Wrapping up the report on my August 2026 trip to New York City, here are some photos from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I went on Friday evening, which I think is the minimum crowd time.
Walking in at 6 pm…
There’s a great Della Robbia exhibit through January 2027. If only the Optimus robots would be ready to recreate these for our house!
Regardless of your “gender expression”, you can pop into the “Women’s Restroom” and ponder how long it will be before Andrea Della Robbia is celebrated as a pioneering trailblazing female artist:
Public behavior has deteriorated in NYC to the point that the Met had the Gubbio Studiolo entirely closed off. This confined space of beautiful inlay work was previously simply open, then they put a guard next to it (10 years ago?). When I visited it was sealed off from the poorly-behaved masses who might damage the fragile work.
You don’t have to go to the costume area to see a wide variety of outfits. In the image below, a halal example of female modesty and a haram display of flesh (at the time that I took the photo, I didn’t notice the sword position).
If Elon would deliver on his robot promises, maybe we could keep our clothing in this armoire instead of in IKEA furniture:
The musical instruments section has been remodeled (and expanded?):
Second harpsichord from 1670 Italy. The harp was made 300 years later in West Africa. Note that Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown collected at least 3,600 musical instruments. If that isn’t a sign of mental illness, what would be?
Circling back to the core collection of the Met, is there any reason for Europeans to resist low-skill immigration? No. Visitors are informed that “Europe” has no real meaning, either geographically or culturally. A Muslim Indian immigrant to Europe is just as European as someone who can trace his lineage back to Charlemagne.
An immigrant from Nanjing could also be considered “European”, of course, but the museum has hatefully segregated these artworks from Nanjing (an amazing special exhibition in which 400-year-old works on paper look as though they were made yesterday):
How empty does the Met get at night? Almost quiet enough to appreciate the art! That said, if you want to see the entire museum you’ll need to arrive closer to 4 pm in order to finish by the 9 pm close.
Housing is a human right, but the New Yorkers I observed in August were as indifferent to their unhoused neighbors (and any associated pit bulls) as they were to the enormous piles of garbage on the sidewalks every night. Examples:
What would New Yorkers rather do than fund apartments for those currently homeless? Spend $6.50 on a cup of coffee rather than suffer the indignity of having to operate a Mr. Coffee machine (pick one up for $18 while getting a Halloween costume at Target and then make coffee for 25 cents per cup?).
Immigrants, on the other hand, are entitled to both sympathy (“Fuck ICE”) and tax dollars (city-funded immigration lawyers plus city-funded advertising to make sure that the undocumented use the city-funded immigration lawyers):
(Lululemon proclaims their commitment to the 2SLGBTQQIA+ with a sticker and a statement about how they don’t tolerate “hate”. At the same time, they operate stores in Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Grok:
These countries generally criminalize male same-sex sexual activity (female activity is less consistently or explicitly addressed in some codes).
Saudi Arabia: Illegal under Sharia law (no fully codified secular penal code for this). Penalties can include imprisonment, flogging, fines, deportation (for foreigners), and the death penalty in some interpretations/cases (especially for Muslims or aggravated/repeated offenses). Courts apply traditional Islamic jurisprudence.
United Arab Emirates: Illegal under federal law (and stricter local codes in some emirates). Same-sex acts and extramarital sex are criminalized. Penalties include imprisonment (federal minimum of roughly 6 months in recent framing; local codes historically up to 10 years in Dubai or 14 in Abu Dhabi). Death penalty is theoretically possible…
Kuwait: Illegal for men. Consensual intercourse between adult men is punishable by up to 7 years’ imprisonment under the Penal Code.
Qatar: Illegal. Penalties include imprisonment (commonly cited up to several years). Death penalty remains a theoretical possibility under Sharia for Muslims in some interpretations of related offenses, though documented application specifically for private consensual same-sex acts is limited.
In short, Lululemon maintains a commercial presence (and has expanded it) in countries where the activity referenced in the original NYC store messaging is illegal and can carry severe penalties, while displaying progressive inclusion messaging and a progress pride flag in markets such as New York.
What if you need to buy some sacred Rainbow Flag items? The good news is that there is at least one store. The bad news is that it has apparently been vandalized in hate-filled NYC (where “hate has no home”, except for all of the haters who commit hate crimes at 7X the per-capita rate vs. Palm Beach County):
What can be purchased there?
In other retail news, CVS keeps everything locked up and inflation has been running at 50 percent lately:
The twin pillars of Queers for Palestine remain robust in NYC. I visited a friend who is supporting the #resistance by mail-ordering olive oil purportedly farmed by an Arab who calls herself “Palestinian” in a village NW of Jerusalem. (Why “purportedly”? At least the Italian extra virgin olive oil is mostly fraudulently relabeled Tunisian (New Yorker 2007).)
The Zaatar Arabic Restaurant, nestled in the heart of Gaza, embodies the essence of Palestinian cuisine, offering a delightful fusion of traditional flavors and contemporary twists. It serves as a testament to the innovation and creativity of Palestinian chefs who seek to preserve the authenticity of their culinary heritage while adding a modern touch.
So, the next time you find yourself in Palestine, make sure to venture into the bustling Gaza Market or explore the markets of Ramallah, Bethlehem, and beyond. Immerse yourself in the sights, smells, and tastes of Palestinian cuisine and experience firsthand the remarkable connection between the markets and the extraordinary flavors that grace the tables of Palestinian households and restaurants alike.
What does resistance taste like? Terrible, in my opinion! If I wanted to support the Arabs who call themselves Palestinian, I would instead buy Arbequina olive oil at a fraction of the price from Hamas’s allies in the Islamic Republic of Spain.
I’m not sure that New Yorkers will have the energy, in the long run, to promote Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Party of Allah (“Hezbollah”), et al. They might have to turn their attention to the conflict between what’s culturally acceptable for their recent arrivals and the legacy population. Haram and halal outfits for women on Houston St.:
Maybe the adult who is modestly covered can tolerate the half-naked female parading down the street, but once Muslims are the most powerful voting bloc in NYC will they want their children exposed to this? That sundress made sense in the 85-degree heat, but it would certainly not be allowed anywhere near the above-mentioned olive farm nor in Gaza!
A report on an August trip to New York City. My favorite sign was one in the subway, officially reminding customers that it is white women who are typically the most poorly behaved group of humans. Why won’t these Speakerphone Americans use headphones?
Also new, I think, are the land acknowledgements near Central Park regarding Seneca Village, a settlement of “approximately 225 people” who were Black. Examples from the Public Theater and from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
This is kind of confusing. We must acknowledge Native Americans, who were dispossessed usually without any compensation, and condemn the dispossessors (white people). In the case of some of the land that is now Central Park, apparently there were dispossessors who happened to be Black. Unlike white dispossessors, the Black dispossessors are virtuous and must be acknowledged. (According to Wikipedia, the Black property owners of Seneca Village were paid market value for their land because it was acquired by eminent domain.)
Who else must be acknowledged? Those behind the “Latinx Freedom Movement” in the 1960s (they were Latinx ahead of their time and the term “Latinx”?). The billionaires who created today’s Hudson Yards remind us that capitalism is the root cause of inequality (humans were equal prior to the advent of this evil system, which, unfortunately is still practiced in Palm Beach County where one of the above-mentioned billionaires fled).
More of the exhibit, which reminds us that the reason we have immigrants is not due to an open border+cradle-to-grave welfare state, but rather because of U.S. military intervention in Guatemala, Cuba, an dthe Dominican Republic. (Our military interventions in India also explain the large number of Indians now living in the U.S.?)
Speaking of Hudson Yards, “The Vessel in NYC’s Hudson Yards reopens with safety netting 3 years after spate of suicides.” (CNN, 2024; the Chinese can build thousands of miles of high-speed rail or several new NYC-sized cities in 3 years, but Americans need 3 years to install some ugly nets?)
Don’t forget to mask when outdoors on the adjacent High Line:
It is safe to unmask when inhaling healing marijuana, however, which is available on nearly every block. LA Olympics ambassador Snoop Dogg has his own brand of weed, apparently, and smoking cannabis all day is “safe and legal”:
I’m too stoned now (just from looking at the above images) to continue writing, so I’ll post a follow-up with the rest of the photos…
The Whitney Museum’s Biennial is still on display, sort of. It “offers a space for contemplating the shifting currents of art in the United States, asking not only what is being made but also what it means to name something “American” at all.”
The approach to the museum exhorts us to “Free Palestine” while eating Halal food:
Once inside, there is some awesome non-political art:
Sign for the above:
New Yorkers who don’t get enough of the “river to the sea liberation” message from their mayor and the assorted public gatherings can sit for 32 minutes and contemplate the displacement of Arabs who call themselves “Palestinian” (I didn’t stay for the whole 32 minutes, but I have a feeling that the Arab rejection of the United Nations partition of the British territory and subsequent Arab declaration of war on the Jews wasn’t mentioned as a possible explanation for displacement; we are reminded that the Arabs who invaded the Levant during the Muslim Conquests are “indigenous”):
I’m not sure that the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) would approve of the restroom signage:
If the restroom sign is haram, the mask compliance of visitors was halal:
The staff also wore masks:
Returning to the question of signage, what if an Ivy League graduate artist went around NYC removing (“stealing”, haters might say) signs that had been fabricated and mounted, at tremendous union labor expense, by office building owners? (Could the Whitney be prosecuted for receiving stolen property?) David L. Johnson says that the signs are overly restrictive, e.g., “no defecating”, but what if someone tried to do that in his living room or studio?
The smartest artist was able to get into the exhibition by applying a square of black tape to the wall:
Another way to get into the exhibit was to put a bunny suit on a doll:
If you had always been curious about “parallels between the discrimination of Okinawans and Black Americans”…
Who can infer the gas price? Is it less than $1 per gallon in this 1986 photo?
Speaking of combusting gasoline into CO2, the exhibit allows us to learn about “environmental collapse”:
(If the artist doesn’t want to be in a filthy degraded environment why does she choose to live in Philadelphia?)
If you’re behind on your rereading of Malcolm X:
And then it was time for coffee… 2SLGBTQQIA+ welcome, but no Canine-Americans:
A friend in Wall Street, but not quite on Wall Street told me about a potential way around Ayatollah Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax. The typical rich douche who is rich enough to have a NYC place as his or her 3rd home is also rich enough to have reproduced successfully (unlike the American working class; see below for how they’re being bred out of existence). If the douche owner has a child in college or grad/professional school, the child can declare the fancy apartment as his/her/zir/their primary residence so long as he/she/ze/they comes “home” during breaks. At that point, no tax is owed because an immediate family member is living in the place. The law says “For purposes of this article, the phrase “immediate family member” means a spouse, child, sibling, parent, grandparent, or grandchild.”
Separately, a recent photo from Manhattan that includes a mixture of haram and halal outfits for females:
(ChatGPT says that American Muslims wouldn’t vote to outlaw these shameless un-Islamic displays of female flesh because “The evidence from actual Muslim political organizations in the U.S. points much more toward protecting Muslims’ own religious practices than toward imposing Islamic dress rules on everyone else” and then admits “What American Muslim organizations advocate while Muslims are a small minority tells us something about their current priorities, but it does not reliably tell us what the same constituency would advocate if it controlled legislatures. … I would expect some political pressure around the margins. It might take forms such as stricter school dress codes, sex-segregated recreation, modest uniforms, objections to sexually explicit advertising, accommodation of gender segregation, or pressure on municipal facilities.” ChatGPT cited a Pew survey in which a majority of Muslim women said that they themselves wear hijab in public.)
Incidentally, the sourdough bagels (Apollo Bagels) for which people were waiting in line (30+ minutes) didn’t seem as good as what we get in the local strip mall from Bagel Boyz. I’m sure that they were made perfectly, but not sure that sourdough is the answer for bagels. Measured by traditional criteria, a Dunkin bagel might actually be better than the best sourdough bagel! (Did I wait in line behind the haram blonde? No! This was place was right next to my hotel so I popped in at 2 pm when there was no line.)
Via a forthcoming paper w/ @CSchmert. Here are differences in TFR across race-income groups. The expected 'u-shape' of TFR by income is clear regardless of race. Birth certs don't record HH income, but we show you how to estimate TFR using pop pyramids in the paper! Pretty cool! pic.twitter.com/UZsesZqzBG
Not so great, however, was the lack of public desks at which to work. DJT has at least 100 workstations at which one can sit at a laptop with reasonable ergonomics, plus the laptop into 110V, etc. LGA has chairs with power outlets for aimless scrolling on one’s phone and loungers for even more laziness, but nothing for work other than perhaps in the Delta Sky Club, which is so elite that they don’t sell day passes.
Readers wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t supply photos for a PhD in Masketology. Here are examples of (a) chin diaper, (b) under-nose mask, and (c) surgical mask worn correctly (but still useless due to not being an N95?):
If people feel unsafe after entering a place where 100 percent of the humans have been screened by TSA, Starbucks is a Safe Place:
A full range of Pride gear was for sale (August 22, so still roughly a month before National HIV/AIDS & Aging Awareness Day and Bisexual+ Awareness Week and after Southern HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and Gay Uncles Day (full calendar)). Are these for people who are arriving in NYC and realize that they forgot to pack Pride gear? Or for people who didn’t realize that they were 2SLGBTQQIA+ until they visited NYC for a weekend and need to buy Pride gear before returning home?
Here’s one approach to female modesty that is common in NYC, the niqab:
By contrast, here’s an image that could be considered haram due to the amount of female bare skin on display:
NYC is likely already a predominantly Islamic city as measured by hours spent in religious observance. How long before the people whose idea of proper dress is Image #1, above, vote to forbid the female outfits in Image #2? Maybe an adult in a niqab can tolerate this shameless display of flesh, but would she want her children to be exposed to this kind of lifestyle?
Let me close by pointing out a triumph of operations research. There are two UP escalators (from the gates) and one DOWN (to the gates), presumably because someone figured out that people are more likely to arrive in a big group (plane pulls in) than they are to depart in a big group.
Animal hoarding is an accumulation of animals that has overwhelmed a person’s ability to provide minimum standards of care. … Rescue hoarders believe they’re the only people that can adequately care for their animals.
New Yor City is the perfect example of the above 2025 post. There is an affordability crisis for housing, necessitating government control of prices for 80 percent of rental units. Food is also unaffordable, which is why the city government has to set up its own government-run grocery stores. At the same time, there shouldn’t be any limits on how many humans can cross the U.S. border, with or without documents, and then come to live in NYC where they are guaranteed taxpayer-funded shelter.
A separate $750,000 will be allocated to launch a first-of-its-kind pilot pet-food pantry, the council’s animal welfare caucus said in a social media post last week.
Frontiers of biology: free/extra food decreases the population of a species.
“These investments will help reduce animal overpopulation, ease pressure on the shelter system, and ensure that New Yorkers are not forced to choose between basic needs and feeding their pets,” the group wrote.
New Yorkers pride themselves on being smarter than other Americans. Now that NYC is out of electricity (Ayatollah Mamdani has instructed his subjects to set their thermostats to 78), folks are reminded that NY’s best and brightest affirmatively decided to shut down Indian Point, the nuclear power plant that was generating 25 percent of NYC’s usage. More interestingly, it was shut down in 2021, a year before the current mad scramble for electricity was ushered in with the launch of ChatGPT (2022). MIT says that data centers will consume 9 percent of U.S. electricity by 2030.
How’s that shutdown decision for perfect timing? (See also, importing tens of millions of low-skill migrants from the world’s most dysfunctional and disorganized societies just in time for the Age of Robots.) Wikipedia credits Florida Realtor of the Year 2020/2021 and hearthrob for progressive females Andrew Cuomo with a central role in the execution of Indian Point.
Separately, we don’t share an electricity rate (ours is less than half the NYC price), an income tax rate (0% vs. 15%), an estate tax rate (0% vs. 16%), a 100-degree temp (86 high for yesterday in West Palm Beach), or a power shortage (the last FPL capacity issue was 37 years ago), but we are doing everything that we can to help New Yorkers. This morning, for example, I handed out these posters at Publix. #FloridaStandsWithNewYork
The “Nakba” could equally be remembered as the anniversary of the united Arab professional militaries invading the new UN-created State of Israel with the stated intention of driving all of the civilian Jews into the sea. Arabs living in the area allocated to the Jews were urged by their invading brothers to get out of the way so that the Jews could be defeated without collateral harm to Muslims. Those Arabs who moved eventually began to identify as “Palestinians”. Those who stayed became Arab citizens of Israel (about 2.1 million people today, including their descendants). From an anti-Jewish point of view, of course, the Nakba refers to a forced displacement similar to what ethnic Germans suffered in Central Europe after World War 11 or what Hindus and Pakistanis suffered when India was partitioned. From a purely historical perspective, the term was was used August 1948 by Syrian Constantin Zureiq in his book Ma’na al-Nakba (The Meaning of the Disaster). The “Nakba” was the Arabs’ failure to win the war that they’d started, an incredible display of incompetence given that civilians aren’t supposed to be a match for even one nation’s regular military, much less five (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon; Saudi Arabia and Yemen also sent troops) and that Arabs outnumbered Jews in the region by at least 150:1 (today that’s closer to 70;1).
Who’s funding Ayatollah Mamdani to promote the anti-Jewish side of the events of 1948? Thousands of high-income Jews! They could leave center-of-Jew-hate New York City and move to Palm Beach County, Florida, the world’s largest investor in Israel bonds. It’s a 2.5-hour JetBlue flight or an easy Tesla self-drive down I-95, but they won’t do it.
If high-income Jews moved out of NYC, they’d quickly be replaced by migrants, of course, just as any American can and will be easily replaced, but the tax base might shrink to the point that Mayor Mamdani would have to focus on administering local government rather than on highlighting Israel’s misdeeds.
in demographic terms, the US Muslim population is expanding exponentially, due almost entirely to recent immigration and higher birth rates than the American norm (e.g., 2.5–8 versus 1.6–1.7).
There are now nearly five million Muslim Americans. These numbers are anticipated by 2030 to surpass the Jewish American population.
An entire generation of young American elites has been groomed in universities to despise Israel and, by extension, to express hostility toward Jews. After October 7, the scab was torn away, revealing what had festered underneath for years.
The DEI binary fuels both anti-Israel and anti-Jewish animus. In this Marxist moral schema, the world abroad—and within the United States—is divided into “white oppressors” and “nonwhite victims,” despite the fact that people commonly classified as white comprise only a small minority of the global population.
Thus, Jews in America found themselves classified among the whitest and most privileged of the oppressor class, perhaps by virtue of their material success, while Israel abroad was deemed a white colonialist settler state because it repeatedly defeated neighboring enemies.
For figures like Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, or Chuck Schumer to forcefully challenge hatred of Israel—and, by extension, of the Jews—would now be treated as political heresy, a career-ending death wish. Defending Israel and calling out antisemitism became as unfashionable in progressive circles as praising secure borders, deportations, or fossil fuels and pipelines
what is left in the pathway of demonizing Israel and blaming Jews, here and abroad, is the supposed bigot Donald Trump and his “irredeemable,” “deplorable” MAGA movement—for now, the last dam holding back the rising flood.
The above might not be 100% correct/complete, but it is certainly bizarre that Jewish Americans support Democrats with both votes and tax dollars.
The Righteous of New York City love to talk about how they’re protecting our precious planet. Here’s their police department proudly displaying a video of perfectly functional mopeds being crushed rather than being sold and/or exported to a lower-income country:
The NYPD is crushing it when it comes to taking illegal mopeds and scooters off our streets.
So far this year, the NYPD has seized over 5,700 of these dangerous, illegal vehicles — and we are not letting up. pic.twitter.com/AJNnBCGsyq
Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled a whopping $124.7 billion executive budget for New York City on Tuesday – built on the back of $4 billion in funny money from Gov. Kathy Hochul.
The governor’s bailout – announced hours before the city budget’s reveal – was quickly criticized as a fiction used to help out her reluctant ally Mamdani as she faces re-election and pressure to appease the lefty mayor’s comrades.
If inequality haters in NYC actually do hate inequality, they shouldn’t want to receive any money from the state. (Same deal with Harvard University, which says officially that inequality is bad and then takes federal money that could have been spent at University of Michigan instead (U. Mich. is a poorer university than Harvard and located in a poorer state than Maskachusetts).)
Finally, let’s reflect that Mamdanism (steal from the rich; give to everyone else) is going to end up working beautifully because the rich won’t move out of NY and stop paying for whatever Ayatollah Mamdani and his sidekick Gov. Hochul dream up. The rest of the U.S. can reasonably vote for Mamdanism on a federal level after watching what a success it has been in NYC due to these elite tax cattle staying in place and paying.
