Report from the trenches: The post-Trump de-woked Smithsonian (Vol II)

After seeing the lowrider special exhibit (see Report from the trenches: The post-Trump de-woked Smithsonian (Vol I)), we continued around some other parts of the de-woked and attacked-by-Trump Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

In the Entertainment Nation section, Carl Nassib was highlighted as the most notable football player in U.S. history (“openly gay”):

Hamilton was featured as the most notable Broadway show in U.S. history due to its “performers of color”:

The Phoenix Suns are are most notable basketball team because at one point the multi-millionaire players advocated for open borders (according to Harvard, low-skill immigration makes multi-millionaires richer while impoverishing the native-born working class).

One American fencer is highlighted as important. Her achievement was fencing while wearing hijab as a positive example to counter the horribleness of Donald Trump:

Trump apparently wrongly questioned the value of importing millions of Muslims as U.S. residents/citizens shortly before Omar Mateen, child of immigrants from Afghanistan, killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub (June 2016). (Note that children of Muslim immigrants are statistically more likely to be interested in waging jihad than their parents were (Harvard report on Danish study).)

A TV actor is highlighted for identifying as 2SLGBTQQIA+:

Anthony Fauci is featured as the most notable physician in our nation’s history (note the modeling of a cloth mask rather than an ineffective N95 mask):

(I am desperate to see a Fauciland theme park on the campus of NIH Bethesda!)

Speaking of coronapanic, a separate part of the museum reminds us to “fight the virus, not the people”:

Science fiction has been important to the extent that it has been about women:

Clips of some of America’s greatest television moments are available. There is a Sesame Street show in which kids are exhorted to wear masks and also one in which kids are told that immigrants, especially Muslims in hijab, always make America a better place for everyone:

In a separate section of the museum, visitors are reminded that today’s immigrants have “much in common with those who came before” (i.e., a no-skill Islamic asylum-seeker immigrant from Somalia has a ton in common with Heinrich Engelhard Steinway, who built pianos in Germany prior to building pianos in New York):

The entertainment section has a “micro-gallery” about racism and comedians of color:

Those who appreciate engineering will be pleased to learn that the museum displays a portrait of Elon Musk:

The World War II exhibit reminds visitors that the U.S. and U.K. defeated Germany without significant assistance from the Soviet Union.

Likely unrelated to Trump and his war on wokeness, the museum falsely states that German-Jewish immigrant Ralph H. Baer invented “the first video game” circa 1966. Baer was perhaps the first to try to make a consumer-priced device that could attach to a TV, but Wokipedia correctedly credits earlier efforts on mainframe computers.

The currency exhibit reminds us that most of the world’s important societies for most of human history have been governed by females:

A $100,000 bill is displayed as well. Although intended for transferring funds from one Federal Reserve Bank to another in 1934, if Congress continues its deficit spending program this could be useful to feed into Coke machines:

The 10-year-old and I found ourselves in the “American Enterprise” exhibit in front of a wall of business pioneers all of whom just happened to be female. I said to the kid “standing here and looking at this wall you can learn that the success of American business was entirely due to women.” This generated some righteous indignation among a couple of 40ish people nearby (presumably furloughed government workers). They proceeded to lecture us to “open your eyes” and look at other walls within the same exhibit. We actually did as they suggested and found Eli Whitney displayed as having equal importance to American enterprise as “Jemmy”, an “enslaved entrepreneur” who made baskets (this pairing makes a certain amount of sense because Whitney’s cotton gin kept slavery going longer than it otherwise might have).

The de-woked attacked-by-Trump gift shop offers this classic American candy, invented by Johannes “Hans” Riegel Sr.:

Some of the apparel in the gift shop celebrates 2SLGBTQQIA+, but most of it celebrates those who identify as “women”. Women are voting, doing science, building WWII weapons, being legends rather than ladies:

Maybe the books would feature some victimhood category other than “female”? Well, a few did:

But mostly the books ignored Blacks and the Latinx in favor of victims whose victimhood was a consequence of female gender ID, just as most of the jobs and government contracts set aside for descendants of American slavery have been scooped up by white women:

Ironically, for a museum that features certain Americans because of their gender or race ID, the gift shop sells a book celebrating the 14th Amendment’s promise of equal protection:

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Number of Americans dependent on food stamps has been reduced from 17 million in 2000 to only 42 million today

Josh Hawley, a senator who calls himself a “Republican”, in the New York Times:

Millions of Americans rely on food assistance just to get by. The program often known as food stamps — officially it’s now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — is a lifeline that permits the needy to purchase basic food items at the grocery store. Last year, SNAP enrollees hit about 42 million. That’s over 12 percent of the American population.

We’re informed that low-skill migrants make America rich. America has never been richer in migrants (CIS):

We’re informed that government spending on poverty relief reduces the number of poor people. The federal government spends more than $100 billion per year of workers’ (chumps’) tax dollars on SNAP. How much larger was the group of helpless government-dependent Americans 25 years ago before the most recent $trillions had been spent on SNAP? According to the USDA, the number of food stamp-dependent Americans in 2000 was… 17 million:

In other words, in the past 25 years the number of Americans who’ve become dependent on food welfare exceeds the population of Taiwan (23 million), where all of the world’s highest-tech integrated circuits and bicycles are made. The Google says that while we managed to grow our food-welfare-dependent population by more than 2X, TSMC grew its market value from $40 billion to over $1 trillion.

(Note that the 42 million Americans who are enrolled in SNAP/EBT shouldn’t be taken as an estimate of the number of Americans receiving what used to be called “welfare”. There are about 78 million Americans currently on Medicaid, for example. Maybe the discrepancy is that a multi-member welfare household shows up just once for SNAP and multiple times for Medicaid? Or some people getting taxpayer-funded food are getting it via programs with other names (see chart below)?)

Inflation-adjusted spending seems to have grown by about 14X since 1970 (USDA):

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Immigration kills pride in paying income tax?

It’s National Immigrants Day, perhaps known to Native Americans as “National Steal All the Land Day”.

Before the personal income tax Americans enjoyed a feeling of pride in their private charitable and community efforts. When a natural disaster occurred (see Climate Change Reading List: Johnstown Flood for an 1889 example) people knew that there was no FEMA and therefore they voluntarily contributed money, materials, and time to relief efforts and felt pride in helping their fellow Americans. One of Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato’s “eliminate private property” proposal was that humans enjoy feeling generous and if you don’t have the option of voluntarily donating property then you are denied an opportunity to feel good.

In the 20th century we switched to a system of forced extraction for good works, especially during the Lyndon Johnson administration when Medicaid, food stamps, and other cradle-to-grave welfare programs were introduced. To the extent that these welfare programs were being spent on people for whom a taxpayer had some fellow feeling it might have been possible to feel pride in paying tax. Irving Berlin was famous for enjoying his role in contributing to American society via paying tax and the Treasury Department promoted a song that he wrote on the subject:

Some of the lyrics that today’s pro-Hamas Americans might not appreciate…

You see those bombers in the sky,

Rockefeller helped to build them,

So did I.

A thousand planes to bomb Berlin.

They’ll all be paid for, and I chipped in,

That cert’nly makes me feel okay.

Ten thousand more, and that ain’t hay!

I wonder if open borders has finished the process of killing any joy a typical American might feel in sending his/her/zir/their money to the IRS. Almost all of us agree that it is worth paying taxes to finance infrastructure construction, e.g., gasoline tax to build and maintain the Interstates. Some of us agree that it is worth keeping an American underclass on welfare for four generations or more. Very few of us, however, seem to be excited about providing migrants with taxpayer-funded housing, food, health care, etc. Some Americans would rather help the world’s unfortunate in situ at a vastly lower per-person cost (if we spend $1 trillion/year on welfare for immigrants and their descendants, for example, that’s $1 trillion that we can’t spend on relatively low-cost-per-person programs that would save vastly more lives if spent on poor people in poor countries). Some Americans are haters and don’t want to help foreigners other than via voluntary trade.

Lack of pride in paying taxes seems to be a factor in state-to-state moves. Quite a few of our neighbors say that they moved from California or the Northeast because they didn’t agree with what their state and local governments were spending money on, e.g., race discrimination (“DEI”), gender-affirming surgeries for teenagers, a fully funded work-free lifestyle for migrants, etc. Without taking the dramatic step of renouncing U.S. citizenship, though, and paying the associated exit tax, none of us can escape paying federal income tax (exception: moving to Puerto Rico). Therefore, the shift in government spending in favor of migrants wouldn’t motivate Americans to move but it could result in less life satisfaction.

Speaking for myself, the taxes that I most enjoy paying are the following:

  • property tax, despite the epic quantity, because Palm Beach County and Jupiter do great jobs with the schools, the roads, public safety, etc.
  • aviation fuel tax because I love airports and air traffic control
  • gasoline tax because I value being able to get from Point A to Point B on smooth roads without traffic jams (Florida accomplishes the smoothness, but nearly every part of the U.S. seems to be plagued with traffic jams)

I’m sure that there are some progressives in Maskachusetts who actually do love paying state and federal tax that funds a work-free lifestyle for migrants, but my suspicion is that overall our decision to open U.S. borders in 1965 was one that has made us significantly less happy with the 30-50% of our working lives that we spend working for the government’s benefit. Running an asylum-based immigration system has perhaps made the situation worse because tens of millions of the migrants currently resident in the U.S. never expressed any affinity for the U.S. or American culture. They just said that they were afraid of being killed or attacked in their home countries.

Related:

  • “The downside of diversity” (New York Times, 2007): “the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The [Harvard] study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.”

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Why won’t rich states fund SNAP and other welfare programs during the federal shutdown?

Gavin Newsom loves to brag about how rich California is. Here’s a typical post in which he says that “California is the fourth largest economy in the world” and is getting richer every day (“#1 in new business startups”).

Here’s a recent post from Gavin Newsom in which he says that “40 million people [will] lose access to food.” (Note that there are actually more than 40 million people on SNAP, which in no way should be considered “welfare”, but let’s accept 40 million as an approximation.) He doesn’t say that “Except for the 5.5 million Californians on SNAP/EBT (“CalFresh”), who will be fully funded with state tax dollars because California is so rich, SNAP/EBT beneficiaries nationwide will lose access to food.”

So…

  1. the state is rich
  2. the political party that runs the state says that inequality is bad
  3. the political party that runs the state says that taxpayer-funded food is a human right
  4. there is no political opposition to the ruling party
  5. the state won’t provide food for its residents unless it can feed at the federal trough

How is it possible for all of the above to be true?

Loosely related because Kentucky isn’t a rich state…

Governor Beshear has a huge charitable heart so long as other people are working longer hours to pay for his charity (kind of like if I borrow my neighbor’s car, donate it to a non-profit org, and then call myself virtuous/charitable). But why won’t he fund free food for all needy Kentuckians with Kentucky state tax dollars?

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Fat Leonard

Happy U.S. Navy Day for those who celebrate.

A related book for American minorities, i.e., the minority of Americans who pay federal income tax… Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked, and Seduced the U.S. Navy (Craig Whitlock 2024). The book is a great argument for replacing the entire U.S. Navy with sea drones, which won’t be vulnerable to attack (nobody will cry if a drone is lost), bribery, etc. The case of Fat Leonard, and the book, expose a fundamental incompatibility between modern Americans and life aboard ships. Prior to no-fault no-shame divorce, the man on the ship and the woman back home were both coerced to be at least reasonably faithful to each other. Even in the rare cases where he didn’t fear God, the man would be shamed if he had too many girlfriends and prostitutes in foreign ports. The woman wouldn’t harvest substantial alimony and child support if she had sex with 10 different boyfriends while the husband was at sea defending our nation. The book describes what happens when all of this social infrastructure is torn down, but ship schedules that keep spouses separated for months at a time are preserved. The females left at home eventually realize that the local family court will give them whatever they want. The males at sea are thus reduced to poverty and can’t afford girlfriends, prostitutes, or new wives on whatever is left to them after paying alimony and child support. Far Leonard figured out that a man who has lost his kids, home, and wife back in the U.S. and who now has only one third of his paycheck to spend is a man who is easy to bribe.

Who was this pioneer of social psychology? Leonard Glenn Francis ran a “husbanding” business to supply ships, ideally expensive U.S. Navy warships whose officers weren’t likely to quibble about prices, with whatever they needed when in various Asian port. Much of his financial success was attributable to jihad:

The USS Cole arrived mid-morning on October 12 in Aden, an ancient Arabian port, and anchored at the mouth of the harbor. The guided-missile destroyer had transited the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and needed to stop for several hours so it could take on 220,000 gallons of fuel before continuing north into the Persian Gulf. As the crew started to eat lunch, a small red-and-white motorboat approached. The two men aboard smiled and waved as they drew close to the hulking warship. Unsuspecting sailors on the Cole waved back, thinking the skiff had come to collect trash. In fact, the two men were suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaeda and the motorboat was packed with explosives. The terrorists detonated their cargo and blew a gaping hole in the side of the Cole that almost sank the $1 billion vessel. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed and forty-two were wounded, making it the deadliest assault on a U.S. Navy vessel in thirteen years. The attack presaged the far bigger one that al-Qaeda would inflict eleven months later with hijacked airliners. Just as the United States was unprepared for 9/11, the Navy had not foreseen that a common motorboat could torpedo one of its powerful warships. The Cole disaster instantly upended the Navy’s risk calculations for foreign port calls. Unsure of the extent of the maritime threat posed by al-Qaeda, the Navy curtailed ship visits to Yemen and other Muslim countries and upgraded force protection requirements elsewhere.

Francis devised a solution: a floating barrier that encircled a ship to prevent waterborne intruders from getting too close. The primitive contraption was merely a makeshift fence of heavy barges and pontoons linked by steel cables. But in a deft stroke of marketing, he branded it as the “Ring of Steel.” The Ring of Steel sounded impregnable and looked plausible when he showed it to Navy force protection officers. “It was impressive,” said Jim Maus, the supply officer from the USS Independence. “No little boat is going through that. Bounce off it, maybe.” The Ring of Steel was also portable. Glenn Marine could move the components from harbor to harbor and customize the perimeter to suit any ship. Shaken by the Cole bombing, the Navy grabbed the Ring of Steel as a lifeline. It didn’t have better ideas to protect its ships in Southeast Asia. Nor did it trust commercial ports or revenue-starved foreign navies to provide adequate security. The only other option was to park ships at well-guarded U.S. bases in Japan and Hawaii. With the Ring of Steel, Francis not only saved his company, but found a way to expand it. After the Cole attack, Glenn Marine became one of a handful of contractors that could meet the Navy’s enhanced force protection requirements. Most competitors in the husbanding industry were mom-and-pop operators who couldn’t or wouldn’t invest in their own floating barriers. That meant more business for Francis. “The Navy went crazy and paranoid over the Cole,” recalled Commander David Kapaun, an operations officer based in Singapore at the time. “Leonard jumped on that like you wouldn’t believe.”

There was also a virtuous interaction between Navy tradition and jihad:

He knew if he wined and dined the Americans, they were unlikely to question his exorbitant fees, including for the Ring of Steel, which cost between $50,000 to $100,000 per day. “Everybody had to use the Ring of Steel,” he recalled. “So literally, the military’s force protection became the golden goose for me.” For ship captains, no price was too high to protect their crews, not to mention their careers. The Navy held them accountable for everything that happened on their watch, regardless of whether they were personally responsible. If a low-ranking seaman screwed up a task that led to a serious accident, the Navy disciplined the commanding officer on the grounds that he or she had failed to ensure the sailor was properly trained and supervised. The Navy upheld that unforgiving standard after the attack on the Cole. A high-level investigation concluded the Cole was “a well-trained, well-led and highly capable ship” and that the skipper, Commander Kirk Lippold, was not at fault. Intelligence reporting had also failed to detect any threats in advance of the visit to Aden. But the Navy nonetheless blocked Lippold from promotion and forced him to retire—Pentagon officials and members of Congress decided someone needed to be held accountable for the disaster. Many commanding officers thought the Navy and Congress treated Lippold unfairly, but the message resonated: Take every precaution. As a result, few ship captains were willing to risk a port visit without the Ring of Steel, no matter the expense—particularly after 9/11 demonstrated that al-Qaeda’s attack on the Cole was not an isolated event. Terrorist threats spread to Southeast Asia. In October 2002, an al-Qaeda affiliate bombed Bali’s tourist districts, killing 202 people. Seven Americans died and the U.S. consulate was damaged. The Navy reduced its visits to Indonesia, but demand for the Ring of Steel soared in other ports. Glenn Defense’s bottom line soared with it.

An officer would be demoted or fired if something bad happened to the ship, but there were no consequences for wasting taxpayer funds.

The book has some inspiration for upgrading your next party:

With his shirt untucked and his stomach hanging out, an inebriated Leonard Francis lay atop a banquet table at one of the most exclusive restaurants in Singapore. A prostitute hand-fed him leftover morsels from the $30,000 feast he was hosting. Around the table, his American guests—about two dozen U.S. Navy and Marine Corps personnel—puffed Cohiba cigars from Cuba and swilled Dom Pérignon while a gaggle of young women massaged their necks. One Navy officer present said the scene resembled a “Roman orgy.” For the five-hour party with his American customers, Francis had rented Jaan, a Michelin-starred restaurant on the seventieth floor of a luxury hotel. Through plate-glass windows, the private dining room boasted spectacular views of the Singapore skyline and, in the distance, the twinkling lights of ships on the South China Sea. But the sights inside the restaurant that evening made an even more indelible impression. One prostitute flashed her breasts at Rear Admiral Robert Conway Jr., the commanding officer of the USS Peleliu expeditionary strike group. Colonel Michael Regner, the normally rigid commander of the strike group’s 2,200 Marines, mouthed the words to “Y.M.C.A” while a band played the disco hit. One Navy captain was spotted French-kissing a prostitute. As the spectacle unfolded, a few officers watched slack-jawed, unsure how to respond to their superiors’ conduct. The rest had the time of their lives.

U.S. Navy officers weren’t supposed to accept bribes, whether cash or fancy dinners/fancy women, but the service came up with a workaround whereby captains and admirals would pay $50 to Fat Leonard’s company as their share of a meal that cost far more (remember that all of the numbers in the book are in pre-Biden dollars):

The “Valentine’s Cheer” celebration unfolded the next night in a balloon-decorated banquet room at Petrus, the Michelin-starred restaurant on the top floor of the Shangri-La Hotel. About twenty people attended, including a half-dozen Navy spouses who received floral bouquets and fancy chocolates from Glenn Defense. The avant-garde menu showcased elements of molecular gastronomy, including champagne espuma and coral powder made from dehydrated lobster roe. The Americans and their genial host also ate Oscietra caviar, gobbled slices of bread topped with foie gras and Wagyu beef, and savored Périgord black truffle, a rare French fungus that is to be served within three days of harvesting. A different wine accompanied each of the eight courses. “It was one of the most extravagant things I’ve ever seen,” recalled Lieutenant Commander Edmond Aruffo, an officer on the Blue Ridge. “I didn’t know people lived like that.”

Some officers and civilian Navy employees took cash instead of or in addition to fine living:

The senior civilian supervisor at the Naval Regional Contracting Center in Singapore was Paul Simpkins, a fifty-one-year-old South Carolinian who had specialized in the fine print of defense contracts since he was a teenager. He served more than two decades as a uniformed contracting officer in the Air Force and attained the rank of master sergeant before retiring from active duty in 1994. He then filled a variety of civilian contracting jobs for the Marines and Navy before arriving in Singapore in 2005 for a two-year assignment. In his new job, he held the power to award millions of dollars in federal contracts. The child of a single mother, Simpkins grew up poor in the South. The military provided him with a steady career, if not riches, and opportunities to live all over the world. A slim, fastidious man, he was an introvert who rarely socialized with coworkers or discussed his personal life. Few knew that he had been married five times or that his current wife had cancer and was living in Japan. Even fewer knew he was cheating on her with a Chinese girlfriend who would eventually become spouse number six.

After several conversations, Simpkins cut to the chase: What was in it for him? Francis was pleased. This was a man he could do business with. Ordinarily, he devoted months or years to grooming Navy contacts, but occasionally he got lucky and found someone who was unabashedly greedy. During a subsequent visit to the hotel bar, Francis said he handed over an envelope containing a stack of $100 bills—$50,000 worth. Simpkins smiled, allegedly taking the bribe and sliding it into his jacket pocket.

… Reagan—he bribed Simpkins with an additional $350,000 by wiring the money to a Japanese bank account in the name of his cancer-stricken wife. As an added sweetener, he said, he provided Simpkins with prostitutes on more than ten occasions.

Here’s the government worker and Fat Leonard:

The money paid to Simpkins and others was a great investment:

David Schaus, the lieutenant in the Ship Support Office who had feuded with Francis over the Reagan’s wastewater bill, devised a

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Honda Odyssey calls in an airstrike on its own AGM battery

Our 2021 Honda Odyssey’s factory battery, a fancy absorbent glass mat device, failed after three years. A friend’s 2023 Honda Odyssey factory battery, also presumably an AGM model, failed after 1.5 years. His car couldn’t be trickle-charged or jumped from another car and ended up being towed to the dealer. Our 2021 Honda Odyssey recently had a no-warning “won’t start” failure of the 1.5-year-old Duracell-brand AGM battery that has a 4-year warranty. Measured via Fluke 17B+ multimeter, the voltage on the battery was mostly around 11-11.3 volts, but confusingly would sometimes spike over 30 volts, even with the car turned completely off. I trickle-charged for about three hours and it came up to 12.3 volts, thus enabling me to drive to the local Batteries Plus (closer than the Honda dealer).

The battery store used a portable tester and a portable load tester and both said “this is a good battery that just needs some love, understanding, and charging.” I responded that the battery might be good at everything, but it wouldn’t start the car so I would pay for a replacement regardless of warranty coverage. They took the battery back into the shop and it wouldn’t take a trickle charge so they gave me a new one for free ($20 tip to the guy who turned the wrench on the car, though, with my formerly ironic “this will pay for half of your next Starbucks”).

I think that the culprit for these sudden deaths might be the auto stop/start feature that supposedly reduces emissions even as it kills starter motors and batteries. This feature can be disabled on a per-drive basis, but not persistently. The Florida heat is tough on batteries, but AGM batteries are supposed to withstand the heat better than older designs, at least according to our AI overlords (and Consumer Reports!).

Honda doesn’t seem to have prepared for this, e.g., with a voltage check on shutdown or before startup. The warning light system is limited to flagging charging failures, i.e., low voltage after the car is started. Nor did they make it easy to get the battery out/in (some plastic trim, some intake manifold piping, etc. has to be removed and then it is a very tight fit to get the battery out/in from its case).

This isn’t a huge financial issue (see below), but it is strange to me that Honda has put so much effort into making the rest of the car bulletproof only to leave the machine vulnerable to sudden catastrophic failure. In theory, a person who had a full set of tools and a YouTube video on how to remove the battery could take it out, lug it to a battery store, and get a replacement, but that would require a second vehicle in addition to a strong back.

Maybe the answer is that Honda was boxed in once they chose to do the stop/start feature. Our AI Overlord says that stop/start requires AGM and that AGM tends to fail without warning. Some excerpts:

The starter motor engages dozens or hundreds of times per day, not just a few times. While the engine is off, the battery powers everything: lights, climate control, infotainment, sensors, steering assist, and ECUs. So the 12 V battery is no longer doing one big job (starting once per trip) — it’s cycling constantly, partially discharging and recharging every few minutes. Traditional flooded lead-acid batteries [aren’t good for] Frequent, deep partial discharges; Thousands of charge/discharge cycles; Sustained accessory loads while the alternator is off. In a stop/start car, a normal flooded battery would: Sulfate rapidly (lead sulfate crystals harden after many partial cycles); Lose cranking power within months; Often fail prematurely (sometimes in under a year).

AGM (Absorbent Glass Mat) batteries often fail with less warning than traditional flooded lead-acid batteries, … Flooded batteries usually decline gradually … AGMs, on the other hand, tend to hold voltage well until near the end, then fail abruptly. … The glass mat holds electrolyte in close contact with the plates — this minimizes self-discharge and maintains performance, but when a plate or cell fails (sulfation, corrosion, or separator drying), the failure propagates quickly. … AGM chemistry maintains surface charge voltage even with reduced true capacity. So a casual voltmeter check can look fine (e.g., 12.6 V) while actual cranking capacity is collapsing. … AGM: Maintains very low resistance and high voltage until one cell’s electrolyte dries or a separator fails; That causes a sudden collapse in available current; You may have zero warning—fine one day, stone-dead the next.

Here’s a page from a Toyota dealer in Orlando giving the expected battery life as short as 2-3 years for a Florida car:

The cited source is Johnson Controls, which seems strange given that Johnson Controls doesn’t make batteries, but it turns out that they did make automotive batteries until 2019. Their former division is now private-equity-owned Clarios. American consumers get Clarios batteries as Optima and DieHard. Our failed Duracell was made by East Penn, I think. They really should cut the warranty period for Floridians!

Is this a situation where it would make sense to boldly go into the lithium-ion battery frontier? Lithium batteries supposedly last much longer. The Duracell AGM has 70 Ah of capacity, but maybe this much isn’t needed in never-freezing Florida. A 40 Ah Lithium battery costs $950 and has a secret reserve that can be tapped if someone sits with the car on and music blasting for an hour. It weighs just 14.5 lbs. so that should improve the Honda’s 0-60 time. $950 seems a bit steep for 0.5 kWh of stored energy. Extrapolated to the cheapest Tesla 3’s 57.5 kWh battery, that would be $110,000 just for the battery, which we know can’t be right since the entire Tesla 3 costs less than $40,000. Lithium batteries don’t do great in the cold, but there should be a good market in the sunbelt. Clarios says it has made 1 million 12V lithium batteries for cars, but maybe they are sold only to car manufacturers. Google AI says that approximately 400 million lead-acid 12V car batteries are made… each year.

Here we are in the 40th year of the lithium-ion battery (developed by three trailblazing female scientists who shared a Nobel in 2019) and still we can’t reasonably get one for an application that makes perfect sense!

Separately, maybe Honda should move the battery away from the engine. AGM batteries, supposedly, can sit right in the passenger compartment, e.g., under a seat. Perhaps that would help, though of course the greenhouse interior gets hot too. (BMW puts the battery in the trunk, I think, to keep it away from engine heat.)

Finally, maybe AGM should be renamed “GGTTC”: God’s Gift To Towing Companies. I’m convinced that today’s cars with automatic stop/start are more likely to need the services of a tow truck than, say, a car made in 2015 that had a standard flooded acid battery.

Related:

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Grandson of the National Gallery donor is now funding the U.S. military

From the New York Times:

Timothy Mellon, a reclusive billionaire and a major financial backer of President Trump, is the anonymous private donor who gave $130 million to the U.S. government to help pay troops during the shutdown, according to two people familiar with the matter. … A grandson of former Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon, Mr. Mellon was not a prominent Republican donor until Mr. Trump was elected. But in recent years, he has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting Mr. Trump and the Republican Party.

The article doesn’t mention that Grandpa Mellon was perhaps the greatest donor to the American people in the history of the nation. He gave his art collection and an endowment to establish the National Gallery of Art. He did this despite being the subject of what ChatGPT says what was a politically motivated tax fraud lawsuit by President FDR:

The government under FDR’s Treasury and Justice Department pursued a civil case (and attempted criminal charges) against Mellon for alleged under-reporting of income in 1931, improper loss transactions (“wash sales”) of stock, and questionable charitable deduction claims (e.g., an art collection transferred to a trust) that might reduce his tax liability. The case dragged on for years: a grand jury outside Pittsburgh declined to indict Mellon for fraud in 1934. In 1937, after Mellon’s death, the Board of Tax Appeals concluded there was “no doubt” the record did not sustain a fraud charge and found his trust and transfers to the art-trust valid. The government still obtained some additional taxes owing, but far less than originally sought.

His children Paul Mellon and Alisa Mellon Bruce were also major donors to the museum. Collectively they must have given money and artworks that are worth tens of $billions today. (Contrast to today’s billionaires who skip out on paying capital gains tax and send money straight to Africa.)

How about if we start a thank-you card-writing campaign? The $130 million donated is $130 million in taxes we won’t have to pay! (Yes, I recognize that all marginal federal spending can be considered additions to the debt rather than additions to collections from working Americans, but eventually taxpayers have to pay the debt unless it is inflated away to insignificance in our inflation-free Scientifically-managed economy.)

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Minivan news for the 2026 model year

Let’s check in with minivans for 2026 as it is long past time for us to retire our faithful 2021 Odyssey. For readers who worship at the Church of the Sliding Doors I will be grateful to get your advice. Nearly all of the driving will happen in Florida, a state with average gasoline prices (about $3/gallon most of the time in recent years). We expect to drive 10,000 miles per year and, therefore, would burn up $1500/year of gasoline at 20 mpg. Unlimited electric car charging at home is $31/month from Florida Power and Light, but it would be a bit cumbersome because we don’t park our minivan in the garage.

2026 Honda Odyssey: Exactly the same as the 2025 Honda Odyssey, which was almost exactly the same as the 2018 Honda Odyssey. Honda imposed a slight price increase in nominal dollars, which might translate to a slight price reduction in real dollars (adjusted for inflation). If Greta Thunberg hadn’t switched to pro-Hamas advocacy she would shed tears for the continued lack of a hybrid powertrain (admittedly the Toyota Sienna’s feels strained; see Toyota Sienna vs Honda Odyssey).

2026 Toyota Sienna: Would be tough to distinguish from the 2020 original. No improvements for 2026. Not as sporty or nimble as the Odyssey, but the dark green color matches much of the foliage in our neighborhood nicely and the optional captain’s chairs in the middle row would likely appeal to our spoiled kids (reduces seating capacity from 8 to 7). Hybrid powertrain approved by pre-Hamas-Edition-Greta Thunberg. Like seafaring blockade-running Greta, the Sienna isn’t afraid of danger. It comes with Toyota Safety Sense 2.0, an obsolete suite of feeble tech assistance from 2018. TSS 2.0 was superseded by TSS 2.5 (2021 Camry) and then by TSS 3.0 (2023 Corolla; 2025 Camry), but Sienna buyers are doomed to live in 2018.

2026 Chrysler Pacifica: Maybe the oldest platform in the group, dating to the 2017 model year? Zero improvements for 2026. The only plug-in hybrid minivan.

2026 Kia Carnival: minimal changes to this supposedly great 2020 minivan that is styled like an SUV (why not just get a Chevy Tahoe if the SUV image is desired?).

A heartbreaking time, in other words, for those of us who appreciate the genius of Lee Iacocca (first-generation Chrysler minivan below, introduced for 1984):

The Nazi-free all-electric minivan introduced to the U.S. in 2025 turned out to be an epic failure. “How Volkswagen’s Electric Bus Went From American Flagship to Flop” (WSJ):

The German auto giant was bringing back the bus as an electric vehicle, albeit one with a boxy design and two-tone paint job reminiscent of the original. The reboot was more than two decades in the making, and the company said the vehicle would soon be available in the U.S.

In the 1960s, the bus and the Beetle helped Volkswagen enjoy rapid growth. U.S. sales peaked at almost 570,000 in 1970, more than a third of the brand’s global total. At the time, the van was priced at the equivalent of around $20,000, less expensive than most cars.

With a battery range of less than 250 miles per charge, the ID.Buzz doesn’t compare favorably with other new EVs. The German-led design also failed to account for some uniquely American tastes: It often needs to be fitted with extra cupholders at U.S. ports.

The commercial-vehicle business is also based at a plant in Hanover that is among the company’s most expensive. The labor cost of producing a vehicle in Germany was roughly $3,307 last year, compared with $1,341 in the U.S., according to a recent report by consultants at Oliver Wyman.

When Diess showed an ID.Buzz prototype in 2017, he promised EVs that would be “affordable for millions, not just to millionaires.” The company prepared its Hanover factory to produce up to 130,000 units a year, and executives hinted that they could in time manufacture it in the U.S. as well.

Only around 30,000 units were sold last year, hurt in Europe by key markets including Germany and Sweden rolling back EV subsidies.

In April, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warned that the vehicle showed the international brake-warning sign in amber rather than the word “brake” in red capital letters, which is the requirement in the U.S. A few weeks later, the body said the third-row seat was too wide because it could accommodate three people even though it only had two seat belts. The company is fitting plastic parts to cover the sides of the seats in the roughly 5,600 vehicles affected.

Floridians love exotic new cars and yet I’ve seen only a handful of ID. Buzz minivans in the wild down here. One mom at a school event said that she loved hers, but noted that the range was short (officially 230 miles; Car and Driver highway test: 190 miles) and access to Tesla superchargers was “coming soon”. The exterior was snazzy while the interior looked like it had recently been the site of a birthday party, with lots of cake and snacks, for 17 preschoolers.

For those who can stomach the Nazi heritage, a Tesla minivan with FSD could be awesome!

(Is Tesla currently suffering from Osborne effect? They told all of their customers 1.5 years ago that HW4 is too feeble for self-driving and that HW5 has 5X the mental power (i.e., HW5 is like a Democrat from California with a Gender Science degree while HW4 is like a Red State HVAC tech) and that HW4 cars can’t be upgraded to HW5. Tesla said in June 2024 that HW5 would be delivered to consumers in January 2026, but now it looks like HW5 will show up in 2027.)

I hate to keep driving our venerable 2021 Odyssey with over 50,000 miles on the odometer, but I can’t see the value in switching to any of the above. People in Florida are careful about opening their doors so we have no door dings. Florida curbs are lovingly molded from concrete instead of being made from rough-hewn granite as in Maskachusetts. Therefore, we have no wheel rash. Since we don’t garage the car, however, I fear that the sun is taking its toll on the paint and interior and soon we will be getting notes from the G-Wagon-owning neighbors asking if we’re in financial distress. A few photos from the local strip malls just in the last week (an alien might infer from our parking lots that humans come in radically different sizes, which is why some can get around in small toys such as the Lambo while others need massive SUVs and pickup trucks):

One funny thing about our current Odyssey that I would miss: on a two-lane local road, it reads a sign about the Brightline train potentially exceeding 100 mph as a “speed limit is 100 mph” indication.

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Get ready for the World Series with Queer Sports Romance?

Who’s watching the World Series? Maybe some of the baseball fans here can explain to the rest of us why we should pay attention.

Also, should one prepare by reading You Should Be So Lucky?

Around the same time as the above screen shot, I captured this one from the New York Times:

The #1 “best part” of any city is “a gay bar”.

Related:

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Report from the trenches: The post-Trump de-woked Smithsonian (Vol I)

We are informed that Donald Trump has attacked America’s museums in general and the Smithsonian in particular. “Will Museums Fight Back Against Trump?” (New York Times, August 22, 2025):

The president’s attacks on the Smithsonian Institution and other museums have become an effort to redefine why such places exist.

President Trump has sought to govern with an iron grip the federal bureaucracy, the economy and even the finer details of White House architecture.

He wants to put his stamp on the culture of the nation, too.

The president, once a fixture of tabloids and reality television, is waging a war on the rarefied cultural spaces he says have become too “woke.”

We took our boys (10 and 12) to the de-woked Smithsonian National Museum of American History on October 4, 2025. Just inside the front door, the boys learned that they “belong” in girls’ sports just as soon as they raise their hands and say “we identify as girls”. It’s not a matter up for debate, but simply “fair play” when “transgender, nonbinary, and cisgender female athletes demand equality”. The Smithsonian certainly doesn’t mention that there are any dissenters (“haters”) from this dogma, though, as we would find throughout the museum every sign is translated into Spanish (but not Arabic, Chinese, Somali, Swahili, Dari, Pashto, Urdu, or any of the other languages of migrants who make America great).

There’s a lot of explanation for the womanly skateboarder at right:

Our primary objective was to see the lowrider show (see also Lowriders in Fort Worth for these machines in their native increasingly-Islamic element). Spanish 101: the word for “lowriding” is “El lowriding”.

The de-woked curators remind us that American Hispanics claim victimhood going back at least 75 years:

(The discrimination was so bad that an additional 50 million Latinx migrated to the U.S. during the ensuing years? See also “Inhuman treatment” of immigrants in the U.S.)

If I can get our Honda Odyssey’s batteries to stop failing (the most recent 4-year AGM battery survived for about 1.5 years) it would be awesome to find the paint shop that did this one:

The depth of color isn’t achievable with a wrap, I don’t think.

Father of the Year Daniel Tovar made a lowrider for his daughter:

One hundred percent of the people described and depicted in the exhibit as actually building lowriders of significance had traditional male names and appeared to identify as men (moustaches, male attire, etc.):

(the dapper gentlemen is Sonny Madrid, who founded Lowrider magazine in 1977)

The gift shop, on the other hand, explains that it is actually Latinas who are responsible for lowriders:

To be continued…

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