This morning we got another absurd inflation number from the BLS (3.7%/year). As harped on numerous times here, headline inflation is untethered to actual costs in the U.S. partly because of the Owners’ Equivalent Rent scam. There’s a recent beautiful example of this in our own Florida neighborhood (Abacoa, within Jupiter, which is within Palm Beach County).
The house recently sold for $3.1 million and will, I’m sure, cost the new owners another $3.1 million in property tax, maintenance, insurance, landscaping, pool care, etc. over the years. What would an owner tell the BLS about what he or she thinks it would cost to rent? Perhaps the Zillow number of $8,593 per month. That’s about half of what an interest-only 30-year mortgage on the place would cost, if a 30-year interest-only mortgage were available. It might be 20% of the real cost of living in the house as an owner.
Note that this is pretty much the top of the Abacoa market. The owners apparently bought it, invested a ton of money in renovation (though it was not taken back to the studs nor was the room layout changed), and then decided that they were too rich to live in a $3.1 million house.
Movies are still being made primarily in 2K Digital Intermediate because Hollywood can’t afford the memory and processing power to do editing and effects at 4K. Our brothers and sisters in Japan introduced practical 8K devices about 12 years ago (Wokipedia). I would have expected 8K televisions for desktop monitor use and for living room use by now.
Should we just give up on ever having an 8K television at consumer prices? I know that the theory is we can’t use that much resolution with current sizes and viewing distances, but I don’t believe it. There are a lot of situations where one can walk right up to a TV and inspect detail, e.g., if it is displaying a document. Maybe it isn’t necessary for enjoying a movie mastered in 2K, but there are lots of ways that a big screen can be used other than for watching a movie. Family photo collage, for example. One of our neighbors recently got a 100″ TV at Costco and there is nothing in front of it. If the machine were 8K, he could put an entire vacation’s worth of photos on the screen at once and people could walk up to the TV if interested. (I don’t like how it looks in his house, incidentally, when it isn’t on. It is a truly massive black hole in the wall. If I can take over from Donald Trump as dictator, I will order TV companies to put in all kinds of great features for what the TV can/should do when nobody is watching TV.)
Separately, who has bought a TV roughly 85″ in size lately? We have a low-end 86″ LG that we got for $900 at Costco in 2022. It was a floor model and came with a 5-year warranty. I wanted to see if something that huge was actually what we wanted. Should we splurge on an 83″ OLED? We never watch when the room is brightly lit (sometimes in the afternoon because of passionate NFL fans, but windows can be shaded). Or are the vastly-cheaper LCD TVs nearly as good? One of my big dreams, as noted above, is convenient software for running a slide show when the TV isn’t being used for TV (we might actually watch 10 hours per week).
Gemini on why we could never have a $900 OLED TV this size, even without AI as our enemy (not in quote style):
The reason OLED TVs max out at 83 inches instead of the standard 85 inches comes down to the fascinating—and ruthless—math of how panels are manufactured in factories.
Every OLED TV starts its life as part of a massive, garage-door-sized sheet of glass called “Mother Glass.” Most OLED factories use what is called a “Gen 8.5” size sheet. Manufacturers need to cut this mother glass into TV-sized rectangles with as little wasted glass as possible, much like cutting cookies from rolled-out dough.
Engineers figured out a highly efficient cutting layout (called Multi-Model Glass production) that perfectly fits two 83-inch panels and two 48-inch panels onto a single Gen 8.5 sheet with almost zero waste. If they bumped the size up to 85 inches, the 48-inch panels would no longer fit. They would have to throw away a massive amount of unused, highly expensive mother glass, which would make the 85-inch TVs prohibitively expensive.
Manufacturing an OLED panel requires depositing ultra-thin organic materials with near-perfect precision in a vacuum. It is a highly volatile process. A single microscopic dust particle or moisture drop can ruin an entire panel. If a tiny defect happens on a 55-inch panel, they throw away a 55-inch panel. If it happens on an 83-inch panel, they have to throw away a massive piece of inventory. The cost of all the ruined large panels gets baked directly into the retail price of the ones that survive the factory.
Standard LCD panels are completely commoditized; there are dozens of massive factories in China and Taiwan churning them out, driving prices into the floor. Large-scale OLED TV panels, however, are incredibly difficult to make and are almost exclusively manufactured by just two companies on earth: LG Display and Samsung Display. Without a flood of cheap, third-party competition, there is no pressure to slash prices.
OLEDs will likely always carry a premium simply because the organic technology fundamentally resists the kind of dirt-cheap mass commoditization that makes 85-inch LCDs so affordable today.
The French, just like us, have been trying to cheat their way to greater wealth/consumption via government borrowing (WSJ):
And, just as with the U.S., investors are beginning to demand to be paid for the possibility of inflation/default.
We were informed that inflation was impossible because of the Eurozone rules regarding deficit spending (no more than 3% of GDP). How has France been able to avoid compliance? ChatGPT:
Another good excuse: coronapanic.
The EU suspended normal fiscal requirements during COVID. From 2020 through 2023, the EU activated its general escape clause, allowing governments considerable flexibility to run deficits in response to the pandemic and subsequent economic disruption.
They made an affirmative decision, in other words, to make the kids whose schools had been closed (nothing like the 18-month closures in Democrat-run U.S. cities, though) pay for it all.
We’re informed that low-skill immigrants make a country rich. France is roughly 25 percent immigrants and children of immigrants. Why isn’t France rich enough that tax revenues can fund current government spending and also pay down some debt?
Finally, with the “French” in the streets (they’re “protesting” according to the New York Times and BBC and “rioting” according to Fox), what rational investor would locate a factory there rather than in Poland, Hungary, or Switzerland? Who reads a “France’s violent protests involve ‘second- or third-generation’ immigrants” headline and decides that the long-term trend is positive?
An excerpt from an “About Me” web page created in the Land of Science (TM):
I currently reside with my family on the ancestral and occupied lands of Nonantum of the Indigenous Massachusett people, whose name was appropriated by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I commit to being LGBTQIA2S+ affirming and anti-racist in my personal and professional life. My pronouns are she/her/hers.”
Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day to those who celebrate!
An indigenous LGBTQIA2S+ resident of Maskachusetts would be a shoo-in for a job with elderly progressive Senator Markey (BIPOC = “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color”, remember).
I’m hiring motivated and eager interns for the Spring 2027 semester in my Boston office. BIPOC, LGBTQ+, working class, veterans, and other underrepresented candidates with Massachusetts ties are encouraged to apply. Applications are due Monday, November 9th.
How is it remotely legal/Constitutional under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause to say that a Black Indigenous lesbian would be hired ahead of a white cisgender heterosexual male? (Yes, in theory they hide behind the fig leaf of “encouraged to apply”, like the person whose social media output is 90% criticism of Israel who says “I don’t hate Jews, but only the world’s only Jewish state”, but does anyone believe that when choosing between two candidates with equal qualifications the victimhood categories of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ wouldn’t be used to tip the hiring decision?) And if the elderly progressive white male is so passionate about BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people getting federal paychecks, why doesn’t he resign the position that he earned only through white male privilege and allow the governor (highlighted as lesbian by state-sponsored PBS) to appoint a BIPOC LGBTQ+ replacement?
Speaking of celebration, the heavily regulated Massachusetts health insurance market is apparently a fantastic place to make a profit. From LinkedIn:
After digging through more Medicare Advantage numbers, there’s such blatant corruption that defies not just economic principles, not just healthcare principles, but somehow lets MA insurers make 3 TIMES the gross profit margins when compared to normal private insurance margins.
Using KFF’s analysis of insurer financial filings, I looked at gross margin per enrollee, meaning premium revenue minus the medical claims insurers actually paid out. In 2024, Medicare Advantage insurers kept $1,655 per enrollee. Individual market plans kept $987. Fully insured employer plans kept $846. Medicaid managed care kept $608.
What makes no sense is that, like Medicare Advantage, Medicaid runs through private insurer contracts. 78% of Medicaid beneficiaries, more than 66 million people, are enrolled in private managed care plans, and five publicly traded insurers, Centene, UnitedHealth, Elevance, Molina, and CVS/Aetna, control 47% of that enrollment.
These are the exact same companies that administer MA plans, paid by the same government, yet in the MA program they keep nearly 3x as much per enrollee.
This happens every single year. Between 2018 through 2024, MA gross profit margin was higher than self funded plans, fully insured employer plans, and Medicaid plans.
Just as Arabs became indigenous to any territory that they conquer, I think it is fair to say that these highly profitable health insurers are indigenous to Massachusetts by virtue of having conquered so much profit.
Gemini, regarding what life was like when the Massachusett ruled Massachusetts:
Public Ritual Torture: Captured enemy male warriors were sometimes subjected to prolonged public torture before execution. This served as a spiritual and emotional outlet for grieving families (a component of the widespread “mourning war” complex) and provided a platform for the captive warrior to demonstrate stoicism and physical courage in the face of death.
Mutilation: Captives or slain enemies were occasionally dismembered or burned, both to neutralize the enemy’s spirit and to serve as a psychological deterrent to rivals.
Taking severed body parts—specifically scalps, heads, or hands—as battle trophies was practiced as proof of victory, honor, and spiritual dominance over an adversary.
Internal Justice System: Internal tribal discipline for severe offenses—such as murder, treason, or theft within the group—was swift and physical. Punishments meted out by the sachem (chief) or council could include beatings, banishment (which was often a slow death sentence given reliance on tribal food networks), or summary execution.
Meanwhile, in Florida, the state DOT encourages a celebration that is both more and less traditional (source):
Amazon is one of the world’s savviest companies and has a sharp eye for what is sustainably profitable. Amazon owns Audible, the audiobook company.
An obvious use case for an AI chatbot is to listen to the listener and be prepared to pause the audiobook and answer questions about the material, about what happened or was said in an earlier chapter, etc. This doesn’t exist inside Audible, however, which leads me to conclude that Amazon has determined that it is impossible to make money by offering an AI chatbot.
(Why can’t the listener use his/her/zir/their phone’s built-in AI services to interrupt Audible and answer questions? Whatever chatbot is behind the phone’s Siri or similar isn’t necessarily preloaded with the complete contents of whatever book the phone owner is listening to, doesn’t immediately have access to context such as what sentence was most recently played, etc. So it would take a lot of permissions and extra programming for the phone to answer “Where is that?” after a place name was mentioned in the book.)
If we assume that Amazon is the smart money, does that mean OpenAI, Anthropic, XAI, Meta, and their respective investors are the dumb money?
Speaking of Meta, who has tried their Muse AI app on a phone? A friend in San Francisco told me to try it. Initial results haven’t been promising. It asked for access to Gmail and Google Calendar and then, when asked about important events in the upcoming week, completely failed to understand that some events on my calendar are almost sure to be handled by other family members, e.g., a dental appointment for another adult member of the household that was added to the shared calendar by said adult member.
“Airline pilot” is a fairly standard Halloween costume. Via the addition of a crash axe, a child can become a warrior against colonialism and genocide as well. On the other hand, inexpensive as a Gemtor D56 might be, it is probably not wise to send the 8-year-old out into the neighborhood with one. I found this plastic training version online:
How much would it cost to 3D print something like this? ChatGPT gives a range:
Separately, Hamam al-Hammami finally answered the question that I wondered about in 2008 when TSA would hassle me for having a couple of coins left in a pocket and setting off the metal detector. “Any pilot could just reach for the crash axe so what difference does it make if he or she brings a tiny amount of metal on board? Given aggressive intent, you’d never use a Swiss Army knife if a crash axe were available.”
Who else has been in the news lately who might be a good inspiration for a Halloween costume?
Separately, who has good ideas for regional candies to hand out for Halloween? I don’t want to be boring and get the same Costco assortments that everyone else gets. It would be fun to give out a candy that is not available in Florida at all. We expect 500 to 1,000 children because our next-door neighbor is an insanely skilled Detroit automaker senior engineer who creates a Las Vegas-quality pirate environment, complete with animatronics.
Here are some ideas from ChatGPT:
ChatGPT estimates that full-size candy bars, which some neighbors do distribute, are $1.15 each while the Costco “fun-sized” chocolate assortment works out to about 14 cents per bar.
Let’s close by looking at Hamam al-Hammami’s plan:
NEW: Interrogation of the Omani pilot: the objective was to crash the plane into the terminal building at Ben Gurion Airport.
The assault on the other pilot was timed deliberately. He waited until the aircraft was over Jordan, near Israel, before moving against him.
The American Muscle Car Museum in Melbourne, Florida is open to the public only on rare occasions. October 3, 2026 was a car show and fundraiser for the Lion’s Club and the rabble were admitted for $30 per adult (our kids got in free). It’s an amazing collection that cries out for an intervention by our political thought-leaders. Mark Pieloch, a dog pharma and supplement flavoring tycoon, decided that he needed to own about 30 Ford GTs, nearly all of them from the two modern reboot (of the GT40) generations and nearly all of them with less than 30 miles on the odometer.
(Note that I don’t think it is reasonable to call the Ford GT a “Ford”. They’ve been produced by contract manufacturers, e.g., Mayflower Vehicle Systems and Multimatic. Compare to the Corvette ZR1X, an insanely powerful machine that is built in a regular GM factory that also makes the humbler versions of the Corvette. Keep in mind that even the humblest version is “insanely powerful”, though, when you consider realistic public road situations.)
Here’s the first room. The 2020 Ford GT in the foreground has 24 miles on the clock. A 1966 GT40 rotates on the turntable in the center of the modern GTs. A museum employee said that it had cost $9 million.
Just one ring of recent GTs, then? No. There are a couple of additional rows of them, e.g.,
Viewed from the other side of the room:
We’re talking about a Gulfstream G700 hangar, essentially, entirely filled with the latest generation of Ford GTs, nearly all of which have never been driven. Is that collecting or hoarding? Either way, I feel that it is time for Bernie and AOC to step in. Just as Bernie reminds us that nobody needs more than three houses, I think that we can all agree that nobody needs more than 3 pristine never-driven modern Ford GTs. One never-driven GT is a sculpture. Two more could be backups. But the 4th one? That’s intolerable inequality and, dare I say it, billionaire greed!
If we walk deeper into the museum, we find an entire row of the 2005ish GTs:
Directly across the aisle, a 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder. The window sticker is still stuck: $915,000 (in pre-Biden dollars!). How much practical value has been delivered by this machine? 32 miles’ worth. (ChatGPT says that Car and Driver got better numbers out of the Porsche 918 than they did out of the 2017-2022 Ford GTs, which sold for substantially less.)
That’s a G-Wagen in the back. Here’s some Gemini output that makes me wonder what Google has been feeding its AI:
In Palm Beach, Mercedes-Benz G-Wagons function like a chronological alimony registry. You can pinpoint exactly when a settlement was finalized based on the specific body style and dashboard layout of the G-Class she is driving:
Speaking of German stuff, Mark Pieloch was an avid Porsche collector as well. He has about 10 Porsche-brand diesel tractors:
Imagine telling someone “I’ll pick you up in my Porsche” and then showing up with one of these tractors! They’re not unreasonably expensive:
Here’s one that Grok says might be worth $5 million, though, a 1959 718 RSK Werks Spyder that was raced:
Just how big is the second room?
There are some additional hangars full of cars, but they’re not regularly open to the rabble.
Corvettes are reasonably well-represented, though I don’t remember seeing any C7s. Almost every conceivable Ford Mustang is displayed.
Here’s a wood-paneled 1957 Ford Country Squire:
Another wagon that, if retrofitted with A/C, would be awesome to own:
The perfect pace car for Elvis:
How was the car show? Pretty good and a reasonable turnout despite the fact that it has been an unusually wet September and October in Florida despite a complete absence of hurricanes from the North Atlantic. Free and dog-friendly. Here’s another dream station wagon:
If you love cars, I recommend finding one of the special events and going. Based on the museum’s Form 990, it seems that all of the money paid goes to whatever group is supposed to benefit. Grok says that the cars and the real estate are owned by Mark Pieloch individually so it isn’t a tax-avoidance vehicle (so to speak) as you might expect. Grok even found the records for the real estate:
Brevard’s parcel record for 3500 Sarno Road lists the owner as PIELOCH, MARK J, mailing address a Melbourne post office box. The use code is a privately owned tourist attraction, the buildings date to 2016, and the 2026 value is about $18.1 million. A 2025 tax bill on that parcel is on the order of $320,000, which is what you pay when the property is not under a charitable exemption.
Unlike, for example, the Gates Foundation and Bill Gates, Mark Pieloch is apparently paying more than his fair share of tax rather than burdening those who’ve been less successful with the chore of funding government.
Anne Carson, a writer from the Islamic Republic of Canada who identifies as “female”, has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. NYT (has anyone reading this ever heard of her or read anything by her?):
Buried within the article:
In recent years, the Swedish Academy has tried to expand the diversity of laureates after criticism that too many past recipients have been men. Since 2018, the academy has alternated between male and female laureates. Given that last year’s prize went to the Hungarian novelist Laszlo Krasznahorkai, critics had expected this year’s accolade to go to a woman.
I usually try to read at least one book by every Nobel winner, but “poet” is a big ask! Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse seems to be her most popular original work. Some of the Amazon reviews from before she was anointed aren’t too encouraging, even if you’re in the market for a queer reimagining of a Greek myth (the Greeks themselves weren’t queer enough?):
2023: I’m a huge fan of Anne Carson’s translation work and was so excited to read a queer reimagining of a Greek myth. This was a disappointment. … the setting was an unexplained mish mash of modern and mythological places which left me confused and unable to immerse myself. The characters were paper thin. … the prose while beautiful is unbelievably pretentious. I think I will stick to her translation work.
2021: it just looks like a jumbled mess and you kind of get the idea that it’s popular because to say otherwise might be perceived as lacking refined taste…but the reality is that it’s just not very good. That’s this book. Which is a shame because I really wanted to like it.
2016: I was bored and more bored.
2014: My reactions upon finishing were: slapdash, sloppy, pretentious, and a waste of time. Then I read some reviews and wondered how in the world this book gained such positive reviews, or for that matter even a publisher. … The amount of material in this tome that is superfluous, loose-ended, confusing and annoying far outweighs any attempts to play with old Greek mythology and mix it with contemporary culture.
2013: Pedantic and Overrated. … Even if you didn’t know that Carson had studied ancient Greek history and literature, she flaunts it in the very first pages of the book which is structured in 3 parts as follows: … Now, call me old-fashioned, but to me a poem must have rhythm and music. Carson’s prose doesn’t!! Therefore, I don’t consider it, and I don’t read it as poem.
That first review does raise the question of DEI. The committee alternates between authors whom they perceive to be men and women. Shouldn’t they also try to include authors who are members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community for at least half of the prizes?
Separately, it seems that Anne Carson was a professor at Princeton back in the 1980s and denied tenure (i.e., “fired”; NYT). Thus we’re reminded of the poet who explained the difference between an ape and a tenured professor of English: “The ape doesn’t think that he can write.”
A Holocaust survivor whose family escaped the Nazis by hiding in a French village under assumed names has been announced as one of two winners of the 2026 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Henri B. Kagan, who was born in France in 1930, was chosen as a Nobel Laureate alongside Kenso Soai, for their groundbreaking work in the field of pharmaceutical engineering. Conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, their respective research helped solve the problem of how to create a single molecular mirror image.
After the war, Kagan went on to receive a PhD from the Collège de France, and then went on to become a professor at what was then Université Paris-Sud, France.
I think this proves some of Brian Keating’s points in Losing the Nobel Prize and Losing the Nobel Prize: on careers in science and Who earned an old-style Nobel Prize in 2019? Trailblazing female engineer Marconi won a physics prize in 1909 for her work in radio, which was still ongoing, just 6 years after achieving practical transatlantic communication. Kagan won for work done 40 years ago. I’m sure that he deserves to be recognized, but what practical effect will the award have on someone who became emeritus in 1999? He did write the foreword for a book published in 2008, Amino Acids and the Asymmetry of Life:
(One consequence of Prof. Kagan’s long life is that he was able to personally experience both the German-influenced period of French Jew-hatred (1940s) and the Islamic-influenced period of French Jew-hatred (today, when around 23% of the “French” are immigrants or children of immigrants).)
Department of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up… Carnegie-Mellon has released renderings of its new home in Miami. It’s a massive sea-level almost-all-glass pavilion that will generate a ton of CO2 every minute (for A/C):
A campus designed to connect.
Carnegie Mellon University Miami is being created as a comprehensive university campus, not a satellite location or a collection of individual programs.
— Carnegie Mellon University (@CarnegieMellon) October 2, 2026
For 20 years CMU’s Nobel-winning Climate Doomers told us that hurricanes of never-before-experienced intensity would be ravaging Miami at least once per year. If forced to move to the Hurricane Belt, you’d expect the elites of Pittsburgh to build themselves something like the German U-boat base in Saint-Nazaire (26-foot-thick roof). What do we see instead? The folks who said that everyone in Miami was going to be killed by hurricanes or driven out by rising seas are going to park themselves inside a literal glass house (at sea level, of course!).
What would a structure in South Florida built by people who took their own predictions seriously look like?
Comedian Bill Burr tore into Florida Governor Ron De Santis on his podcast, slamming the Republican for banning mask mandates as his own state becomes the epicenter of the highly transmissible Delta variant of Covid-19.
“The amount of people who not only don’t even own a microscope or even have a pair of scrubs – you know, unless they went to some Halloween party – who are literally questioning doctors. It’s just – at this point it’s just hilarious,” Burr said in the programme released on Monday.
Donald Trump apologist DeSantis last month issued an executive order aimed at banning schools in the state from mandating the use of masks to curb the spread of Covid-19.
This is a news, not an opinion, piece and it was apparently a proven fact that Ron DeSantis’s work in Congress and then as governor of Florida could be fairly summarized as “Trump apologist”.
What was the correlation between governor-imposed restrictions and age-adjusted death rates? “In the end, some states that adopted dramatically divergent policies had comparable outcomes (Florida and California, for example).” (December 2022 Bioinformatics CRO, which does seem to show a correlation with pre-existing health conditions and COVID-19 death rate (see Mississippi, for example)).
Separately, here’s a timeless lecture from Bill Burr, whose COVID-19 scholarship was still some years in the future:
