Author: philg

Who watched the Trump State of the Union speech?

by philg

Per my usual, I didn’t watch Trump’s speech last night, but have peeked at the transcript. CNN establishes their neutrality in the first sentence:

Americans are reeling from the early weeks of Trump 2.0

The Google, informed by Oxford, says the definition of reeling is “lose one’s balance and stagger or lurch violently.” CNN reports as fact, in other words, that Trump has assaulted all Americans.

CNN compares Trump unfavorably to Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

Trump will always say he’s accomplished more than anyone. He’s got a way to go to catch presidents like FDR.

Maybe if Trump puts Japanese-Americans into concentration camps CNN will give him some respect?

Trump compares himself to slaveholder George Washington:

In fact, it has been stated by many that the first month of our presidency — it’s our presidency — is the most successful in the history of our nation. And what makes it even more impressive is that, do you know No. 2 is? George Washington. How about that? I don’t know about that list. But we’ll take it.

(see George Washington, Mules, and Donald Trump (2015): “real estate speculator-to-president is not an entirely new path”)

They heard my words and they chose not to come — much easier that way. In comparison, under Joe Biden, the worst president in American history, there were hundreds of thousands of illegal crossings a month, and virtually all of them, including murderers, drug dealers, gang members and people from mental institutions and insane asylums, were released into our country. Who would want to do that?

yields a “facts first” check from CNN:

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Haley Britzky: There is no evidence for the president’s claim, which Trump’s own presidential campaign was unable to corroborate. (The campaign was unable to provide any evidence even for his narrower claim that South American countries in particular were emptying their mental health facilities to somehow dump patients upon the US.)

I’m not sure what about Trump’s statement CNN thinks is untrue. The federal government’s own statistics said that hundreds of thousands of noble migrants crossed the border in various months during the Biden-Harris administration. In any population of roughly 10 million (the total number of migrants during Biden-Harris rule) there will be at least some “murderers, drug dealers, gang members and people from mental institutions and insane asylums”.

I do love this one!

I could find a cure to the most devastating disease, a disease that would wipe out entire nations, or announce the answers to the greatest economy in history, or the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever recorded. And these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements. They won’t do it no matter what. Five times I’ve been up here. It’s very sad, and it just shouldn’t be this way.

So Democrats sitting before me, for just this one night, why not join us in celebrating so many incredible wins for America. For the good of our nation, let’s work together, and let’s truly make America great again.

This is kind of funny:

We ordered all federal workers to return to the office. They will either show up for work in person or be removed from their job.

CNN fact check: More than half of federal workers were already working from the office full- or part-time when Trump took office

This reminds me of going to a California law office in 2024 and asking the receptionist how many people were coming in to work. She characterized the office as “packed” with perhaps 50 percent of people coming in on a given day (I saw only a handful of them). The post-coronapanic norm for desk jobs seems to be that only about half of people will show up and most of them will show up only part time.

Everyone who disagrees with me is a racist:

And two days ago, I signed an order making English the official language of the United States of America.

CNN: The English as a national language and Gulf of America efforts can be tied together with a very clear racial overtone.

(the majority of English speakers don’t live in the U.S., of course)

Just listen to some of the appalling waste we have already identified. $22 billion from HHS to provide free housing and cars for illegal aliens. $45 million for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma. $40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that is. $8 million to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of. $60 million for indigenous peoples and Afro Colombian empowerment in Central America — $60 million. $8 million for making mice transgender. This is real. $32 million for a left-wing propaganda operation in Moldova. $10 million for male circumcision in Mozambique. $20 million for the Arab Sesame Street in the Middle East. It’s a program — $20 million for a program. $1.9 billion to recently created decarbonization of homes committee headed up — and we know she’s involved — just at the last moment, the money was passed over — by a woman named Stacey Abrams. Have you ever heard of her?

CNN’s response is interesting. They aren’t able to say that Trump is wrong about any of the above except that they take issue with “$8 million for making mice transgender” (i.e., the $22 billion number at the beginning of the passage is apparently correct) [Update: Apparently there were some fact-checker-checkers and the government’s transgender mice project was real so CNN updated its criticism of Trump to say only that the $8 million number might not be right.]

Last year, a brilliant 22-year-old nursing student named Laken Riley — the best in her class, admired by everybody — went out for a jog on the campus of the University of Georgia. That morning, Laken was viciously attacked, assaulted, beaten, brutalized and horrifically murdered. Laken was stolen from us by a savage illegal alien gang member who was arrested while trespassing across Biden’s open southern border, and then sent loose into the United States under the heartless policies of that failed administration — it was indeed a failed administration. He had then been arrested and released in a Democrat run sanctuary city — a disaster — before ending the life of this beautiful young angel. With us this evening, are Laken’s beloved mother, Allyson, and her sister, Lauren.

CNN says that only Republicans are better off when violent criminals are detained:

Riley’s death was a major campaign issue for Republicans, and passing the Laken Riley Act, which requires certain migrants to be detained when accused of a crime, was a major victory for Trump and Republicans.

Democrats are better off, CNN reports as a fact (this is not an opinion section piece), when people like José Antonio Ibarra are not detained.

This seems kind of insane:

To boost our defense-industrial base, we are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding.

And for that purpose, I am announcing tonight that we will create a new office of shipbuilding in the White House and offer special tax incentives to bring this industry home to America, where it belongs. We used to make so many ships. We don’t make them anymore very much, but we’re going to make them very fast, very soon.

It costs 4-6X as much right now, I think, to make a ship in the U.S. compared to in Taiwan, Korea, or China (see Why you’re likely safer on a Panamanian- or Liberian-flagged ship than an American ship). The French, Germans, Finns, and Italians are all better/cheaper at making cruise ships than we are. Trump on shipbuilding sounds like someone who is 4’11” planning for a career in the NBA. Here’s one of the last memorable U.S.-built non-military ships (SS United States, built 75 years ago when the U.S. still had its WWII shipbuilding capacity):

This pains me:

And I also want to make interest payments on car loans tax-deductible, but only if the car is made in America. … Spoke to the majors today, all three, the top people, and they’re so excited.

The federal government has borrowed $36.5 trillion so far and will now encourage people to bury themselves in shiny car debt instead of paying taxes?

Trump describes the people who cowered in place for two years when instructed to do so by their governors:

From the patriots of Lexington and Concord to the heroes of Gettysburg and Normandy; from the warriors who crossed the Delaware to the trailblazers who climbed the Rockies; and from the legends who soared at Kitty Hawk to the astronauts who touched the moon, Americans have always been the people who defied all odds, transcended all dangers, made the most extraordinary sacrifices, and did whatever it took to defend our children, our country, and our freedom.

How did the world’s meekest people end up with this bold self-image?

Readers: What did you take away from the speech, if you watched?

The Democrat response (transcript) is from Elissa Slotkin, an archetypical member of her party (divorced childless menopause-age female passionate about expanding abortion care). She’s also an example of White men correctly perceive American Jews as their enemies? and Elite coastal Jews advocate discrimination against white and Asian males. For example, she promises to “Increase access to capital and other financial tools to support minority businesses” (but not to businesses owned by white men; source). Here’s an example of her rebuttal:

But securing the border without actually fixing our broken immigration system is dealing with the symptom not the disease. America is a nation of immigrants. We need a functional system, keyed to the needs of our economy, that allows vetted people to come and work here legally. So I look forward to the President’s plan on that.

(Doesn’t “America is a nation of immigrants” mean that Native Americans are irrelevant? Or maybe they’re not part of the “nation”?)

Is “an open border isn’t the real problem” persuasive? Isn’t this exactly what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris said?

But it’s also at risk when the President pits Americans against each other, when he demonizes those who are different, and tells certain people they shouldn’t be included.

She says that it is bad to “tell certain people they shouldn’t be included” but also has a web site telling white men they shouldn’t be included in a government hand-out program. Ms. Slotkin agrees with Donald Trump on one point:

We are a nation of strivers. Risk-takers.

She’s from a cower-in-place state (Michigan) where schools were still closed in 2022, roughly two years after SARS-CoV-2 began spreading in the U.S. and thinks that Americans are “risk-takers”?

It’s Congress’s job to set tax rates and determine spending, but Ms. Slotkin blames Donald Trump for deficit spending:

Meanwhile, for those keeping score, the national debt is going up, not down. And if he’s not careful, he could walk us right into a recession.

My conclusion from the two speeches: given our addiction to spending, the only thing that can save the U.S. from insolvency or hyperinflation is if LLMs and other forms of AI hugely expand the economy/tax base.

Loosely related, from the days when Congress accepted all of Ronald Reagan’s tax cut proposals and rejected all of his spending cut proposals:

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Child care in the Netherlands

by philg

A friend in the Netherlands is a little crazy and is now head of a household (the term is still vaguely sensible there) with four pre-K children. Here’s his report:

Things are going surprisingly well. It’s actually possible to have a ton of kids running around just like our forebears did. The neighbor’s kid shows up everyday to help out.

Me: “Just for a few hours? What do you pay for that, out of curiosity? Here I don’t think you can get anyone decent for less than $25/hr and probably $30/hr if you wanted to lure a high school kid away from obsessive college prep. How old is your helper?”

we pay E10 per hour. She’s still in high school. We don’t need more than a few hours. In the morning, they all go to the child care which is a few minutes walk from here and they come back at 6pm. She’s very young, though. I think 15 or something.

Me: 15 isn’t young. Stalin’s girlfriend when he was 35 and in Siberian exile was 14. Maybe she was 13.

I directed his attention to “Stalin and his lover aged 13” (The Standard, 2010):

In March 1914 Josef Stalin – a Georgian cobbler’s son known to friends as Soso and comrades as Koba – was sentenced for his revolutionary activities by the Tsar to exile close to the Arctic Circle in a tiny hamlet named Kureika.

The place was a freezing hellhole, an isolated twilight world cut off from humanity in winter by the daylong darkness.

In Kureika, only the reindeer, snowfoxes and Tungus indigenous tribesmen could really function in deep midwinter. Everyone wore reindeer fur.

The hamlet contained 67 villagers – 38 men and 29 women – all packed into just eight ramshackle izbas or wooden peasant shacks.

Among them were seven orphans from the same family – the Pereprygins – of whom the youngest was 13-year-old Lidia.

She immediately noticed Stalin, not just because of his good looks but also because he was hopelessly underdressed with only a light coat.

Before long, he was sporting the full local outfit – from boots to hat – of reindeer fur, all of it provided by Lidia Pereprygina.

Stalin in those days was slim, attractive, charming, an accomplished poet and educated in the priesthood, but also a pitiless Marxist terrorist and brutal gangster boss – a Red Godfather who had funded Lenin’s Bolsheviks with a series of audaciously bloody acts of bank robbery, piracy and racketeering.

Some time in the early summer of 1914, the 35-year-old Stalin embarked on an affair with Lidia.

While not admitting to anything explicit in her memoirs, we catch a glimpse in them of Stalin and Lidia together staggering from drinking bout to drinking bout, because she writes of their drunken dancing and singsongs: “In his spare time, Stalin like to go to evening dances – he could be very jolly too. He loved to sing and dance.”

Separately, today is the anniversary of Josef Stalin’s death in 1953. Imagine the disappointment of people who were alive 72 years ago and thought that they’d seen the last of Stalin-style dictatorship reading today’s New York Times and learning that an even worse dictator has seized control of the U.S.

Circling back to the Netherlands and my friend, I think that all of the doom stories coming out of Europe still leave room for us to admit that most European countries provide a lot more support for the traditional nuclear family. Marrying the government in Europe leads to a much crummier lifestyle than here (admittedly, working at the median wage in Europe does too!). All of the family court profiteering that works so well here (e.g., having sex with an already-married high-income person, divorcing a medium-income spouse, etc.) leads to just a subsistence income there. The U.S. provides economic incentives for parents of young children to split up (or never get together to begin with) while Europe mostly provides economic incentives for parents of young children to stay together and, as a consequence, the traditional two-biological-parent household is more common in Europe (some stats). At this point, most of Europe is a terrible place to make money, obviously, (the whole continent will be worth less than NVIDIA if present trends continue?) but for someone who already has money and wants to spend a summer over there with a 10 Euro/hour helper maybe it makes sense?

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Testing the religion of immigration

by philg

We were told by the Biden-Harris administration and their media allies that reducing undocumented immigration would require PhDs in Migration Science, $118 billion in new laws and funding from Congress, and decades of hard work by properly credentialed people. We also needed a pathway to citizenship for the tens of millions of migrants already here (about 22 million in pre-Biden times). My 2019 idea, Why aren’t we paying the Mexicans to patrol our border?, was plainly unworkable. Yesterday, a little more than a month after the start of the second Trump dictatorship, the New York Times:

On the eve of President Trump’s deadline to impose tariffs on Mexico, one thing is hard to miss on the Mexican side of the border: The migrants are gone. … “All that is over,” said the Rev. William Morton, a missionary at a Ciudad Juárez cathedral that serves migrants free meals. “Nobody can cross.” … “We are going to wait to see if God touches Mr. Trump’s heart,” said a 26-year-old woman from Venezuela, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Maria Elena, as she sat eating with her 7-year-old son at the cathedral in Ciudad Juárez. … In response to Mr. Trump’s demands last month, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, dispatched 10,000 national guardsmen to the border

(I would love to see a heart-touching meeting between God and Trump! Maybe God would be angrier than Zelenskyy?)

The threat of tariffs rather than my proposed cash payments is a twist from what I proposed and, I think, unfair our Mexican brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters (they’re not the ones who created the world’s second largest welfare state, as a percentage of GDP (maybe we’re #1 now, since the French have run out of money due to their own passion for hosting economy-boosting migrants)). But it seems to be working better than anything that the U.S. has done internally over the past 100 years.

Even if Trump has been successful in eliminating undocumented immigration, we are still on track to receive at least 10 million legal immigrants, many of them low-skill, over the next decade. Let’s step back from today’s news and look at the assumptions behind our policy.

Americans who advocate for and oppose open borders and low-skill immigration both agree on two things:

  1. without immigration, demographics will make it difficult to keep our Ponzi schemes, such as Medicare and Social Security, going as the ration of taxpaying workers to beneficiaries shrinks (due to population aging)
  2. with immigration, the Ponzi schemes can be continued for many additional decades, if not forever

Nobody seems to question the two points above. The righteous point out that immigrants make us safer because they don’t commit crimes (see 2024 state-sponsored NPR story below) and they will boost the economy because they’re smarter and more energetic than native-born Americans (see Albert Einstein as a typical example of someone who walks across the southern border). Haters, as seen in Fox News, say that they don’t want to live with people from all of the world’s most violent, dysfunctional, and impoverished societies. But even Fox News doesn’t question the Sacred Two elements of dogma above.

What if both the righteous and the haters are working from incorrect assumptions? That’s the question asked and answered in “Immigration does not solve population decline” (Aporia):

most of the problems of population decline, like pensions bankrupting the state or less innovation and entrepreneurship, are actually problems of population aging. … immigrants age too. This means that while immigration can definitely reverse population decline, it can’t do much for population aging. Assuming immigrant age-structure and fertility remain constant, the difference in the working-age share of the population in 2060 between zero net migration and 2019 levels of migration in the United States is… 2% (57% vs 59%).

The picture for the European Union is similar. The difference in the old-age dependency ratio in 2016 between zero non-EU migration and the existing levels is tiny: 118:100 vs 114:100. By comparison, the 2015 level is 76:100. The total effect of all non-EU immigration on aging means that instead of this ratio increasing by 55% over 45 years, it will increase by “only” 50%.

In other words, if we accepted the full slate of New York Times assumptions about migrants, a best-case scenario, and we maintained the open borders of the Biden-Harris administration, we still would be on track to spend ourselves into either insolvency or hyperinflation. What are the assumptions of the Righteous?

  • migrants, despite not being able to speak English or having education beyond 7th grade, will earn about the same as native-born Americans
  • migrants never commit crime
  • migrants don’t reduce our quality of life by bringing an alien culture, e.g., one where female circumcision and honor killing are accepted and one where females running around with hair or bare skin showing is unacceptable
  • population growth via immigration does not reduce our quality of life by burdening infrastructure and creating congestion, e.g., massive traffic jams in every city other than Detroit, Baltimore, Buffalo, and the other write-off cities
  • immigrants and children of immigrants won’t clog up public housing and exacerbate homelessness (remember that public housing is a human right and also that a person might get put on a 10-year waiting list in order to receive this right; it’s the inequality factory for people who say that they hate inequality)

How did we get to a place where half of the country felt that it was time to open the borders?

Democracies naturally tend towards vote-buying, and paying off current voters with the earnings of future generations who cannot vote is a winning strategy. This creates a Ponzi scheme in which huge fractions of state budgets are redistributed from current workers to retirees in ways that require an ever-growing number of workers to be sustainable. Productivity gains don’t usually help, because the expected living standards of retirees, often enforced by law, rise with productivity.

What does this look like from the perspective of a peasant with a job? The author gives us a figure captioned “Change in real purchasing power by age group in Spain since 2008. Every group under 65 has gotten poorer; only pensioners’ living standards are improving”:

One blind spot in the article: no discussion of natural resources and the fact that a larger population means dividing the value of those resources by a larger number and, therefore, each individual has less natural resource wealth.

Bigger blind spot in the editing: much of the content in the article isn’t related to the central point of dependency ratio and, instead, talks about negative non-demographic effects of low-skill immigration (i.e., effects that immigration advocates deny). I think it would be more interesting and persuasive to have an article solely focused on the dependency ratio and demographics issues while accepting the assumptions of those who advocate for open borders. People who are pro-immigration will never be persuaded by facts and figures about how much low-skill migrants cost in welfare benefits. People who are anti-immigration don’t need these facts and figures because they never expected a Tren de Aragua member to pay a lot in federal personal income tax.

More: Read “Immigration does not solve population decline”.

Related:

  • “Immigration and the Aging Society” (CIS, 2021), which seems to be the author’s principal source for the interaction between immigration and population age structure: “In 2000, the average age of all immigrants — not just new arrivals — was 39.2 years. By 2019, it was 46 — a seven-year increase. Over the same period, the average age of native-born Americans increased only slightly, from 35.4 years to 38 years. … the relatively high and increasing average age of all immigrants is a good reminder that they grow old like everyone else, even if they do arrive when relatively young. … nder the Census Bureau’s current projections, there will be 2.5 working-age people per retiree in 2060. If the projected immigration rate were cut in half, there would be 2.3 workers per retiree. … to roughly maintain the working-age share of the population, immigration rates would have to increase five-fold over what the bureau currently foresees. This would create a total population of 706 million in 2060 … the average age of new immigrants, including illegal immigrants, is still much higher than it was in the past — increasing from 26 in 2000 to 31 in 2019. Perhaps even more surprising, the share of newly arrived immigrants who are 55 and older more than doubled, from 5 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2019. This means that one in nine new immigrants is arriving old enough to move directly into a retirement community. … U.S. citizens can sponsor their parents for permanent residence without numerical limits. Parents typically immigrate to the United States after age 50, meaning they tend to be at or near retirement age as soon as they arrive. … Immigrants are human beings, not just the idealized workers or child-bearers that some commentators imagine.”
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Which of the Oscar-winning movies are worth seeing?

by philg

I stopped going to movies when Maskachusetts made it illegal and, apparently, I haven’t resumed the habit because, except for the Bob Dylan bio, none of the movies that won Oscars last night are ones that I had heard of, much less seen. I thus appeal to readers to say which of these movies are worth seeing and why. Maybe the animated climate change parable Flow?

[Update: Based partly on a reader comment, we purchased Flow on Amazon Prime and the kids loved it. I especially enjoyed that a golden retriever (maybe a Lab?) is the hero.]

Separately, I did appreciate that Florida was included in the event. Unwilling to ladle out taxpayer funds to Hollywood studios, Florida is mostly excluded from the world of film production. (Inequality-hating Maskachusetts, by contrast, will take money from the peasants to pay for 25 percent of a rich Hollywood studio’s costs; inequality-hating California will pay up to 30 percent; inequality-hating New York will transfer the working class’s wages to Hollywood elites at a rate of 40 percent.) Here’s the Two Minutes Hate in which Florida plays the Emmanuel Goldstein role:

(What does she mean “you people”?

)

It would be fun to invite all of Oscars attendees who cheered for the idea that Florida was anti-gay to Gay Days in Orlando this June and then see how many enter the Miss Gay Days Pageant and Mr. Gay Days Leather Competition. (no need to be “gay” to enter/win: “Whether you’re gay, bi, trans, a straight Ali, twink, bear, otter, or somewhere in-between, you’re invited to join us for an unforgettable celebration of love and acceptance.”)

Loosely related… the beautiful Snow White and comparatively ugly Evil Queen from Disney’s forthcoming remake.

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Aurora Borealis viewing in Fairbanks, Alaska

by philg

The Iditarod starts at 3 pm Eastern today. As has happened 3 times before (2003, 2015, and 2017), the sled dog race begins in Fairbanks rather than near Anchorage. This is due to a lack of snow.

As we all get set up to watch the puppies run, here are some tips on traveling to Fairbanks, Alaska, one of the world’s best places for seeing the Northern Lights due to (1) reasonably clear skies, (2) reasonably easy travel, and (3) perfect latitude (coincides with peak aurora activity).

A tour operator says that April 11-20 is the best time to see the aurora because it is the driest period and also close to an equinox, which is typically a peak for activity. 2025 is right near the peak of solar activity (on an 11-year circle) so maybe April 2025 is the time to go! (I went Feb 20-27, 2025, which coincided with the World Ice Art Championships that was a nice bonus, but it probably would have been better to go in April so as not to suffer as much from the cold!)

Except in the summer, you’ll probably have to fly through Seattle. Unless you live in Seattle, Delta Airlines might be a better choice for the total trip than Alaska Airlines because Delta has more overall network capacity to recover from a staffing or maintenance issue.

Spend the first day at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Museum of the North and watch the movie about the aurora ($20 if you’re foolish enough to work; free if you show your EBT card). Stop by the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center in downtown and pick up a guide to aurora viewing that includes a map of good locations. Inside the visitors center try to refrain from shouting out “Like Jeffrey Epstein, that Piper PA-22 didn’t hang itself”.

My Lyft driver (Uber pays a lower percentage of the revenue to drivers and is, therefore, so disfavored by drivers in Fairbanks that Lyft is the only service available in winter), who was also an aurora tour operator, explained that moisture/clouds tend to hang over the city but that as soon as you get to the first ridge going north the weather tends to clear. This also has the advantage of getting you away from the city’s light pollution. We had great luck at the Cleary Summer, about 30 minutes from downtown:

There are some cabins with skylights to rent right there, The Overlook at Cleary Summit, and that might be the smarter way to do a trip (watch the aurora while lying in bed; splurge by also renting a hotel room in downtown Fairbanks and bouncing back and forth depending on weather and desire to be close to restaurants and museums). Some friends organized a trip based at Pike’s Waterfront Lodge, which is right next to the end of the big runway at Fairbanks International Airport! The Overlook has Starlink Internet that should be better than what we had at Pike’s Lodge (Alaska is plagued by a telephone/Internet monopoly (“GCI”) that will make you take back all of the bad things that you said about Xfinity, AT&T, and Verizon). Getting up the hill to Cleary Summit wasn’t too challenging. We had a full-size van from Avis with studded tires. A regular AWD SUV with good winter tires would have worked as well.

Our first night of aurora viewing wasn’t that exciting. We drove 30 minutes up to a turnout on the Elliott Highway. With our naked eyes we saw what looked like white-gray thin vertical clouds. Photographed with an iPhone 16 Pro Max steadied via Ulanzi/Gitzo, however, a spectrum of colors emerged (exposures of about 5 seconds on the left and 30 seconds on the right; it probably would have been smarter to download and use Halide or a similar “pro camera” app that would have allowed more bracketing):

On the second night, we went to Cleary Summit (a big parking lot with the challenge of retaining one’s night vision as cars came and went with headlights on):

About 15 minutes later (pretty much fully automatic, with the iPhone choosing to expose for 5 seconds):

We never did see the red/pink colors in the above photos with our eyes, but we did see green, albeit not as saturated as in the above photos. Our hotel had an aurora chaser’s movie on permanent repeat in its library. The filmmaker gets very excited when he can see red with his naked eye and points out that he hadn’t seen that color for years. Unless a scene is bright you’re going to see it with your rods, which are monochrome, rather than your cones. The most common aurora frequency is green and our visual systems are very sensitive to green, which means you have a decent chance of seeing green. Partly because nobody has built a camera that works like the human visual system at night, the aurora industry is based largely on fraud. Here, for example, is a tour operator’s example of what you’ll see after paying $9000+ for two people:

Maybe an Alaska resident does occasionally see something like this, but a tourist is unlikely to see a color other than white or green on a one-week tour. Two perspectives:

  • “the Northern Lights are one of the few things that look better in a photo than in real life”
  • “looking at pictures of the Northern Lights before going on a trip is like watching porn movies to figure out what married sex after 10 years will be like”

The tradition of overselling the lights goes back at least to 1865 when Frederic Edwin Church painted the following (based on sketches and descriptions from Isaac I. Hayes, who did not sing but who spent years in the high Arctic):

If you are going to visit in the winter pack as though you were going ice fishing. I thought that I’d be okay with clothing that I wore for walking a dog in Maskachusetts in 10F temps. The temperature north of Fairbanks was closer to 0F, however, and watching the aurora involves minimal movement. Wool socks and insulated snow boots were useless on the first night so I stopped at Prospector Outfitters and got battery-powered socks for the second night. Felt boots such as Sorel or Baffin would have been a smarter choice (I had Sorels back in the Boston area, but I left them in the garage and squirrels used them as a house/outhouse). Electrically heated gloves would be the smart way to go for finger comfort. I was using an Apple Watch as a remote trigger (to minimize camera shake) for the iPhone camera and I don’t think that could have been done without exposing bare fingers for every photo. Maybe a remote shutter release with a physical button would have been usable with gloves kept on.

Would I go again? Sure, but I would want to have some kind of anchor activity in Fairbanks, either seeing friends or doing an exercise program or taking a class or something. Alternatives include Iceland, but it is surrounded by water and, therefore, seems likely to be much cloudier than Fairbanks. Arctic Norway (e.g., Tromsø) is a possibility, but it might be more challenging to travel to for an American and probably more expensive (Fairbanks has a McDonald’s, a Walmart, gasoline at just over $3/gallon, etc.). I would go back for the experience, not to try to compete for best picture with the people who live in the Arctic and are likely to be there on the 20 best nights of the past 10 years.

Crash course in Aurora #Science from Pike’s Lodge:

Related:

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Evolution of the Telluride Association Summer Seminar

by philg

I’m listening to The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen (“One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2023”). The author was born in 1963, just as I was. Unlike me, he did not drop out of high school but, by contrast, was admitted to a highly selective Telluride Association Summer Seminar (not in Telluride, Colorado, but in Ithaca, NY and Baltimore, MD). The choices circa 1980:

Telluride was offering three seminars that summer, one on literature and revolution, one on the life of the American city, and the third on sociobiology,

I was curious to see if the program still existed. It does. The choices of topic for 2025: Critical Black Studies and Anti-Oppressive Studies.

Maybe the author would have benefitted from one of these programs. Here’s the beginning of a story of how he ends up in the hospital:’

Early in the second week, as Michael and I were cutting across the sweeping [New Rochelle, NY] high school grounds on our way home, talking about classes and the usual bullshit, I noticed a group of Black guys up ahead on the bank of the lake to my left. They seemed about our age, or a few grades older, but did not look like they had spent the day in school. Several were lounging against the low, thick branch of a weeping willow; others were horsing around, tagging each other and darting out of range; and one or two were sitting on the ground.

(There was no motivation for the subsequent attack and facial disfigurement other than the victim being white.)

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DEI at the Fort Lauderdale Airport

by philg

Thanks to Alaska Airlines’s focus on DEI rather than on starting and/or completing flights, I had a multi-hour opportunity to inspect the gates and the art collection at FLL.

As we look back with nostalgia on Black History Month, here’s a Southwest gate:

Remember that 15 pieces of flair is the minimum:

How about art? Here’s an exhibit from someone who “has challenged societal barriers as an LGBTQ+ female artist”:

Note the featuring of Frida Kahlo, who broke through a lot of barriers by having sex with the married already-successful artist Diego Rivera, and Georgia O’Keefe, who broke through a lot of barriers by having sex with the already-married Alfred Stieglitz (more than 20 years older), an already-successful art dealer and photographer.

Intrigued by Southwest Airlines’s “I am Black 365 Days a Year” flair, I asked ChatGPT and Grok to make “I am Golden 365 Days of Year” signs. Both systems were provided with one of Southwest’s as an example. ChatGPT:

Grok:

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Today’s “economic blackout”

by philg

From state-sponsored NPR:

An organization is calling for a national boycott in the form of an “economic blackout” on Friday, urging Americans not to shop for 24 hours.

This movement, spearheaded by The People’s Union USA, a grassroots group, follows the rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at several companies, including Target. The boycott coincides with protests against President Donald Trump’s plans to reduce the government workforce and mass firings at federal agencies.

I don’t know why retailers are the focus given that healthcare is nearly 20 percent of the GDP. Are these folks suggesting that Americans boycott getting their COVID boosters, flu shots, and healing marijuana? What about government? That’s a huge slice of the economy. Does the The People’s Union USA suggest that employers don’t send withheld taxes to the government today? Given that the federal government is now run by an illegitimate fascist dictator, i.e., Donald Trump, why would a righteous individual pay federal taxes on any day of the year? Surely a progressive wouldn’t want to advance Nazism by sending tens of thousands of dollars to a Nazi.

Speaking of Nazis… is the name racist? Why is a boycott a “BLACKout”? State-sponsored NPR reassures us:

What are you all doing to support this grassroots movement? As it happens, my first stop in the morning was Home Depot (Deplorable-founded) to pick up some parts for our electrician (see Electrifinflation).

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Florida vs. DC area school observance of Valentine’s Day

by philg

Closing out February with a reminder that this month is host to Valentine’s Day….

From our local “5th Grade Gifted Science Teacher” (Florida state law requires that public school systems offer gifted education beginning in 2nd grade):

I am writing to all parents to remind you that our class is having a Valentine Exchange this Friday. I sent home a bright pink flyer 2 weeks ago with the information and class list needed if your child wanted to participate. It is optional. I am writing because I have seen many of my students who did not show you the flyer as it is still in their yellow folder. If your child chooses to participate, he/she is required to bring one for each child in the class. Your child can also bring Valentines for friends in other classes if they choose.

Additionally, our class is having a Valentine Box Design contest. The child with the most creative box will win prizes that I have purchased. There will be a first, second and third place winner. Again, it is optional, and those children who opt out will receive a bag to place their Valentine’s.
You can send in a class treat if you would like. After we pass out the Valentines, we will be watching a movie.

Please ask for the pink flyer if you have not seen it yet. Thank you.

From a high school administrator in the Washington, DC area:

Join us February 14th for a fun Valentines event, hosted by the LGBTQ+ Allies Club. We’ll play some mini games and introduce you to the mission of the club.

What “mini games” are part of the LGBTQ+ lifestyle? A video game from “The 13 Best Queer Games to Play During Pride Month (and Beyond)” (PC Magazine)? Croquet because it is #1 in “Lawn Games Every Gay Should Know”?

Circling back to Florida, the Valentine Exchange is more 2SLGBTQQIA+-oriented than what we had growing up in Bethesda, Maryland. Kids here in Florida are required, if they want to participate at all, to bring a card for every other member of the class, regardless of gender ID, and are forbidden from writing anything personal in any card. A boy, therefore, must present other boys with cards if he is to present any girls with cards. In 1970s Bethesda, we chose which other members of the class to give cards to and wrote whatever we wanted. Each card always went to a member of the opposite sex, as far as I can remember (there were no “gender IDs” back then so “opposite sex” was a defined term).

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Electrifinflation

by philg

Leftover Inflation? (November 2024):

I wonder if there is a significant “leftover inflation” yet to come, though, from companies and people who neglected to raise prices or who were locked into long-term agreements during the core years of Bidenflation.

Our electrician, a solo practitioner in mid career (i.e., he already has all of the skills that he is going to have), is coming over tomorrow. His rate in December was $100 per hour. His rate for 2025: $125/hour. I think that he was at $90/hour in 2022, when we first hired him, but he apparently hadn’t kept up with inflation, which means he is now charging 40 percent more than he was in 2022.

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