I love the imagery in this New York Times headline: “Scientists Fight a New Source of Vaccine Misinformation: Aaron Rodgers”. Here’s how it renders, for those who are not loyal su… | Continue reading
With the U.S. already having spent more, as a percentage of GDP, on infrastructure than Germany (previous post), how did we get to the point that we needed to spend another $1.2 trillion? (sounds l… | Continue reading
Here’s a request for money from the Harvard Art Museums, recently received in the mail: They lead with the fact that they were closed for 1.5 years. Surrounded by fully open (“essential… | Continue reading
The wisest comment regarding the most recent mass in-person gathering by the elite? “Greta Thunberg tells protest that COP26 has been a ‘failure'” (BBC): Ms Thunberg said: “… | Continue reading
I caught an Uber from Jupiter to PBI the other morning. My Colombiana driver (I did not actually ask for this driver’s gender ID; should it be Colombianx?) blasted down the left lane of I-95 at 90 … | Continue reading
…. in the opinion of American pregnant people. “Rates of Prenatal Cannabis Use Among Pregnant [People] Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic” (JAMA): Considered an essential bus… | Continue reading
Here’s an image that, I think, best summarizes the current American spirit. It is from September 7, 2021 at 5 pm and was taken on the Jupiter campus of Florida Atlantic University. The appare… | Continue reading
Google spec’d a bigger sensor than what Apple uses in the latest iPhones and, therefore, should have been able to crush Apple in image quality. DxOMark says otherwise. In lab conditions, the … | Continue reading
The centuries-old struggle of humanism versus traditional religion hasn’t resulted in total victory for humanism, even in thoroughly debauched Western societies. Until March 2020, for example… | Continue reading
I had thought that SABRE, a joint development of IBM and American Airlines, was the first computerized airline reservation system, going live in 1960. However, “The Univac Air Lines Reservati… | Continue reading
I used to pride myself on being the world’s dumbest buyer of real estate. I like to overpay for a house, overpay for renovations, contract for non-existent products, fail to account for the r… | Continue reading
Mobile phone service back in Maskachusetts was generally terrible, whether the iPhone 12 Pro Max indicated “LTE” or “5G” up at the top right. I attributed this to hills gene… | Continue reading
Readers will recall that one of my pet themes here is the diverging interests of urban/suburban Americans who get richer when government gets bigger and rural Americans for whom a bigger government… | Continue reading
For nearly two years, the global elite have been telling the peasantry not to gather across households for fear of spreading deadly SARS-CoV-2. The global elite have closed borders as well (except … | Continue reading
How did everyone enjoy Halloween? In our Jupiter, Florida neighborhood, not a single mask was observed (other than costume masks). Substantial gatherings were observed in the next neighborhood over… | Continue reading
I used to love the idea of leasing a car. Interest rates were almost zero. Technological improvements seemed like they had the potential to devalue used cars suddenly, e.g., if self-driving cars ac… | Continue reading
Happy Halloween! It has felt like Halloween for the past 20 months or so, with ordinary Americans dressing us as surgeons or asbestos remediators in masks. I’ve recently had occasion to take … | Continue reading
The Fall and Rise of China, a course by Richard Baum (late professor at UCLA), asks how it was possible for an empire that had been so successful for 1,000 years to fall apart in about 100 years. T… | Continue reading
I checked Philip Roth: The Biography out of the local branch of the Palm Beach County Library. One fascinating aspect is the faith that Americans had in psychotherapy, especially Freudian psychoana… | Continue reading
Elon Musk gets paid more if Tesla’s market capitalization, revenue, and profit (using the fraudulent EBITDA number) rise, but the goals seem to be stated in nominal dollars, not real (inflati… | Continue reading
“In-N-Out closes in San Francisco over refusal to enforce vaccine mandate” (Guardian, 10/20): In-N-Out burger has become the first restaurant in San Francisco to be temporarily closed f… | Continue reading
I was chatting with a pilot friend who returned to his native Germany recently and reported that he’d been unable to get into restaurants. “They refused to accept my CDC card as proof o… | Continue reading
The Fall and Rise of China, a course by Richard Baum (late professor at UCLA), has an interesting section on the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962). Essentially the Chinese economy didn’t produce… | Continue reading
Ever wonder what the inflation statistic would be if it included some of the big purchases that people actually make, e.g., houses? A Wall Street economist, Joe Carson, recently wrote a piece on th… | Continue reading
Facebook has been in the news lately due to testimony at the Senate by Frances Haugen (imagine how much better off the company would be if they’d never hired him/her/zir/them!). From “H… | Continue reading
“Art Institute of Chicago Ends a Docent Program, and Sets Off a Backlash” (NYT): Museum officials decided that one area in need of an overhaul was its 60-year-old program of volunteer e… | Continue reading
An acquaintance who is a Hilton Platinum member was able to give an unworthy person Hilton Gold status and she selected me. At the time, I said “Now I know how Barack Obama felt when he was a… | Continue reading
CovidActNow, a Web site for Shutdown Karens (‘We support data- and science-backed policies and decision-making’), starts with a map of “Vaccination progress” by state: The p… | Continue reading
From the imaginatively named The Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, the Tesla store: Answers the question, “What if you asked an artist to create a car dealer installation for China… | Continue reading
For several years I’ve been a member of “Airplanes for Sale” on Facebook. The software at Facebook apparently thinks that an airplane is a car and therefore tries to display the m… | Continue reading
Most comparisons of Florida to our former home in Maskachusetts are positive. The infrastructure here is new, shiny, and smooth. The landscaping in higher income parts of Florida is beautiful (palm… | Continue reading
I received a letter from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Jeffrey Riley, the Commissioner, shared some bad news for the children whom the state putatively serves.… | Continue reading
The police in New England will drive out to hassle kids playing soccer outdoors and arrest the unmasked for disorderly conduct (example). What about their counterparts in the Florida Free State? I … | Continue reading
An immigrant friend has slender athletic children in high school. Their statistical risk from COVID-19 is negligible, possibly smaller than the risk of being injured or dying in a car accident on t… | Continue reading
I don’t know how I missed Outbreak during the first 18 months of 14 days to flatten the curve, but the 1995 movie is fun to watch to see what they got right. The virus in the movie is Ebola, … | Continue reading
Modern Monetary Theory is sometimes cartoonishly summarized as “government can borrow and print unlimited money without negative consequences so long as it issues debt in its own (printable) … | Continue reading
Our new religion, in which God is replaced (“In Fauci We Trust”): Source: A Deplorable immigrant friend (Joe Biden couldn’t bundle him onto one of the Haitian deportation flights,… | Continue reading
MIT’s President weighs in on the situation previously covered here in Corpus Juris Canonici for academic cancellations (MIT). A follower of the Climate Change Alarmism religion held a heretic… | Continue reading
As part of our move to the Florida Free State, I had Everpresent scan a photo album that my mom made in 1966 (she didn’t use acid-free paper so there was no practical way to preserve it other… | Continue reading
The Zillow August 2021-August 22 forecast: Zillow expects home values to grow 11.7% between August 2021 and August 2022, and to end 2021 up 19.9% from December 2020. The September 2021-Sep 22 forec… | Continue reading
I didn’t know who Dave Chappelle was, but the protests against his latest show made me curious. See “Netflix Loses Its Glow as Critics Target Chappelle Special” (NYT), for example… | Continue reading
If you’re passionate about #StopAsianHate, you’ll probably want to invest $11.99 in a “Tolerant” wok from IKEA. Photographed October 3, 2021 in Sunrise, Florida: #ProblemSol… | Continue reading
If you want some insurance against future Europe-US travel restrictions, want your children to have the flexibility to study/work/live in the EU, or just want to be like Eric Schmidt (support Biden… | Continue reading
From a barbecue joint in Boynton Beach, Florida: “due to the shortages of commodities within the market such as chicken wings, pork and also beef we must increase the prices from what the men… | Continue reading
The Federal government says that today is the last day of “National Hispanic American Heritage Month”. What did you do to celebrate? Why doesn’t the post headline agree with the g… | Continue reading
During four years of tyranny, anyone who posted a criticism of Donald Trump on Facebook or Twitter was boldly #Resisting. Example from my late friend Mike Hawley (the below was liked and loved 119 … | Continue reading
Florida is not lacking in big box stores and the ones we’ve been in so far have generally been nicer, cleaner, and newer than their counterparts in Maskachusetts (exception: Costco in Palm Be… | Continue reading
Now that we have near-Biden levels of free cash to spend (rent in Florida is cheaper than property tax plus lawn mowing in Maskachusetts and our neighborhood has a lot more to offer, especially for… | Continue reading