Category: Questions to Readers

Dear Readers: I’m headed to Austin and should be free on February 20. Would anyone like to meet up? Terry Black’s, perhaps? (see Austin and Lockhart, Texas: 10 barbecue restaurants in 72 hours) Email philg@mit.edu if interested.

Does anyone have a good idea for activities? I went to the city’s official events page and just one event is listed for February 20:

OUTsider is an Austin-based transmedia nonprofit that celebrates the bold originality and creative nonconformity of the LGBTQ+ communities through the presentation of provocative, overlooked and out-of-the-box film, dance, theater, performance art, music, writing and visual art. Through its annual festival and conference, OUTsider unites queer artists, audiences and scholars from around the globe to exchange ideas, ignite conversations, transcend boundaries and experience new pleasures through artistic discovery.

If Feb 20 doesn’t work, how about Feb 24 in Vegas? Please email philg@mit.edu!

Folks: If you love cold gray weather and flying, consider coming to our FAA Ground School class at MIT, next Tuesday-Thursday (January 20-22, 2026). If you are already in Boston and already know how to fly, email me (philg@mit.edu) and we can pick a time to meet before or after the class.

Here’s the forecast for Tuesday (high of 24; low of 10 (in the units that God prefers)):

Dear Readers: I’m headed to Minneapolis this week. Please email (philg@mit.edu) with a subject line of “Meet on Wednesday” if you want to get together on Wednesday evening. Perhaps we can meet at one of the coffee shops in George Floyd Square? It’s definitely safe after dark, right? Google AI:

George Floyd Square’s safety after dark is a complex issue with no single consensus, and opinions on it vary significantly among residents, business owners, and activists. … the area was often self-policed as an “autonomous zone,” and some residents reported that police and ambulances avoided the area, leading to increased crime, including fatal shootings and gang activity. Some nearby residents at the time reported feeling unsafe and experiencing ongoing trauma. … Police data from early 2025 indicated only a few isolated incidents of robbery, burglary, and gunfire over several months, suggesting a reduction in the previous levels of violent crime.

Robbery and gunfire only on Tuesdays and Thursdays and, therefore, at least “mostly peaceful”?

We are informed that the twin pillars of the Minnesota economy are marijuana (“hemp”) and harvesting federal welfare dollars (see below), but it is my comparatively boring life as a software expert witness that brings me to the city.

I’ll be in Providence, Rhode Island this weekend and would be happy to meet up with readers! The plan is to attend WaterFire on Saturday night, but otherwise I’m fairly flexible. Sunday morning coffee downtown would work, for example. The weather forecast is great. Email philg@mit.edu if interested!

Here’s an image from September 8, 2018:

Loyal Readers:

I’m headed to Manhattan this weekend and it would be fun to get together for coffee. Please email philg@mit.edu if interested. I propose Sunday, August 17 at 10:30 am. I propose that we meet near the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side to celebrate NYC’s return to its glorious heritage of migrants housed in squalor. After coffee we can proceed to the nearby International Center of Photography and its “Great Acceleration” exhibition:

The Great Acceleration is an established term used to describe the rapid rise of human impact on our planet according to a range of measures, among them population growth, water usage, transportation, greenhouse gas emissions, resource extraction and food production, each of which Burtynsky has photographed the outward signs of at length and in great detail over the past forty years.

(And what better way to accelerate the Great Acceleration in the United States than via open borders and associated rapid population growth?)

After NYC I’ll be traveling to Boston/Cambridge. How about a Friday, August 22 noon meeting at Yume Ga Arukara, an udon place in Porter Square that is supposedly great? I’m open to alternative suggestions, but let’s try to avoid the towns in Maskachusetts that are currently drowning in garbage because elite Massachusetts Democrats refuse to pay their peasant workers a fair wage (the state is home to at least 355,000 “illegal and inadmissible migrants” so maybe the hope was that these enrichers would pick up garbage at a lower hourly rate?):

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

I’ve decided to travel to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and see if the Biden administration’s Secret Service is making efforts to protect Donald Trump from local armed teenagers. To avoid crowds, though, I will arrive on Friday, July 19 and my inspection will last through the morning of Sunday, July 21. If anyone wants to get together for coffee in Milwaukee, or between July 21 and July 27 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin (EAA AirVenture!), please email philg@mit.edu. Thanks in advance!

Here’s a 2002 digital SLR photo from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Calatrava-designed wing that I took. I’m 99% sure that a smartphone today provides higher image quality:

Well, maybe not my iPhone 14, which I had hoped would last at least through the glorious release of the iPhone 16. Here’s what it is doing as of today:

The phone wasn’t dropped or, as far as I know, recently updated. It’s running iOS 17.5.1, which I think is a month old. The camera actually seems to work reasonably well. What seems to have gone wrong is Apple’s system for monopolizing parts and service. The phone isn’t recognized as “genuine” and that triggers a limit on what the software will do with it. I called Apple Support and was connected to a woman with a heavy Indian accent. She asked where I’d bought the phone and I responded “Verizon”. She had never heard of Verizon so she came up with a theory for how the fly-by-night vendor might have installed a third-party camera into the phone 1.5 years ago (this treacherous act not having been discovered by iOS until today).

[Update: Despite being kind of an Apple hater, I must admit that the repair was convenient. 12-minute drive, meet the genius at 6:50 pm, leave phone at 7:00 pm with a diagnosis of “needs new camera module”, hit Shake Shack in the mall food court, return just before 8:00 pm, receive phone and pay $219 (to the virtuous rainbow flag-waving (except in Muslim countries) Apple) plus tax (to the hated dictator Ron DeSantis) at 8:15 pm. How does it work when a Samsung or Google Pixel phone needs service?]

A 2019 picture taken from the EAA Bell 47 helicopter ride:

The plan for this year is to fly commercial into ORD (nonstop from PBI), rent a car, and do some stuff before or after EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”). We have some constraints…

• one family member is 8 years old and, therefore, lacks an adult level of patience
• one family member lacks a Democrat adult level of tolerance for crime and disorder and, therefore, refuses to set foot in Chicago (my default choice, e.g., Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium)
• one family member objects to long drives so we don’t want to go too far off route (it’s about 2.5 hours from ORD to Oshkosh if one proceeds direct (through Milwaukee) and 3.25 hours through Madison, WI)
• everyone in the family likes the outdoors
• the before/after time will be on weekends, when some things might be closed

One of my early ideas was Devil’s Lake State Park, SW of Oshkosh. However, the same government that informs us that we’re doomed without population growth via open borders also tells us that one must get to this park at dawn in order to be allowed in:

Are the Wisconsin Dells and Baraboo plausible outdoor destinations that are also practical on weekends given the rapidly growing population of our country and constant number of nice places to visit?

What about Milwaukee? I know the art museum (good for 1.5 hours max with our kids). There is a Harley-Davidson museum (do they sell “Better Your Sister in a Whorehouse than Your Brother on a Honda” T-shirts? If not, I question the authenticity). The city will be somewhat jammed on the weekend after Oshkosh due to an airshow(!) so we’d see Milwaukee on the way in. Perhaps the Pabst Mansion as well as the museums? How is the “Historic Third Ward”?