It’s International Civil Aviation Day (an odd day to choose when you consider what else aviation accomplished on December 7…). Let’s look at whether self-driving cars will make piston-powered aviation even less defensible as a transportation tool. Last month I embarked on a day t … | Continue reading
I attended Free Play Florida in Orlando last month and the machine that everyone loved and wanted to play was the new Jersey Jack Harry Potter design. It has a fascinating and frighteningly intricate flow (I can’t imagine it being successfully maintained in an arcade and there we … | Continue reading
We’ve read about a variety of frauds lately, some in the business world and some at the government trough. We hear about the fraudsters being sanctioned, but never the people who were responsible for ladling out the cash. Our first example happened at JPMorgan (source: Associatio … | Continue reading
Advice from a guy who will be paying taxes to keep the Mamdani Caliphate running: “I would ask: “May I meet you?” before engaging further in a conversation. I almost never got a No.” I hear from many young men that they find it difficult to meet young women in a public settin … | Continue reading
It’s National Special Education Day. Let’s look at the latest from the towering intellects of the Ivy League: “Winning the Bread and Baking it Too: Gendered Frictions in the Allocation of Home Production” (NBER with authors from Princeton, Penn, and a university in Chile). From t … | Continue reading
It’s Art Basel time again here in Florida. See Art Basel Miami Beach and Art Basel Miami 2021 for some photos of earlier versions. Who wants to meet at the event on Friday for lunch? Please email philg@mit.edu with a subject line of “Meet at Art Basel” if interested. Alternativel … | Continue reading
Gemini 3 has been out for a couple of weeks now. Who is finding it more useful than ChatGPT, Grok, et al.? I gave a simple tree identification task to Gemini 3, ChatGPT, and Grok. All three failed the task with supreme confidence. A plants-only image classifier handled the task n … | Continue reading
Donald Trump made the news recently for ending the Temporary Protected Status for Somali migrants who live in Minnesota. USA Today (Reuters): U.S. President Donald Trump said on Nov. 21 that he was immediately terminating the temporary deportation protections for Somalis living … | Continue reading
Happy Official Beginning of Christmas Season for those who celebrate. (I guess younger Americans think it is okay to decorate for Christmas even before Thanksgiving.) Gretchen Wilson and lyricist John Rich in “Redneck Woman”: And I keep my Christmas lights on, on my front porch … | Continue reading
I hope that none of the loyal readers of this blog went hungry yesterday. Today is the 35th anniversary of the EBT system for food stamp benefits (later, “SNAP”). The Mickey Leland Memorial Domestic Hunger Relief Act was signed on November 28, 1990. Let’s have a look at inflation … | Continue reading
Suppose that Rahmanullah Lakanwal hadn’t shot and killed National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom nor shot Andrew Wolfe (currently in the hospital), as he recently did. How was admitting him and multiple family members to the U.S. under the Biden-Harris administration and granting h … | Continue reading
Below, New York City’s intellectual elites admit that they’re not capable of setting an oven to 325, sticking a $20 supermarket special turkey in, and walking away for a few hours. These are the folks whose advice we’re supposed to follow on complex economic, scientific, medical, … | Continue reading
In Immigrants expand our economy, but millions of immigrants exiting the U.S. don’t shrink our economy we looked at a New York Times report, “Immigrant Population in U.S. Drops for the First Time in Decades”: “An analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center found that betwe … | Continue reading
Loyal readers may recall What if our National Parks charged Navajo prices? (2023) $100 per person per day is the “Navajo rate” for what could reasonably be charged … the Chileans charge foreigners $35 per adult to visit their signature national park for one day. Even at Chilean … | Continue reading
Frontiers of Migranomics from one of our intellectual elites, a New Yorker writer: If you would like to pay $30 for a pint of strawberries, $700 for someone to clean your one-bedroom apartment, and $100,000 for a new roof on your normal-sized house, then deporting all undocum … | Continue reading
It’s International Civil Aviation Day (an odd day to choose when you consider what else aviation accomplished on December 7…). Let’s look at whether self-driving cars will make piston-powered aviation even less defensible as a transportation tool. Last month I embarked on a day t … | Continue reading
From a friend in Maskachusetts who owns a stainless steel monstrosity: [college-age son] got middle finger in truck yesterday going through Boston tunnel, and today in Hanover. He has been doing Nazi salute back. Meanwhile, at a strip mall here in Florida, an illustration of th … | Continue reading
The New York Times, which told us that closing schools for 18 months was the absolute best thing for children (keep them safe from a virus that was killing Americans at a median age of 82), now tells us that screens are bad… “The Screen That Ate Your Child’s Education”: Many of … | Continue reading
Boston Globe: Massachusetts public school enrollment has long been stagnant, with international arrivals balancing out a low birth rate and high numbers of residents moving out of state. Who benefits when public schools are jammed with undocumented migrants? The drop in the … | Continue reading
I called in an airstrike on my own audio position by “upgrading” from a 10.5-year Windows 10 PC to a brand-new Windows 11 machine with 100% pimp ASUS ProArt Creator motherboard. If I’d spent half as much on a motherboard from ASR the machine would have had an optical S/PDIF audio … | Continue reading
Readers may recall my passion for doing something with the dead/black/huge televisions that are on many walls of our houses (the house that we bought in Florida actually came with six flat-screen TVs at no extra charge because the previous owners didn’t feel like demounting and m … | Continue reading
Everyone in Florida prepares for the Category 5 hurricane that, generally, never shows up (e.g., Tampa hasn’t been hit badly by a hurricane for 100 years). Hardly anyone prepares for an internal water leak and quite a few of our neighbors have suffered severe home damage from, e. … | Continue reading
Larry Summers is in the news lately for his association with Emmanuel Goldstein: “Larry Summers steps back from public commitments, ‘deeply ashamed’ by Epstein revelations” (Politico). Was there anyone ridiculing him 20 years ago? Yes! See “Women in Science” from this very server … | Continue reading
From exactly four years ago: What’s on the mind of New Yorkers today who were passionate maskers in 2021? Wearing masks: Also, of course, the suffering of the world’s most peaceful and noble humans (link): The post Coronapanic flashback to 2021 appeared first on Philip … | Continue reading
The relationship between cloud service companies and AI companies transcribed for military hardware… “France Wants to Build Jet Fighters for Ukraine. Neither Has the Cash.” (WSJ): Separately, the article says that it will take at least 10 years for these fighters to be produc … | Continue reading
Some photos from an October 2025 visit to Frederick, Maryland that are relevant to our observance of Transgender Awareness Week… Formerly Christian churches have been mostly converted over to Rainbow Flagism, e.g., a Lutheran church founded in 1738: The United Church of Christ … | Continue reading
We’re right in the middle of Transgender Awareness Week for those who celebrate. I have a business trip to Wilmington, Delaware. I thought I would check to see if there was any reason to tack on a day at the end to do something in “Filthadelphia”. Here’s the official tourism site … | Continue reading
A reminder that exactly five years ago, the police in Pennsylvania were hunting for college kids who committed the crime of assembly (formerly a “right” protected by the First Amendment). From Life on campus during the plague: At the same time, the students were reminded “It i … | Continue reading
Our family room TV is almost impossible to use due to the fact that the hub of the system is a Yamaha RX-6A AV receiver with a complex user interface and many functions that overlap with the TV. What’s worse, the Yamaha has already had one HDMI switch board failure and seems to b … | Continue reading
Today was when hundreds of thousands of taxpayers had expected to enjoy an air show. “NAS Pensacola cancels annual Blue Angels air show because of government funding uncertainty” (Stars and Stripes): Naval Air Station Pensacola canceled this year’s Blue Angels Homecoming Air Sho … | Continue reading
A friend in suburban Boston apparently delights in enraging his neighbors and, thus, purchased a Cybertruck. His monstrous machine upgraded itself to FSD v14 last night. Our message exchange: have you tried it? Just did. It was needing to make a left turn onto a side street. A c … | Continue reading
Today is the 10th anniversary of the November 13, 2015 Paris jihad, which killed 130 civilians, including 23-year-old American student Nohemi Gonzalez. What’s happened since then? Are nearly all of the jihadis and their supporters out of prison by now? “Most of the Paris attac … | Continue reading
Our former home of Lincoln, Maskachusetts: (I tried to Zoom in for the meeting, but the link resulted only in an “Invalid meeting ID. (3,000)” error message.) The town spent money producing its own guide to dodging La Migra (ICE). Excerpts: A former “illegal alien” … | Continue reading
It’s Veterans Day. Historically, one of the things that U.S. society tried to do was ensure that good jobs were available for those who left the military and returned to civilian life. This was a matter of great concern around the end of World War II. See for example “JOBS FOR VE … | Continue reading
Happy World Immunization Day to those who celebrate (not to be confused with World Immunization Week, which WHO says is the last week of April). Let’s turn our attention on this sacred day to one of the world’s leading vaccine scientists and covidologists: Bill Gates. From the Wo … | Continue reading
A two-page spread on the WNBA from Guinness World Records 2026: What else from the world of sports merits two pages? All of the combined achievements of the NBA, MLB, the NFL, and the NHL: An algebra lesson for kids: WNBA = MLB+NFL+MLB+NHL WNBA=4*NBA WNBA=4* … | Continue reading
A judge appointed by Barack Obama ordered the federal government to pay Americans who don’t work (state-sponsored PBS), i.e., those who receive SNAP (“food stamps”). At the same time, we’re informed that it is illegal for the federal government to pay Americans who do work (air t … | Continue reading
I recently did some work in a law firm conference room where we were trying to review some PowerPoint slides that contained patent excerpts and, even after walking right up to the big flat-screen TV it was impossible to see texts and figures clearly. A diverse (and therefore stro … | Continue reading
A friend in central New Jersey has a new Tesla Model Y: I just calculated my effective $/kWh rate on my first month of the EV charging plan. Regular rate is ~$0.24/kWh. After 9pm, I get charged $0.04/kWh. Last month of charging has cost me $10. My response: The peasan … | Continue reading
Due to the government shut down, air traffic controllers who are 100 percent guaranteed by law to be paid for 100 percent of hours worked are calling in sick so that they don’t have to “work without pay with (delayed) pay”. Now the FAA is cutting back on total volume so as to mai … | Continue reading
It has been a year since the ablest administrator in history was defeated in a stolen election (the Nakba). What is she managing now? | Continue reading
American-born New Yorkers said that they would vote for Andrew Cuomo (October 18 poll). Foreign-born New Yorkers said that that they would vote for Mayor Mamdani (charts below). What do we call the system of government that brought Mayor Mamdani to power? It doesn’t seem like “de … | Continue reading
Eric Adams, who identifies as African-American, is on track to be replaced by an immigrant, Zohran Mamdani, today, just as predicted by this 2007 Harvard-NBER paper: I’m sure that it is painful for some to see New York’s Blacks reduced to political irrelevance, but academic … | Continue reading
All of the 2026 cars are out by now, I think. Are there any Japanese cars on the market that offers features comparable to the American leaders in self-driving (“advanced driver-assistance systems” or “ADAS” if we want to be precise)? Tesla has the non-self-driving full self-d … | Continue reading
I asked ChatGPT “what percentage of Americans receive at least some form of welfare, e.g., public housing, SNAP, or Medicaid?” and it responded only with “Stopped searching”: Grok is willing to tackle this question, however (see below). Separately, here’s a study of how … | Continue reading
Tesla full self-driving (FSD) was great before and now is even greater: The FSD release in about 6 weeks will be a dramatic gain with a 10X higher parameter count and many other improvements. It’s going through training & testing now. Once we confirm real-world safety of FSD … | Continue reading
It’s the Day of the Dead for our neighbors in Mexico. While cleaning up my mother’s possessions, I found a correspondence between my late father, apparently a friend of William Cowper Boyden III, and the young Mr. Boyden’s father. I couldn’t find much on the Web regarding the … | Continue reading
“Mask mandates return in parts of the Bay Area as virus season nears” (San Francisco Chronicle via Yahoo! News): Mask requirements are returning to health care settings across parts of the Bay Area, as local health officials brace for the annual surge in respiratory illnesses … | Continue reading