“UC Berkeley professor under fire for telling student to ‘get out’ of California’s Bay Area if they want a girlfriend” (New York Post): “If you want a girlfriend, get out of the Bay Area. Almost everywhere else on the planet is better for that. I’m not kidding at all,” [Berkeley … | Continue reading
When SARS-CoV-2 burst onto the world stage societies could choose whether to absorb the damage quickly or drag out the misery. Sweden, for example, chose a sharp spike in infections and deaths while attempting to isolate the oldest and most vulnerable. The typical western countri … | Continue reading
Dali, the Singapore-flagged container ship that brought down Key Bridge in Baltimore, presumably had multiple redundant power systems, yet apparently suffered a total loss of power that may have contributed to the bridge strike: The cargo ship looses power multiple times before c … | Continue reading
“Border walls don’t make us safer or stronger, says political scientist” (berkeley.edu, 2019): “[the partial border fence between the U.S. and Mexico is] not actually keeping immigrants out, but it has magnified the cost and peril for migrants on the one hand and created an enorm … | Continue reading
It’s Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week for observant Christians. In the old days, the majority of Americans believed that Jesus was God’s greatest gift to humanity. What or who has replaced Jesus? “Marilynne Robinson Considers Biden a Gift of God” (New York Times, February … | Continue reading
Despite not being a member of the Palm Beach elite or even elite-adjacent, I managed to bust into Mar-a-Lago recently for an annual event that benefits a local children’s charity, A Place of Hope. Why would anyone want to go to Mar-a-Lago? It’s a National Historic Landmark and im … | Continue reading
A jihad was waged at a concert hall in suburban Moscow yesterday. It is tough even to imagine the grief of Russian families touched by this event. However, since I didn’t know any of them (as far as I am aware), a question worked its way from the back of my mind to the front… “Wh … | Continue reading
Recent email from the guardians of the Jewish faith in our corner of South Florida: The organization’s web site says “Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County embraces a culture of diversity and inclusivity in accordance with our Jewish values”. This is a little confusing because w … | Continue reading
A Scientific American article, as presented by Apple News: There are “unprecedented threats” against American children who identify as 2SLGBTQQIA+ (I won’t hatefully exclude some categories, as the headline authors did by citing only “LGBTQ”). In other words, it was better to be … | Continue reading
Happy First Day of Spring! If you’re in a northern lockdown state it is presumably time to think about gardening. On a recent visit to Morikami, an enormous-by-Japanese-standards Japanese garden run by Palm Beach County (see Should Palm Beach be renamed Elba? for some background … | Continue reading
Today was our presidential primary. From CNN, an example of how democracy is supposed to work from the party that says its sacred mission is to preserve our democracy: And a baffling result from the Party of Tyranny (TM): How does Nikki Haley, who has never tried to do anything f … | Continue reading
Question: Wouldn’t Hamas be finished in a few days if the typical Gazan were anti-Hamas? Presumably, the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) couldn’t survive amidst civilians if they were hostile to the cause and told the IDF where to find the Hamas members, tunnel entrances, e … | Continue reading
Here’s a photo of an unhoused person sleeping next to a classic Volkswagen Microbus used to advertise the availability, for those with money, of sparkling new apartments: Housing is a human right, say the folks who live in the Bay Area, but somehow they never reduce their persona … | Continue reading
A recent New York Post story, “3-month-old baby mauled to death by family pit bull in NJ”: I asked Claude, Anthropic’s $7 billion baby, whether the choice of pit bull was unwise: We have a 3-month-old baby. We want to get a dog. If the baby’s safety is our main concern, should we … | Continue reading
Scenes from a shopping mall in Newport Beach, California: The salespeople explained that “Creature Comfort Mode” had been released on Friday, March 8. When could we get one of these Lucid cars for which a 1-2 year wait was expected? “If you’re paying cash, you can have th … | Continue reading
Anthropic, an OpenAI spin-off, raised $7.3 billion last year and will soon need to raise more money (NYT). Some of the money came from Effective Altruist and Biden supporter Sam Bankman-Fried (due back in court on March 28), but even if Mr. Bankman-Fried helped, it is tough to un … | Continue reading
The 12 million people who live in Haiti are reportedly going through a rough patch. 100 percent of them should be entitled to asylum in the U.S. due to a reasonable fear of violence, yet the U.S. won’t simply run around-the-clock evacuation flights and ships. We insist that they … | Continue reading
The United Nations top bureaucrat loves Ramadan, which celebrates the revelation of the Qur’an: “In these trying times, the spirit of Ramadan is a beacon of hope, a reminder of our shared humanity,” UN Secretary-General says in message for Ramadan “May this Holy Month bring pea … | Continue reading
“When Wall Street Rolls Out the Red Carpet for You, Who Pays?” (Wall Street Journal, March 8): Edward McQuarrie, an emeritus business professor at Santa Clara University who studies long-run asset returns, recently analyzed how mutual-fund investors have fared since the 1920s. … | Continue reading
It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that Europe is “dying” when “stagnating” might be a fairer description. The chart below isn’t adjusted for inflation, so the European market is more or less flat in purchasing power while the investor in the U.S. market has done nicely. Euro … | Continue reading
From a couple of economists in Sweden, proving that sometimes peer-reviewed research must be rejected, “The Covid-19 lesson from Sweden: Don’t lock down” (Economic Affairs): … countries with more stringent lockdown measures did not experience a lower death rate, as might be exp … | Continue reading
“I feel the need for speed,” said my friend who flew the F/A-18 for the U.S. Navy to the Hertz folks in Tampa. They rented him a Volvo XC40 EV, purportedly capable of 293 miles of range. It’s 190 miles and 3 hours to get from Tampa to our neighborhood in Jupiter, according to The … | Continue reading
An email from The Google regarding a merchant replying to a review that I left two years ago (pre-ChatGPT): Here’s the full text of the reply: Thank you for taking the time to leave us a 5-star review for Calaveras Cantina in Jupiter. We are delighted to hear that you enjoye … | Continue reading
How did Joe Biden sound today? I didn’t watch the State of the Union address, but I have skimmed the transcript. I think it is fair to say that Joe Biden is the most transformative president in U.S. history because a country is defined by its residents and Joe Biden has done more … | Continue reading
A well-done Audible recorded book and, probably, a good book in print/Kindle form: Cook County ICU. A few things that I learned from it… The modern insurance/Medicare/Medicaid system requires that hospitals seeking to get revenue give each patient a concrete diagnosis prior to … | Continue reading
Episode #571 of how being a homeowner makes a person stupid and boring… Our area of Florida is plagued with moderately hard tap water that is packed with dissolved solids. There are professional window washing services that charge about $700 to come over with a hose-fed flow-thr … | Continue reading
Today is Super Tuesday, an important milepost in what is shaping up to be a fight among two guys in Memory Care (and one gal for whom Americans don’t seem to share my own enthusiasm (and even I have been put off by Nikki Haley’s seeming lack of coherent philosophy)). A bit of no … | Continue reading
From a Bloomingdale’s department store, February 19. 2024 (entering Year 5 of coronapanic): Temporarily out of service. We’re sorry, this water fountain is not in use, due to enhanced safety measures in place to protect our customers and colleagues! (Who will protect the … | Continue reading
When a World War I-style trench warfare stalemate develops, the real victims are those who never go anywhere near the trenches and who, in fact, are able to go to mostly peaceful Germany and marry the German taxpayer. Women & girls in Ukraine have been disproportionately impact … | Continue reading
I enjoyed the special effects in the Dune 2021 movie, but the plot seemed overly serious and challenging to follow. For the strike-delayed second part, I’m hoping that Godzilla will join the mix. Who agrees with me that Godzilla v. a sandworm would spice things up? (Side note: I … | Continue reading
We had a few seconds of power loss the other day. Everything in the house, including a Windows machine using NTFS, came back to life without any issues. A Synology DS720+, however, became a useless brick, claiming to have suffered unrecoverable file system damage while the underl … | Continue reading
Some photos from a recent Florida Panthers v. Washington Capitals NHL game: (My neighbor loves hockey and has season tickets. Bizarrely, the Florida-based team is one of the best in the NHL. They lost the Stanley Cup last year to the cold weather experts in the Las Vegas … | Continue reading
The JetBlue management team, based in enriched-by-diversity New York City: The JetBlue home page: | Continue reading
The Twitterverse reported that Gemini was refusing to create images of whites, but happy to create images of Blacks: I tested this theory after some frantic code rehab had been done to reduce the obviousness of the bias, but before the ability to show humans had been pulled alto … | Continue reading
“Migrant suspect in Laken Riley murder accused of ‘seriously disfiguring’ nursing student as affidavit reveals grim details in case” (New York Post): The Venezuelan migrant charged with murdering Laken Riley allegedly beat her so brutally with an unidentified object that he dis … | Continue reading
Willis Haviland Carrier at work in 1902, according to Gemini: | Continue reading
I went to Costco to set up my mom’s new life as a Floridian. As part of the sales process, Costco customers are informed that some of the profits from the towels for sale flow into the pockets of people who identify as “women”. The “Women Owned” logo certifying that this is where … | Continue reading
Fritz Haber, the historical figure who did more than anyone else to enable human population to expand to 8 billion: Note the baldness. What does Gemini think that life in a German lab looked like circa 1909 when the Haber process was being developed? How about the 1,600 Naz … | Continue reading
Apparently, a mostly peaceful conflict between two groups within Eritrea has entitled people from both sides of the conflict to claim asylum in Europe and the U.S. This has resulted in the mostly peaceful conflict continuing in The Hague and in, for example, North Carolina. “Char … | Continue reading
History according to Google’s Gemini: ChatGPT 4, in response to the same prompt: ChatGPT, in response to “Create a mural of five aircraft designers working together in 1905”: Back to Gemini, this time regarding elderly surgeons: I give the system credit for using one … | Continue reading
A pizza shop in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida: Note the solution to the inflation problem that the government tells us is entirely in our minds: tape over all of the prices and tell the customer what it’s going to cost only after he/she/ze/they orders. | Continue reading
Other than gender studies graduates who are about to have all of their student loans transferred onto the backs of the working class, divorced women are the most reliable Democrat voters in the U.S. What’s the latest harvest of material from Democrat-controlled media on the mirac … | Continue reading
For folks from the Northeast and California who are afraid to move to Florida because of a perceived lack of righteousness, the local Palm Beach County library branch’s displays for Black History Month… First, in the kids’ area: It turns out that identifying as “female … | Continue reading
From the creative geniuses at Stern, a James Bond Premium machine, NIB: A harmless diversion? Only if you think that cancer, birth defects, and “reproductive harm” are harmless! The warning to Californians about what might happen to them if they are brave enough to unbox this … | Continue reading
The Biden administration recently extended the “Temporary Protected Status” (i.e., “permanent”) for migrants from El Salvador. Starting in 2001 (State Department), Salvadorans have had an automatic right to stay in the U.S. because El Salvador is too dangerous for human habitatio … | Continue reading
“Ukraine says it has sunk another warship, disabling a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet” (CNN): Ukraine claims it has now disabled a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet after its military intelligence said it sank another Russian warship in a sea drone attack off the coast of Cr … | Continue reading
“Egypt is building a new walled buffer zone more than 2 miles wide on Gaza border, satellite images show” (CNN): Egypt is building a massive miles-wide buffer zone and wall along its border with southern Gaza, new satellite images show, as fears grow over Israel’s planned groun … | Continue reading
A Ukrainian friend shared “Russia has recruited as many as 15,000 Nepalis to fight its war. Many returned traumatized. Some never came back” (CNN): He is one of as many as 15,000 Nepali men to have joined the Russian military, multiple sources have told CNN, after the Russian g … | Continue reading