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).
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.
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).
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.
Their commitments didn’t include committing to flying to Seattle from FLL on February 20, 2025 at 7:00 am. I got a text message from them about cancellation just as I was walking up to the gate shortly before 6:00 am. Note that their plan is a 30-hour delay (the substitute 3-leg flight is on February 21, a day later than the original 2-leg flight):
(A lot of other passengers got texts with the same itinerary and none of them complained to the gate agent because Alaska Airlines had wisely chosen not to send any personnel to the gate. Everyone gathered in a Fall of Saigon scene back at the ticket counter and then at a carousel to retrieve what would have been our checked bags.)
What was Alaska Airlines working on if not getting us to the destination that we’d paid for? The skin tone and gender ID of the pilots: “125 new students enrolled in the Ascend Pilot Academy (26% BIPOC, 36% Female). Surpassed commitment to increase Black female pilots at Air Group by nearly 33%.”
For those concerned about safety, the good news is that a DEI pilot hire can’t crash an airliner that never takes off.
My DEI day started hours earlier. If I’d wanted to do a slow three-leg trip to Fairbanks I could have done it starting at nearby PBI. Instead, I chose to fly from FLL, which is an hour’s drive away. Because it would be 4:15 am and I might want to snooze, I reserved “Uber Premier” at over $190 rather than Uber Comfort at $110. Initially a pavement-melting GMC Yukon was going to show up, but then either the driver canceled or Uber canceled him because he wasn’t expected to arrive by 4:15 am. A 2022 Tesla 3 was substituted. The driver was a nice guy and I learned a fair amount about Teslas (he’s test-driven the new Model 3 and says that it is noticeably quieter inside, the doors close more solidly, and FSD works great). However, I don’t think the Model 3 qualifies as “Premier”; it’s a “Comfort”-class car. Uber still charged the originally quoted $190+ price despite not delivering a “Premier” car. I’m surprised that they haven’t been sued for this by an energetic class action lawyer. Uber doesn’t have a customer service phone number (some sort of AI chatbot instead for questions about charges), which means Uber has pocketed the extra cash for all similar downgrades unless a customer has gone to the trouble of disputing the charge with his/her/zir/their credit card bank.
They weren’t committed to keeping the Uber Premier appointment that they’d made, but they say they are committed to “racial equity”.
Rationally I can accept that incompetence and indifference to the customer are both possible (even plausible given the concentration and lack of competition in both U.S. airlines and U.S. ride sharing) without a percentage of corporate focus being devoted to DEI. But it is tough to avoid the temptation to search for “Company X diversity” after a negative customer experience. That makes me a hater?
After losing his job at the U.S. Forest Service, Cameron McKenzie was worried about finding a new job. But first, he had a more immediate concern: How was he going to pay the mortgage?
He’s done the math — finding another job in the environmental sector could take months — and keeping up with the nearly $2,700 monthly payment on his three-bedroom home in Blairstown, N.J., will be a challenge, if not impossible. “Even on unemployment,” said Mr. McKenzie, 27, who worked as a community engagement specialist, “I’m not going to be able to make my mortgage payment.”
Mr. McKenzie’s termination was among thousands of federal job cuts, part of a purge of the work force under an executive order signed by President Trump.
It’s the New York Times, so it is important to stress that the “community engagement specialist” profiled happens to be a member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community:
Mr. McKenzie, who worked at the U.S. Forest Service, said he and his husband are planning to list their New Jersey home — which his husband first purchased in 2022 for $215,000 — in May, when there’s more greenery to make it more attractive to potential buyers. Though they used to split the mortgage payments, Mr. McKenzie took on the task when his husband started law school. He estimated that around half of his $87,000 salary was going toward the payments and a construction loan the couple took out to cover renovations.
Who else is profiled in the article? “a single mother with three children” working as a “a health insurance specialist” and “Nathan Barrera-Bunch, who was a management analyst at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs … staying in Washington might not be feasible. It all depends, he said, on whether his fiancé, who still works for the federal government, can keep his job and if Mr. Barrera-Bunch can find a new one.”
In other words, the NYT apparently couldn’t find a single fired federal employee who was in a heterosexual partnership of some sort. Nor could they find an example of children growing up in a two-parent household.
Let’s circle back to Mr. McKenzie. If his cash compensation was $87,000 per year it seems fair to assume that he was costing taxpayers $250,000 per year (salary, benefits, pension, office space, etc.). What does a “community engagement specialist” do that justifies 100 percent of the personal federal income tax of perhaps 20 median-income families being harvested (i.e., for those 20 families, not a penny of their tax dollars can be used to deliver other services to them)?
I tried to answer my own question and found these slides from the Forest Service that include contributions from two community engagement workers. Here are some samples:
The white male cares about social justice, but is hogging this position that pays 2-3X private sector wages and thereby preventing a Black trans female from enjoying it? Only a white male can understand “Recreation Equity”, apparently:
Taxpayers keep funding DEI and yet don’t get any diversity, equity, or inclusion. The folks who get paid to achieve DEI aren’t discouraged by their long track record of (paid) failure:
Whiteness is to blame, it seems, but the white people won’t give up their unearned jobs and fat government salaries:
Critical Race Theory is not being funded or applied by the government, except in the minds of paranoid MAGA:
Wokipedia says that the Gulf of Mexico/America was referred to at some point by at least some people as the Golfo de Florida. Here’s the cited source with, in turn, some of its citations:
Here’s the section that seems to be the basis for Wikipedia’s “other explorers”:
This seems like a good bachelor’s thesis topic a history major! Separately, if the Gulf of Mexico v. Gulf of America dispute can’t be settled amicably, my vote is for Golfo de Florida!
Our mole inside Queers-for-Palestine Brown University signed up for Linear Algebra and was sentenced to read “Mathematical Microaggressions” by a past president of the Mathematical Association of America, Francis Edward Su. He/she/ze/they starts off by relating his/her/zir/their own personal trauma:
Here are some example microaggressions in the math world:
Turning tricks is somehow bad:
Math will be improved with more diversity:
Here’s the organization’s current “Executive Director” (“president” wasn’t a sufficiently august title?):
They’re so certain that diversity improves mathematics that they hired one of the world’s whitest white guys to be their leader?
On March 16, 2021 a man killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent, and injured one man in a shooting spree in Atlanta, Georgia. This violence has renewed broader calls to support our Asian and Asian American communities. The specifics of this tragic incident remind us that there are multiple layers of identity-based marginalization and hate related to gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality. One solidarity movement with the victims of the hate crime is #StopAsianHate. This is not a response to last Tuesday’s events, but to a broader arc of increased hate crime since the COVID-19 pandemic started.
In 2019, MAA launched the Inclusivity Award in recognition of the importance of its core value of Inclusivity and building a healthy, vibrant mathematical community where all are welcome and encouraged to flourish. The 2021 award winner is William (Bill) Hawkins, Jr.
UnderDr. Hawkins’s leadership, the SUMMA Office created an archival record of American PhDs in mathematics and mathematics education who are members of minority groups, initiated the Minority Chairs Breakfast annually, established the Tensor-SUMMA projects “to encourage the pursuit and enjoyment of mathematics by students who are members of groups historically underrepresented in the field of mathematics,” organized panels at JMM on issues that affected minority institutions or populations, published a poster on African and African-American Pioneers in Mathematics, and provided guidance to those who wanted to establish an intervention project.
“I am delighted to be able to recognize my friend and colleague, Bill Hawkins, with the 2021 Inclusivity Award,” said MAA Executive Director, Michael Pearson. “It has been my privilege to work with, and learn from, Bill during my tenure at MAA.”
Circling back to Clouseau, let’s hope that he can learn some linear algebra from YouTube while the Brown faculty teaches him about microaggressions (a $91,676/year experience for 2024-5).
My mother died on January 6, 2025 (obit). She’s still eligible to vote in New Jersey and some other states, I think, so it makes sense that a new Proud Democrat card arrived in the mail this month:
I can’t figure out why the righteous are limited to 3 outrage choices in each category. If my mom had lived to pick
Attacking the fundamental rights of LGBTQ+ Americans
Gutting abortion access
Enacting mass deportations
she would be precluded from picking “Severely limiting voting access” (e.g., to those who are alive).
A longer letter was attached. Your kindergarten education will serve you well because 100 percent of those who participate can be a “leader”:
Every Democrat — each and every one of us — will be a leader in the fight to stop the Trump administration’s dangerous agenda.
Could this be a reference to the War of Northern Aggression (“Civil War”)?
But we, the Democratic Party, have fought through major inflection points in history before.
The overall package seems inconsistent. America is going down the “path of darkness, chaos, and hate”. At the same time, there is a concern about “mass deportations”. Why wouldn’t a noble undocumented migrant be far better off after being deported? He/she/ze/they would get a U.S. taxpayer-funded flight far away from the darkness, chaos, and hate.
The Villages is very likely the world’s most active “active retirement” community in the world. A friend retired in his 50s (the magic of a U.S. military pension supplemented by work for and retirement package from a U.S. military contractor) to The Villages and showed me around recently. He says that it is home to about 150,000 people and that a percentage of units can be sold to those under 55 so long as they don’t bring under-19 kids with them who need to be educated in local schools. (In addition, the same enterprise is building an adjacent family-oriented community that is intended to house workers.) The Villages are northwest of Orlando (the mouse elite) and southeast of Ocala (the horse elite). It’s just over a one-hour drive to MCO or Disney World.
If you’re a student of New Urbanism you’ll find The Villages to be a twist on the concept. My friend lives in an almost-new house in an almost-new neighborhood. There are no sidewalks. The front of the house is dominated by a 2-car garage door. In these senses, it is the opposite of our New Urbanism neighborhood of Abacoa, despite the density being similar. All of the Abacoa neighborhoods have sidewalks and nearly all emphasize “meeting the street” with something other than a garage door (every house has a garage, of course, but they’re hidden behind the houses and accessed via alleys).
Realistically, though, how far is an American going to walk? Especially an American who is at least 55 years old? A $200/month HOA fee (“amenities fee”) gives every resident of The Villages access to recreation centers, neighborhood pools, “sports pools” (25-50 meters), golf courses (70, though some of them are “championship” courses that require an extra fee), pickleball, tennis, etc., etc. These are spread out over at least 32 square miles. Bicycling is fairly popular among residents and it is possible to drive a regular car to all of the points within the development, but golf carts seem to be the overwhelmingly popular means of transportation to any destination within The Villages. The local dealer (owned by the founding family) says “the average resident will drive 3,500 – 5,000 miles in their golf car per year” (a married couple will have two golf carts, so this is a per-person number). My friend says that it would be perfectly reasonable to go more than 50 miles in a single day within The Villages (he and his wife therefore bought gas-powered carts because the EVs didn’t have sufficient range at the time).
The Villages is designed with separated golf cart roads and car roads. Some of the latest communities have additional dedicated biking/walking paths. I am not aware of any place else in the world with a similarly extensive network of golf cart roads. (A fair number of people cruise around gated communities in golf carts, but they’re using roads designed for and shared with cars.) I’m not sure why, but the golf cart roads seem to move more people per square foot of pavement. Maybe because the vehicle size is a better match to the human driver/passenger size? Maybe because the golf cart roads have tunnels under and bridges over busy car roads so there isn’t time wasted at 4-way intersections?
A lot of places in the U.S. where new communities are being built have similar golf cart-friendly weather to The Villages. I’m wondering if golf cart roads should be built as part of standard urban planning even when there isn’t one giant HOA. If nothing else, Greta Thunberg should be happy. If people can get safely to the supermarket in a lightweight vehicle (about 700 lbs. for a lithium-ion machine) that’s a lot less impact on our beloved planet than if they run daily errands in a typical 4,000+ lb. highway-speed car. (Our kids go to a school that is 1.3 miles away. The supermarkets are 0.7 to 1.2 miles away. Home Depot is 1.7 miles away. All of these trips could be done almost as fast in a golf cart as in our Honda Odyssey and the weather would be reasonable for golf cart travel at least 90 percent of the time (people in The Villages have fabric on the sides that they can pull down if it is raining or chilly).)
If golf cart roads could become a standard part of the municipal vocabulary along with bike paths, sidewalks, and car roads, we could have Golf Cart Urbanism as a national movement!
What does a golf cart cost? During the Obama administration, the answer was “nothing”. Working class chumps were tapped to give rich people $5,500 for each electric “vehicle” where a golf cart could qualify if it had sufficient lights, etc. to be street legal (Cato):
The federal credit provides from $4,200 to $5,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle, and when it is combined with similar incentive plans in many states the tax credits can pay for nearly the entire cost of a golf cart. Even in states that don’t have their own tax rebate plans, the federal credit is generous enough to pay for half or even two-thirds of the average sticker price of a cart, which is typically in the range of $8,000 to $10,000. “The purchase of some models could be absolutely free,” Roger Gaddis of Ada Electric Cars in Oklahoma said earlier this year. “Is that about the coolest thing you’ve ever heard?” … “The Golf Cart Man” in the Villages of Lady Lake, Florida is running a banner online ad that declares: “GET A FREE GOLF CART. Or make $2,000 doing absolutely nothing!”
(Some people made huge $$ by buying fleets of golf carts, harvesting the tax credits, and then leasing the carts to golf courses.)
Back in 2020 my friend paid $19,000 for each of his Yamaha golf carts, which struck me as basic (just two seats, for example). He said that the long-range electric carts today were selling for about $21,000. For a household with two adults, therefore the total cost of transportation equipment is about the same as in a place where cars are king because the household needs two carts, each of which is half the cost of car, and a car.
Maybe this could rejuvenate the EV industry, which seems to be dead except for Tesla. Instead of making huge cars and trucks that, apparently, few people want, the car companies could make street-legal golf cart-width EVs. Put in AWD and climate control, for example. Shouldn’t Ford and Honda be able to make better golf cart-width EVs than the small companies currently making them?
My visit was brief and I spent so much time in my friend’s golf cart that I couldn’t take a lot of photos. This video, though, shows some travel around via dedicated cart roads within The Villages:
Loosely related, an all-Islamic city being built just north of Dallas:
One of the casualties of our move to Florida was a knob that locks down the quick-release plate on my old Arca-Swiss B1 ball head ($350 in pre-Biden dollars! Adjusted for inflation back to 1995, that’s equivalent to 740 Bidies today).
To my delight, I learned that Arca Swiss still exists and a lot of the good old film stuff can still be repaired by Precision Camera Works, the legendary Chicago-based shop that moved to the Austin, Texas area during coronapanic (2021). They can fix the Fuji G617, which might be my favorite film camera (a 4-shot point and shoot on 120 film. Here’s the full set of stuff PCW works on, mostly names that will bring tears to the eyes of older photographers:
One worrisome page on the site advertises an apprenticeship. I wonder if the shop is really just the one guy, Bob Watkins, who has been doing this since 1976. It is tough to imagine a young American with a sufficiently high IQ to do the work who’d be interested in doing this kind of work. Our nation’s average IQ is falling (probably also conscientiousness, which is heritable) and smarter Americans aren’t usually interested in working with their hands.
So if you have a beloved old film camera don’t delay on sending it in for an overhaul (“CLA” for “clean, lubricate, and adjust”).
What if you want to go in the opposite direction entirely? You’d think that a good full-height tripod that holds a phone and can’t hold a traditional camera would exist, but I haven’t found one. As a consumer, you’re supposed to cobble together and tighten down the following items:
legset
ball head
phone clamp
A Hong Kong company called Ulanzi seems to be the solution. The winning combo seems to be their ST-27 phone clamp, which has an Arca Swiss base, and their U-80L ball head, which is rated to a ridiculous 22 lbs. Just over 50 Bidies right now. What about the legset? Maybe the Slik CF-634 4-section carbon fiber tripod is ideal because it extends almost to eye level (factoring in the ball head) and folds down to 19 inches, which means it will have a chance of fitting in a roll-aboard suitcase. This is a straight copy of the Gitzo, I think, at less than half the price. (Gitzo has a rich French heritage, but they were acquired by the same company that owns Manfrotto and now the tripods are made either in Italy or China. Slik started in Japan, but maybe everything is now made in Thailand while still designed in Japan?)
Note that the replacement for the ball head that kicked off this thread seems to be the Z1+, which is only $422 and can purportedly hold 60 kg! Maybe the good old days weren’t so great…
Arca Swiss still makes 8×10 film view cameras! Imagine someone from Gen Z having the patience to deal with 8×10 sheet film!
