Author: philg

The #Resistance in Bangor, Maine

by philg

What does a gathering of diversity advocates who’ve chosen to live in the whitest part of America’s whitest state look like? June 11, 2025, Bangor, Maine:

As in Park City, Utah, the city officially supports Pride with tax dollars by placing Biden-style trans-enhanced Rainbow Flags on every downtown lamppost:

The U.S. quasi-embassy in Taiwan explains, using your federal tax dollars, that these official city-purchased flags are missing the intersex circle:

I hope that the Taiwanese, thus educated, won’t make the same mistake as the City of Bangor!

Within a block of the rally, a “Pride Proud” church that believes Black Lives Matter even if no member of the congregation has seen a Black person lately (not shown: a guy coming out of the church wearing a “Let Gaza Live” button; the IDF would have a tough time indeed if Maine progressives turned their words into action!):

A fabric/yarn store a few steps away:

President Trump apparently sent tanks to Bangor to quell any unrest (spotted the next morning):

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Air India 171 Boeing 787 crash questions

by philg

Friends have been asking my opinion regarding the recent Boeing 787 crash in India. Based on the fact that the 787’s gear wasn’t retracting or retracted, the most common speculation right now seems to be that the flight crew mistakenly retracted flaps rather than gear at the “positive rate” point just above the runway.

I’m not typed in the B787 so I can’t say for sure how far apart flaps retraction and rotation speed are. In the CRJ, the following are true:

  • the plane won’t take off without some flaps down (i.e., even with full power from two engines it will just go off the end of a 15,000′ runway)
  • rotation speed (Vr) and flaps retraction speed (V2+10) are reasonably close, separated by perhaps 15 seconds (admittedly that’s with gear coming up); see “Everything about V Speeds Explained”
  • flaps on an airliner move rather slowly
  • with two engines at full power, the plane will climb reasonably well even if the configuration isn’t perfect
  • given a long runway, less than full power is typically used for takeoff so as to reduce wear on the engines and stretch out the time to overhaul

So… I have no idea what caused this tragedy, but I don’t think that “proper configuration; proper rotation speed; full power; flaps instead of gear just after takeoff” explains a failure to climb. Gear adds drag, but the plane needs to be able to fly in a clean configuration on just one engine and, therefore, with double the power it can easily overpower the gear drag. An inadvertent flap retraction also shouldn’t have caused a crash because, once off the ground, the plane accelerates very quickly toward and beyond V2. The Ahmedabad airport is at sea level and has an 11,500′ runway, which might enable reduced thrust to be used even given the reported 43C temperature. On the other hand, pilots who are sinking would likely push the thrust levers full forward as a reflex.

An obvious explanation is that the aircraft lost power in both engines shortly after takeoff, but it is difficult to think of a way that two turbine engines can fail at the same time. It happened to a Boeing 777 landing at Heathrow due to high altitude icing, but that’s impossible during a hot summer takeoff. It happened to Airbus single-pilot hero Captain Sully (Jeff Skiles nowhere to be found in the media!).

Maybe the fuel was contaminated, but jet engines will burn almost anything and why didn’t the engines quit during taxi?

Separately, should “British man” Vishwash Kumar Ramesh (Guardian) spend all of his future earnings on lottery tickets?

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Florida question: Why isn’t a compressed air source a standard part of poolside equipment?

by philg

Every Florida pool has an equipment pad nearby with electric power, sometimes natural gas (electric heat pumps are better these days because they’re cheaper to run and can also chill the pool), and filtration. The question for today: Why isn’t there always an electric air compressor on the pad? Given the popularity of inflatables why wouldn’t there be a permanently stationed powerful compressed air source to top up rafts, etc.?

Most compressors don’t seem to be designed to handle the elements, but here’s one with potential:

Has anyone ever seen something similar mounted near a pool? If not, why not?

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Wall Street Journal says that Jupiter, Florida is mostly insufferably rich golfers

by philg

“Wealthy Home Buyers Are Flocking to Jupiter—and Not Just for the Golf” (Wall Street Journal, beginning of Pride 2025; no-paywall version):

Toward the northern end [of Palm Beach County] is Jupiter, with a population of about 61,000. The beachy city with a classic Old Florida feel is a mecca for golfers, especially professional ones. “There are at least 75 PGA Tour players in this area,” says Brad Faxon, an eight-time PGA Tour Champion and Jupiter local. The city has nine golf clubs and around a dozen-and-half golf courses, according to Palm Beach County Sports Commission; about 133 more courses are elsewhere in Palm Beach County. Many of Jupiter’s courses are within private, exclusive country clubs, where initiation fees can go as high as close to $1 million. Still, golf isn’t the only reason people live in Jupiter. Residents also seek it out for favorable taxes, good schools and proximity to multiple airports.

They zoomed in on the house next door to ours:

Actually, the WSJ does incongruously (and without explanation) note that the typical house or condo in Jupiter is almost free:

“The price point is broad,” says Leland Rykse, a Jupiter-based real estate agent with ONE Sotheby’s International Realty. Luxury properties can list around $50 million to $70 million, whereas there are also typical midmarket options. Jupiter’s median sale price was $717,500 in March 2025, according to Redfin.

Consistent with everything in our media being lies, the WSJ provides a misleading statistic (“median sale price” includes 1BR condos). More seriously, the WSJ says that prices are going up when, in fact, they are likely going down (the WSJ doesn’t bother to adjust for inflation or the fact that people keep improving their houses so a square foot from 2022 isn’t as high quality as a square foot from 2025):

We humble folks in the MacArthur Foundation-developed Abacoa should just be grateful that our town was noticed even if our neighborhoods weren’t!

Perhaps coincidentally, the Deplorables with Dollar Signs (Fox Business) did an article just a week after the WSJ… “The new Palm Beach? Jupiter, FL, is drawing luxury homebuyers”:

Seth Mansfield, an agent with Douglas Elliman and a Forte Luxe sales executive, told FOX Business that he is seeing a lot of wealthy people come to Jupiter “because they are able to enjoy a storybook lifestyle in a relaxed setting.”

I would love to meet these people living in a relaxed storybook!

“The median price for a single-family home 5 years ago was $530,000 and the ceiling price was $12,250,000. Over the past year, those numbers are $980,000 and $48,000,000, respectively,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ve seen Jupiter’s ceiling.” … “In addition to the steady migration from the northeast and California, we’re seeing more and more buyers shift their attention from Palm Beach to Jupiter,” Mansfield said. “You can get the same house on the same Bahama blue water for a 50-60% discount relative to Palm Beach, with access to all the creature comforts that you’re used to, even more options for golf, and Palm Beach is still at your fingertips. I truly believe Jupiter is undervalued, as crazy as that may sound to some.”

This does sound crazy! But maybe the market will just bifurcate. Peasant neighborhoods like ours will continue to depreciate while the handful of elite gated communities and waterfront areas will zoom upwards. (All over Florida markets are going in opposite directions for older condos and houses and new condos/houses. A house built prior to 2002 when the statewide building code went into effect can slide three percent (real dollars) every year while an adjacent house built in 2022 is appreciating.)

(Note that Fox isn’t as incompetent as the Wall Street Journal. Fox does not mix in the prices of 1BR condos when reporting on what “houses” cost.)

Zooming out to the national real estate news…

Rising home prices and high mortgage rates have pushed the median age of homebuyers to a record-high 56 years old in 2024, up from 45 in 2021. In 1981, the median age of homebuyers was 31 years old, see chart below.

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Los Angeles is peaceful and also too dangerous for a platoon of soldiers to walk around

by philg

Reason to love Legacy Media #479… we are informed that

  • Los Angeles is peaceful and therefore the (defunded?) LA police did not require any assistance
  • Los Angeles cannot be safely traversed by a group of soldiers clad in body armor and armed with M4 rifles (maybe they could be safe in this peaceful city if enclosed within an M1 Abrams tank or Bradley Fighting Vehicle?)

From the Financial Times:

A growing number of military veterans and serving officers have spoken out against President Trump’s decision to deploy marines and National Guard troops to LA, calling it a misuse of executive power that puts soldiers’ lives at risk

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Pride Month in aviation

by philg

Air Canada demonstrates “inclusivity” by excluding any cisgender heterosexuals from working on a particular flight:

Probability question: We are informed that being 2SLGBTQQIA+ is common/normal and also that in a company with more than 35,000 employees there had never previously been an assembly of 3-6 workers (pilots plus flight attendants) who all identified as 2SLGBTQQIA+ (the flight in the video was the “first all-2SLGBTQIA+ flight”.

In London, Ontario, home to a big Diamond factory:

The Irish equivalent of the FAA:

Atlas Air, best known for a crash with a DEI hire at the controls:

The folks who’ve taken over the Climate Change Awareness mantle from all-Hamas-all-the-time Greta Thunberg:

Airbus UK:

How is are observant Muslims supposed to “be their authentic selves” if they must walk by this flag on their way into work?

In case the Trump Tyranny (TM) reaches D.C.’s airports and the tweet below is memory-holed, screen shots:

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A Greta Thunberg yacht trip to California?

by philg

Greta Thunberg is back in Europe after her heroic aid trip to Gaza. There are some open questions regarding this trip:

  • why does someone who says that the Earth is being destroyed by humans choose the Palestinians, close to world #1 in fertility and population growth, as her model society? Just imagine the CO2 output if every group of humans on this planet had 4-6 children per family, as is common among Palestinians entitled to UNRWA aid (i.e., free food, health care, education, etc., even if nobody ever works at any job other than Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad soldier)
  • why was a female do-gooder visiting a group of Muslims (the noble Gazans) not wearing hijab and/or burqa?

I’m not holding my breath for answers to the above, but now that we apparently need not worry about climate change, perhaps the highest and best use for Greta Thunberg would be a diesel-fueled yacht trip to deliver aid to the Californians who are currently #resisting an occupying military.

Let’s look at some photos from my recent visit to the teen section of the central Los Angeles Public Library, which officially teaches cooperation via smartphone to evade ICE. An important way to “keep our community safe” is to prevent federal government workers from doing their jobs:

The #Science section in which we learn that SARS-CoV-2 is no match for teenagers wearing masks and voluntarily receiving an injection of an experimental vaccine that is reserved for those 75 years and older in the UK:

The library has an official “favorite drag queen” and he/she/ze/they recently performed for teenagers:

Any books for the teens to read after the drag show?

Finally, remember that Los Angeles is a hate-free zone (which is why Donald Trump and ICE are being welcomed with love?):

Readers: What should Greta T deliver to the besieged folks in Los Angeles?

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How the ACLU frightens the elderly out of their money

by philg

Here’s some mail that recently arrived for my mother, who would have been 91 if she’d been alive to receive it:

It’s from the same geniuses who wrote the op-ed that led to Amber Heard being successfully sued for defamation. Inside the elderly with some cash potential are informed that “A second Tmmp administration presents a clear and present danger to our fundamental freedoms.”

Here’s the rest of the panic-inducing letter.

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Does every NFL team support Pride Month?

by philg

Miami:

Tampa Bay:

Houston:

Green Bay:

The NFL overall:

Is there any team in the NFL that rejects the U.S. official state religion? What would happen to a team that said they were going to celebrate African American Music Appreciation Month, created by Jimmy Carter, instead of Pride? (And maybe played “Gold Digger” by Kanye West during halftime while a huge fabric disk was paraded around the stadium with the image below, the way that European soccer fans will support an Walmart-sized pro-Palestinian flag or banner.)

For reference, 50x20m according to Al Jazeera:

Speaking of the noble entirely peaceful Palestinians, has anyone claimed the $1 million in funding for a Pride parade in Gaza or the West Bank?

Finally, here’s the archetypical Black rapper according to the Smithsonian’s PhD curators:

(Educated-in-Florida Ray Charles is not sufficiently notable to have made the museum experts’ cut.)

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Jews of Boston gather for a Pride parade

by philg

Recent email from the Jewish Community Center of Greater Boston…

If you don’t get up early enough for today’s Pride parade or the June 14 all-of-Boston Pride parade, you’ll have a third chance in Newton in two weeks (it’s billed as “fun for all ages” but in fact is only for kids, based on the photo?):

The email also advertises a way for your child to spend some quality alone time with an adult stranger:

Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters
This program matches LGBTQ+ youth with adult mentors who share similar lived experiences, offering empathy, guidance, and support while helping build identity, resilience, and confidence.

Let’s check in with that organization. They say that they’re “actively recruiting” children “between the ages of 6-18”:

Confirming the primacy of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ cause, the organization’s web site header has a one-click link to only a single program, anchored by the sacred official Biden-style trans-enhanced Rainbow Flag:

(every other program requires more complex navigation)

Related:

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