Housing Justice in Berkeley, California

Here’s a photo of an unhoused person sleeping next to a classic Volkswagen Microbus used to advertise the availability, for those with money, of sparkling new apartments:

Housing is a human right, say the folks who live in the Bay Area, but somehow they never reduce their personal consumption in order to build housing for the unhoused.

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Closing out Black History Month at the hockey game

Some photos from a recent Florida Panthers v. Washington Capitals NHL game:

(My neighbor loves hockey and has season tickets. Bizarrely, the Florida-based team is one of the best in the NHL. They lost the Stanley Cup last year to the cold weather experts in the Las Vegas Golden Knights.)

Note that Amazon has partnered with the Panthers to celebrate Black History Month. With one (Indian) exception, Amazon seems to have a 100-percent white roster of senior managers and directors. What about in the arena? We never saw a Black player on the ice at any point in the game (ended in overtime with the Science-Deniers defeating the Lockdowners 3-2). Where are the Panthers from this year? Finland, Canada, Sweden, Russia.

Separately, if you ever want to go to one of these games, held west of Fort Lauderdale (a reasonable drive from either Palm Beach or Miami), the Corona Beach House is a great place to sit. Copious food, beer, and wine are included and there is plenty of room to wander around. The only thing that I did not love about the seats is that you’re viewing the game through the net that prevents the puck from flying into the crowd.

Parking in our inflation-free society is $40. Many fans park for free across the street at the Sawgrass Mills Mall. Pro Tip: park in Lot 7 if you’re going to be heading north after the game. Getting out of the $40 lot and onto the highway after the game took less than ten minutes.

Would I go again? Sure. I wish that the overtime rules applied all the time, though! It is more exciting when it is just 3+goalie per side rather than the standard 5+goalie and it is also much easier to follow the puck.

Readers: How did you close out Black History Month?

Related… the Amazon books section, retrieved on February 26, 2024, in which “Black Authors” is the #1 category of products to browse (they’re “remarkably written” whereas books by non-Black authors are unremarkable?):

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What’s the relationship between women and Rainbow Flagism?

I went to Costco to set up my mom’s new life as a Floridian. As part of the sales process, Costco customers are informed that some of the profits from the towels for sale flow into the pockets of people who identify as “women”. The “Women Owned” logo certifying that this is where the money goes has a rainbow embedded within. What does it mean? Are they saying that a heterosexual cisgender woman, for example, is somehow part of Rainbow Flagism?

I ended up buying towels from Land’s End. Maybe other shoppers are persuaded by the magic of this logo or the idea that their money is going to business owners of a particular gender ID? Wirecutter says buy Frontgate Resort Collection towels.

For $500 of miscellaneous household items, I had a choice between the Heroes of Rainbow Flagism at Target or the more prosaic Walmart, which is a little closer to our house. I chose Walmart.

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A Silicon Valley history of aeronautical engineering

History according to Google’s Gemini:

ChatGPT 4, in response to the same prompt:

ChatGPT, in response to “Create a mural of five aircraft designers working together in 1905”:

Back to Gemini, this time regarding elderly surgeons:

I give the system credit for using one of my favorite terms: “Latinx”. A surgeon who graduated in 1970 should have been born in 1944, however, and thus would be 80 years old today. These folks look like they’re in unusually good shape for age 80.

Gemini knows about the “sport of kings”:

But its image generator is clueless:

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Black History Month at the Palm Beach County Library

For folks from the Northeast and California who are afraid to move to Florida because of a perceived lack of righteousness, the local Palm Beach County library branch’s displays for Black History Month…

First, in the kids’ area:

It turns out that identifying as “female” is actually Black-adjacent. Here’s a book that was part of the Black History Month display:

Kids are encouraged to engage in a wide range of behaviors that would get them arrested in Florida:

And for adults:

Readers: How are your Black History Month celebrations going?

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Subscribe to Rachel Dolezal’s OnlyFans channel?

Happy Valentine’s Day! If we intersect love and romance with the regular content of this blog… we get “Rachel Dolezal Is An OnlyFans Model & Teaching At A School After Pretending To Be Black To Run NAACP Chapter” (Outkick):

Former disgraced NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal, who pretended to be black to get her job after being born to white parents, is now a NSFW OnlyFans model who has picked up another job working at an elementary school in Arizona.

Dolezal, who changed her name to Nkechi Diallo (West African translation = “gift of god”) back in 2017, is listed under Sunrise Drive Elementary School payroll records as an after-school instructor …

Between her school job and the OnlyFans career where a September post got 122 ‘Likes’ from paying subscribers (122 x $10 = $1,220 per month which means she’s probably making more than that) seems to be going pretty well for the woman who made headlines around the world as the fake black woman running an NAACP chapter.

Readers: Who wants to take the hit and subscribe to Nkechi Diallo’s OnlyFans channel?

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The social justice of fitness, according to Apple

We got a free Apple Fitness+ subscription with our nearly $40,000/year family health insurance policy (the cheapest that we could find for a small LLC that covers Cleveland Clinic, Mayo, and U. Miami; see Shopping for health insurance on healthcare.gov).

We can celebrate Black History Month as we walk (with a Black Lab, ideally? Or do all Labs matter?). And Apple reminds us that drag performance is not just for storytime at the local public library. (Also note that the “drag performer” whose job is to be an imposter pretending to be female talks about “managing imposter syndrome”. Is it a “syndrome” if you get paid to do it? Does Tom Cruise have “imposter syndrome” because he is merely a pilot but pretended to be a Navy fighter pilot in two paid performances?)

Speaking of social justice, here is a Maskachusetts Congresswoman talking about the unconscionable corporate greed of Walgreens layered on top of a video of a Walgreens being looted by noble Americans.

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College admissions essays should be written in a proctored environment?

A friend is relaxing now after writing more than 20 college admissions essays. “For rich families,” he explained. “It’s normally a competition among the professional essay writers who’ve been hired, but we decided to do it ourselves.” (“do it ourselves” means the parents, both Harvard graduates, did most of it)

The question for today is why elite kids are allowed to have this kind of advantage. If a college wants to see how a 17-year-old writes, wouldn’t it make sense to have the 17-year-old sit in a big room set up like the SAT or AP test environment? The prompts would be kept hidden until the morning of the exam so that applicants couldn’t show up with memorized professionally-written responses. This would also solve the ChatGPT problem.

If colleges are sincere about leveling out the disadvantages of coming from a poor family, why haven’t they adopted this obvious approach?

Separately, a report on the continuation of elite schools’ race-based admissions system… “After Affirmative Action Ban, They Rewrote College Essays With a Key Theme: Race” (New York Times):

Astrid Delgado first wrote her college application essay about a death in her family. Then she reshaped it around a Spanish book she read as a way to connect to her Dominican heritage.

The first draft of Jyel Hollingsworth’s essay explored her love for chess. The final focused on the prejudice between her Korean and Black American families and the financial hardships she overcame.

All three students said they decided to rethink their essays to emphasize one key element: their racial identities. And they did so after the Supreme Court last year struck down affirmative action in college admissions, leaving essays the only place for applicants to directly indicate their racial and ethnic backgrounds.

But the ruling also allowed admissions officers to consider race in personal essays, as long as decisions were not based on race, but on the personal qualities that grew out of an applicant’s experience with their race, like grit or courage.

This led many students of color to reframe their essays around their identities, under the advice of college counselors and parents. And several found that the experience of rewriting helped them explore who they are.

Sophie Desmoulins, who is Guatemalan and lives in Sedona, Ariz., wrote her college essay with the court’s ruling in mind. Her personal statement explored, among other things, how her Indigenous features affected her self-esteem and how her experience volunteering with the Kaqchikel Maya people helped her build confidence and embrace her heritage.

The Times features a future physician:

In her initial essay, Triniti Parker, a 16-year-old who aims to be the first doctor in her family, recalled her late grandmother, who was one of the first Black female bus drivers for the Chicago Transit Authority.

But after the Supreme Court’s decision, a college adviser told her to make clear references to her race, saying it should not “get lost in translation.” So Triniti adjusted a description of her and her grandmother’s physical features to allude to the color of their skin.

If this is her BMI at age 16, maybe she will ultimately specialize in prescribing Ozempic?

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Claudine Gay won’t be hired by any state-run university in Florida

It’s a good thing that Claudine Gay has a paycheck-for-life from Harvard…. “Florida’s State Board of Education passes rule to ‘permanently prohibit’ DEI at public colleges” (WPTV):

The board said the rule prohibits Florida College System institutions from using state or federal funds to administer programs that “categorize individuals based on race or sex for the purpose of differential or preferential treatment.”

Targeting DEI has been a key talking point of Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s education department during his second term in office.

How many people will lose their Victimhood Industry jobs?

The governor also asked Florida’s public colleges and universities in 2023 to report how much money they are spending on DEI. He later said they self-reported at least $34 million.

If we assume a fully loaded cost of $200,000 per year per bureaucrat, that’s 170 DEI experts who will now be looking for jobs in more righteous states.

Who doesn’t like a race-neutral environment?

Meanwhile, Black leaders have pushed back on the initiatives to limit DEI at state colleges, saying DeSantis is playing politics in his pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination.

Some students have expressed worries that campuses across the state won’t be as welcoming to minorities in light of the changes.

A statement against racial equality from “Equality Florida”:

“There’s no surprise today that the State Board of Education, a board that has been a rubber stamp for Governor Ron DeSantis’s agenda of censorship and surveillance, moved forward with another sweepingly broad rule that abolishes diversity and inclusion programs in the Florida College System. The Board’s rules go well beyond what’s required by Governor DeSantis’s already extreme SB 266, handcuffing state colleges from using any state-funded resources on diversity programs that help recruit talented faculty, support students with unique needs, and help Florida’s colleges compete for national research and funding. This is a brazenly political attack on Florida’s colleges, and all minorities in Florida, and is one more way state agencies have been weaponized to support Governor DeSantis’s failing political ambitions. Shame on the State Board of Education for passing rules that weaken and threaten Florida’s colleges in service to one more manufactured culture war.”

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