Earlier this month, picking up a tree from Home Depot (Alton/Palm Beach Gardens) in the Rolls-Royce:
Sadly, the pre-Christmas shopping rush in Palm Beach Gardens has been marred by a recent arrival from Georgia, Antonio Moore. He murdered Rita Loncharich, aged 65, at the Barnes & Noble. He later admitted that he stabbed the victim in the back without any motive and despite not knowing her. Fox:
Despite the tragedy, let me wish a Merry Christmas to all readers, even those who don’t celebrate.
We’ve been informed that low-skill migrants, as a matter of Scientific fact, are positively correlated with U.S. economic growth (at least aggregate growth if not per-capita!). Low-skill migrants have been departing the U.S. at an unprecedented rate since the Trump Dictatorship v2.0 began (CIS; NYT (covers a different time period than the CIS analysis)).
Toda we learn from the Wall Street Journal that the aggregate GDP is expanding even as the migrant population shrinks.
Maybe the GDP numbers are wrong? We can see for ourselves that valuable Somalis and Latinx are being kidnapped by ICE (should we try to fight ICElamophobia?). We know that these folks are worth $billions even though there is not another country on Planet Earth that is willing to take the migrants whom we deport (i.e., no other country wants to be enriched as we have been). If the GDP data are correct, could the apparent contradiction be explained by The Science being merely a projection of researchers’ love for migrants? “Why immigration research is probably biased” (Guenther, December 20, 2025):
All of these choices resulted in 1,261 submitted models; no two were identical. Notably, this heterogeneity arose even though the hypothesis and data were the same! Think how much freedom researchers have when they are allowed to choose the hypothesis and the data.
It is not necessarily problematic if researchers are more liberal than the general public, but it is problematic if these attitudes make them analyse data in a biased way, to arrive at conclusions that reinforce their prior attitudes. In that case, immigration research ceases to be research and transitions into propaganda, where only hypotheses are tested that one can anticipate to portray immigration positively, and the research design is chosen to obtain the desired conclusion.
Testing the religion of immigration (could immigration solve fiscal problems, e.g., keeping Social Security and Medicare Ponzi schemes going? (answer: a resounding yes, so long as you import immigrants who don’t themselves age))
Maybe some of you will join me in reading False Dawn: The Mirage of Recovery, an economist’s book about the Great Depression, which is when Americans came to accept the idea that every problem should be met by a larger federal government. FDR is almost a god for today’s Democrats (in a debate Ayatollah Mamdani identified FDR as the best modern-day U.S. President and then Florida Realtor of the Year 2020/2021 Andrew Cuomo said FDR would be his pick as well if FDR could be considered “modern”). If nothing else, False Dawn would make an awesome last-minute Christmas gift for anyone with insomnia (384-page work by an economist).
The Wall Street Journal selected this book as one of 2025’s ten best. Some excerpts from their review:
In 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidency with the promise to restore prosperity. But he and his advisers had no clear explanation for the collapse and his subsequent New Deal would amount to a series of experiments. FDR admitted to the nation that some of his proposals took the nation down “a new and untrod path.” If they failed to “produce the hoped-for results, I shall be the first to acknowledge it.”
George Selgin’s “False Dawn” asks if the New Deal’s varied experiments produced the promised recovery. In dispassionate, careful and finally devastating detail, “False Dawn” shows that, with a few exceptions, FDR’s experiments did not work. And he did not acknowledge it.
Based simply on raw numbers, the case for the New Deal is not strong. Although the economy did recover from its nadir when FDR took office in 1933, by 1939 the unemployment rate was still 17%. After six years of supposed recovery, the economy was in worse shape than in any other recession of that century or the following one.
Some might suppose that FDR used deficits rather than the Fed to juice the economy. But deficits as a percent of the economy were hardly different during Roosevelt’s time in office than they had been at the end of Herbert Hoover’s. While the New Deal spent more, it also imposed new taxes on food and payrolls. The result was a bigger federal government, but not one that relied on deficits as stimulus.
If not by increasing the amount of money or deficit spending, how did Roosevelt and his advisors hope to create recovery? The earliest solution they hit on—odd considering the rampant shortages—was to restrict production and thus raise prices. The National Industrial Recovery Act that passed in mid-1933 turned much of the American economy over to giant cartels. Industries colluded to raise prices and unions colluded to raise wages. The result was fewer goods on the market and an immediate economic collapse that would still be remembered today if it hadn’t been surrounded by so many others.
This could be an interesting update to The Forgotten Man, by Amity Shlaes, a Wall Street Journal reporter. I wrote a lot about that book shortly after its 2007 publication (what awesome timing by Schlaes and her publisher, given that the U.S. economy collapsed just a year later):
U.S. economy may not be tough enough to survive incompetent government (July 2008; given how rich the receptionists at NVIDIA have become, it seems as though either our economy was very tough indeed or our government has been competent, but Gemini says “When adjusted for inflation, using a constant dollar base (e.g., 1982-84 dollars), the median wage shows a much smaller increase. The real median weekly earnings were about $368 in Q4 2007 and grew to only $376 by Q3 2025. This highlights that much of the nominal wage growth has been offset by inflation.” (i.e., the economy is much bigger, but inflation and the larger population are responsible for most of the growth))
You’ve read in this space about Art Basel Miami (officially “Art Basel Miami Beach”), which isn’t in Miami. There’s also Art Miami, which is in Miami and, having started in 1991, predates Art Basel Miami (2002). Art Miami happens in a huge waterfront tent and is connected to CONTEXT Miami, which features less-established artists. Art Basel and Art Miami are connected by the Venetian Causeway and also by an every-10-minutes water taxi service organized by the cities (if a city doesn’t spend all of its tax dollars on migrants, those who choose to refrain from work, and migrants who refrain from work, there is plenty left over for public services!).
My companion and I had a late lunch at Motek Miami Beach and then took the water taxi over:
We quickly learned that it is okay to cover your Ferrari in fur, but don’t leave it unattended!
Art Miami seems to have art by bigger names than Art Basel, with less emphasis on what’s newest. Here’s a Yayoi Kusama to go in your $200 million house:
If you’re Christmas shopping for an elderly photographer/engineer, how about this Rolleiflex 35mm camera embedded in Lucite from François Bel?
On the CONTEXT side, a vaguely similar idea (no acrylic, though) from John Peralta ($28,500; unlike at Art Basel most of the pieces at Art Miami and CONTEXT had price tags):
A view from the smoking terrace:
An Israeli gallery showed up with some huge glass works and a few original Yaacov Agams (remarkably, still alive at 97):
Speaking of Israel, here’s a photorealistic work by Yigal Ozeri that would be perfect for the redecoration of Gracie Mansion for incoming Mayor Mamdani. The intifada could easily be globalized if Israeli women loved Ayatollah Mamdani as much as progressive white American women!
Here’s some more work from Israel for Mayor Mamdani, all from Natan Elkanovich (he says that he uses “kitchen and sewing utensils to drizzle and sculpt plastic materials on canvas”):
If you are a peasant with a house worth less than $200 million, Art Miami is probably a better place to shop than Art Basel. If you want to find out what’s exciting to art nerds, Art Basel is perhaps better. But if you’re doing Miami Art Week, both are well worth visiting.
Today is the first day of the bleak northern winter. Let’s celebrate by considering a bleak forecast. Our smartest minds say that China is heading for disaster because the Chinese aren’t having enough children and, also, the Chinese refuse to convert to the Church of Open Borders (they wouldn’t have welcomed Rahmanullah Lakanwal as we did, for example). Here’s one from RAND:
Population well-being (structural security) implications include broad strain on government finances; increasing costs of social insurance programs, including pensions and health care; varied but generally negative economic effects; high youth unemployment and disengagement from competitive labor markets in a slowing economy; and mixed effects on innovation capacity.
(There will be “high youth unemployment” with a reduction in the supply of youths?)
The “decline in fertility” that is described will result in China’s median age going up from its current 40 maybe to Switzerland’s 44 or Taiwan’s 45 (they’re so old that all they can do is make 2nm semiconductors for NVIDIA and Intel) or, in a true nightmare scenario, to Japan’s 50. China could become a hellscape like Japan, in other words.
If low fertility and a high median age is something that a society should try to avoid that must mean that the world’s nicest countries are ones with high fertility and a low median age, right? The CIA list highlights some paradises:
Afghanistan: median age 20
Sudan: median age 19
Mozambique: median age 17
Niger: median age 15 (population growth rate of 3.66%, higher even than what the Palestinians have achieved while fueled by unlimited housing, food, health care, and education funded by US and EU taxpayers through UNRWA)
How can our smartest people predict that China will become bad through low fertility if the nations with the highest fertility aren’t great places to live? A simpler formulation of the above: Africa has a larger population than China and Africa’s population is growing robustly (more than 2 percent per year); if the fertility doomers are right why isn’t Africa a better place to live than China?
Folks also fret about potential gradual population decline in the U.S. In other words, we’ll be farther up the list of countries ranked by median age and, thus, farther away from the fertility champs cited above. Why would it be bad to have 300 million Americans instead of 343 (or maybe 370?) if the 300 million never get stuck in traffic, enjoy decluttered National Parks, and are surrounded by AI and robotics any time that something productive needs to be done?
Here’s my report from this year’s Art Basel. All photos from the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
Because paying $1,000 per night for a basic hotel room is just a rounding error for me… I stayed across the bay at the Marriott Biscayne Bay. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it was right next to Art Miami, which I hadn’t heard about and which I’ll cover in a later post, and also because it’s right next to a former Episcopal Church that has converted to Rainbow Flagism, consistent with Santiago de Compostela and End Stage Christianity.
If you don’t want to get stuck in traffic, the Miami Citibike system isn’t a bad way to get around. The bikes don’t seem to be in great shape and they don’t fit a 6′ rider that well, but the terrain isn’t hilly.
In Art Basel Miami Beach (2018) and Art Basel Miami 2021, UBS featured female victimhood and celebrated the handful of women who’d manage to overcome the “imbalance” and “make a difference”. The commitment to social justice seems to have evaporated and now UBS promotes getting richer:
Speaking of rich, the most talked-about installation echoed the UBS theme of rich-meets-art. Busts of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg on robot legs interacted with Andy Warhol, Picasso, and the creator of this work (Mike Winkelmann; a.k.a., “Beeple”). (Given Picasso’s fondness for teenage females, could he have survived today’s moral rectitude?)
Here’s Andy Warhol (the most famous gay person not famous for being gay?):
The Wall Street Journal says that $200 million is the new minimum for a decent house and there were quite a few pieces for sale that would have required a spare thousand square feet or two. Here’s an example from Anne Samat titled “The Unbreakable Love… Family Portrait.” It includes plastic swords, keys, wine corks, etc.
A work by Yinka Shonibare that inspired me to stop complaining for a few minutes:
I looked him up on Wikipedia: “At the age of 18, he contracted transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord, which resulted in a long-term physical disability where one side of his body is paralysed.” If someone who is half-paralyzed can make it to Art Basel, what’s wrong with the rest of us?
Feel better about your middle-school dioramas (by Mondongo, a husband-and-wife team in Argentina):
Here’s a technique that I enjoyed, hand cut paper by Ariamna Contino (or maybe by her assistants?):
At the opposite end of the effort spectrum, Erika Rothenberg’s 2018 work America, A Shining Beacon to the World:
Only the Weinstein Gallery (they haven’t changed their name?) was crass enough to put prices on labels. Here’s a modest-sized $3.5 million Leonor Fini work from 1936 (imagine what it would cost to get an original oil painting by an artist that people have actually heard of!):
Some practical advice… pay a little extra for the 11 am entry tickets and go in right at 11 rather than at noon. The venue gets crowded by 1 or 2 pm. A 2:15 pm Friday image:
From 1:22 pm:
You don’t have to spend a lot to bring a souvenir home from the event. For only $5,500, for example, you can get a nice Taschen book of David Hockney pictures (printed in Italy):
Don’t worry about charging for your electric Rolls-Royce:
There are quite a few additional art events in Miami Beach and, covered in a later blog post, across the bay in Miami proper.
Despite the epic length of Minneapolis in December, I neglected to include a few photos. Here are official posters within the Skyway from the local government:
(Unless the person in the vaccine promotion photo is at least 75, he/she/ze/they isn’t eligible for both flu (age minimum: 65) and COVID-19 (age minimum: 75) shots in the Science-driven UK NHS system.)
What kind of person can drink a “Homie” Coke without being guilty of cultural appropriation?
The smartest folks in Minnesota says that Somalis “[contribute] $8 billion to the Minnesota economy” (presumably annually):
Vang: Somalis don’t contribute anything? How about $8 billion to the Minnesota economy. https://t.co/srVSXEj9LB
This could be true if $8 billion in federal welfare funds flow into Minnesota because 80 percent of Somalis in Minnesota are entitled to welfare:
But if this is a contribution in the conventional (non-welfare) sense, why isn’t there any other country in the world that will pay us to send them Somalis whom we have chosen to deport? Or that will set up a migrant recruiting booth in Mogadishu? Other countries don’t want to become $8 billion richer every year?
Eva Dou covers technology policy for The Washington Post. A Detroit native, she previously spent around a decade covering international politics and technology for the Post and the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, Seoul and Taipei. She is currently based in Washington D.C.
In other words, the author is embedded in U.S. corporate media. What does she have to say about our rivals in China?
By late 2017, there were growing signs that something was very wrong in China’s far-west Xinjiang region. Guards with machine guns manned checkpoints in and out of cities; travelers had to have their faces scanned and walk through full-body scanners. On the streets, pedestrians were stopped by police at random to have their phones checked for illegal political or religious content. Gas stations were barricaded and ringed with razor wire as a precaution against bombings. Officials warned that even modest expressions of Islamic faith, such as growing a beard or wearing a headscarf, would be scrutinized as potential signs of extremism. And a growing number of people—especially members of the Uyghur ethnic minority—were being hauled off without trial to prisonlike sites called “reeducation centers.” Estimates of how many people were detained (in either short-term or long-term detention) ranged from the hundreds of thousands to more than a million. Reports of torture, abuse, and deaths trickled out. Under the banner of counterterrorism, Xinjiang had become the world’s most repressive high-tech surveillance state. And Huawei had helped build it. The company’s next-generation fast networks, facial-recognition algorithms, and high-definition cameras had all combined to build an invisible net of enormous scale. Huawei was not the only tech company to sell surveillance gear into Xinjiang. But it was certainly among the major suppliers. In Xinjiang, and across the nation, Huawei was hawking a fulsome portfolio of advanced surveillance technologies, built in cooperation with hundreds of startups and other partner companies. There were smart glasses that police could wear on patrol to scan crowds for faces on a watch list. There were high-definition police body cams that streamed live to a big screen back at the command center. There was a listening device that could monitor and analyze conversations within a ten-meter radius outdoors, day and night. There were biometric scanners that picked up iris patterns in the eyes, which could be used to identify a person, similarly to fingerprints. There was a voiceprint database to match voices on audio recordings against known individuals. These gadgets were often marketed under the brands of Huawei’s partner companies, with Huawei satisfied to take a low-key role.
The Chinese, in other words, engaged in unprovoked aggression against the Uyghurs purely because of prejudice against “Islamic faith” and “ethnic minorities”. This was done “under the banner of counterterrorism”, but the author doesn’t mention any terrorist incidents in which Uyghurs might have been involved. What does American-produced AI have to say?
Various incidents described by Chinese authorities as terrorist attacks or riots by Uyghur separatists have occurred in China, particularly in the Xinjiang region, over the past few decades.
“Major incidents often cited include:
July 2009 Ürümqi riots: Ethnic violence in the capital of Xinjiang resulted in the deaths of nearly 200 people, mostly Han Chinese civilians.
March 2014 Kunming railway station attack: A group of knife-wielding assailants attacked civilians, killing 31 people and injuring 141 others. This attack occurred outside of the Xinjiang region.
April 2014 Ürümqi train station attack: A knife attack and suicide bombing killed three people and injured 79.
May 2014 Ürümqi street market attack: Two vehicles were driven into a market and explosives thrown at shoppers, resulting in 43 deaths and over 90 injuries, making it one of the deadliest attacks in the conflict.
The Chinese government has consistently attributed these events to Uyghur separatist and extremist groups, notably the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), also known as the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP).”
I find it interesting how the official “Chinese bad; Islam is the Religion of Peace” line can be subtly supported even by a book about a telco supplier. (Note that the above passage, read by a skeptical person, actually calls into doubt the Biden administration’s “genocide” accusation. If the Chinese government were simply killing most or all Uyghurs they wouldn’t need to bother with high tech surveillance.)
(Of course, the Chinese response to jihad was quite different from what the U.S. has done, e.g., the deaths on 9/11 motivated us to open the borders to a vastly larger group of Muslim immigrants, the 2016 jihad of second-generation Afghan-American Omar Mateen motivated us to bring in Rahmanullah Lakanwal, one of his wives, and four of his kids.)
Related:
“As the Olympics Unfold, a Look at China’s Treatment of Uyghur Muslims” (BBC): … a diplomatic boycott the Biden administration announced in December 2021, prompted by what Press Secretary Jen Psaki called the Chinese government’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.”
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is still here and still providing full employment for American attorneys (NYT):
How is it possible that nobody wants to change U.S. immigration laws? I could understand a world in which both of these non-citizens were deported. I could also understand a world of open borders in which neither of these non-citizens were deported. Given the above facts, however, I can’t understand how anyone can argue that our current immigration laws are in the U.S. national interest.
Separately, the noble enricher Kilmar has been enriching the United States for 14 years (since 2011) and hasn’t needed to learn English. Thus, someone who doesn’t speak English turns out to be more powerful than the President of the United States and all federal immigration bureaucracy put together. WBAL:
Abrego Garcia on Friday stopped at a news conference outside the building, escorted by a group of supporters chanting “We are all Kilmar!”
“I stand before you a free man and I want you to remember me this way, with my head held up high,” Abrego Garcia said through a translator. “I come here today with so much hope and I thank God who has been with me since the start with my family.”
He urged people to keep fighting.
“I stand here today with my head held high and I will continue to fight and stand firm against all of the injustices this government has done upon me,” Abrego Garcia said. “Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws and I believe that this injustice will come to an end.”
After Abrego Garcia spoke, he went through security at the field office, escorted by supporters.
The agency freed him just before 5 p.m. on Thursday in response to a ruling from Xinis, who wrote federal authorities detained him after his return to the United States without any legal basis.
Recent group chat from a friend in Maskachusetts who is selling his house in the rich NW suburbs:
another open house today – mostly Asians and Indians on indoor camera, as I predicted. MA burbs will go that way really fast. It’s a critical mass kind of thing
Later messages from a friend in a South Shore suburb of Boston:
Walmart had Columbian woman deliver to my house. I went to Walmart and two employees I tried to talk to could not speak English
Basically all of the cashiers at Hanover Market Basket are 4′ tall women from South America.
From the same chat group, regarding OpenAI’s text-to-video generator:
I asked Sora to make a video of a mugger. Every single time, it made the mugger white. I asked Sora to make a video of a happy family. Every single time, it showed a black man in a relationship with a white woman. According to ChatGPT: Black people make up 60% of robbery/mugging convictions. Black man/white woman marriages make up 1.3% of marriages.
