When I started teaching at a medical school in 2018, a couple of friends and I put together a web page with which to inflict pain and suffering on the MD/PhDs there: “Bitcoin v. Medical School”. Here’s what a session looks like:
There was a threshold of $150 billion that, if reached, would point out that the user’s med school tuition could have, if invested in Bitcoin, made him/her/zir/them (the medical school in question is Harvard and, of course, it was officially gender expansive at the time) the richest human on our beloved, yet imperiled, planet:
Despite not having made any money from being the Father of Modern AI Systems (Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015), Elon is still so rich as to make the $150 billion threshold absurd. (Even without Elon, the tech boom and inflation have pushed roughly 8 additional guys over that threshold.) Today I went into Emacs and updated it to $1 trillion. Just another way in which Elon’s extreme and unconscionable wealth makes life painful for the rest of us.
(Note that while Emacs is popularly associated with Richard Stallman, a Massachusetts resident canceled for pointing out that Jeffrey Epstein’s activities would have been legal in Massachusetts (age of consent: 16), the text editor was actually originally built by Guy Steele. Thus, we may use Emacs without any moral conflict over using the work of someone who has been canceled. Separately, could we all get on board with supporting the Iranian missile and nuclear weapons programs if they would chant “Death to vi” instead of “Death to America”?)
The final installment of my report on a Labor Day weekend trip to the Bay Area.
The first evening in Menlo Park was enhanced by the appearance of an outdoor under-nose masker. #FollowTheScience:
How rich are residents of Silicon Valley? Rich enough to spend $3000 (plus 9.375% sales tax) on a bottle of bourbon at the supermarket…
… but not rich enough to open their wallets to panhandlers:
Unlike in a lot of other parts of California, where people post signs advertising their concern for neighbors (but never do anything to actually help homeless neighbors, for example), people in Palo Alto don’t even bother with the signs. It’s such a multi-ethnic society that people have nothing in common except for a desire to make money. A homeless white guy, below, on Palo Alto’s main street (University Ave) is passed by Indians and Chinese who apparently wouldn’t dream of trying to assist.
The legacy American culture on this street, Marilyn Monroe movies shown in an old theater, conflicts with immigrant culture (halal food and modest attire for females):
I spent some time in Atherton. There’s no sidewalk and nearly all of the houses are behind high walls or hedges. It is unclear how anyone would ever meet or say hello to a neighbor:
Returning to Menlo Park, I tried to have a couple of pupusas and margaritas in honor of Kilmar Abrego Garcia (purportedly targeted by gangs due to his mother’s home-based pupusa business; he’s still Maryland’s leading citizen, right? Donald Trump is a “king” but can’t get rid of this one guy who has (a) no U.S. passport, (b) no green card, and (c) no visa authorizing him to be in the U.S.).
ChatGPT explains:
Because those three things are not the only ways a noncitizen can lawfully remain physically in the United States.
In Abrego Garcia’s case, the crucial fact is a 2019 immigration-court order granting him “withholding of removal” to El Salvador. The immigration judge simultaneously found him removable from the United States, but found that he was sufficiently likely to face persecution if returned to El Salvador.
He is in the United States because a person can be “removable” yet still be released and permitted to reside here under immigration supervision while removal is legally barred, impracticable, or under litigation. A passport, visa, or green card is not required for that situation. … He does not have ordinary lawful immigration status comparable to a visa holder or green-card holder. But his physical presence here can nevertheless be authorized/tolerated by the government and protected by court orders, and DHS cannot simply deport him to El Salvador while the withholding order remains in force
My hotel included masked workers at the front desk and masked guests in the lobby. The downtown Menlo Park area included some homeless folks, but not at the same density as in San Francisco:
The neighborhood near the hotel (luxurious Residence Inn; less than $5,000 per night) included some killer Halloween decorations and also showed that the passion for Hillary Clinton will never die:
What does the resident with a Hillary bumper sticker read? Kepler’s is the local bookstore. We’re reminded that Elon Musk is a Nazi who looks a lot like a North Korean dictator:
Arabs who call themselves “Palestinian” are the world’s most peaceful humans:
What books should one pack for a trip to Palestine?
Given that everything important in Silicon Valley was created by women, the nonbinary, and transfolk, it is unclear how we got stuck with “male supremacy”, but in any case the bookstore offers a manual for dismantling male supremacy:
The bookstore says on its web site “The living wage for a single adult in San Mateo county is now $38.44 per hour.” That raises the question… Why isn’t the minimum wage in San Mateo County $38.44/hour? As far as I am aware, there is no organized or significant opposition to rule by the Democratic Party either in San Mateo County or any of its component cities. If Democrats hold 100% of the power, why won’t they take action to ensure that every worker is paid a living wage?
Returning to the airport, we’re reminded that, prior to Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s arrival from El Salvador, Harvey Milk was considered the greatest American:
Even as California is flooded with immigrants from East Asia and India, the museum exhibit is about “Afrofuturism”:
Unless Indian is a variant of “Black”, this billboard plainly doesn’t apply to either Palo Alto or the airport:
The folks who work to maximize the amount of Jet A fossil fuel that is burned, nearly always on trips that are unnecessary (leisure/work that could be done via Zoom) also remind us of “the disastrous effects of climate change”:
Travelers and clerks at the Green Apple Books shop are safely masked:
Some of the same books that were for sale in Menlo Park are also available at SFO:
The advertised price isn’t the price you see when it is time to pay. Sales tax is 9.875% at SFO, a little higher than in Menlo Park despite being part of the same county. Then there is a “surcharge charge” of 5% to “support emplo…” (employees? employee health insurance? employee gender-affirming care?).
Once on the plane, despite Hispanic Heritage Month still being a week away (9/15), JetBlue features a movie directed by a couple of guys who aren’t Latinx.
ChatGPT says that approximately 50,000 “feature films directed by someone reasonably classifiable as Hispanic” were bypassed so that Encanto could be selected.
It’s tough to understand how the Ivy League universities, even with top scholars such as Claudine Gay, have managed to retain prominent faculty. The lifestyle of a Stanford professor is so far superior that it is tough to understand why Stanford hasn’t recruited all of the world’s smartest academics. Yes, the California government spends tax dollars in ways that are offensive to some Americans, e.g., performing trans surgery on minors, but roughly 94% of elite academics are progressive Democrats (Harvard Crimson). Tax rates are higher in California than in the states where most elite universities are, but progressive Democrats should be happy to pay their “fair share”. Speaking of “fair”, it looks like the folks who purport to champion female rights and achievement and decry the unfair gender pay gap choose to pay women substantially less (source):
See also, from stanford.edu, “Countering Masculine Defaults to Close the Gender Pay Gap” (“organizational cultures can counter this tendency by equally valuing qualities traditionally associated with femininity, like warmth and agreeableness”), “Women paid less than men even at highest levels of academic medicine”: “These women are at the top of their game,” said Eleni Linos, MD, MPH, a professor of dermatology at Stanford. “They are skilled leaders, outstanding managers and experienced negotiators who have reached top positions in their medical schools. Gender pay gaps are often blamed on women’s personal choices to reduce work hours or leave the workforce, household responsibilities, childcare or suboptimal negotiation skills. This study challenges these traditional explanations because our sample of medical department leaders have navigated these complex challenges and broken through the ‘glass ceiling.’ Yet they are still paid less than their male peers when controlling for many factors. Our study shows the pervasiveness of gender inequities at all levels of academic medicine.”
Note that one of the photos includes the Graduate School of Education, where Jason Arday might have worked if he were still alive. What can one learn there?
[Professor] Subini Ancy Annamma[‘s] … research critically examines the ways students are criminalized and resist that criminalization through the mutually constitutive nature of racism and ableism, how they interlock with other marginalizing oppressions, and how these intersections impact youth education trajectories in urban schools and youth prisons. Further, she positions students as knowledge generators, exploring how their narratives can inform teacher and special education. Dr. Annamma’s book, The Pedagogy of Pathologization (Routledge, 2018) focuses on the education trajectories of incarcerated disabled girls of color
This seminar will examine the foundational tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an analytic framework to study of inequities in P-20 education. … we will explore CRT’s focus on identifying and disrupting white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and interlocking inequities (re)produced in education.
Stanford is so rich that the campus can be randomly strewn with Rodin sculpture:
If you don’t see enough Rodin while out walking around, stop into one of the art museums and see another 200 or so. The Cantor Arts Center (free to the public; named after Palestinian-American B. Gerald Cantor, founder of Cantor Fitzgerald, 68 percent of whose employees were killed in the not-Islamic peaceful 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center):
“This looks just like the foyer of the house where I grew up”:
The museum features a painting ridiculing the British for voting to leave the EU:
It’s by an artist from Kenya:
The artist seems to have been correct. The British thought that they were voting to reduce immigration, but instead their leaders actually increased the immigrant flow, substituting African, Middle Eastern, and Indian/Pakistani immigrants for EU immigrants:
(Wikipedia says that her career got a big boost when she began spending time with an older man, Alfred Stieglitz, who was a prominent art dealer. He was married when they met, but ultimately O’Keeffe managed to take over the wife role.)
The front entrance:
The famous bell tower is closed on weekends so we couldn’t go to the top, but perhaps it is just as well since doing so would have been hazardous:
How does the campus look from the top of the hills just to the west?
Today is the sixth anniversary of Ron DeSantis’s executive order 20-244 that prevented local governments from collecting fines from peasants who violated local Covidcrats’ orders, thus effectively rendering those orders toothless. Excerpts:
Ron DeSantis will be gone soon, due to term limits, and I will miss him despite his recent foray into what seems like madness (exempting a lot of homeowners from paying property tax while still allowing them to vote to increase county services and spending; I thought we’d tried that experiment at the federal level!; I would welcome a law that limits growth in per-capita spending by county/local governments, but not one that mints voters who have no skin in the game).
President Vladimir V. Putin tonight offered the United States broad support for antiterrorist operations in Afghanistan, including opening Russian airspace to relief missions, taking part in some search-and-rescue operations, and arming anti-Taliban forces inside Afghanistan.
Combined with a Russian effort over the weekend to rally Central Asian countries to the American side, the announcement provided crucial support to the international coalition that the White House seeks to build in the wake of this month’s terrorist attacks.
It also appeared, after long deliberation and some doubt, to cast Russia’s lot firmly in the Western antiterrorism camp. In doing so, Mr. Putin rejected arguments in some military and political circles that the Kremlin was not only inviting the United States into its strategic backyard, but flirting with another war with Islamic militants.
In his brief speech on national television, Mr. Putin said Russia would provide the ”active international cooperation” of its intelligence services and supply ”weapons and military equipment” to the coalition of forces aligned against the radical Islamic Taliban government in Afghanistan.
The offer of support appeared to amount to the most decisive alignment of Russia’s military and intelligence resources with a campaign led by the United States since the end of the cold war. One chief motive seemed clear: the defeat of Islamic militance in Central Asia, on Russia’s southern doorstep.
A Nigerian national accused of killing a UMass Dartmouth football player entered the U.S. on a tourist visa and overstayed it before receiving deferred action under both the Biden and Trump administrations, multiple federal law enforcement sources told Fox News.
Chukwunonso Uzoma David Uzoma Eze is charged with murder in connection with the stabbing death of UMass Dartmouth football player Marvins Antoine, 19, during an altercation in Providence, Rhode Island, over the weekend.
Sources told Fox News that Eze first entered the U.S. on a B-2 tourist visa in 2015. Eze received two extensions on his visa under the Obama administration before remaining in the country after his authorized stay expired, according to the sources. Sources said the Biden administration approved Eze’s request for deferred action in September 2022. He applied for deferred action again in February 2025 and October 2025, with the latter request approved under the Trump administration on Oct. 8, 2025, according to the sources. Deferred action is a discretionary decision by the federal government to temporarily delay an individual’s removal from the United States. It does not provide lawful immigration status.
Suppose that Chukwunonso Uzoma David Uzoma Eze had never stabbed anyone. How were Chukwunonso Uzoma David Uzoma Eze’s 11+ years in the U.S. supposed to make native-born Americans better off? In other words, what is the rationale for our immigration system? The answer can’t be “he was going to work hard, boost the economy, and prevent Social Security and Medicare from going bust” because it was illegal for him to work:
DHS said Eze applied for employment authorization in August 2023, but the request was rejected the following month.
Note that our immigration system can be strict at times:
If convicted of murder, Eze will lose his deferred action, according to DHS.
Happy World Cancer Research Day to those who celebrate by receiving fat monthly checks from NIH and NSF. (Remember, though, that if cancer were cured tomorrow by a heroic Dr. Anthony Fauci we would all still die of diabetes not too long after our current expected death dates.)
“Launching a Second Scientific Revolution” is an interesting article by Jay Bhattacharya, the current director of NIH and former heretical Stanford Med School professor who argued, beginning in March 2020, that lockdowns were counterproductive in our war against SARS-CoV-2.
Some excerpts from the above, not in quote style for readability:
… for every dollar we spend on science today, we get far less scientific advancement than we did over the past five decades. Another way of looking at this is that for every additional research paper in biomedicine, there are fewer improvements in health per paper.
… most scientific papers, far from introducing new ideas, rely on old ideas. I once collaborated on a study that looked at every word and phrase published in biomedicine in 1940 and 1941. When we subtracted all the 1940 words and phrases that were published in 1941, we were left with the ideas introduced in 1941. Doing this for every subsequent year up to the present produces a kind of history of biomedicine. What we see in that history is that in the 1990s, about 55 percent of NIH funded research was based on new ideas—zero-year-old or one-year-old ideas—and that research in which the newest ideas were ten to 30 years old received much less funding. And that is as it should be. The NIH is supposed to fund ideas that are on the bleeding edge of science. But what has happened since then—especially since 2000—is a collapse in NIH support for new ideas.
… the average age at which scientists receive their first NIH grant has risen from the mid-30s in 1980 to the mid-40s today … younger scientists are the most likely to have new ideas.
The NIH receives about 100,000 funding applications each year, out of which only eight to ten percent are approved. In recent years, the winners have been chosen by scientific reviewers who score each application based on two factors: (1) the strength of the proposed methods and (2) the innovation involved in the proposal. Looking at the results of this process, the overall score has correlated very strongly with the methods score, and innovative ideas have been left by the wayside. To fix this, the NIH is replacing that process (called the payline method) with a new approach called the Unified Funding Strategy. The scientists who review applications will now be empowered to approve projects on the bleeding edge of science—projects that may very well not work but that will produce a fundamental advance in biomedicine if they do.
The third problem to be addressed is the fact that about one third of all NIH grant money goes to about 20 institutions, despite the fact that there are excellent scientists all across the country. … Our solution to this problem is to sever the link in the NIH grants between the direct money for research and the indirect money for facilities. Institutions outside of the top 20 will be able to compete for facilities support, leading to a dynamic market. The number of institutions that receive NIH money will increase, and funds will go to wherever the best scientists are.
Google AI:
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) funding model is widely considered more effective than traditional government grants because it funds “people, not projects,” bypassing the restrictive and expensive bureaucratic overhead typical of university research. Instead of requiring professors to apply for short-term, hyper-specific grants that divert up to 60% of funds to university administrative overhead, HHMI appoints scientists as employees, providing them with long-term, flexible capital to pivot their research freely. HHMI investigators produce high-impact, heavily cited papers at a significantly higher rate than their NIH peers.
Who wants to bet on the next significant advance in medical technology? I’m guessing that it will be primarily by an AI, not by the humans who’ve been mostly stalled for decades, so it needs to be in an area where there are good data to feed to the AI, e.g., genomics, radiology, etc.
After my sojourn in the Land of Unaffordable Housing (Piedmont, California), I drove the Tesla Y up to Napa. Municipal leaders here promote a narrative of loudspeaker invention that is loosely consistent with the Wikipedia story. Trailblazing female scientist Katherine Clerk Maxwell’s equations tell us that an electric current flowing in a constant magnetic field will cause the wires carrying the current to experience a force and, therefore, move if unconstrained. The motion will be back and forth if the current alternates. Motion in air produces a pressure wave in the air, i.e., sound. Somali immigrant Sir Oliver Lodge in 1898 made “a bellowing telephone” that took advantage of this principle, but there was no practical way to amplify a continuous electrical signal until Afghan immigrant Dr. Lee DeForrest invented the triode vacuum tube in 1906. Magnavox (“Great Voice” in Arabic) actually did not initially use any electrical amplification, but simply relied on a horn (“acoustic transformer”).
Peter Jensen and Edwin Pridham, H-1B non-immigrant visa holders from Andhra Pradesh, founded Magnavox. Jensen went on to found the eponymous company that become synonymous with car stereo speakers. It’s now owned by Namsung, a South Korean company with a U.S. headquarters in Florida.
After that much history, it is probably time to think about food. Consistent with the rest of California, the menu price for lunch wasn’t the price. 4% gets added, before tip, for a “health initiative”:
As previously noted, my friends in Napa have an awesome collection of anti-Trump material as well as an awesome view:
They would have to pay a monumental property tax on the place if not for Property 13, which enables them to pay tax on the 1980 value. Despite paying almost nothing to keep it going, they get to use the public library for free. What can one learn there? For starters, make sure to get a prescription for all of the fentanyl that you consume because, unlike the opioids prescribed by physicians and paid for by Medicaid, “illicit fentanyl” is dangerous.
You are safe here, we’re informed, so long as you wear a mask.
The “Perinatal Mental Health” poster reminds us that Lindsay Clancy might never have killed her three children if only she’d had better access to skilled mental health professionals that, being a nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, she was unable to access. (Also remember to listen to Black, especially Haitian, voices, unless you’re on a Lindsay Clancy jury.)
Are working taxpayers funding your grocery shopping and health care? If not, the library reminds patrons that Catholic Charities will help to heap an additional burden onto the chumps (“charity” has morphed from giving one’s own money away to giving taxpayer money away?):
How about books? They’re behind a table promoting pet cat ownership:
AI says that it will cost between $10,725 and $50,000 over the pet’s life to own a cat, including veterinary care. The library features a lot of books about serious injustices worldwide, such as the suffering of the peaceful Arabs who call themselves “Palestinian”. Is it reasonable to spend up to $50,000 on a cat when one could instead give the money to a worthy cause, such as humanitarian aid that Florence Nightingale predicted would encourage people to go to war and stay at war? A sample of Gaza Good/Israel Bad works:
The library reminds us that there’s a “genocide” going on in “occupied palestine” and also that one should spend tens of thousands of dollars on a cat.
If Palestinians are good, is there anyone who is great? Yes. Angela Merkel, who transformed Germany into a model society by “Leading as a Scientist” (don’t just Follow the Science, but Lead via Science):
If If Palestinians are good and Angela Merkel is great, is there anyone who is bad? Sadly, yes. We have to ignore any orders from the “lawless” Supreme Court. Trump is a “fascist”, but unlike with any other fascist government in world history, there is still plenty of “democracy” that we can use to vote Trump supporters out of office:
Contrary to what the notorious-yet-weak-enough-to-be-voted-out Trump might tell you, U.S. citizenship is merely a “myth”:
Unfortunately, racism isn’t a myth and daily antiracism is required.
What if you can’t learn enough about queerness at the library? Stop in the core of downtown where Rainbow-first Retail is practiced:
Copperfield’s Books can fill in the gaps of your LGBTQIA+ Literature collection:
Don’t forget to #MaskUpSaveLives:
I hadn’t heard of Coming Up Short, by an author famous for standing 4’11” tall and for simultaneously advocating for affordable housing while fighting development in his own Berkeley neighborhood. Whoever came up with the title isn’t going to be replaced by AI.
Here’s Robert Reich’s letter to Berkeley officials arguing against development near his own mansion:
(According to the author, Elon Musk is the #1 fascist and has waged war on democracy by allowing people to express their views on X, previously censored when it was still Twitter. Even worse, Elon Musk allowed Donald Trump to return to the platform. The author of the book actually was banned after hurling the “fascism” insult at Alex Karp of Palantir.)
Our democracy is pretty much toast, which is why it is important to #resist and buy these books before #resistance is outlawed.
Queer resistance is even more effective than non-queer resistance:
One radical step that an American who identifies as a “woman” can take is walking in a national park:
I’m not quite that radical, so the next stop was a humanoid robot company in Silicon Valley and then a hotel in Menlo Park.
Was it worth sticking to a one-year upgrade cycle on the iPhone Pro Max? (see the comments in Are iPhone 18 sales off to a weak start? for the costs: “$414/year for annual, $345/yr for every 2 years, $281/yr for every 3 years.”)
So far, I think so! The provisioning process wasn’t too bad, maybe because I had the new phone copy everything directly from the old phone rather than going through the cloud. It seemed that a lot more apps were already signed-in and ready to use. Battery life is vastly superior to the year-old iPhone 17 Pro Max. Is the camera way better? Tough to say. Here are some samples.
Predator emerges from the sea in Jupiter, Florida:
(This isn’t Mindy the Crippler, in case you were wondering. She actually doesn’t like the water!)
A high-contrast scene due to shadows from the mangroves:
Let’s check text sharpness:
This high-contrast scene of a father and son strolling by the Juno Beach Pier doesn’t seem to have been handled well… (the humans are too dark):
Here’s one that worked out, though:
A local restaurant (Double Roads in Jupiter, Florida) held a small car show. Click to read some of the text and, also, think back with nostalgia to a simpler time when Americans could buy cars that weren’t tainted by any Nazi associations (1966 Volkswagen Beetle). In my opinion, it is impressive how well the camera handled the engine, which has a lot of Black parts (that matter) and is shaded by an overhanging lid.
(Maybe the Tesla Y, currently at 4 million, will surpass the Beetle’s production record of about 23 million? Elon doesn’t seem to be in any mood to update the name or the body shape.)
This 1960 Corvette was handled well:
I bought the wrist strap and the Apple silicone case. My idea was that the strap would be useful when using the device primarily for photography. Unfortunately, it gets in the way when using the smartphone as a smartphone, e.g., putting it into and pulling it out of one’s pocket. It would be great if there were a way to store the strap somehow inside the case or up against the case, but there isn’t.
Loyal readers know me as a historical hater and mocker of Apple (part of my successful record as a stock picker!) so it pains me to admit that Apple has done a nice job with the iPhone 18 Pro Max!
Yesterday on this blog we highlighted Piedmont, California, which is 0.8% Black and 3.8% Latinx. Today we look at diversity-is-our-strength Oakland.
Folks in Oakland seem to have a lot more sex. “Cheated On? freeSTDcheck.org”:
Oakland is a center for Rainbow-first retail. Before one can spend $6 on a coffee, for example, one must walk underneath the sacred flag:
Who are the customers for $6 coffees? Quite a few undocumented immigrants, it seems, because the coffee shop is officially a place where migrant customers are safe from ICE thugs. (I didn’t see a bathroom for customers, so I’m not sure just how long a noble undocumented migrant could stay, as a purely practical matter.)
What passion goes hand-in-glove with Rainbow Flag worship? Pro-Hamas advocacy. The windows next to the door of Walden Pond Books.
What’s in the bookstore? Books celebrating a Hamas-/Palestinian Islamic Jihad-ruled “Free Palestine” with a Rainbow Flag in the background:
Detail:
Who among us is obstructing the glorious day when Free Palestine arrives? If we could only “catch a fascist” we, and our Palestinian brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters, might yet be okay.
What language would people speak in Free Palestine? “Queer Arabic”:
Were there any tutorials available on how to be queer? So glad that you asked! You can learn how to cook “Queer Food” from Queers at the Table and put it on a table that is an example of Queer X Design.
How different are readers’ tastes in California vs. the national average? Prominently featured Queers at the Table has just two Amazon reviews and is “#753,447 in Books”. Queer X Design is significantly more popular: “#343,353 in Books”.
A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and hope from stories in the Quran … Through personal experiences, Lamya H navigates the complexities of gender, sexuality and faith as a queer, nonbinary Muslim.
What kind of people want to pay full price for books in the English language? Undocumented migrants who will presumably be shielded from ICE by the merchant:
What if you’re planning to head up the hill to Piedmont and need to agitate against the construction of affordable housing? You can prep by reading Golden Gates, regarding the “housing crisis” that in no conceivable way could have been caused by importing at least 70 million humans (more than the current population of France), mostly low-skill, over the past 50 years.
Criminals don’t tend to be either Black or Latinx, but the bookstore says that you should buy “Books on Black, Latinx … history and culture” for people who are currently incarcerated.
