Author: philg

All-Trump format for NYT continues even without Trump

by philg

If you’d been wondering what the New Yorker magazine and the New York Times were going to do with their “All Trump-Hatred All the Time” formats once the hated dictator was gone, here’s today’s NYT front page:

How much longer can they keep selling Donald Trump as the main topic that Americans need to learn more about?

(What else was going on in the world today? A coup in Myanmar. Climate change that is an existential threat to humanity. Chinese purportedly inflicting a “genocide” on a group that contains some separatists and jihadis. Insane volatility in GME stock (a friend sold a bunch of call options with a strike price of $800; when the stock was trading at $340 people were willing to pay $130 for the option, meaning that the buyers expect GME stock to hit $930). Variant coronavirus preparing to attack the masked-and-vaccinated. Lower income BIPOC school-age children across the U.S. are coming up on a full calendar year without any school (private and public schools for rich white kids are generally open, of course). Russians are in the streets to protest the arrest of Alexei Navalny. Fiji is being destroyed by cyclones. Migrant caravans are trying to reach President Biden’s promised land, but having trouble redeeming that promise.)

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Late to the party: Why doesn’t GameStop (GME) come back down now?

by philg

This has been a tough month for fans of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. GameStop (GME) started out the month at less than $20/share and is now “worth” over $300/share. The market cap for this bricks-and-mortar retailer is over $22 billion:

Why doesn’t it come back down now? Mall-based retail isn’t a lot better than it was a month ago. The Wall Street shorts who got squeezed have presumably had to close out their positions by now. Unless the company can use its current high share price to issue more shares and invest them in some super profitable business, don’t the shares have to come back down to $20?

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Dr. Andrew Yang, PhD in Mansplaining?

by philg

From a male-identifying friend on Facebook:

Being a progressive does not mean simply giving people more money and stuff. It also means thinking in critical and integrative ways, connecting the social, economic and cultural. In fact, thinking this way can both save money and improve lives through providing meaning.
Here is Andrew Yang on maternal health: “One way I think we can help combat maternal and infant mortality in NYC–both of which are unconscionably high in much of the city–dramatically expand the use of doulas and midwives. Doulas are the truth. Women help women.”
Just one more reason why I support Andrew Yang, a deep, integral thinker, for Mayor of NYC.

Can this be true? Twitter says yes:

This is like a PhD thesis in mansplaining. Perhaps Dr. Yang also said “We’re pregnant” before his children were born.

(Director of Baby Production in our household corporation rated her doula “useless” and elected to fly solo (except for the full hospital team that was present) the next time we were pregnant.)

Related:

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Why you can’t get vaccinated by your local dentist

by philg

A dentist friend (yes, even dentists need friends!) looked into becoming a COVID-19 vaccination center. She’s amply qualified to inject people (“so is a janitor,” says a med school professor friend). She earns her high income by serving a low-income high-risk population so it would make perfect sense for the parents of her patients to come in and get stuck.

What’s stopping her? “It costs $12,000 for the fridge and I don’t think I’d be able to get reimbursed for giving shots. I’m set up to bill for dental services and being able to bill for medical is a whole different procedure.”

(How is it possible to prosper when the patients are poor? Medicaid doesn’t pay quite as much as private dental insurance for any given procedure, but it is common for children on Medicaid to need $10,000+ in dental surgery due to candy+lack of brushing. An upper middle class child might yield a slightly higher payment for a cleaning, but that is the only revenue that can be obtained from treating the upper middle class child.)

Marketing to MassHealth (Medicaid) customers in Worcester, Maskachusetts, a city whose entire economy consists of mining poor people (medical, dental, criminal prosecution and divorce/custody/child support litigation in a magnificent brand new courthouse).

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Portsmouth, New Hampshire and home (coastal aerial photos)

by philg

Readers will be relieved to learn that this is the last in the series of New Hampshire and Maine coastal aerial photos. This batch goes from Portsmouth, New Hampshire over the rich kids’ Phillips Academy Andover and to our home base, East Coast Aero Club at Hanscom Field.

From our Boston to Bar Harbor, Maine trip in a Robinson R44 helicopter. Tony Cammarata was in back with a door removed and a Nikon D850. Instrument student Vince Dorow and I were flying.

Also available as a streaming 8K video.

Thanks to Rob Brigham and the ECAC maintenance crew for a squawk-free helicopter trip!

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How many Christmas/New Year cards did you get that specified pronouns?

by philg

I wonder if we can track trends via Christmas/New Year’s cards. Out of roughly 100 cards, we received one with explicit pronouns. This was from a Ph.D. engineer (colleague of Dr. Jill Biden, MD?) who opened by characterizing 2020 as “bizarre” (the Swedish MD/PhDs might agree with him that it is bizarre for middle aged people to cower in place for a year to avoid a 0.1% chance of nasty flu symptoms or worse). Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

[usually-female name] (they/them) left [Company A] to join [Company B]… a few months later they left [Company B] to become a consultant for [Company C]… they have the distinction of having been hired twice of having been hired twice during a difficult time for employment generally.

Pronouns are also specified for two additional children, the author (“he/him”) and the mother of the three kids (“she/her”).

I have gotten accustomed to receiving business correspondence, e.g., from Linode, festooned with pronoun specifications, but can’t recall too many previous personal letters containing them (their/theirs). Readers: what did you get in your mailboxes this year in terms of pronoun specs?

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Know Your Audience: the masked helicopter pilot

by philg

A post in a helicopter pilots’ group: “Pandemic times” over the following photo.

Nobody came up with my preferred reaction (“You have to say global pandemic”). Sampling of the responses:

  • That is utterly retarded……
  • Whenever I see an aircraft several thousand feet above me, my first thought is always “wonder if they’re being good commies and effing wearing their slave costumes way up there by themselves…”
  • I get free IFR time whenever I have to fly with a mask and glasses
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