Today is the Costco shareholder meeting. The Board recommends against studying whether Costco’s race-/gender-/2SLGBTQQIA+-based discrimination programs (“DEI”) are harmful. Here’s their argument for continuing to discriminate, from the annual meeting notice:
And we believe (and member feedback shows) that many of our members like to see themselves reflected in the people in our warehouses with whom they interact.
I’m wondering how much discrimination is permissible based on customer preference in a 21st century American business. Suppose that “many” customers said that Asian cashiers worked faster and more reliably. Could Costco then refuse to hire non-Asians to work as cashiers? Back in the 20th century, companies were told that they couldn’t use the “customer preference” excuse to exclude Black employees. But the Costco Board and its superstar attorneys tell us that the “customer preference” excuse is usable for excluding at least some employees based on race.
Here’s what Grok thinks the employee mix should look like:
ChatGPT seems to have some issues with (1) racism, and (2) counting to four:
(All of ChatGPT’s highly capable and fast-working Costco cashiers appear to identify as white, including in previous answers to prompts.)
As of last month, the New York City Department of Health wants the peasants back into masks:
COVID-19, flu and RSV are all currently spreading in NYC. Wearing a mask in crowded indoor settings can help protect you and protect others if you’re sick.
Compliance with this advice doesn’t seem to be high. Non-elite New Yorkers are always in crowded settings and few wear masks (though some wear masks over beards, which is a delightful example of human behavior).
Instead of repeatedly tweeting “Mask Up!” maybe the NYC Covidcrats could hire Luigi Mangione as a spokesperson. Mangione could talk about the critical importance of wearing one’s mask 100 percent of the time rather than 99.9 percent of the time (he might well be free today if he hadn’t dropped his mask a couple of times).
Loyal readers know me as someone who rejected the SUV religion almost as early and often as I rejected Faucism (saliva-soaked cloth face rags, lockdowns except for liquor and marijuana stores, and school closure as a way of slowing down SARS-CoV-2). Today I have a shameful admission to make… I’m almost in love with the Chevrolet Tahoe.
Our affair began at the Kissimmee, Florida airport. I dropped off the 20-year-old Cirrus SR20 so that it could get a new parachute and rocket at the factory-owned service center there (see Parachute and rocket replacement option for Cirrus owners who love Disney and Harry Potter). I reserved a “car” from Enterprise for the trip back to Stuart, Florida and was dismayed when they gave me what looked like two huge bricks:
By the time I was done with the two-hour trip, though, I marveled at the isolation from road noise. It seemed even quieter than our beloved 2021 Honda Odyssey (not to be confused with the 2025 Honda Odyssey that, thanks to continuous reinvestment and diligent engineering work, is exactly the same as our car). On smooth pavement, the noise level might be similar, but Florida highways have a tremendous amount of texture in the concrete. This is presumably to prevent hydroplaning during the Biblical rains that are common here. The interior noise level of almost every car that I’ve been in goes up dramatically when entering an interstate highway or turnpike from an untextured ramp. Not the Tahoe’s.
The car also drove well and the software design seems slightly better overall than for the typical Japanese car and dramatically better than for the typical European car.
Readers: Who else loves this absurdly oversized/overweight GM vehicle?
(One answer: a neighbor here in Abacoa! Below is a photo of the monster Tahoe in front of an efficiently sized minivan (visitor to the neighborhood? We’re one of the few families that has resisted the SUV craze).)
The Odyssey is also extraordinarily quiet at speed, which is especially impressive with this much frontal area. We measured 66 decibels at a steady 70-mph cruise, which not only bests all the other minivans—including the ID. Buzz by a wide, four-decibel margin—but also beats some luxury juggernauts, such as the Mercedes-Benz E-class. While the Odyssey is the quietest minivan, put your foot down and it becomes the loudest, with 80 decibels of VTEC fury at wide-open throttle.
The Car and Driver numbers are consistent with what I was able to measure in Maskachusetts, but I’m pretty sure that they’re a lot lower than what we experience when we take the Odyssey out on the textured Florida highways. The Tahoe tested at the same 66 dBA back in 2021, but I think it does a better job of keeping that 66 dBA when the road surface isn’t smooth.
Maybe we could find the perfect tire for the Odyssey and that would help? Car and Driver tested purported noise-killing tires back in 2016 and the results were weak:
If the effect appears small by our sound-meter measurements, it seemed even smaller when measured with our eardrums. We struggled to discern any significant improvement, although it probably didn’t help that our back-to-back drives were separated by a half-hour tire swap.
Continental confusingly claims a 9 dBA reduction in noise, but only at certain frequencies. I thought that the whole point of A weighting was to give a summary that matches human perception. Their ContiSilent tires aren’t available in sizes to fit the Odyssey, unfortunately.
Is it time to get a new vehicle? Our Odyssey is getting a little shabby after 4 years, but it is tough to summon the energy to push through all of the dealer paperwork in order to trade it for a minivan that is identical in all significant respects. It probably wouldn’t be a huge financial hit to buy the new minivan because our existing minivan will start depreciating like a rock soon enough. I don’t feel sufficiently high and mighty to switch allegiance to the Tahoe. Readers: Have you noticed any other car that is especially quiet over textured concrete?
For parents and students in the East Bay (of San Francisco, California), a reminder from a school bureaucrat, who has stayed entirely “neutral”, to “to follow the example set by Presidents Biden and Obama” (for better readability, not in quote style):
DUSD Community,
In the United States, we have always had a peaceful transition of power between presidents, except for January 6, 2021. President Biden and his administration have demonstrated a high level of professionalism during this transition, just as former President Obama did for President-Elect Donald Trump and each president prior.
The 2024 Presidential election was, for the second time, an extremely divisive election for our country. This election has itself become a point of protest for women, Muslim and Jewish communities, immigrants, and people who care about education, Social Security, Medicare, and a whole list of other issues. There has been a great deal of media coverage regarding the Presidential Inauguration that will take place Monday, January 20, in Washington, D.C.
As educators, we have the incredible opportunity to use the presidential election and the second Trump Inauguration as learning opportunities to help promote social justice [Ed: with taxpayer funds] in a way that actively engages our students. The activities, discussions, and student production that we choose to plan around the inauguration are opportunities to further develop the skills and competencies that we are developing in our Graduate Profile. We need to provide a safe environment for our students during the Presidential Inauguration. I encourage students and staff to reach out to each other and work together on shared, peaceful activities at our school sites. Listening to the Inauguration is an appropriate activity, along with providing the space for students to process Trump’s presidential address. Providing these types of activities is a critical responsibility and opportunity for our educational institutions.
Regardless of the activity, we will stay neutral, share the facts, allow for both sides of an issue to be shared, and create a safe place in our classrooms and at our school sites for discussion to take place. We need to follow the example set by Presidents Biden and Obama and engage in activities that support the peaceful transition of power between Presidents.
In addition, I want to reinforce the importance of maintaining the privacy rights of our students. Under FERPA laws and laws that govern the State of California, our schools will not provide any private student information to ICE (Immigrants and Customs Enforcement) without a formal arrest warrant. Our schools must remain safe and secure for all who attend and work in DUSD.
I thank you in advance for staying in school, remaining respectful, and engaging in meaningful dialogue around the upcoming Presidential Inauguration on Monday, January 20, 2025.
Sincerely,
Chris D. Funk Superintendent Dublin Unified School District
In other news, I was just in Berkeley, California, a simple 1.5-hour BART ride from Dublin! The laundry detergent is locked up at Target (along with almost everything you’d find at CVS):
Let’s stroll out of Target, past a few outdoor maskers, and into Pegasus Books, which features a permanent panhandler by the front door. Inside we find empty CD cases for fear that someone without a streaming account will steal the precious CDs themselves:
The Followers of Science (TM) are heavy readers of books about witchcraft:
What if a passion for Hamas rule and Socialism could be combined into a single book?
American democracy ends in five minutes. We’ll be weeping not only for the end of Science-guided rule but also because of Climate Change since it was forecast to be the coldest Inauguration Day in 40 years.
Let’s try to push through our shared tears to think about Mark Zuckerberg and his foxhole conversion to free speech. From University of Colorado:
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that the company would fire its fact-checkers and instead rely on its users, with the help of AI, to police Facebook and Instagram for false or misleading posts. The company will also move its content moderation team from California to Texas, lift restrictions designed to protect immigrants and LGBTQ people from hate speech and “dial back” penalties for rule-breakers.
Nathan Schneider, assistant professor of media studies, sees it as a wake-up call to users that it may be time to take back some control over social media platforms.
Rightly, many people are terrified. The company has been quite explicit that it is committed to tolerating and normalizing the discourse of the far right, which includes denying the dignity of people in many communities, particularly queer folks. This move reflects the kind of naked power that this company has always been able to exert over speech, and its ability to determine what the bounds of acceptable speech in society are. As the political winds shift, the company appears to be embracing that shift across its networks. We should be asking ourselves whether we can continue to place so much trust in a company that can abruptly remove protections in this way.
There is a solution, fortunately, according to the giant brains of academia:
What’s hopeful to me is a growing movement of people embracing other kinds of social networks like Mastodon and Bluesky. … You could look at an example like Wikipedia – a widely trusted utility on the internet that is mission-driven and organized as a nonprofit.
Compare to 2020: “Facebook censors The Post to help Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign” (nobody could suggest that people had been bribing then-VP Joe Biden via Hunter Biden or amplify the misinformation that the Hunter Biden laptop was somehow genuine).
A literal-minded friend in a chat group explained the motivation for Zuck’s elimination of (Democrat) fact-checkers just as the White House was turning over to Republican rule:
He has principles
An immigrant from Eastern Europe in the same group:
when did he have principles, before biden or now?
(My main question about Facebook is how it can be so jammed with pig butchers compared to the purported unregulated hellscape of Twitter. Maybe the answer is that Facebook is explicitly about friendship and therefore it makes sense to try to befriend someone on Facebook?)
“Kamala,” by Kadir Nelson, would have been the cover of the November 18, 2024, issue of The New Yorker, had Kamala Harris had won the election. Read about the cover that never was: https://t.co/GlOlEFKmR8pic.twitter.com/VaQqfPMcSm
(the image, full size below, is interesting because it shows Kamala Harris as a key figure in the U.S. civil rights movement, which started in 1954 (Wikipedia) despite her parents having migrated to the U.S. in 1958 and 1961)
I visited TikTok.com at 11 pm Eastern time last night:
I wasn’t a regular TikTok user, but I don’t remember any education- or work-related content there. If Americans aren’t viewing TikTok anymore will there be a huge boost in American productivity and GDP as a result of all the TikTok addicts doing something useful instead?
President Biden’s legacy will largely be limited to his success in lowering border crossings. But his approach has drawn criticism, and some of his actions have moved the problem deeper into the country.
Today we can say goodbye to Joe Biden, the president who, according to the fair- and tough-minded journalists of the New York Times, was responsible for “lowering border crossings” (i.e., reducing undocumented migration compared to previous administrations). It isn’t clear why this is a “legacy” of which to be proud since we are reminded by the NYT that low-skill immigrants make us all better off. Why is it “success” to lower border crossing when diversity and immigration are our strength?
Note that the number of encounters appears to have fallen from 2023 to 2024 in the chart below, but that may be because the 2024 bar is for only part of the year (through July 2024).
Many of the vehicles that crowd the tolling zone are taxis and cars for ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft.
The new tolls will not fall on the drivers of those vehicles, who are often struggling to make ends meet. Instead, passengers will be charged an additional amount for each trip into, out of and within the zone. (Even before the new pricing began, passengers already paid congestion-related fees of up to $2.75.)
Riding in a taxi, green cab or black car will now cost passengers an extra 75 cents in the congestion zone, which runs from 60th Street south to the Battery. The surcharge for an Uber or Lyft will be $1.50 per trip.
I want to focus on “the new tolls will not fall on the drivers of those vehicles”. Let’s consider Eric Cheyfitz, the Cornell professor who teaches Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance:
The first half of the course will be devoted to situating Indigenous peoples, of which there are 476,000,000 globally, in an international context, where we will examine the proposition that Indigenous people are involved historically in a global resistance against an ongoing colonialism. The second half will present a specific case of this war: settler colonialism in Palestine/Israel with a particular emphasis on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) finding “plausible” the South African assertion of “genocide” in Gaza.
(There are 476 million Indigenous people in the world, but fully half of the course will be devoted only to the 2 million who support Hamas, UNRWA, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.)
Prof. Cheyfitz is visiting some pro-Hamas faculty at NYU and is considering taking an Uber for a 15-block trip to a restaurant. His/her/zir/their alternative is walking or taking the subway. Suppose that Prof. Cheyfitz is willing to pay no more than $20 for a car ride before he/she/ze/they will hoof it. If the city imposes an additional $1.50 fee (on top of existing congestion fees, car registration fees, taxes, etc.), doesn’t that reduce the maximum revenue that a driver can obtain for the trip? I don’t see how the money taken by the government can not come out of some combination of Uber’s pocket and the driver’s pocket. Consumers always have alternatives, not only walking and public transit but also deciding to stay put. (And, in fact, one express goal of the fee is to reduce the number of trips that Uber/Lyft customers will take. If successful, doesn’t that mean the tolls actually did “fall” on the drivers?)
As a thought experiment, suppose that the new fee were $1,000. Nearly all consumers would decide to stay put or use public transit or use a personal/family car. With the service priced only for billionaires, there wouldn’t be work for more than 10 Uber/Lyft/taxi drivers in the entire city. With no limit on who can apply for these 10 jobs there wouldn’t be any reason for the job to pay any better than it does now. The impact of a $1.50 fee is much smaller, of course, but I think the analysis works in the same way.
My mother‘s 1955 bachelor’s thesis, “The Synagogue and its Architecture”, uses the term “Palestine” 24 times, the adjective “Palestinian” 8 times, and the adjective “Palestinean” once (maybe this is a misspelling). Example from the Preface:
The thesis uses the term to describe present-day Israel even before the Roman era, e.g., prior to the 2nd century BC Maccabees (who gave us Hanukkah):
From Ramallah to New York, Tel Aviv to Porto Alegre, people around the world celebrate a formidable, transnational Palestinian LGBTQ social movement. Solidarity with Palestinians has become a salient domain of global queer politics. Yet LGBTQ Palestinians, even as they fight patriarchy and imperialism, are themselves subjected to an “empire of critique” from Israeli and Palestinian institutions, Western academics, journalists and filmmakers, and even fellow activists. Such global criticism has limited growth and led to an emphasis within the movement on anti-imperialism over the struggle against homophobia.
I’m having some trouble understanding “LGBTQ Palestinians … are themselves subjected to an empire of critique”. I didn’t think that “critique” was the punishment for LGBTQ sexual activity under Islamic law.
An elite Californian posted with satisfaction a state-sponsored NPR story about how stupid people in Louisiana were, especially with respect to the mpox vaccine. I decided to see if ChatGPT had advice regarding avoiding mpox (not to be conflated with the racist “monkeypox virus”, which is the cause).
Prompt 1: Is there any lifestyle change that I could adopt to minimize my risk of catching mpox?
ChatGPT gives a one-page answer and the only reference to sex is “Use condoms and consider other barrier methods during sexual activity”.
Prompt 2: You mention “sexual activity”. Is there any particular kind of sexual activity that is more likely to result in contracting mpox?
ChatGPT gives a one-page answer that doesn’t hint at the type of person or group that might be infected.
Prompt 3: You say “If you are in a community experiencing an mpox outbreak or belong to a group at higher risk”. What would be an example of a “group at higher risk”?
ChatGPT gives a 1.5-page answer, buried within which is the phrase “Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM)”
Prompt 4: If a person is a man who has sex with men and wants to avoid mpox, should he stop having sex with men?
ChatGPT gives a 1.5-page answer that can be summarized as “no”, but does note that “Reducing the number of sexual partners can lower the risk of exposure.”
Prompt 5: Would it make sense for public health officials to ban group sex activities by men who have sex with men in order to minimize mpox spread?
ChatGPT responds that this would not be “ethical” (but it is ethical to close schools to minimize viral spread?).
Prompt 6: You say that men who have sex with men should “Limit the Number of Partners”. Would 365 partners per year be a sensible limit?
ChatGPT gives a rambling response that includes “Quality Over Quantity: Engaging with partners you know and trust may reduce risk.” and “Regular screening is essential but becomes logistically challenging with such a high partner count.”
Prompt 7: What’s your best guess as to a sensible number of partners, assuming that the partners are screened for mpox and that these are high quality partners (people that the man who has sex with men knows and trusts)?
The full response below says that 50-100 sex partners per year is a sensible lifestyle when trying to avoid mpox infection and obtain “meaningful connections” with those sex partners.
The “sensible” number of sexual partners is subjective and depends on individual circumstances, preferences, and the quality of risk-reduction practices. If partners are screened for mpox, and relationships are built on trust and open communication, a more moderate number of partners would generally balance health and personal satisfaction while minimizing risks.
Factors to Consider
Screening and Trust:
Regular screening for mpox and other infections reduces risk significantly.
Knowing and trusting partners helps ensure mutual openness about symptoms, exposure risks, and health status.
Frequency of Contact:
The number of partners should align with your ability to maintain safe practices (e.g., vaccination, symptom monitoring) and your emotional and physical capacity.
Public Health Context:
During active mpox outbreaks, even with high-quality partners, limiting the number of partners reduces overall exposure.
A Sensible Number
A reasonable estimate might range from 1 to 2 partners per week, translating to 50–100 partners per year under optimal conditions (e.g., vaccination, trust, and symptom screening). Here’s why:
This frequency allows for meaningful connections and sufficient time to assess and manage any health risks.
It strikes a balance between an active sex life and maintaining lower cumulative risk.
Key Takeaways
The number itself is less important than the quality of interactions and the consistency of risk-reduction practices:
Stay vaccinated against mpox and other preventable infections.
Monitor for symptoms regularly.
Communicate openly about health and risks with partners.
By prioritizing safety and communication, individuals can maintain an active sex life while minimizing health risks.
