going native (hotels) and just touchi… | Continue reading
Beginning of a new year and time for some tax planning. If you’re not a U.S. citizen and thus subject to worldwide taxation, maybe it is time to move to the U.K.? The all-in tax rate for R… | Continue reading
A wealthy (through marriage) and virtuous (through Trump-hatred) friend posted while on a $1,000+/day luxury vacation on Grand Cayman: I mentioned the fundamental lack of sustainability of any econ… | Continue reading
Happy New Year’s Eve from St. Augustine! My hope for readers is that excessive alcohol consumption doesn’t interfere with the efficacy of their medical marijuana edibles… Back to … | Continue reading
End-of-year portfolio rebalancing time. What about this being the year of buying foreign stocks, especially emerging markets? From a banker friend: Since coming out of 2008/2009 the place to be has… | Continue reading
We have a 10-year-old Buderus GB142 wall-hung gas boiler that is suffering from myriad corrosion issues. The HVAC service folks recommend either dumping in $3,300+ for a “major renovationR… | Continue reading
Our guide in Havana said that Cuba has one of the world’s highest divorce rates and attributed this phenomenon to the real estate shortage. “People have to live with their in-laws and t… | Continue reading