May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month. What better time to talk about health care in the Sunshine State? The Great Plains are traditionally the best places for doctors to work when salaries offered are compared to house prices and overall cost of living. But not everyone wants to l … | Continue reading
May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month. What better time to talk about health care in the Sunshine State? The Great Plains are traditionally the best places for doctors to work when salaries offered are compared to house prices and overall cost of living. But not everyone wants to l … | Continue reading
From 2013, Should we short Twitter? Folks: It has come to my attention that Twitter has gone public at a valuation of $18 billion. The company has modest revenue (about $600 million per year) and no profit. Is it a short?What is the explanation for how this service can make enou … | Continue reading
Poking around within Twitter, I found this gem: Rage crying this morning. Two years of isolating and keeping my toddlers safe, and I get infected with #COVID19 at a mandatory team offsite, even while wearing a KN95 mask myself. Now my toddlers are exposed. 🤬 This isn’t … | Continue reading
An American friend lives in locked-down Shanghai and I recently checked in with her. Below are some of her text messages. We were locked in apartment for somewhere between two and three weeks (forgot exact dates) and now we are allowed to roam inside the compound courtyard area … | Continue reading
I’ve been watching a $3+ million house in our own neighborhood (see Open house today in our neighborhood) to see what it finally sells for (this could be an official Florida spectator sport?), but now there is a house on the market for $55 million about two miles away. Here’s a p … | Continue reading
My general rule is that if an activity is dangerous enough to require wearing a mask then it is dangerous enough to avoid altogether. I wouldn’t go to a Broadway show, for example, because they’re telling me that it isn’t safe (masks are required as well as vaccine paper checks) … | Continue reading
A typical reaction to Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter seems to be that it is easy to toss out a term such as “free speech” but that it is difficult to implement a plan. Internet conversations need moderation, is the theory, especially on platforms where users aren’t authenticated … | Continue reading
One of the reliable features of non-welfare neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. has been a “migrants welcome” sign in the typical front yard. Now that Texas is sending asylum-seekers directly to D.C., however, it seems that the formerly popular “No Matter, Where You Are From, We’re … | Continue reading
This is one of my favorite New York Times headlines ever: “G.D.P. Report Shows the U.S. Economy Shrank, Masking a Broader Recovery”. Our technocratically-managed economy is thriving, even if shrinking a bit (the per capita shrinkage would be more dramatic if you consider popul … | Continue reading
Germany has had strict requirements for people to use N95-style masks and… a raging coronaplague to go with those masks (but the failure of two-way N95 masking should not shake our faith in one-way N95 masking! Don’t stay home to avoid COVID-19, get on a plane with an N95 mask, e … | Continue reading
After digesting reader advice in response to What is the best 15-16-inch laptop right now? I decided to go with the $1200 LG Gram 16 2-in-1 from Costco. I’m setting it up now and already somewhat at war with the device because the keyboard is off center. Why isn’t the QWERTY keyb … | Continue reading
This is a report on a trip from PBI-DCA-PBI, April 21-24. Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle struck down the Biden Administration’s mask order on April 18. (Friends on Facebook have been continuously posting reminders that Judge Mizelle is “not qualified.” In other words, a confused 8 … | Continue reading
Twitter will soon be owned by African American entrepreneur and investor Elon Musk, who is paying $44 billion for a company that lost $493 million in 2021 on revenue of $5 billion (press release). The company would have earned something like $273 million if it hadn’t had to pay o … | Continue reading
Two years into the forced masking of the general public (except in Florida!), the Science experts at the New York Times give us “Maskless Flying: What might a more effective mask mandate look like?” On Sunday, I spent nearly five hours on an airplane, flying home from the West C … | Continue reading
I visited the National Gallery of Art recently, trying to figure out when the Hunter Biden wing will open, and was impressed by the extensive collection of animal sculpture by Barye. I thought that it would be fun to get reproductions of the works that include crocodilians for th … | Continue reading
It is time to replace my 5-year-old Dell XPS 13. Despite multiple return trips to Dell for service, the computer has never worked properly, refusing to sleep when closed or even to sleep when “sleep” is selected from the power options at lower left (the only way to prevent the ba … | Continue reading
I attended a family event this weekend in Washington, D.C. The Cirrus is in for annual inspection and, in any case, is not suitable for transportation on a rigid schedule so I bought a ticket on JetBlue. On Monday, Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle famously freed Americans from the r … | Continue reading
As balance to a 2018 gathering (see Elizabeth Warren helps another politician raise money on a “get money out of politics” platform), I recently attended an evening with Senator Tom Cotton. It pains me to say this about a Harvard graduate, but his knowledge of world history going … | Continue reading
Happy Earth Day, especially to those who live in single-family houses and drive SUVs! This would be a great day to post a photo of your pavement-melting Ford Bronco to Pinterest, which will happily collect ad revenue from photographs of lavish consumption that burns the Earth’s … | Continue reading
For Passover this year we used a Haggadah from PJ Library, a Maskachusetts-based non-profit (funded by Harold Grinspoon, a late-blooming artist like Hunter Biden). The book includes the classic victimhood narrative in which “Pharaoh” enslaves the Jews and does various gratuitousl … | Continue reading
“Biden administration to appeal ruling striking down transit mask mandate” (Washington Post, today): The Biden administration will appeal a federal judge’s decision that struck down the mask mandate on public transportation, officials announced Wednesday.The Justice Department f … | Continue reading
If anyone expresses support for low-skill migration into the U.S., one of my standard tropes is to offer to pay for a year of food for any migrants that the gracious welcomer wants to shelter in his/her/zir/their own home. After 20 years of making these offers, I have not had to … | Continue reading
I recently finished After the Plague, a lecture series by Simon Doubleday, a professor at Hofstra. The pandemic of the lectures is the Black Death of the 14th century. As with the physicians of spring 2020 who harmed COVID-19 patients by putting them on ventilators (today we real … | Continue reading
I recently finished After the Plague, a lecture series by Simon Doubleday, a professor at Hofstra. The pandemic of the lectures is the Black Death of the 14th century. As with the physicians of spring 2020 who harmed COVID-19 patients by putting them on ventilators (today we real … | Continue reading
I recently finished After the Plague, a lecture series by Simon Doubleday, a professor at Hofstra. The pandemic of the lectures is the Black Death of the 14th century. As with the physicians of spring 2020 who harmed COVID-19 patients by putting them on ventilators (today we real … | Continue reading
First, was matzah sold out at your local supermarket right when Passover began (last Friday night)? Here in northern Palm Beach County, matzah was more popular than Hunter Biden original oil paintings. Both Publix and Whole Foods were sold out. Publix, however, did have Carr’s T … | Continue reading
In a perfect illustration of the generational conflict exposed by COVID-19 and with perfect timing for Passover (a holiday all about freedom), a 34-year-old federal judge struck down the 79-year-old’s order forcing healthy young (non-elite) people to wear masks on buses, subways, … | Continue reading
If you’re in Boston enjoying healing legal cannabis today, you can thank the traitors who rebelled against legitimate British rule in 1775 (marijuana is strictly illegal in the U.K.). How did George III see the “patriots”? The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of Geo … | Continue reading
Kicking off a new Doublethink category for this blog…. “Biden will allow summertime sales of higher-ethanol gas as prices remain elevated.” (NYT): Gasoline that contains ethanol reduces pollution, as indicated by the “Cleaner Air for Iowa” sticker (not to be confused with an “ … | Continue reading
The Obamacare tax was imposed in 2013 on “net investment income” in order to shovel more money from Americans who don’t work in health care to Americans who do work in health care. Capital gains from selling a house, interest, dividends, etc. are hit with an extra 3.8 percent fed … | Continue reading
From https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/tips-and-ideas/holiday/passover-menu : Screen #2: From Screen #3 (after clicking Continue): | Continue reading
We made a family trip to Lakeland, Florida’s answer to Oshkosh, i.e., Sun ‘n Fun. It was a great experience with much more manageable traffic, hotels, food, etc. The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds were the main airshow attraction and the USAF also brought a B-1 bomber, of which roug … | Continue reading
An iPad Pro costs between $1,100 and $2,200 (plus $350 for a keyboard), depending on precise configuration. It features a 12.9-inch LCD display and weighs about 1.4 lbs., making it inexpensive to pack and ship. It runs a Unix-based operating system and a bunch of apps to decode s … | Continue reading
A friend works at Amazon in Maskachusetts. She just got a 13 percent raise, not performance-based, to compensate her for inflation and prevent her from quitting. State-sponsored NPR today says that the inflation rate is just 8.5 percent: “U.S. inflation rises 8.5 percent, sharpe … | Continue reading
From the New York Times, April 3, 2022, apparently not satisfied with A corrected history of mRNA vaccines, its January 15, 2022 effort to erase Robert Malone: This post is not about the obviously false claim that someone whose name appears on a foundational paper regarding mR … | Continue reading
Moore’s law says that we should get GPUs twice as fast every two years (GPUs are inherently parallel so adding more transistors should add performance). Huang’s law says that GPUs get 3X faster every two years. Because everything desirable in this world is being scooped up by th … | Continue reading
Two Apollo 11 astronauts wore the Omega Speedmaster after riding the Saturn V to the moon. Swatch has recently released a replica “moon watch”. Demand for these watches, and an association with the men who were brave enough to go into space, was overwhelming (Daily Mail). I would … | Continue reading
Electrify America charges 43 cents/kWh in Florida: That’s 4X the average price to a commercial customer in the state (EIA.gov; which shows that Electrify America’s price is 5X the “industrial” rate, which might be more appropriate for a large and busy charging station). (Let’s … | Continue reading
From an interview with the Markus Bucher, the CEO of Pilatus (in Switzerland)…. For the first time we produced and delivered over 140 aircraft to our customers in one year, taking us virtually to the limit of our current production capacity. The enormous demand for our General A … | Continue reading
Who else will be at Sun ‘n Fun this weekend in Lakeland, Florida? For those who are unfamiliar with this glorious event, it is a gathering of aviation enthusiasts that is a little more manageable than Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture). To prevent a January 6-style insurrection within the … | Continue reading
The NYT, under a headline about “A Transformative Justice”: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will help make the Supreme Court look like the nation but will have little power to halt its rightward trajectory.Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman confirmed to the Supreme C … | Continue reading
To celebrate World Health Day, let’s look at a state where long-term public health was optimized by closing schools for more than a year while keeping the marijuana stores open. Every retailer of healing cannabis in Maskachusetts requires a permit to operate from the government. … | Continue reading
Here’s a challenge for those of us afflicted by a belief in the Efficient Market Hypothesis: Adjusted for inflation, Zoom is cheaper today than in June 2019, when the only lockdowns were for convicted criminals and any non-felon could work, socialize, and study in person to hi … | Continue reading
We’ve had runaway government borrowing and spending, plus money-printing by the Fed, for the past two years. Now we have runaway inflation, which has led to some eye-popping asset prices and a government eager to collect a share of these assets even before they’re sold (“unrealiz … | Continue reading
A New York Post story: [Daniela Jampel, who served as an assistant corporation counsel for the City] had publicly challenged the mayor at an unrelated event on LGBTQ issues — as [Mayor Eric] Adams stood in front of a podium banner that read, “Come to the city where you can say w … | Continue reading
Folks who’ve been unpersoned by Twitter, Facebook, and/or YouTube/Google might feel that their practical freedom of speech is gone. The good is is that it can be bought back from the U.S. Mint for $1,595 via the First Amendment to the United States Constitution 2022 Platinum Proo … | Continue reading
We have some stuff in storage (see PODS versus PACK-RAT for moving and storage). The monthly storage rate was bumped last month by 8 percent (over a price quoted in June 2021). A local (Palm Beach County) dentist said that he’d raised hygienist wages by 20 percent to partially c … | Continue reading