A posting every day; an interesting idea every three months…
Facebook Messenger text from a friend with a 9-year-old…
[daughter] borrowed my iPhone and then asked me why I have Tinder on it.
And then asked if that is how I met mommy.
If an author had made this up for a novel, readers wouldn’t believe it!
Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone!
Full post, including commentsWho proposes a super high tax rate on America’s idle rich? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (“AOC”).
What part of the country benefits most if there is a super high tax rate on the idle rich? Puerto Rico, the only place on Planet Earth in which an American citizen need not pay Federal tax. (see GQ for the lifestyle; search for “Act 22 tax” for the details)
Where is AOC’s family from? Wikipedia: “Her father was born in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican family, and became an architect; her mother was born in Puerto Rico.”
Related:
Full post, including commentsFrom “Women of Color Organize for Access and Accountability in Photojournalism” (nytimes, Feb 5, 2019):
Tara Pixley often felt isolated in the newsrooms where she worked as a photographer or photo editor. As a “black woman who was the child of immigrants, raised by a single mom, and also a first-generation college student,” she struggled for a decade to fit in. She was the only woman of color in the photo departments where she worked and was ignored or treated dismissively.
Pixley!
[The article goes on to explore the question of how a person who fits into multiple victim categories might start determining the reason that he or she was “ignored or treated dismissively”:
“There is a three-prong gender/race/class identity space, and the bias and marginalization that it brings down on a visual journalist is very real and makes it difficult for women of color to succeed in this industry,” Ms. Pixley said. “Add to that being gender nonconforming, non-binary or trans, then you’re just this kind of oddity that no one seems to know how to engage.”
So it is either three dimensions or four dimensions.]
Related: Sony Alpha Female program (identify as female as Step 1 towards picking up a $25,000 grant, $5,000 in gear, mentorship, networking, and exhibitions), which Tara Pixley and company complained about in a letter:
one of the awarded portfolios included a prominently featured wedding photo that uses an apparent wildfire as a backdrop for a bride and groom. This was an egregiously tone deaf choice as wildfires destroyed thousands of California homes and lives in the same week as Sony’s announcement. Another portfolio featured images of black and brown people from impoverished nations that exoticized those individuals and communities, rather than telling complex and compelling stories from their perspective.
(Is a wildfire image inappropriate for a California wedding? A lot of California marriages end up in scorched earth litigation that consumes all available fuel (cash) to pay the lawyers.)
Any photo of a non-white subject is risky:
By relying on tropes of people of color, honed and employed over hundreds of years of colonization and dehumanization of black and brown people, you fail to convey a holistic narrative. That is the damning imperialistic photographic tradition being upheld by these images, their photographers and therefore the camera companies that reward, employ, fund, mentor, highlight and support such work.
But what if a bunch of white photographers take pictures of white subjects? Wouldn’t they then be accused of ignoring people of color? The letter goes on to say that Sony, et al., should “hire inclusion consultants.” Maybe the answer is that cameras should have a real-time feed to a second electronic viewfinder. Whenever a person of color is in the frame, the inclusion consultant can check the second viewfinder and approve the shutter release.
Full post, including commentsFolks have pointed me to mocking memes regarding Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, e.g., “It’s so cold, I had my hands in my own pockets,” in connection with her “Green New Deal” that “offers economic security for those unwilling to work.” (original draft)
But why not respect her for ably representing the interests of her constituents? Census data show that median household income in her district is about $58,000/year. That means more than half of the people she represents are eligible for welfare (less than $83,450 for a family of 4 entitles a New Yorker to public housing). More than half would also qualify for health insurance welfare (either Medicaid or subsidized Obamacare for those who earn less than 4X the official poverty line).
“Unwilling to work” should probably be understood as “unwilling to work given the existing system of incentives.” As of 2013, six years before Ms. Ocasio-Cortez took office, welfare in New York paid 110 percent of median income (CATO) and therefore it wouldn’t be rational for the typical person in her district to work. Why is it Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s fault that Americans have voted to create a system in which work is irrational for anyone who can get welfare or child support after having sex with a high-income partner? She wasn’t old enough to vote when these systems were created.
Mitt Romney stated in 2012 as a simple fact that the 47 percent of Americans who don’t pay income tax weren’t going to vote for him (Politifact):
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” Romney said in the video. “All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.
He didn’t say that these folks were stupid, irrational, or evil. They were rationally voting their interest. (Politifact says that the proportion with no federal income tax liability may actually have been as high as 51 percent.) Why can’t folks who disagree with AOC and who are differently situated in life compared to her welfare-qualified constituents credit her for faithfully representing her voters’ interests in Congress?
Personally, I’m kind of a fan. Her tweet that health insurance as a waitress was twice as costly as health insurance for a member of Congress was an inspired way to wake people up to absurdity of our health care and health insurance systems (my proposal for reform is different from hers).
Readers: Given her welfare-qualified constituents, is it fair to slam this young member of Congress for advocating for expanded welfare?
Full post, including comments“Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex? Despite the easing of taboos and the rise of hookup apps, Americans are in the midst of a sex recession.” (Atlantic, December) is long and rambling, but two trends are identified:
Both are identified as reasons why Americans might have less sex than a few decades ago (the idea that weight leads to body shame is considered, but not that extra weight simply leads to having less energy to move around, including in bed).
Researchers don’t consider another big change: the rise of “single parents” (data from 1960, 1980, and 2014). These folks need to hire a babysitter before heading out for a Tinderfest. Contrast to the old days when a married couple with kids could do whatever they wanted after 10 pm.
Readers: What do you think? Blame phones, blame weight, or blame something else?
Related:
Recent conversation in the D.C. area:
Related:
Here’s a fun story on the health insurance system that America’s most brilliant technocrats have created…
Woman falls on Christmas (Tuesday) morning and breaks her collarbone. Blue Cross pays 100 percent of the cost of emergency care following an accident. $0 deductible. ED doc says will likely heal on its own. First available consult with an orthopedic specialist is Thursday morning. After a bit of deliberation, it is decided that surgery to insert a plate may be helpful. This will cost the insurer $30,942 ($35,080 “rack rate”). Had it been completed within 72 hours of the emergency visit, it would have been covered completely. Due in part to the holiday and a question about whether the break could heal adequately on its own, the surgery was not done until the following Monday, outside of the 72-hour window (one business day beyond, or maybe not even that if we subtract out Christmas).
Although the procedure is exactly the same, now the insurance customer must pay 15 percent of the total: nearly $5,000!
So the insurance company that you might think would want to encourage patients to step back and consider whether an offered intervention is useful instead gives them a huge financial incentive to sign up for whatever physicians put on the menu during the first 72 hours!
(The good news is that any customer who memorizes the 165-page 2018 benefits document would be well aware of this 72-hour cliff (don’t forget to read the 176-page PDF for 2019, though!).)
Related:
Here’s the public Instagram feed of the teacher at a suburban Boston-area school (one of her thankless tasks is molding the 12-year-old mind of a friend’s daughter who previously caused mayhem with a feigned nut allergy). The feed is primarily for communicating with her students and their parents and many of the items are titled “Homework” and contain instructions such as “Just answer the Part 1 Questions! Please DO NOT do the figurative language on the back!”. Some non-homework material has made its way into the feed lately though…
This public servant, whose union has ensured her a total comp of well over $100,000 per year (salary, benefits, and pension), has apparently attended a “Teaching Social Activism Conference”. But with median hourly wage in Massachusetts down around $23 (was $22.81 in May 2017), or $46,000 per year on an annualized basis, can she credibly teach Social Activism? She and her union are directly acting to increase inequality by taking money from people who earn median wages to put it into the pockets of folks who earn above-median wages.
[The other parts of this feed are also interesting. The teacher exhorts her charges to “do something great for your community in honor of Dr. King”. Yet she teaches in a nearly all-white suburb thanks to the miracle of two-acre zoning minimums. African Americans are welcome as long as they can afford $1 million for a vacant lot and $30,000/year in property tax on a completed house.
There is an LGBTQ+ meeting on “Pink Days” in a 7th grade classroom sponsored by the Sexuality and Gender Alliance. Where does that leave 12-year-olds who want to gather around the topics of sexuality and gender but don’t identify as “LGBTQ+”? (maybe the “+” includes cisgender heterosexuals?)
Finally, the Instagram feed reveals that “Google Classroom” is heavily used. Americans will be Google users from cradle to grave? Will Google automatically flag K-12 heresy as a service to the young? An AI on a Google server will read one of the assigned essays on refugees and mark any passages in red that are not appropriately sympathetic and welcoming?]
Full post, including comments“Political operative who was dating alleged Russian spy Maria Butina indicted” (CNN):
The money laundering portion of the indictment notes a $20,472.09 payment from one of [the old bald guy’s] accounts to American University in 2017, when [the young long-haired woman] was attending graduate school there.
Another $9,000 in payments were directed to a recipient whose initials are listed as “M.B.” in the indictment.
That’s what it is called!
Full post, including comments“At least a dozen elementary students exposed to marijuana gummies, police say; mom arrested” (CNN, 2019):
More than a dozen students at an elementary school in Cleveland were admitted to the hospital after being exposed to gummy candy that police say contained marijuana.
Fifteen children, ages 5 to 9, were tested for drugs and released from Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital at University Hospitals Ahuja Medical Center, said Katelyn McCarthy, a media relations strategist at the hospital.
She said that a couple of the children complained of stomachaches.
The police report noted that one of the children tested positive for a mind-altering chemical found in marijuana called tetrahydrocannabinol, also known as THC.“When young children consume them, they can result in severe symptoms, including dizziness, excessive sleepiness and, in rare circumstances, impair their breathing,” [the toxicologist] said.
It’s key to safely store marijuana products far from where children can see them, said Dr. Suzan Mazor, director of toxicology for Seattle Children’s Hospital and a toxicology consultant for the Washington Poison Center, who was not involved in the Cleveland case.
Also, “make sure to have the poison center phone number on hand for caretakers, grandparents: 1-800-222-1222,” said Mazor, who is also an associate professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
Previously in CNN: