Happy Labor Day and National Payroll Week (imagine creating a system of taxation so complex that no company could pay its workers without the assistance of a contractor who in turn must rely on at least 1 million lines of software).
What does it cost to hire decent people these days? A similar-vintage (i.e., old!) friend in San Francisco recently started a job at a VC-backed AI/robotics company. It would have been rude to ask how much he is getting paid, so of course I did. “About $400,000 per year in cash,” he replied, “plus $500,000 or $600,000 in lottery tickets.” Apparently, the tax value of the lottery tickets is much lower than $500k and, therefore, the current taxes on what might turn out to be worthless aren’t severe.
If you’re wondering why your health insurance bills are so high… A mid-career radiologist friend was offered $1.3 million to work at a community hospital in New Jersey. She turned it down because she doesn’t agree with the progressive politics of the state, a disagreement that would be exacerbated by New Jersey’s high taxes (10.75% for state income, ranked #49 for tax environment by the Tax Foundation; the most recent ranking for tax burden, the percentage of peasant income taxed away by the governing elites, has New Jersey taking 13.2% vs. 15.9% in New York and 7-9% in the most efficient states, such as New Hampshire, Texas, Tennessee, and Florida). As a legacy American (white/Christian) she probably wouldn’t enjoy being represented by her replacement Adam Hamawy, an Egyptian immigrant to the U.S. with an “association with a terrorist Muslim cleric” (Politico) and “an opponent of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and a supporter of a complete arms embargo and the right of return for Palestinian refugees” (Forward).
How soon before all of America’s smart people post “Gone to the Klondike” signs on their doors and can’t be hired because they’re doing AI startups?
Anyone else want to contribute some data on real-world recruiting and pay right now? I feel that the BLS data aren’t the full picture. Median pay for a software developer was supposedly around $131,000 in 2024, but does that include people who can’t program and who work 2 hours/week while being paid for 40 at a state government agency or contractor? I’m more interested in a survey of what it costs to hire someone who is capable and productive.
The plane is reported to have crashed at 1758Z, two minutes before 2 pm Eastern time. Based on recordings at liveatc.net, however, it seems that the crash was closer to 1753Z. Here are the weather reports before and after:
Although the closest report to the crash is the 1753Z METAR and the wind was 19017G26KT (from 190 true at 17 knots, gusting 26), shortly after the crash the ATC Tower is heard telling listeners that the wind was only 190 at 8 (source: ATC app, an interesting new service). Depending on which weather report we think was applicable at the moment of the landing, there was a tailwind component of somewhere between 3 and 8 knots on Runway 30 (magnetic 304; true heading of about 300 (Miami magnetic variation is 5W)).
It is unclear why the heavy Boeing was assigned Runway 30, which is only 9360′ long and, due partly to a displaced threshold, has a “landing distance available” (LDA) of 7913′. That’s enough to allow a B767 to land in 60% of the available runway, but doesn’t leave a lot of additional room for error considering the typical final approach speed of 130-140 knots. Runway 27, by contrast, offers nearly 13,000′ of LDA and has more favorable alignment with wind coming from 190. Even Runway 26L would have been both better-aligned and longer (LDA of 10220′). The most likely reasons for the landing jet getting a short-ish runway: (1) high volume of traffic in the afternoon, (2) jets need longer runways for taking off than for landing. A departure runway needs to be long enough for (a) the aircraft to accelerate to the V1 decision speed, (b) suffer an engine failure, (c) have the pilots do nothing for one second, (d) stop on the runway or an overrun area after the pilots pull back the power and hit the brakes. According to ChatGPT, FAA-certified Aircraft Dispatcher, this is more than 9,000′ at 30 degrees C. sea level, and no favorable headwind. Due to the long “balanced field” takeoff requirements, it is conventional for controllers to allocate their longest runways for departures. (That said, the controller isn’t flying the airplane. The pilots can always request something different, possibly suffering a couple of turns in a hold before getting what they want or need. DJT has a 3200′ runway for propeller-driven planes, but even a humble piston pilot can always request and be worked into the flow for the 10,000′ parallel runway for “real airplanes”. In the unlikely even that this was impossible, the pilot would have the responsibility to choose an alternate airport.)
Typical Florida summertime heavy rain does not seem to have been a factor in this accident, but in any case all of the runways at KMIA are grooved and that’s supposed to prevent hydroplaning (the “dry” braking distance is used for planning even if the runway is actually wet). ATC communications with other aircraft before the accident don’t reveal anything out of the ordinary. The accident aircraft did not declare an emergency or report any issues prior to the accident.
Most runway overruns are caused by excessive energy: too much airspeed and too much altitude. It is tough to dissipate this energy if one lands halfway down the runway at a higher-than-standard groundspeed (remember that kinetic energy varies as speed squared). Why isn’t there a computer in an expensive jet that looks at the GPS position relative to the runway and the groundspeed and shouts “Go Around!” if an overrun seems likely? There is, but not for the typical jet. Airbus ROPS (Runway Overrun Prevention System) was introduced in 2009 on the A380 and has now been extended to the entire family of idiot-proof airliners. It says “Runway Too Short!” if it expects an overrun. Embraer has something similar called Runway Overrun Awareness and Alerting System and deploys it on airliners as well as on the single-pilot Phenom 100 and Phenom 300 personal jets (where “personal” means “affordable for Nvidia and AI company employees”). The Embraer system arrived on the Phenom 300E in 2020 and has a clearer warning: “Overrun; Go Around”. The Europeans are supposedly trying to require that all newly registered airliners have something like this.
Not a great day for aviation and, so far, not enough information to begin to guess at the cause of the accident.
I visited The Great Elephant Migration, “a coexistence story”, in Boston’s Back Bay. You can see them through September 13, 2026.
The life-size elephants are made in South India out of an immigrant plant that a sign regarding the elephant “Kashmiri” (Kashmir is a great example of coexistence between Muslims and Hindus?) describes as an “invasive weed”:
The immigrant, Lantana camara, as portrayed by Wikipedia: “L. camara can outcompete native species”. (Immigrant humans make life easier for natives, in other words, while immigrant plants consume scarce resources and make life either miserable or impossible for natives.)
It’s important to platform indigenous ways of knowing:
You can prepare for the experience by stocking up on “essential” cannabis on Boylston Street, right next to the Apple Store (maybe you’ll need to be stoned in order to be able to handle Apple’s AI-era pricing?):
Folks treating themselves to new $10,000 MacBooks stroll right by an unhoused neighbor without bothering to stop:
The Public Garden features a slaveholder:
I tried to rescue this abused puppy, but my friend refused to hand him over:
(Tough to know what will happen to the Samoyed breed now that Taylor Swift has one.)
Wrapping up the report on my August 2026 trip to New York City, here are some photos from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I went on Friday evening, which I think is the minimum crowd time.
Walking in at 6 pm…
There’s a great Della Robbia exhibit through January 2027. If only the Optimus robots would be ready to recreate these for our house!
Regardless of your “gender expression”, you can pop into the “Women’s Restroom” and ponder how long it will be before Andrea Della Robbia is celebrated as a pioneering trailblazing female artist:
Public behavior has deteriorated in NYC to the point that the Met had the Gubbio Studiolo entirely closed off. This confined space of beautiful inlay work was previously simply open, then they put a guard next to it (10 years ago?). When I visited it was sealed off from the poorly-behaved masses who might damage the fragile work.
You don’t have to go to the costume area to see a wide variety of outfits. In the image below, a halal example of female modesty and a haram display of flesh (at the time that I took the photo, I didn’t notice the sword position).
If Elon would deliver on his robot promises, maybe we could keep our clothing in this armoire instead of in IKEA furniture:
The musical instruments section has been remodeled (and expanded?):
Second harpsichord from 1670 Italy. The harp was made 300 years later in West Africa. Note that Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown collected at least 3,600 musical instruments. If that isn’t a sign of mental illness, what would be?
Circling back to the core collection of the Met, is there any reason for Europeans to resist low-skill immigration? No. Visitors are informed that “Europe” has no real meaning, either geographically or culturally. A Muslim Indian immigrant to Europe is just as European as someone who can trace his lineage back to Charlemagne.
An immigrant from Nanjing could also be considered “European”, of course, but the museum has hatefully segregated these artworks from Nanjing (an amazing special exhibition in which 400-year-old works on paper look as though they were made yesterday):
How empty does the Met get at night? Almost quiet enough to appreciate the art! That said, if you want to see the entire museum you’ll need to arrive closer to 4 pm in order to finish by the 9 pm close.
We’re informed that immigrants come to the United States to work, not to enjoy our cradle-to-grave welfare state for four generations.
We’re informed by the U.S. Census Bureau that the number of foreign-born residents of the U.S. (a.k.a. “immigrants”) is down by almost 3 million. “Census Bureau Survey Shows Total Foreign-Born Down 2.9 Million” (CIS, yesterday):
since January 2025 … the government’s monthly household survey, officially called the Current Population Survey (CPS), shows an unprecedented 2.9 million decline in the foreign-born population — naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, long-term temporary visitors, and illegal immigrants.
Latin American non-citizens who arrived in 1980 or later account for all of the decrease. This population overlaps significantly with illegal immigrants.
Only 44 percent of the decline in the foreign-born are workers; the rest are children, the elderly, and other non-workers. This fact, along with employment gains by the U.S.-born, mitigates the impact on the labor market and may help explain why the survey of businesses does not show a dramatic decline in workers.
The total number of people working in the United States is up (CBS, today):
Here’s a wider picture of steady-then-increased numbers of workers as immigrants departed:
The increase doesn’t seem to have been caused by an increase in the working-age population, which is down slightly over the same time period:
How can this apparent paradox be explained?
One possible explanation is that immigrants displace the native-born in the labor force. When an immigrant with a job leaves, his or her job is sometimes taken over by a native-born American who had been sitting on the couch playing Xbox. If that were true, though, we’d see an increase in the labor force participation rate and/or a decrease in unemployment rate over the same time period, but that hasn’t happened.
Another explanation is that immigrants were working off the books and, therefore, their jobs weren’t counted in most government surveys. If this were true, we’d see a divergence in CPS data, which asks people “did you work for pay?” vs. Current Employment Statistics (CES) data, which asks employers “did you pay someone to work in at least a quasi-legal fashion?” I ran out of brain power and asked ChatGPT to resolve this possibility:
And in the particular January 2025–August 2026 comparison we just calculated, the divergence isn’t enormous once you compare the CPS consistently: CPS total employment is roughly +0.3 million, while CES payroll employment is roughly +0.8 million. So the data could accommodate some loss of informal immigrant employment, but they don’t by themselves demonstrate it.
What’s left as an explanation, given that we can’t abandon the axiom that foreign-born residents of the U.S. are the hardest workers and, certainly, are never on what used to be called “welfare”? We’re living in the Age of Miracles?
Housing is a human right, but the New Yorkers I observed in August were as indifferent to their unhoused neighbors (and any associated pit bulls) as they were to the enormous piles of garbage on the sidewalks every night. Examples:
What would New Yorkers rather do than fund apartments for those currently homeless? Spend $6.50 on a cup of coffee rather than suffer the indignity of having to operate a Mr. Coffee machine (pick one up for $18 while getting a Halloween costume at Target and then make coffee for 25 cents per cup?).
Immigrants, on the other hand, are entitled to both sympathy (“Fuck ICE”) and tax dollars (city-funded immigration lawyers plus city-funded advertising to make sure that the undocumented use the city-funded immigration lawyers):
(Lululemon proclaims their commitment to the 2SLGBTQQIA+ with a sticker and a statement about how they don’t tolerate “hate”. At the same time, they operate stores in Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Grok:
These countries generally criminalize male same-sex sexual activity (female activity is less consistently or explicitly addressed in some codes).
Saudi Arabia: Illegal under Sharia law (no fully codified secular penal code for this). Penalties can include imprisonment, flogging, fines, deportation (for foreigners), and the death penalty in some interpretations/cases (especially for Muslims or aggravated/repeated offenses). Courts apply traditional Islamic jurisprudence.
United Arab Emirates: Illegal under federal law (and stricter local codes in some emirates). Same-sex acts and extramarital sex are criminalized. Penalties include imprisonment (federal minimum of roughly 6 months in recent framing; local codes historically up to 10 years in Dubai or 14 in Abu Dhabi). Death penalty is theoretically possible…
Kuwait: Illegal for men. Consensual intercourse between adult men is punishable by up to 7 years’ imprisonment under the Penal Code.
Qatar: Illegal. Penalties include imprisonment (commonly cited up to several years). Death penalty remains a theoretical possibility under Sharia for Muslims in some interpretations of related offenses, though documented application specifically for private consensual same-sex acts is limited.
In short, Lululemon maintains a commercial presence (and has expanded it) in countries where the activity referenced in the original NYC store messaging is illegal and can carry severe penalties, while displaying progressive inclusion messaging and a progress pride flag in markets such as New York.
What if you need to buy some sacred Rainbow Flag items? The good news is that there is at least one store. The bad news is that it has apparently been vandalized in hate-filled NYC (where “hate has no home”, except for all of the haters who commit hate crimes at 7X the per-capita rate vs. Palm Beach County):
What can be purchased there?
In other retail news, CVS keeps everything locked up and inflation has been running at 50 percent lately:
The twin pillars of Queers for Palestine remain robust in NYC. I visited a friend who is supporting the #resistance by mail-ordering olive oil purportedly farmed by an Arab who calls herself “Palestinian” in a village NW of Jerusalem. (Why “purportedly”? At least the Italian extra virgin olive oil is mostly fraudulently relabeled Tunisian (New Yorker 2007).)
The Zaatar Arabic Restaurant, nestled in the heart of Gaza, embodies the essence of Palestinian cuisine, offering a delightful fusion of traditional flavors and contemporary twists. It serves as a testament to the innovation and creativity of Palestinian chefs who seek to preserve the authenticity of their culinary heritage while adding a modern touch.
So, the next time you find yourself in Palestine, make sure to venture into the bustling Gaza Market or explore the markets of Ramallah, Bethlehem, and beyond. Immerse yourself in the sights, smells, and tastes of Palestinian cuisine and experience firsthand the remarkable connection between the markets and the extraordinary flavors that grace the tables of Palestinian households and restaurants alike.
What does resistance taste like? Terrible, in my opinion! If I wanted to support the Arabs who call themselves Palestinian, I would instead buy Arbequina olive oil at a fraction of the price from Hamas’s allies in the Islamic Republic of Spain.
I’m not sure that New Yorkers will have the energy, in the long run, to promote Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Party of Allah (“Hezbollah”), et al. They might have to turn their attention to the conflict between what’s culturally acceptable for their recent arrivals and the legacy population. Haram and halal outfits for women on Houston St.:
Maybe the adult who is modestly covered can tolerate the half-naked female parading down the street, but once Muslims are the most powerful voting bloc in NYC will they want their children exposed to this? That sundress made sense in the 85-degree heat, but it would certainly not be allowed anywhere near the above-mentioned olive farm nor in Gaza!
A report on an August trip to New York City. My favorite sign was one in the subway, officially reminding customers that it is white women who are typically the most poorly behaved group of humans. Why won’t these Speakerphone Americans use headphones?
Also new, I think, are the land acknowledgements near Central Park regarding Seneca Village, a settlement of “approximately 225 people” who were Black. Examples from the Public Theater and from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
This is kind of confusing. We must acknowledge Native Americans, who were dispossessed usually without any compensation, and condemn the dispossessors (white people). In the case of some of the land that is now Central Park, apparently there were dispossessors who happened to be Black. Unlike white dispossessors, the Black dispossessors are virtuous and must be acknowledged. (According to Wikipedia, the Black property owners of Seneca Village were paid market value for their land because it was acquired by eminent domain.)
Who else must be acknowledged? Those behind the “Latinx Freedom Movement” in the 1960s (they were Latinx ahead of their time and the term “Latinx”?). The billionaires who created today’s Hudson Yards remind us that capitalism is the root cause of inequality (humans were equal prior to the advent of this evil system, which, unfortunately is still practiced in Palm Beach County where one of the above-mentioned billionaires fled).
More of the exhibit, which reminds us that the reason we have immigrants is not due to an open border+cradle-to-grave welfare state, but rather because of U.S. military intervention in Guatemala, Cuba, an dthe Dominican Republic. (Our military interventions in India also explain the large number of Indians now living in the U.S.?)
Speaking of Hudson Yards, “The Vessel in NYC’s Hudson Yards reopens with safety netting 3 years after spate of suicides.” (CNN, 2024; the Chinese can build thousands of miles of high-speed rail or several new NYC-sized cities in 3 years, but Americans need 3 years to install some ugly nets?)
Don’t forget to mask when outdoors on the adjacent High Line:
It is safe to unmask when inhaling healing marijuana, however, which is available on nearly every block. LA Olympics ambassador Snoop Dogg has his own brand of weed, apparently, and smoking cannabis all day is “safe and legal”:
I’m too stoned now (just from looking at the above images) to continue writing, so I’ll post a follow-up with the rest of the photos…
Here’s the part of the news story, professionally edited and fact-checked, that interested me:
Women still earn less than men for the same work (81 cents for every dollar made by a man, according to the 2024 census).
Much of the NYT is devoted to decrying corporate greed, workers who are “underpaid”, and capitalism’s tendency to exploit workers. In this article, however, we are told about corporate altruism and a class of workers who are overpaid by about 25 percent (every man who has a job is paid, on average, 25 percent more than a woman who would do “the same work”).
It’s also a little interesting that someone who died childless is the “personification” of a movement for a class of people (“women”) previously associated with having children (“becoming pregnant people” in modern parlance).
Some other media coverage… AP uses the term “potent” to describe someone who died childless:
BREAKING: Gloria Steinem, the potent voice of the U.S. women’s movement and a co-founder of Ms. Magazine, dies at 92. https://t.co/ok97z6S8K0
Nancy Pelosi talks about a “trailblazer” (followed by no children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren of her own) and future generations in the context of someone who had no genetic role in any future generation:
Gloria Steinem was a fearless trailblazer who transformed the fight for equality in America and inspired generations of women to know their power.
Her voice, courage and relentless advocacy helped break down barriers and open doors once firmly closed to women.
If white feminists had limited or no fertility we can ask the question of who are the future generations to whom white feminists passed down their intellectual legacy? Observant Muslims in hijabs (Rahmanullah Lakanwal‘s wife and five children, for example)? Latinx who follow Catholicism? Will these future generations want to continue down the “trail” purportedly “blazed” by Gloria Steinem and fellow white gals?
“White feminism is a term which is used to describe expressions of feminism which are perceived as focusing on white women while failing to address the existence of distinct forms of oppression faced by ethnic minority women and women lacking other privileges.” (Wikipedia)
“Feminists and the Clinton Question” (Gloria Steinem in the NYT, 1998), pointing out that a woman might have accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment in order to make money: “If any of the other women had tried to sell their stories to a celebrity tell-all book publisher, as Ms. Willey did, you might be even more skeptical about their motives. But with her, you think, ”Well, she needs the money.””
The Whitney Museum’s Biennial is still on display, sort of. It “offers a space for contemplating the shifting currents of art in the United States, asking not only what is being made but also what it means to name something “American” at all.”
The approach to the museum exhorts us to “Free Palestine” while eating Halal food:
Once inside, there is some awesome non-political art:
Sign for the above:
New Yorkers who don’t get enough of the “river to the sea liberation” message from their mayor and the assorted public gatherings can sit for 32 minutes and contemplate the displacement of Arabs who call themselves “Palestinian” (I didn’t stay for the whole 32 minutes, but I have a feeling that the Arab rejection of the United Nations partition of the British territory and subsequent Arab declaration of war on the Jews wasn’t mentioned as a possible explanation for displacement; we are reminded that the Arabs who invaded the Levant during the Muslim Conquests are “indigenous”):
I’m not sure that the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) would approve of the restroom signage:
If the restroom sign is haram, the mask compliance of visitors was halal:
The staff also wore masks:
Returning to the question of signage, what if an Ivy League graduate artist went around NYC removing (“stealing”, haters might say) signs that had been fabricated and mounted, at tremendous union labor expense, by office building owners? (Could the Whitney be prosecuted for receiving stolen property?) David L. Johnson says that the signs are overly restrictive, e.g., “no defecating”, but what if someone tried to do that in his living room or studio?
The smartest artist was able to get into the exhibition by applying a square of black tape to the wall:
Another way to get into the exhibit was to put a bunny suit on a doll:
If you had always been curious about “parallels between the discrimination of Okinawans and Black Americans”…
Who can infer the gas price? Is it less than $1 per gallon in this 1986 photo?
Speaking of combusting gasoline into CO2, the exhibit allows us to learn about “environmental collapse”:
(If the artist doesn’t want to be in a filthy degraded environment why does she choose to live in Philadelphia?)
If you’re behind on your rereading of Malcolm X:
And then it was time for coffee… 2SLGBTQQIA+ welcome, but no Canine-Americans:
The Recognition of Art by Women: In Retrospect show at the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach closes on September 27 so there is still time to plan a somewhat unfashionably-early-in-the-season trip to Palm Beach County (via DJT!).
Recognition of Art by Women series began at the Norton in 2011 in an effort to recognize and promote living women artists through solo exhibitions, addressing the persistent inequity in exhibiting and acquiring art by women.
I can’t figure out how this is legal under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which purportedly guarantees “equal protection” to women vs. artists of other gender IDs. The Norton Museum is heavily funded by taxpayers, sometimes directly from local, state, and federal government and sometimes indirectly via tax deductions taken by donors (such as Ken Griffin, a refugee from the collapse of public order in Chicago/Illinois). Given that about half of the money is coming from taxpayers, could they host an art show limited to white male cisgender heterosexual artists, for example? If not, how are they allowed to host a show in which art can be selected only from artists identifying as “women”?
How bad has the historical discrimination been against women that the museum needs to redress the imbalance with this limited-to-one-gender-ID program? “Of the Norton’s 10 directors, nearly half have been women.” The first director was named “Mary”. The “women-only” series was initiated, 15 years ago, by a director named “Hope”.
The most recently featured artist, Danielle McKinney, paints pictures of Black women not working, which the curators say is “radical”.
(There is some support for this in BLS data; Black women are more likely to work than white women, while the reverse is true for Black men. Non-Black men are more likely to work than any of the foregoing.)
One of the radical acts:
A previously featured artist, María Berrío, does some interesting work:
The sculpture garden features a work by Louise Nevelson, who objected to being pigeonholed (“I’m not a feminist. I’m an artist who happens to be a woman”).
Also an interior Nevelson (I love her work so much! Maybe this one would be easier to steal):
How about some kid art? Here’s a painting by a local public school kid:
And one from the private school for nerds started by Jeff Greene, a billionaire refugee from NYC:
Here are some folks who probably should have used Kodachrome. Check out the color fading on these Polaroids:
(Imagine a camera technology so that even Walker Evans seems incompetent.)
Exit through the gift shop… (these photos were taken in June, admittedly)
Stop at Costco on the way home for some low-priced steak:
