Category: Journalism

New York Times on the fascist “paradise”

by philg

The New York Times regularly runs stories about Floridians suffering from “fascism”, “tyranny”, and “authoritarianism”, the most accurate descriptions of being governed by Ron DeSantis. What else is true about Florida, according to the newspaper of record? “36 hours: Florida Panhandle” (NYT, July 6, 2023):

The word “paradise” appears twice in the article as the most succinct characterization of the destination covered.

So… Florida is “fascist”, but also “paradise” for a tourist. Does this make sense? Did the NYT recommend attending the 1938 rally in Nuremberg, Germany (after Anschluss) because the city was a “paradise” of historical buildings, culture, and parks?

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Floridians brave Extreme Danger heat levels

by philg

Following up on Ireland in the European heat wave… the latest map from the New York Times shows that Palm Beach County is suffering from 125-degree heat:

If it gets even 1 degree hotter, we might be into the “Extreme Danger” zone:

Due to a toilet trip lever failure (everything in this 20-year-old house seems to have been designed to last for exactly 20 years), we cautiously ventured out to Home Depot in the local strip mall (Palm Beach Gardens; 4 miles from the ocean). We decided to eat lunch at one of the high-end restaurants there and found that these two people had chosen to flirt with Danger at an outdoor table rather than enjoy the comfortable indoor air-conditioned environment where they’d received their food. Not shown: the person on the right (pronouns unknown) was wearing massive fuzzy bunny slippers, ordinarily marketed for use in frigid New England winters.

After stopping into PetSmart, we passed by a table-service restaurant in which a Floridian is wearing long pants and a sweater in what the New York Times says might be 125-degree heat:

Here’s what the Google says about afternoon temps in the heat dome over the strip mall:

Fortunately, I hope to be escaping to comfortable 93-degree weather in Oshkosh, Wisconsin for next week’s EAA AirVenture:

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New York Times on protecting the immunocompromised by wearing a mask

by philg

“Should You Still Wear a Mask?” (NYT, April 2022):

Experts weigh in on where, and when, you can safely take one off.

If you have compromised immunity, for example, or live with someone who does, it’s a good idea to continue wearing a mask

“A Positive Covid Milestone” (NYT, today):

“Even for most — not all but most — immunocompromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” [Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser] said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immunocompromised that vaccines don’t work.”

Most immunocompromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers.

Where did the “bad information” that Dr. Jha mentioned come from? Separately, the NYT seems to have discovered that a virus cannot kill the same human twice:

The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal.

The good news is that the mask religion lasts longer than mask Science. Two photos from last week in Ireland (signage that was ignored) and a young slender apparently healthy person wearing a mask outdoors… in front of the Science museum in Salt Lake City (June 2023):

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How are folks in New Orleans doing in the 115-degree heat?

by philg

Email from the New York Times:

The Morning: 115 degrees Fahrenheit

Today, New Orleans will reach 113 degrees in the heat index. Houston will reach 111. Mobile, Ala., and Jackson, Miss., will also surpass 110. And those are only a few of the places that will experience dangerous heat this week.

In New Orleans, the heat index will hit 111 degrees today, climb to 115 by Thursday and remain above 110 for the week.

From the Google:

Whether the high temp this week will be 98 or 115, I hope that our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in New Orleans can find a way to stay comfortable.

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Is inflation “abnormally high” given our epic budget deficits?

by philg

Pravda says “The U.S. is now two years into abnormally high inflation“:

But wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that we have roughly the inflation that we should expect given the level of deficit spending that we voted for? To prevent runaway inflation, the EU established a deficit limit of 3% of GDP for member countries and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 60%. The US deficit has been 5-15% since 2020 and was higher than 3% before that:

U.S. debt-to-GDP is 115 percent, according to the World Bank (compare to 45ish percent in Germany and Korea and 92 percent in over-the-EU-limit France, the only country with a larger welfare state than the U.S. has).

What’s the news from the New York Times?

U.S. inflation today is drastically different from the price increases that first appeared in 2021, driven by stubborn price increases for services like airfare and child care instead of by the cost of goods.

We can buy as many DVD players as we want, in other words. It is only services that are going to be unaffordable to the non-elite. What percent of the economy is subject to a wage-price spiral, then? 77.6 percent.

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Should Fox News hire Casey DeSantis to replace Tucker Carlson?

by philg

As my only exposure to this channel is when walking through FBOs, I’m not an expert on Fox News or the recently departed Tucker Carlson. However, I’m wondering if Fox would be smart to try to replace him with Casey DeSantis, who has experience as a TV newscaster. Here is the kinder/gentler DeSantis in 2021 (source):

Readers who do watch Fox News: will you miss Tucker Carlson and whom should Fox hire as a replacement?

Also, what does Tucker Carlson do for a second act? Wikipedia says that he is 53, so he won’t be ready to run for U.S. president until at least 2045. Could Mr. Carlson succeed in a run for Congress in a district where Fox News viewership is high? Presumably he can never achieve a comparable level of fame/following as what he had on Fox, so why bother trying to reboot as a TV personality?

Also, readers who watch CNN (again, not me, except when passing through some commercial airports): will you miss Don Lemon? The BBC says that he hatefully suggested that men were better at soccer than women, contrary to ChatGPT’s findings. He also dissed my favorite Republican candidate, Nikki Haley, for being “not in her prime” at 51 years old (“prime” for a Democrat is 86, the age that Joe Biden will be when he passes the baton to President Harris in January 2029).

Related:

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New York Times coverage of Donald Trump indictment

by philg

The New York Times informs us that humanity faces an “existential crisis” and/or “existential threat” due to climate change (2014 example regarding a New York politician). We also face an “existential threat” from coronavirus (NYT Editorial Board, May 24, 2020). Finally, there is the imminent threat of nuclear war (NYT, Oct. 5, 2022).

With humans potentially going extinct from climate change or COVID-19 and/or being killed millions at a time via nuclear weapons, what is today’s most important news? “porn star” occurs twice in the follow screen shot and “hush money” once. From the front page text, in other words, we learn that a sex worker allegedly got paid for having sex and then not talking about it.

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Judaism and modern gender science

by philg

“Ancient Judaism Recognized a Range of Genders. It’s Time We Did, Too.” (New York Times, March 18, 2023):

I’m transgender and nonbinary, and as a rabbi I’ve offered bereavement spiritual care for the past 17 years.

There are four genders beyond male or female that appear in ancient Jewish holy texts hundreds of times.

We were always hiding in plain sight, but recently the research of Jewish studies scholars like Max Strassfeld has demonstrated how nonbinary gender is central to understanding Jewish law and literature as a whole.

I have never forgotten this insight [that Judaism is the same as Rainbow Flagism]. Trans people, and especially trans young people, make human uniqueness more visible for everyone. … Trans liberation is a gift to everyone, because it expands the categories for what it means to be human.

The growing wave of anti-trans bills in the United States represents not just a trans crisis, but a humanitarian crisis. History has shown countless times that when a government limits one group’s legal rights, it will eventually do the same to other groups.

I might be accused of having a “trans agenda.” I do. And it’s the same as my religious and my human agenda. I want trans kids, and all young people, to survive.

Because the Science is Settled and no reasonable person could disagree with the above interpretation of Jewish texts, the New York Times has disabled comments on this scholarly work. What would an unreasonable Jew say if he/she/ze/they were allowed to comment? I submitted the NYT article to a friend who has read the Talmud a few times. His response is below (not in quote style for clarity).

Sex-change operations involving the surgical removal of sexual organs are clearly forbidden on the basis of the explicit biblical prohibition, “And that which is mauled or crushed or torn or cut you shall not offer unto the Lord; nor should you do this in your land” (Lev. 22:24). Sterilization of women is also prohibited, as recorded in Even ha-Ezer 5:11.

Rabbi Meir Amsel (Ha-Ma’or, Kislev-Tevet 5733) notes that yet another prohibition is also applicable to sex-change procedures, a consideration which may extend as well to hormone treatment for purposes of sex-change. The commandment “A woman shall not wear that which pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment” (Deut. 22:5) is not limited to the wearing of apparel associated with the opposite sex but encompasses any action uniquely identified with the opposite sex, proscribing, for example, shaving of armpits or dyeing of hair by a male. A procedure designed to transform sexual characteristics violates the very essence of this prohibition.

For Besamim Rosh sexual identity, insofar as marriage is concerned, depends entirely upon the presence of genital organs. No mention is made of the presence or absence of secondary sexual characteristics and indeed it is not difficult to understand why they are deemed irrelevant. Hence, despite the comments of Rabbi Amsel, who asserts that secondary sexual characteristics play a role in sexual identification, there is no evidence that the transformation of secondary sexual characteristics affects sexual status in any way.

There is at least one early source which apparently declares that a male cannot acquire the status of a woman by means of surgery. Rabbi Abraham Hirsch (No’am 5733) cites the comments of Rabbenu Chananel, quoted by Ibn Ezra in his commentary on Leviticus 18:22. Rabbenu Chananel declares that intercourse between a normal male and a male in whom an artificial vagina has been fashioned by means of surgery constitutes sodomy. This would appear to be the case, according to Rabbenu Chananel, even if the male genitalia were removed.

[I find the last paragraph stunning. Wikipedia says that Chananel lived 1000 years ago. How did he anticipate that one day American surgeons would be banking $100,000+ per teenager for creating artificial body parts?]

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The victim who attended private school while dad worked at Goldman

by philg

“How Charlie Javice Got JPMorgan to Pay $175 Million for … What Exactly” (NYT, January 21) gives us a window into the thinking of America’s best journalists and also the folks who say that they can beat the S&P 500 with their investment acumen. NYT:

When JPMorgan Chase paid $175 million to acquire a college financial planning company called Frank in September 2021, it heralded the “unique opportunity for deeper engagement” with the five million students Frank worked with at more than 6,000 American institutions of higher education.

“To cash in, Javice decided to lie,” the suit said. “Including lying about Frank’s success, Frank’s size and the depth of Frank’s market penetration.” Ms. Javice, through her lawyer, has said the bank’s claims are untrue.

JPMorgan’s legal filing reads like pulp nonfiction, with jaw-dropping accusations. Among them: that Ms. Javice and Olivier Amar, Frank’s chief growth and acquisition officer, faked their customer list and hired a data science professor to help pull the wool over the eyes of the bank’s due-diligence team.

When Frank was born, in 2016, Ms. Javice was 24 years old, displayed great media savvy and claimed to have real-world experience with financial aid and the struggle to pay for college. “It’s grueling, it’s emotional,” she told The Daily Pennsylvanian, a student newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania, adding that her mother would frequently cry while talking to financial aid officers.

Ms. Javice’s personal story — and pledge to cut through the painful thicket of government forms, jargon and regulations surrounding the aid process — must have made compelling reading for angel investors and venture capitalists. Especially those who have little firsthand knowledge of how financial aid actually works.

Ms. Javice’s career helping others began, in her telling, on the border of Thailand and Myanmar. She spent time volunteering there one summer, between terms at her private high school in Westchester County, N.Y.

Ms. Javice has said she needed help herself while she was an undergraduate at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where she quickly drew notice by appearing on Fast Company’s 2011 list of the 100 most creative people in business.

There, she was on financial aid, and she found the forms confusing. So did her parents, according to an interview she gave to Diversity Woman magazine — including her father, Didier, who has worked on Wall Street for more than 35 years, with 11 years at Goldman Sachs and three at Merrill Lynch, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Ms. Javice appeared on the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 finance list. Then she made the Crain’s New York Business 40 Under 40 list. “Javice has done her homework,” the Crain’s article said.

In other words, the smartest people at Penn, in American business journalism, and on Wall Street accepted that someone who attended “private high school” while Dad worked at Goldman was a rags-to-riches heroine and a member of two victimhood classes: women and poor people.

(Separately, can the New York Times sue Diversity Woman magazine for trademark infringement?

Related:

  • Equity Funding fraud, in which Californians with a mainframe computer generated fictitious insurance policies (movie version stars suppressed-on-Twitter coronaheretic James Woods!); a good reminder that California was famous for fraud before it became famous for righteousness, lockdowns, school closures, mask orders, vaccine papers checks, and homeless encampments!
  • “Why Women-Owned Startups Are a Better Bet” (from the big Harvard MBA brains at Boston Consulting Group) says that all you need to do to outperform the S&P 500 is invest in female-founded companies such as Ms. Javice’s: “businesses founded by women ultimately deliver higher revenue—more than twice as much per dollar invested—than those founded by men”
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Climate change alarmists are alarmed that China’s population has leveled off at 1.4 billion

by philg

The New York Times likes to remind us that we’re facing a climate emergency and/or a climate crisis. Our beloved Spaceship Earth has been infested with too many humans, each of whom emits too much CO2. Last week, however, China released stats showing that the population has leveled off at 1.4 billion. The good old days:

Today, however, “China’s Population Falls, Heralding a Demographic Crisis” (NYT):

The world’s most populous country has reached a pivotal moment: China’s population has begun to shrink, after a steady, yearslong decline in its birthrate that experts say is irreversible.

Now, facing a population decline, coupled with a long-running rise in life expectancy, the country is being thrust into a demographic crisis that will have consequences not just for China and its economy but for the world.

The entire world is at risk due to China’s failure to push from 1.4 billion up toward 2.8 billion. Because the planet is in a crisis, “her body her choice” is no longer acceptable. Potentially pregnant people who refuse to do their share will be named and shamed:

“I can’t bear the responsibility for giving birth to a life,” said Luna Zhu, 28, who lives in Beijing with her husband. Both their parents would be willing to take care of grandchildren, and she works for a state-owned enterprise that offers a good maternity leave package. Still, Ms. Zhu is not interested in motherhood.

The news is not all bad. If you’re concerned about eliminating your credit card debt or the availability of a “final expense” insurance policy, phone calls from the subcontinent (with local caller ID) should continue to flood in:

Meanwhile, India’s total population is poised to exceed China’s later this year, according to a recent estimate from the United Nations.

Circling back to the first point… how can people who say that their first concern is a climate emergency also characterize a falling human population anywhere in the world as a “crisis”?

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