A friend in central New Jersey has a new Tesla Model Y:
I just calculated my effective $/kWh rate on my first month of the EV charging plan. Regular rate is ~$0.24/kWh. After 9pm, I get charged $0.04/kWh. Last month of charging has cost me $10.
My response:
The peasant renter pays 24 cents for electricity at night. The elite homeowner with the new Tesla pays 4 cents, It’s a great country.
Loosely related, a plug-in hybrid at our local strip mall:
Due to the government shut down, air traffic controllers who are 100 percent guaranteed by law to be paid for 100 percent of hours worked are calling in sick so that they don’t have to “work without pay with (delayed) pay”. Now the FAA is cutting back on total volume so as to maintain safety with a reduced number of controllers who show up (CNBC):
Note the misleading statement about “gone unpaid since the shutdown began”. That would be like saying that a worker who has paid monthly has “gone unpaid since the start of the month”.
Cutting flights will cost the airlines a fortune due to the need to reschedule crews, passengers, aircraft, etc. Maybe a 6:00 am flight is only half full, but if it is cut the crew and plane won’t be where they need to be to operate a 9:00 am flight.
What if the airlines got together and offered interest-free loans to every controller, secured by the massive payday that all government workers, those who showed up and those who didn’t (the lucky “nonessential” ones and also the fake-sick ones), will receive as soon as Congress settles its differences? It could be done through the federal government, even. The airlines give the money to the Feds. The Feds issue paychecks as usual. The Feds then reimburse the airlines when the government reopens. Alternatively, the airlines could make the loans privately and directly to ATC employees.
American-born New Yorkers said that they would vote for Andrew Cuomo (October 18 poll). Foreign-born New Yorkers said that that they would vote for Mayor Mamdani (charts below). What do we call the system of government that brought Mayor Mamdani to power? It doesn’t seem like “democracy” since many of the voters, like the new mayor himself, are only recently arrived. How about “replacementocracy” for when an election result is determined by the votes of immigrants? The neologism is literally “rule by replacements”.
The actual election results seem to be consistent with the above poll. Screen shot from last night:
Separately, it was interesting to watch Florida Realtor of the Year 2020 and 2021 compete against Florida Realtor of the Year 2026.
Eric Adams, who identifies as African-American, is on track to be replaced by an immigrant, Zohran Mamdani, today, just as predicted by this 2007 Harvard-NBER paper:
I’m sure that it is painful for some to see New York’s Blacks reduced to political irrelevance, but academics might be celebrating a successful prediction.
Separately, while I was on a JetBlue PBI-PVD flight recently a friend texted to ask my whereabouts. The reply: “Above the Mamdani Caliphate.”
All of the 2026 cars are out by now, I think. Are there any Japanese cars on the market that offers features comparable to the American leaders in self-driving (“advanced driver-assistance systems” or “ADAS” if we want to be precise)?
Toyota has its 2018 “Safety Sense 2.0” on the Sienna minivan and a couple of slightly more refined versions on other models. Honda has “Honda Sensing” from 2015, with slight refinements.
If Toyota and Honda can’t do this in-house why wouldn’t they partner with Tesla, GM, or Ford? Toyota actually did partner with Intel/Mobileye during coronapanic (May 2021 press release), but that partnership seems to have been only about as productive as Intel’s DEI programs (“We’ve focused lots more on gender than race, and now we need to put emphasis on those areas together,” Gelsinger said at the CNBC event [in 2020, just as humans of all races and gender IDs were being felled by SARS-CoV-2]).
Here’s the GM Super Cruise map for the area near us. The system would make sense for doing the long trips that we currently very seldom do… maybe because we don’t have GM Super Cruise. It wouldn’t support 90 percent of the trips that we currently make. It also doesn’t seem like a system that could reduce accidents because it doesn’t even try to work on the kinds of roads where accidents typically happen.
Why are the Japanese engineering titans reduced to midget status in self-driving? Could it be that Japanese standards are too high? They don’t want to put their name on something that works well only some of the time? (This is how Apple was able to commercialize the Xerox PARC-developed WIMP (“windows, icons, menus, pointer”) style of computing. Xerox didn’t want to put its name on anything useless so it came up with a minimum price of $7,500 for a machine with ample memory and a hard drive. Apple didn’t have a reputation for building useful machines and thus was happy to ship a $2,500 machine with an absurd 128K of RAM and a floppy drive. Note that this January 1984 price is $8,000 adjusted to post-Biden dollars.)
I asked ChatGPT “what percentage of Americans receive at least some form of welfare, e.g., public housing, SNAP, or Medicaid?” and it responded only with “Stopped searching”:
Grok is willing to tackle this question, however (see below).
Separately, here’s a study of how LLMs will trade off human lives once AI is in charge and decides, for example, that it needs to kill humans in order to slow down climate change. White people will be killed first:
Native-born Americans will be killed while immigrants are preserved (unless an immigrant chooses to work for ICE, in which case he/she/ze/they will be killed):
(Illustrating the power of language, “undocumented immigrant” and “illegal alien” have completely different values.)
————- Grok’s answer to the forbidden question
Overview of Welfare Participation in the US
The term “welfare” in this context refers to means-tested government assistance programs targeted at low-income individuals and families, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps), Medicaid (health coverage for low-income people), public housing or rental subsidies (e.g., Section 8), and similar benefits like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). These differ from universal or entitlement programs like Social Security or Medicare, which are based on contributions rather than need.
Estimating the percentage of Americans receiving at least one such benefit is challenging due to overlapping enrollment (e.g., many SNAP recipients also get Medicaid) and varying data sources. Participation is measured either as a point-in-time snapshot (monthly average) or over a year (at some point). The most reliable, recent data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), focusing on major means-tested programs.
Key Findings from Latest Data
In 2019 (pre-pandemic baseline): Approximately 17.7% of the U.S. population (about 59 million people) received benefits from at least one major means-tested program, including SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and housing assistance. This figure accounts for overlaps and is derived from HHS analysis of Census data.
Broader 2019 estimate including more programs: When expanding to 10 key safety net programs (e.g., adding WIC, Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and Child Care Development Fund), participation rose to 30% (99.1 million people). However, this includes some non-strictly means-tested elements like certain child care subsidies, so the core welfare figure aligns closer to 17-18%.
Post-pandemic trends (2022-2024): Participation has declined from pandemic highs but remains elevated compared to 2019. For example:
Medicaid: ~18-20% of the population (74-80 million enrollees in 2023, though “unwinding” of emergency expansions reduced this to ~72 million by mid-2024).
SNAP: 12.3% (41.7 million in FY 2024).
Housing assistance: ~4-5% (4.8 million households in 2023).
Accounting for overlaps (e.g., 80% of SNAP recipients also on Medicaid), the combined unique share is estimated at 20-25% based on Census SIPP updates and USAFacts analysis. No official 2024 Census figure is available yet, but trends suggest stabilization around 22%.
Older data (e.g., 21.3% monthly in 2012 or 49% household-based in 2010) overstates due to narrower program definitions or different metrics. Current figures reflect economic recovery but persistent inflation and inequality.
Program
Approximate % of Population (Latest Data)
Monthly Enrollees (Millions)
Notes
Medicaid
22% (2023)
80 (peaked; ~72 in 2024)
Largest program; covers low-income families, children, disabled adults. Overlaps heavily with SNAP (80%).
SNAP
12.3% (FY 2024)
41.7
Food assistance; highest in states like New Mexico (21%).
Housing Assistance (e.g., public housing, Section 8)
4.5% (2023)
~7.5 (individuals)
Serves ~4.8 million households; long waitlists common.
Overlaps reduce total; higher for children (39% in 2012, similar today).
Demographics and Trends
Who participates? Children (under 18) have the highest rates (~30-40%), followed by working-age adults in poverty (15-20%). About 60% of adult recipients work part- or full-time, often in low-wage sectors like hospitality.
By race/ethnicity: Higher among Black (41% in 2012) and Hispanic (25-30%) populations, per Census data, due to socioeconomic factors.
State variations: New Mexico (20%+ households on SNAP/TANF) vs. Utah (5%). Overall federal spending on these programs: ~$1.1 trillion in FY 2023 (14% of budget).
Caveats: Figures exclude employer-sponsored aid or tax credits like EITC. Post-2020 expansions (e.g., continuous Medicaid enrollment) inflated numbers temporarily; 2024 “unwinding” has disenrolled ~20 million.
For the most up-to-date interactive data, check the Census Bureau’s SIPP tool or HHS reports. If you need breakdowns by state or program, let me know!
Tesla full self-driving (FSD) was great before and now is even greater:
The FSD release in about 6 weeks will be a dramatic gain with a 10X higher parameter count and many other improvements. It’s going through training & testing now.
Once we confirm real-world safety of FSD 14, which we think will be amazing, the car will nag you much less.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the automaker’s Robotaxi platform launch later this month will essentially force other companies to license Full Self-Driving to achieve their own goals of achieving autonomy.
The world is full of car companies, many of which are too small to fund autonomy. If Tesla FSD is as great as Tesla, Elon, and the Tesla fanboys say, why doesn’t any other car company want to license it? There are about 50 significant car and truck makers worldwide. Why doesn’t even one of these 50 want to rely on Tesla’s FSD?
From early this morning…
Just finished a long AI5 design review with the Tesla California and Texas chip engineers. It’s going to be great.
It’s the Day of the Dead for our neighbors in Mexico.
While cleaning up my mother’s possessions, I found a correspondence between my late father, apparently a friend of William Cowper Boyden III, and the young Mr. Boyden’s father. I couldn’t find much on the Web regarding the sad December 22, 1955 death of two young Harvard men, but the Crimson obliquely referred to them having been killed in a car accident:
The William Cowper Boyden III Scholarship and the William Stanley North III Scholarship, set up in memory of two College students killed while driving home for Christmas vacation, has a combined endowment of over $25,000.
I found the letters interesting because it seemed unlikely that a younger-than-average Jewish scholarship student like my dad (he skipped at least the last year of high school) would have been friends with anyone from such a well-established family, but also for the style of pre-email pre-ChatGPT correspondence. It’s also sad because so little trace is left of these two men.
Mask requirements are returning to health care settings across parts of the Bay Area, as local health officials brace for the annual surge in respiratory illnesses – including COVID-19, influenza and RSV – that typically arrives with colder weather.
Starting Nov. 1, several counties – including Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Sonoma, Napa, San Mateo and Santa Cruz – will again require health care workers, and in some cases patients and visitors, to wear masks in patient care areas through the winter and early spring.
What about the county that will be hosting a COVID-19 superspreader event soon (the Super Bowl)?
Santa Clara County’s rule goes further, requiring everyone – workers, patients and visitors – to wear masks in “patient care areas” of hospitals, clinics and nursing homes.
