Climate Emergency question: Should migrants be evacuated from dangerous southern states and taken to safety in California and the Northeast?

by philg

Dangerous heat continues to afflict major portions of the U.S., including migrant-rich areas in Texas. Here’s the latest map from the New York Times of where 125-degree Fahrenheit conditions might be encountered:

We’re able to keep our house at a furry golden retriever-approved 72 degrees (and the garage at 78) by paying Florida Power and Light about $450/month (also runs the pool pump, the hot water circulation pump, lights, fridge, etc.). Recent undocumented immigrants, however, may not enjoy the luxury of a comfortable air-conditioned home fed by a bomb-proof power grid and/or, due to the stinginess of Republicans, may not have $450/month to hand over to the electric company.

Politicians running sanctuary cities and states have previously complained about buses of asylum-seekers from, e.g., Texas, arriving to claim sanctuary (example: the New York righteous fight amongst themselves). But the same politicians who run sanctuary cities also talk about a “climate crisis” (NYC Mayor Eric Adams, for example).

Instead of waiting for Texans to send migrants out of what the NYT says is “Danger”, wouldn’t it make more sense for governors and mayors in California and the Northeast to send Climate Emergency Escape buses to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina? Anyone who can prove that he/she/ze/they is undocumented (by presenting documents?) would be invited to hop on the bus and escape to climate safety/sanctuary.

If we have an “emergency” (and/or “crisis”) and also “danger” why aren’t there evacuations for the most vulnerable?

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Tenderloin thoughts from San Francisco

by philg

What if we just gave each resident of the U.S. either a basic income or the necessities of life such as shelter, food, and clothing? Poverty wouldn’t be eliminated in the technical sense as defined by the poverty-industrial complex because people who did not work wouldn’t have any cash income, but poverty would be eliminated in a practical sense because nobody would be without the necessities of life.

The Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco comes pretty close to the universal basic lifestyle utopia. Nonprofit organizations (the “homeless-industrial complex”) own buildings and give away shelter. Taxpayer-funded meals are also provided by nonprofits. From the Tenderloin Museum:

As a sign in the Museum gift shop notes, almost everyone is taken care of:

(Exercise for the reader: What class of humans are left out and should be denied care?)

Predatory capitalism has been kept at bay via zoning restrictions:

What happens when you give Americans everything that they need to live, by historical standards, an extremely comfortable life? They take a lot of drugs and live in tents on the sidewalk:

(See also, this New York Times article about Portland, Oregon, three years after drug use was decriminalized: “Oregon’s overdose rates have only grown. Now, tents of unhoused people line many sidewalks in Portland.”)

Related… Dianne Feinstein made cleaning up the Tenderloin a top priority during her tenure as mayor of San Francisco:

(In a great example of American polygamy, Feinstein was the third wife of a rich guy and is now involved in a fight with the dead rich guy’s children with another wife (NYT).)

Loosely related, a sticker on display at Oshkosh that I wouldn’t expect to see in the Tenderloin or anywhere else in San Francisco:

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How many Mega Millions lottery tickets did you buy?

by philg

Scanning the headlines, I see the Mega Millions is up to $1.55 billion. That’s a fake number because it is pre-tax and adds up an annual payment without discounting? Let’s assume that it isn’t a fake number. The odds of winning are 1 in 302 million and a ticket costs $2. So we should definitely play! We expect to get $5.13 for every ticket that we buy (ignoring any less-than-jackpot prizes).

But of course, the number is fake. CNBC says that the one-time lump sum payment is $757 million. This analysis says that the lump sum in a state such as Florida with no personal income tax is worth only $477 million after federal income tax. The odds of winning on a $2 ticket are 1 in 302 million. So I think one gets back only about $1.50 in expected value from the big jackpot. But maybe the lesser prizes are what make the expectation positive? This analysis adds up all of the lesser prizes. The expected value of a $2 ticket was only about $1.10 after taxes when the jackpot was $521 million and fell to about 77 cents for players who chose the lump sum option. On a $1.55 billion jackpot if you pick numbers that nobody else picks maybe it would be worth buying tickets? Would it make sense to use a random number generator? Use numbers that the Chinese consider unlucky? Pick the birthday of a 17th century scientist whom nobody cares about?

Who has purchased some tickets for what could now be a rational activity, depending on your level of risk aversion? What are you planning to buy if you win?

(I would use my winnings to buy housing for every currently unhoused resident of the U.S., to pay for immigration lawyers to help migrants prevail in the 10-year asylum process, to finance Democrats running for office (stepping in where Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX has withdrawn), etc. With any leftover money, beyond the obvious aviation items, how about a bus-based RV (about $3 million fully pimped-out). And, of course, a driver. I’d be able to watch Barbie and Oppenheimer over and over while sitting in traffic. And would have a nice place to sleep at Oshkosh!)

Separately, and speaking of Sam Bankman-Fried and crypto glory, how about this Bitcoin criminal who stole $4.5 billion? That’s way more than Mega Millions and he just hung around in New York City for years until he was arrested. From the WSJ:

If you get a lottery-style windfall, but it is illegal, wouldn’t it make sense to move to some country where they won’t extradite?

Related:

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Is it time for a climate lockdown?

by philg

In response to a virus that killed at most 0.2% of the population in a country that did almost nothing by way of attempted prevention (Sweden; a computer system automatically tagged anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 as having been killed by COVID-19, so 0.2% is the upper bound), countries around the world locked down their peasants, closed businesses, shut down health care (except for emergencies), and closed schools.

We are now faced with an “existential threat” to the entire human species, i.e., a 100% death rate (500X more deadly). Science tells that we are sealing our doom by emitting CO2, much of which is a side effect of humans moving around (28 percent of total CO2 emissions, says the EPA). Therefore, CO2 emissions can be cut dramatically if we make it illegal for humans to move around.

Given that climate change is a much more serious threat than SARS-CoV-2 and that none of the current rulers of the U.S. say that lockdowns and school closures were bad ideas, why don’t we have climate lockdowns right now?

Here’s how it would work:

  • peasants cannot leave the house except to go to a marijuana store (“essential” in Maskachusetts and California)
  • standardized food delivered by efficient diesel, hybrid, and electric trucks going from house to house
  • K-12 schools and universities run via Zoom (not “closed”, but “open fully”)
  • WiFi thermostats become mandatory and the government prevents them from being set lower than 80 degrees in summer or higher than 62 degrees in winter
  • shutdown of heating and cooling systems in offices, schools, and other buildings that become illegal to occupy

Let’s check the NYT to see if we have enough to justify these restrictions on the peasantry (elites can party on, of course). From July 10:

From today:

Updated every day:

(It’s not enough to exercise “extreme caution” anywhere in Florida because “danger”, with temps up to 125F, is omnipresent.)

How about their brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters at CNN?

120 million Americans, including, potentially, many valuable migrants, are at risk. What more do we need to justify a lockdown?

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Prediction: The -G7 Cirrus comes out in 2024

by philg

At Oshkosh, Garmin showed off their retrofit panel for the ancient Cirrus SR2x aircraft (-G1 and -G2, made from 1999 through 2008).

The G500TXi PFD and MFD screens are smallish (10 inches) and low resolution (1280×768; makes it tough to read an approach plate without pinching and zooming, not ideal workload additions when you’re trying to fly an airplane). The Garmin 750/650 nav/coms in the pedestal are getting long in the tooth at this point (introduced in 2011).

What’s interesting about the panel, then? The GFC 500 autopilot includes Electronic Stability and Protection that fights against unusual attitudes even when the autopilot is nominally off. The -G6 G1000-equipped SR2x airplanes include a GFC 700 autopilot that also has this important safety feature, so ESP is not a big advantage for the retrofit. The retrofit panel is all-touch all-the-time, which is great in a ground demonstration and not to great in turbulence. By combining the three backup steam gauges into a single Garmin GI 275, the autopilot control head can move to where those steam gauges used to be. With remote transponder and audio panels, the pedestal can be devoted to the 750/650 instead of two hard-to-read 650s.

Here’s where the retrofit truly shines:

The $1.2 million -G6 Cirrus doesn’t have this button. If the engine quits , it is the panicked pilot’s job to pitch for best glide airspeed, figure out which airports are within glide range, edit that airport list based on terrain and weather, pick the best airport, pick the best runway at that airport, fly down to the airport, get lined up on a reasonable final approach (vertically and laterally) for a runway, and then land. If the pilot makes a mistake at any point, it is time to pull the parachute, which will seriously injure the aircraft and may seriously injure the occupants (it’s designed to save your life, not your back).

Since 2022, however, the pilot of a boned-out $200,000 Cirrus that has been injected with $100,000 of Garmin (that was the pre-Biden price; maybe it is 130,000 Bidies now?) can have the calm, cool, and collected Garmin software do all of the above for him/her/zir/them except for the final two miles of gliding and the heroic flare. (See the video below; it is unclear what happens if there is a massive amount of extra altitude available. The pilot might have to do some descending 360-degree turns. On the other hand, maybe SmartGlide will turn into SmarterGlide in a later software release.)

Because this situation can’t last forever, my prediction is that the 2024 Cirrus SR22 and SR20 will be -G7 models and will offer at least Smart Glide and touch screen.

Related… an advertising video from Garmin.

Also related… what about Brand A? Avidyne brought their announced-in-2021 Vantage retrofit to EAA AirVenture. It still isn’t certified. The Avidyne autopilot lacks ESP. The Avidyne system lacks anything like SmartGlide.

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Being boiled alive in the 101-degree ocean (according to NYT)

by philg

At least five of the folks with whom I chatted in the San Francisco Bay Area recently noted that the ocean water near Florida had been heated up to more than 100 degrees. When I asked them what part of the Florida shoreline was plagued with this scalding water, they couldn’t answer precisely. Their conjectures ranged from a few miles out to sea from Miami to maybe right near a popular beach.

For all of these loyal Followers of Science, one of whom has a Ph.D. in physics, the source was “101°F in the Ocean Off Florida: Was It a World Record?” (New York Times, July 26, 2023):

The reading from a buoy off Florida this week was stunning: 101.1 degrees Fahrenheit, or just over 38 Celsius, a possible world record for sea surface temperatures and a stark indication of the brutal marine heat wave that’s threatening the region’s sea life.

So it’s “off Florida” and therefore out into the open sea, right? If we had any doubt about this, the Scientists at the NYT include a photo of the open ocean underneath the headline:

Based on the headline and the photo, then, a Marvel-style villain heated up part of the open ocean to over 101 degrees and, with a little more climate change, it is easy to imagine this hitting 213 degrees F, the boiling point for sea water. (In other words, New Yorkers with money should not follow their former neighbors and move to Florida because the risk of being boiled alive at the beach is real.)

The best-known beach in Florida is Miami Beach. Is it 101.1 degrees in the water there? seatemperature.net says that, around the time that the NYT raised the alarm, it was a degree or two hotter than the average for previous years:

Maybe “off Florida” meant into the Gulf of Mexico? The water temp on the west coast of Florida was also about average.

Let’s dig for clues in the NYT article:

Allyson Gantt of the National Park Service, which monitors and maintains the buoy, said there was no reason to doubt the measurement. The data was consistent with high water temperatures seen in the area, Florida Bay, between the southern end of the Florida mainland and the Florida Keys, in recent weeks, she said.

Just like it’s easier to heat up a shallow bath than a deep one, the depth of the water is going to affect temperatures, said Jeff Masters, a former hurricane scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a co-founder of Weather Underground, a Web-based weather service.

So… it turns out the buoy was not “off Florida”, but rather inside Florida (between the Keys and the mainland). The NYT tells us that shallow water will heat up more than the deep ocean, just as your backyard swimming pool heats up more, but the newspaper of Science doesn’t tell us the water depth.

What’s unusual about the water between the Keys and the mainland? That’s where beginner kiteboarders and windsurfers are taken to learn because (a) the wind is steady, and (b) the water is so shallow that students can stand up after falling off the board. How shallow? The charts show between 0′ and 6′ at low tide:

So the NYT reader was informed that the “ocean off Florida” had reached 101.1 degrees when, in fact, it was a protected area possibly just a few feet deep. (The open ocean off Florida’s Atlantic coast quickly reaches depths of 1,000′ and more.) Is Florida Bay even part of the ocean? Wikipedia says that “It is a large, shallow estuary that while connected to the Gulf of Mexico, has limited exchange of water due to various shallow mudbanks covered with seagrass.” (What’s an estuary? Wikipedia says “An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea.”)

A Bay Area Deplorable (deeply closeted so that he can keep his job!), when I shared these conversations with him, said “when you’re looking at the New York Times, what you don’t see is more important than what you do see.” (i.e., the unseen depth of the water and the unseen previous buoy high temp in the same area are more important than the seen recent high temperature)

When I got home on August 3, 2023, I discovered that the lifeguards on the Atlantic coast hadn’t been reading the New York Times. They marked the Juno Beach water temperature as 85 degrees:

In case the NYT article gets memory-holed, some screen shots:

Note that the article also mentions “Manatee Bay” as a place where the “ocean” is super hot. Here’s the open ocean in Manatee Bay, from Google Maps:

How deep is Manatee Bay? 4-5 feet, except where mud or coral makes it shallower.

Why does it matter? If you’re ordering a 150-meter boat from Meyer Werft, make sure to tell them it can’t draw more than 4′ (or 1′ for Florida Bay?) because you want to sail it in what the New York Times calls “the ocean”.

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How did the crippled-by-Long-Covid Swedes beat the American soccer world champions?

by philg

We are informed by the New York Times and CNN that Long COVID is (a) crippling, and (b) almost inevitable for those who reject Faucism. Sweden is renowned for letting SARS-CoV-2 rip through its younger-than-70 population while the elderly hid (excess mortality data by country). The Swedish women’s soccer team doesn’t contain anyone over age 73 and, therefore, must necessarily be riddled with Long COVID. How do we explain “Knocked out. Sweden bounces top-ranked U.S. out of the Women’s World Cup in penalties” (state-sponsored NPR) then?

It can’t be that the world champions are also Covid-plagued. From summer 2020, “Megan Rapinoe one of three internationals to withdraw from NWSL Challenge Cup” (BBC):

Forward Christen Press and midfielder Tobin Heath will not play because of “uncertainty” caused by the virus.

“Megan let us know that she has decided not to play,” said Bill Predmore, chief executive of Rapinoe’s team OL Reign.

“Like all NWSL players, she was given the option to participate … but we understand and respect her decision.”

The tournament, being played in empty stadiums, starts on Saturday in Utah and will last for one month.

Star players also cowered in their bunkers in the fall and winter of 2020… “NWSL star Megan Rapinoe says she won’t play in fall series” (CBC):

Two-time World Cup winner and OL Reign midfielder Megan Rapinoe is opting out of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) fall series starting next month, the Washington-based franchise said in a statement.

No reason was given for her decision but Rapinoe, 35, also skipped the NWSL Challenge Cup tournament in June, which was played in empty stadiums due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Rapinoe sang the praises of lockdown in the Journal of Popular Studies:

Megan Rapinoe on Quarantine Life with New Fiancé Sue Bird: ‘It’s Been Such a Gift’

“Because we’re athletes, we’re constantly on the go and we never get to spend this much time with people that you love,” Megan Rapinoe tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue

So… the soccer players who were out and about in 2020, exposed every day to dangerous levels of SARS-CoV-2, beat the soccer players who wisely cowered in place and thus were protected from Long Covid and the even-more-dangerous Medium Covid. How can this fact be squared with Faucism?

Loosely related… an open-to-all-genders single-city team of 14-year-olds beat the world champions prior to coronapanic (CBS):

Also… “Djokovic Heads Hard-Court Leaderboard” (from the gender-neutral ATP Tour, 6 days ago):

Novak Djokovic has dominated the ATP Tour’s hard courts throughout his career, and the past 52 weeks are no exception for the 36-year-old.

Across a run that includes titles at the 2022 Nitto ATP Finals and the 2023 Australian Open, the Serbian has posted a tour-leading 91.9 per cent win rate (34-3) on the surface during that span. He also won hard-court titles in Tel Aviv and Astana last year as well as at the Adelaide 1 event to start the current season.

How is it possible for someone who was infected with SARS-CoV-2 without a previous vaccination to be the world’s best hard-court tennis player?

Also related, “The social justice of coronashutdowns” (January 2021), in which a friend who lives in a $9.6 million house (pre-Biden money) disagrees with my assertion that “[school] shutdowns are ordered by people who live in mansions (governors) and supported by rich white people who live in 4,000+ square foot suburban houses” and therefore don’t consider “a single parent in a 2BR public housing apartment with three kids” and “what benefit the shutdown is delivering to a 30-year-old single mom and her 10-year-old kids”.

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Infrared versus regular gas grill? (and what about electric?)

by philg

We’re getting ready to run a natural gas line to where our gas grill is ($1500 is the new $700 for a half day of plumbing effort). We’ll need either to convert our basic propane grill, now 1.5 years old, or buy a fancy new grill. The space is tight and a grill wider than about 50 inches won’t look right (even the smallest grills are about this size with side shelves). We go through a propane tank every 1-2 months (using the grill every other day).

One of the divides in the consumer grill world seems to be infrared vs. conventional. The IR enthusiasts claim that they get better sear marks after a faster heating time and the reduced amount of hot air flow keeps more moisture in the food. On the other hand, some of the higher-end grills either don’t have an infrared burner or reserve the infrared burner for rotisserie, or have an infrared burner as a specialty zone with most of the grill being conventional. Here’s a grill that I overheard one rich guy recommending to another rich guy:

It has “Rotisserie system with infrared burners” but the primary burners are conventional. (Why would anyone pay $34,000 for a freestanding grill? The product lets you stick charcoal or wood in and light it with the gas. You can also do it with a $1500 Canadian grill from Napoleon and an accessory tray if a $32,000+ savings is significant to you.)

TEC sells $4,000+ infrared-only grills and claims that they’re vastly superior in every way. Certainly nobody is going to steal one because their smallest model weighs 248 lbs. on a pedestal. If TEC is so great, why don’t all of $1000 grill brands copy them? “Advantages and Disadvantages of Infrared BBQ Grills” says that infrared is unconditionally better:

Clean up is easier, too. The high temperatures practically vaporize any drippings or unwanted mess. In fact, most infrared grills are designed to use this feature by collecting the drippings in a channel. They’re then vaporized back into the food as pure flavor, eliminating the fare-ups in ordinary grills that must be conquered to avoid burning the food. These channels just wipe or clean with a regular grill brush. This is because of the high radiant heat.

Finally, food actually tastes better on an infrared grill, according to many. This is due to the high temperature and direct heating. The infrared burners are wide and cook uniformly with even heat distribution. It locks in all the seasoning and natural flavors in your food. The quickness of the neat locks in moisture, too. Meat, seafood, vegetables – everything is quickly seared and flavor-locked for the best taste.

“Infrared Grills — Advantages, Disadvantages and How They Work” says that the disadvantage is an ability to cook at low temps:

Although an infrared grill could take your steak cooking skills to another level, popular opinion is that this is about all it will do. With the crazy high temperatures it can reach, the grill can be somewhat difficult to master when it comes to the time-temperature relationship. In addition to this, it doesn’t offer the lower temperatures that a traditional gas or charcoal grill does. In contrast, other more traditional grills can offer as low as 100f at the low-end, which is great for slow cooking meats, whereas an infrared grill only goes as low as 250f.

(the TEC people claim that they can now go down to 200 degrees)

This retailer page suggests that infrared is not the complete solution.

To prepare for climate change, in which our 3-mile-inland house will soon be at the beach, it might be good to get a grill made from 316L marine grade stainless. Here’s one from Blaze into which an infrared burner can be installed to replace one of the conventional burners (about $4,000 total and we’d need to lose one side shelf to make it fit).

Readers: Have you cooked on an infrared grill? Is it suitable for nearly all grilling projects?

Crazy/heretical idea: If infrared is truly the best technology, why bother with natural gas or propane? Why not run a dedicated outlet, either 120V or 240V, and use electricity to create as much heat as desired? Char-Broil sells what they claim is “TRU-Infrared” for 320 square inches for $250. That’s actually larger than the 296-square-inch grilling surface claimed by TEC for its $4,000+ product. (Food&Wine magazine says that it doesn’t work) If you don’t need infrared, then a Ninja outdoor electric grill for $330 (you can toss in wood pellets for authentic smoked flavor), which gets 4.7 stars on Amazon. An electric grill used for slow-cooking should be vastly simpler and more reliable. Instead of adjusting the knobs and monitoring, set the desired temperature and walk away for 5 hours. Maybe gas grills are obsolete, just as gas ranges in the kitchen are obsolete, having been slain by mighty induction! (as predicted by Katherine Clerk Maxwell’s Equations) There aren’t that many full-size electric grills available right now, but we’ve been doing fine with 320 square inches of cooking surface on our existing grill.

(Existing electric grills don’t seem to make any attempt to compete with gas grills for total heat output. A medium-size standard four-burner grill puts out 48,000 BTUs, about 14,000 watts. The highest wattage electric grills that I have seen are 3,000 watts, less than a single burner on a high-end induction cooktop (3,300 to 3,700 watts is typical).)

Here’s a piece of restaurant equipment that I discovered at a friend of a friend’s house:

It seems to be called a “salamander” and the claim is that it will heat up to 1050C. It is all-infrared-all-the-time Based on a quick search, they seem to start at about $4,000 and consume 3000-4500 watts. (The house that I visited contained not a single piece of kitchen equipment that I knew how to either turn on or use.) More background on salamanders: from a retailer; from a manufacturer.

Loosely related (on the advantages of a propane-free society)… a story about Mohamad Barakat, a successful asylum-seeker from Syria:

Firefighters notified police [in Fargo, ND] after seeing guns, ammunition and propane tanks in Mohamad Barakat’s apartment, according to a report provided to The Associated Press Wednesday by the City of Fargo Fire Department.

Battalion Chief Jason Ness noted what appeared to be “a significant amount of gun ammunition,” “multiple ‘assault style’ rifles,” a 20-pound propane cylinder in a bedroom, a second smaller propane cylinder in the kitchen, and “a funnel, blender, and other items that looked to be for measuring purposes” in his report on the Sept. 6, 2022 fire.

“FPD determined everything was legal with the gun collection,” Ness wrote. “The individual admitted to owning approximately 10 guns and 6,000 rounds of ammunition. My decision to refer the issue to PD was based on the presence of the guns, several high capacity magazines, and the presence of propane tanks with no means of using the tanks for cooking or grilling.”

The migrant-turned-U.S. citizen loaded up the propane tanks a year later: AP News.

Related:

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Climate resilience and Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture)

by philg

Attendance at “Oshkosh” (technically, EAA AirVenture) seemed lighter than in 2021 and 2022, possibly due to the weather being about 10 degrees F hotter and the first couple of days being marred by poor air quality courtesy of our Canadian neighbors. (EAA says that attendance was actually a record, contradicting our lived experience.) The EAA Lifetime Member “Oasis” was nothing of the sort, due to A/C that couldn’t cool the place down below 80 degrees. The typical GA plane, warbird, or vintage/antique lacks A/C and, therefore, people had trouble getting motivated to do intra-event flying.

Given that people have less tolerance for discomfort every year (central and mini-split A/C having grown in popularity) and that we’re assured by the New York Times and CNN that Planet Earth is going Full Venus, I wonder if it wouldn’t make sense to move the fly-in to early June. The public schools in Oshkosh get out on May 31, 2024, thus freeing up the no-A/C school buses that are essential to the EAA event. Why not fire up EAA AirVenture on June 10, 2024? Here are the weather averages by month:

June is 5 degrees cooler than July (though records for June 10 include some 90-degree days in various years; record temp for June 10 is 94). Given the higher heat in July, one might imagine that it is also the peak time for thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes. Here’s a warning that we got:

OSHALERT 7/27: NWS issued Severe Thunderstorm WATCH for KOSH until 11pm. Could bring 1-2″ hail, 70mph winds, heavy rain, isolated tornado.

When basic new airplanes cost about the same as Corvettes and thousands were produced annually, perhaps a mass casualty hail event at KOSH wouldn’t have been so bad. But now that new piston four-seaters can be over $1 million and parts can take months to obtain, the risk of losing 10,000 planes has to be given more weight. From my web searches, it looks like June is actually a higher risk month for tornadoes and severe thunderstorms than July.

If the event can’t be moved, perhaps it can be made more comfortable. EAA has over $44 million/year in revenue (see Form 990; note that this was down to just $18 million in 2020, AirVenture having been canceled due to lockdowns). How about spending some of that $44 million on A/C for the four vendor hangars and also on some air-conditioned lunch venues scattered around the grounds? While EAA is at it, build some additional permanent running-water bathrooms around the show grounds and bathhouses (not Florida-style, necessarily) in campgrounds. Porta-potties and trailers don’t make for a luxurious experience. EAA is constantly harping on how they want to get more people who identify as “women” to show up. How many women want to use an outhouse for 7 days? And women with kids? Imagine the mom below trying to manage and clean up her 3 young kids in porta-potties:

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Schools that are closed are “open fully” (flashback to 2020)

by philg

My favorite NYT headline of August 5, 2020 characterizes schools that are 100-percent closed as “open fully”:

Supporting those in New York, Maskachusetts, Chicago, and California who now say that lockdowns and school closures never happened, this headline cannot be found either with a Google search or a search on nytimes.com itself.

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