A posting every day; an interesting idea every three months…
NPR says that it isn’t state-affiliated media because it gets less than 1% of its funding from the government/taxpayers (2023). NPR also says that it can’t survive without taxpayer funding (2025).
2023: “NPR quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as ‘state-affiliated media'”
2025: “The Order threatens the existence of the public broadcasting system“
I recently finished listening to American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century, a book about Israel Keyes. Mr. Keyes was born at home, one of 10 children, and was not only never vaccinated but didn’t interact with medical doctors for his first 18 years. He never even had a birth certificate. (The events of the book occur before the Sacrament of Fauci became available and, therefore, “never vaccinated” refers to the pre-2020 standard childhood vaccines.) From the perspective of those who are pro-vaccination, the fact that Mr. Keyes became a serial killer will be important (i.e., without the 57 shots recommended by the CDC through age 18, Mr. Keyes’s mental health was impaired, though the book describes him as “bisexual” and membership in the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community is considered a sign of superior mental health, so maybe being Bi and being a serial killer cancel out?). From the perspective of those who are anti-vaccination, Mr. Keyes being extraordinarily robust, intelligent, and conscientious will be important (of course, he eventually makes one mistake that leads to his arrest).
According to the author, we didn’t learn as much as we could have about Mr. Keyes’s life of violent unprovoked crime due to the incompetence of the U.S. Attorney in Anchorage, Alaska, Kevin Feldis (now a partner at Perkins Coie). He allegedly refused to allow the FBI professionals interrogate the suspect and, instead, inserted himself.
The book might inspire you to develop or purchase a “panic ring” that can be pressed one-handed to summon the police. Keyes was usually able to tie up his victims before they were able to make any phone calls, but they generally would have had enough time to move a thumb on top of a forefinger ring. If the GPS location and mobile data connectivity services are handled by a Bluetooth-linked mobile phone, the ring shouldn’t need to be large even with a long battery life. It looks as though a phone-linked necklace/bracelet is available from invisaWear:
The victims weren’t immediately gagged so perhaps it would also work if the phone were just constantly listening for “I have an itch” or a similar phrase. If Hitler 2.0 can get Neuralink to work, perhaps it would be sufficient just to think “I need to be rescued”.
Full post, including commentsNVIDIA is worth over $3 trillion and has approximately 30,000 employees. The company could be quickly overtaken by the competition, though, if all of the employees quit. No problem, right? Just pay every employee $1 million per year for the next ten years and nobody will quit. That would cost only $300 billion. Most of NVIDIA’s employees are in California where the personal income tax rate on successful people is close to 50 percent (federal plus state). Each employee would realize only $500,000 in after-tax spending power if paid $1 million pre-tax. Suppose that the average NVIDIA employee is already worth $20 million. He/she/ze/they wouldn’t rationally keep coming to work every day for the next ten years unless spending power could be roughly doubled. That would require giving every employee about $40 million in pre-tax compensation over the next ten years (presumably most of this would be via stock grants that would dilute existing public investors). That’s a $1.2 trillion cost to prevent employees from “calling in rich”.
Does the fact that NVIDIA has already made nearly all of its employees so rich that they can afford to retire comfortably (for some, moving away from California might be necessary) impair NVIDIA’s likely long-term value to outside investors?
Who could conceivably overtake NVIDIA, you might ask? The Intel Gaudi line doesn’t seem to have caught on. Amazon (“Trainium”), Google (“TPU”), and some startups are all going after the H100 market that is responsible for most of NVIDIA’s revenue (the desktop gamers have been reduced to insignificance). Here’s a story on Google’s potential self-sufficiency:
Amazon and Google don’t sell chips, but instead sell time on their chips via their cloud services which is, presumably, what most customers want. So NVIDIA can’t be complacent and let its employees wander off to either pleasant retirements or startups where there is a realistic chance of making significant money.
Maybe this overhanging need to pay already-rich employees crazy high compensation is priced into NVIDIA stock, just as my Church of Efficient Markets pastor says. Yet I have doubts…
Full post, including commentsEighty-eight years ago today, on May 26, 1938, the Nazi Party’s union labor organization laid the foundation stone of the first Volkswagen factory. Adolf Hitler was present to witness this step in his 1933 vision becoming a reality. (DW) And, of course, today is Memorial Day where we remember Americans who died in our fight to strip the Germans of their empire (a fight that might not have been necessary if we and the British had stayed out of World War I?).
Let’s have a look at a cherished survivor of this company’s output, spotted here in Jupiter, Florida:
It seems to have one of the 5 mph bumpers that NHTSA required from 1973-1982 so perhaps it is a second generation (1967-79) bus, beloved by hippies, anti-war agitators, Grateful Dead fans, etc. Here’s the surprise…
A closer look…
It’s been five years since the life of the greatest of all Americans was cut short and Tim Walz reminds us that we should “honor him”:
What have we actually done for Americans like George Floyd? The Boston Globe says that $1 billion was spent in Maskachusetts and there is nothing to show for it.
The most significant change to American society since May 2020 is that the borders were fully open for about four years, thus leading to a massive increase in low-skill immigration. In addition to at least 4 million green cards (permanent residence) issued (“legal immigrants”), there were approximately10 million undocumented migrants (combined total of more people than live in New York City and Los Angeles put together). “Effects of Immigration on African-American Employment and Incarceration” (NBER 2007):
For white men, an immigration boost of 10 percent caused their employment rate to fall just 0.7 percentage points; for black men, it fell 2.4 percentage points.
That same immigration rise was also correlated with a rise in incarceration rates. For white men, a 10 percent rise in immigration appeared to cause a 0.1 percentage point increase in the incarceration rate for white men. But for black men, it meant a nearly 1 percentage-point rise.
Readers: What are you doing to honor George Floyd today?
Related:
From 2003, The Chinese car:
Within 10 to 20 years the Chinese will be able to sell a car that is very similar to today’s rental car: 4 doors, 4 seats, air conditioner, radio, new but not fancy. It will cost between $2000 and $3000 in today’s dollars. With cars that cheap it will be unthinkable to manufacture in the U.S. Consumers won’t bother to finance a $2000 purchase separately (maybe they’ll add it to their credit card debt).
Among the large range of my failed predictions, this one would appear to have been an unusually spectacular failure. Very few Chinese-made cars are available in the U.S. and they cost $40,000-70,000, not $3,000. Maybe there is some hope for salvaging my reputation as a prophet. “What a $15,000 Electric SUV Says About U.S.-China Car Rivalry” (Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2025):
For an American used to a $50,000 gasoline-powered SUV as the standard family choice, the Chinese market is hardly recognizable. … Chinese car buyers no longer need to debate whether an EV can be made affordable, not when a decent starter model costs $10,000 and a luxury seven-seater with reclining massage chairs can be had for $50,000. … Toyota said its bZ3X—the recently introduced model that starts at $15,000—was designed in China by the company’s engineers in the country, who worked with a local joint-venture partner. It is made in Guangzhou with Chinese batteries and driver-assistance software from Momenta, a Chinese leader in that field.
I was off by a factor of more than 3X, then? What if we adjust for the inflation that the government assures us doesn’t exist? Adjusted for official CPI, $3,000 in 2003 is equivalent to about $5,250 today. So I was off by only a factor of two! What if we try to adjust for inflation as experienced by Americans who buy houses? (official CPI excludes the cost of buying and living in a house in favor of a hypothetical “owner equivalent rent”) The Case-Shiller Index has gone from 133 to 324:
If we adjust the $3,000 number from 2003 with the growth in house prices, we get $7,300. My prediction was of a $7,300 car, then, in today’s money and the WSJ says that $10,000 now buys a reasonably good car (denied to Americans, but available in the world’s largest market for cars).
Related:
“The Ultra Wealthy Are Riding Out the Market Chaos in Luxury Real Estate” (WSJ):
Despite a chill in the overall housing market, ultraluxury home sales in areas like New York, South Florida and Los Angeles are accelerating as the wealthy buyers bet on real estate’s long-term value. Since February, the number of homes sold for $10 million or more has surged in major markets nationwide, according to an exclusive analysis by The Wall Street Journal. Between Feb. 1 and May 1, sales at that price point in Palm Beach, Fla., surged 50% from the same period last year, while sales in Miami-Dade County jumped 48.5% year-over-year, according to public records and local multiple listing service data. In the luxury ski destination of Aspen, Colo., sales jumped 43.75% in that same period, followed by Los Angeles County at 29% and Manhattan at 21%.
When President Trump’s tariffs were first announced, some wealthy buyers tapped the brakes and backed out of deals. In recent weeks, however, real-estate observers have been surprised to see a wave of big-ticket sales across the country.
The largest was the $225 million sale of a residential compound in Naples, Fla., in late April, the country’s second-most expensive home sale ever recorded. The seller was tied to the DeGroote family of Canada, property records show. The same week, billionaire David Hoffmann paid $85 million for a waterfront property nearby.
Home buyers at lower price points, by contrast, are holding off on buying and selling amid the chaos, agents said. For Miami homes below $20 million, for example, listing prices have dropped 10% to 20% since the start of the trade war, said agent Danny Hertzberg of Coldwell Banker.
“The most bullish buyers seem to be the highest-net worth buyers,” said Hertzberg, who knows of at least three Miami homes in contract to sell for $40 million or more. “The rest of the market is soft—frozen in some aspects—whereas the top of the market is accelerating in the number of sales and prices.”
The estimates of construction costs don’t seem right:
Hoffmann, an activist investor, already owned a smaller home in Naples but was searching for a larger compound in the area for five years. “This wasn’t a spur of the moment thing,” he said. The $85 million house, which measures about 17,200 square feet with eight bedrooms, ticked all the boxes in terms of design, size, quality and location. He is also in contract to buy the adjacent property with a guesthouse, bringing the total purchase price to just over $100 million. The two properties had been listed for a combined $125 million.
Hoffmann said he has diverse investments, including a “significant” amount of money in the stock market, but isn’t worried about short-term fluctuations. Moreover, he felt he got a good deal on the Naples home, since it would cost about $110 million to build today.
Even at $1,000 per square foot, a 17,200-square-foot-house would cost only $17 million to build.
Especially in higher-end neighborhoods of South Florida, a physical house is seen as a depreciating asset that will require a bulldozing or a gut rehab after 20 years. In my brain, the only ways that it could make sense to consider such an asset an “investment” are (1) interest rates are near 0 percent and it is easy to get a 90-95 percent mortgage, (2) an expectation that the land underneath will become much more valuable. Interest rates are not close to 0 percent anymore. The only reason that land would rise dramatically in price is if rich Americans decide that they need to cluster together even more tightly.
(See the classic 1997 “A Long Run House Price Index: The Herengracht Index, 1628–1973” in which real estate doubled in value… over 345 years; “The Amsterdam rent index: The housing market and the economy, 1550–1850” (2012) is similarly discouraging regarding appreciation potential beyond whatever is happening in the larger economy; a 2002 paper by Gregory Clark (of The Son Also Rises fame) found that constant-quality rents actually did rise substantially in England between 1550 and 1909.)
Why should we care? Rich Americans control our political parties, especially the Democrats (The Nation). If the rich are concentrated in just a handful of neighborhoods they have less reason to care about what happens to the rest of us. It might be rational to support filling the U.S. with Tren de Aragua members if you are assured that you will never encounter one.
Some porn from the WSJ (the $51 million Palm Beach, Florida house that Bren Simon, widow of the real estate tycoon Mel Simon, recently bought):
I’m continuing the project of archiving my mother’s documents and artwork, including some photo albums that she made. Here’s Adobe Acrobat’s opinion of a 1968 trip to France album in which your ignoble blog host plays a small (5-year-old) role:
Don’t waste time on family history when AI can summarize it for you!
This reminds me of the old story…
A management consultant attended his first symphony concert and submitted the following analysis:
a. For considerable periods, the four oboe players had nothing to do. The number of oboes should therefore be reduced, and the work spread more evenly over the whole concert program, thus eliminating the peaks and valleys of activity.
b. All twenty violins were playing identical notes. This would seem to be an unnecessary duplication, so the staff of this section should be cut drastically.
c. Obsolescence of equipment is another matter warranting further investigation. The program noted that the leading violinist’s instrument was several hundred years old. Now, if normal depreciation schedules had been applied, the value of this instrument would have been reduced to zero and the purchase of more modern equipment recommended long ago.
d. Much effort was absorbed in the playing of demisemiquavers, which seems to be an unnecessary refinement. It is recommended that all notes be rounded up to the nearest semiquaver. If this were done, it would be possible to use trainees and lower-grade operatives more extensively.
e. Finally, there seemed to be too much repetition of some of the musical passages. Therefore, scores should be pruned to a considerable extent. No useful purpose is served by repeating on the horns something that has already been handled by the strings. It is estimated that, if all redundant passages were eliminated, the whole concert time of two hours could be reduced to twenty minutes and there would be no need for an intermission.
What did AI have to say about this 63-page photo album? It found an Avis rental car receipt and our future overlord’s entire summary of the monthlong vacation was based on that:
February 2024, regarding a tragedy that began in 2023: Microsoft keyboards back from the dead.
After massive daily injections of healing Paxlovid, the Sculpt keyboard has risen! Amazon now stocks the Incase “Designed by Microsoft” keyboards.
Get yours before the 6,000 percent tariffs kick back in (the case is stamped “Made in China”, almost surely by the same factory that Microsoft used).
The new supplier’s site:
(spoiler alert)
My notes to a group chat:
Just watched movie Conclave about choosing a Pope. The bad guys are the conservatives who say that male Catholics shouldn’t go to the bathhouse and have sex with five different guys every night. What the movie calls “liberal” cardinals are heroes. They suggest continuing a program of throwing out everything that was sacred to Catholics in the 19th century. The best of the cardinals, who ultimately wins, is a hermaphrodite. He/she says “I am as God made me” and claims that being a hermaphrodite makes him/her a way better Pope. The movie’s villain is a cardinal who wants Muslims out of Italy, partly due to the potential for jihad, and points out that Muslims don’t tolerate the presence of Christians in Muslim countries.
A friend:
So basically a Netflix show
Here’s someone who might have been pope:
From the same article on Cardinal Robert Sarah:
Full post, including comments“By losing its faith, Europe has also lost its reason to be. It is experiencing a lethal decline and is becoming a new civilization, one that is cut off from its Christian roots.”
“All migrants who arrive in Europe are penniless, without work, without dignity,” Sarah reportedly said. “This is what the Church wants? The Church cannot cooperate with this new form of slavery that has become mass migration.”
“If truth no longer exists, if everything is relative, then man becomes a slave to his passions.”
Sarah argued that gender ideology is an affront to God’s creation and cannot fundamentally change whether a person is male or female in “The Day is Now Far Spent.”