Cueflation of 40 percent compared to 2021

by philg

Back in 2021, I ordered a 42-inch pool cue so that the youngsters could enjoy the landlord’s pool table:

They’re getting taller and we’ve moved to an 8′ table (see Buying a pool table) so they’re overdue for a longer cue. Out of curiosity, I went back to the retailer’s site and found the same American-made McDermott K97B cue. The price has gone up 40 percent to $105:

(Actually, the market-clearing price is presumably higher than $105 because the cue is out of stock whereas it was in stock for immediate shipment when I ordered back in 2021. For a proper understanding of inflation we also need to adjust for availability because an item that one must order weeks or months in advance isn’t as valuable as an item that will be delivered as soon as needed. See Is inflation already at 15-30 percent if we hold delivery time constant? (2021).)

What does the official government CPI calculator say about inflation since August 2021? The $75 item should cost $86 if the government numbers are accurate.

(The Chinese-made Vector cue that I got for myself has gone up to $126, representing inflation of roughly 17 percent. That’s reasonably consistent with China’s low inflation rate over the past three years combined with high American inflation for the retailer’s services, domestic shipping, etc.)

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Could robots weave better tapestries than humans ever have?

by philg

One of America’s greatest art museums, the Kimbell in Fort Worth, is showing seven enormous tapestries right now. These depict the Battle of Pavia (1525) and were made roughly 500 years ago from wool, silk, gold, and silver thread. Each one is about 30′ wide and 14′ high, perfect for the Palm Beach County starter home. The curators praise the human artists behind these works, but I’m wondering whether robots couldn’t do a better job in many ways and thus revive this form of art.

(If you miss them in Fort Worth, you can see them while stocking up on fentanyl in San Francisco beginning in October and eventually back at their home in Naples, Italy (leave everything that you value in the hotel safe!)). Here are a few photos to give you a sense of the scale and detail:

Wouldn’t we rather all have walls like these rather than imaginative answers to simple household questions?

To revive the art form, a computer program would need to be able to take in multiple photographs (the typical tapestry shows multiple scenes), come up with a cartoon, and then pick fabric to match the colors in the underlying photographs. How could robots do a better job than humans? Robots have more patience than humans and could perhaps work at a higher resolution. We have a broader range of colors available with dyes and could also add plastic thread to the palette.

There are some companies that purport to make tapestry-like art from photographs, but they do it by printing rather than weaving.

What else did I see at the Kimbell? Readers would be disappointed if I didn’t provide a gift shop tour…

The building itself is a Louis Kahn-designed landmark:

The lighting was a bit dim, but I managed to capture a Follower of Science (concerned enough about SARS-CoV-2 to wear a mask, but not concerned enough about SARS-CoV-2 to shave his/her/zir/their beard):

The modern art museum across the street is also worthwhile and provides clear instructions for making your own $1 million artwork at home:

The Amon Carter Museum, famous for its collection of Remington and Russell, is a 5-minute walk away (might feel longer in the 100+ degree heat).

Texas is not as rich a location for the masketologist as California, New York, or Massachusetts, but I still managed to find people who have elected to do jobs that inevitably expose them to thousands of potentially infected humans per day and who attempt to avoid contracting a respiratory virus by wearing simple masks:

A sticker for sale at DFW:

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How would eliminating taxes on tips work in practice?

by philg

Kamala Harris recently floated the entirely original idea of eliminating taxes on tip income. How would this work in practice?

Consider the hypothetical case of Abu Mohammed Alsomiri, a personal trainer in Dearborn, Michigan. Clients currently see Abu twice per week and pay $80 per session via Venmo or Zelle. After Kamala’s no-taxes-on-tips program is implemented, Abu says that he provides training at no cost because he is so passionate about fitness, but tips are gladly accepted and that anyone who doesn’t tip at least $80 per session may need to be dropped from his schedule because he tends to be busy.

Or how about Catherine Débrosse, a Haitian migrant with Temporary Protected Status (extended most recently in July 2024) who attended law school in Maskachusetts and became a divorce litigator in Boston. She was previously charging $1000 per hour and paying taxes on her $1.5 million/year income (not every hour is billable). She tells clients that they have to pay her $300/hr and then she expects a $700/hr tip, which is never expected, but always appreciated. At the same time, she notes, due to her great track record at winning custody, child support, alimony, and property division, she’s too busy to work for clients who don’t tip so the clients who don’t tip can expect to have her withdraw from their case. Now Ms. Débrosse pays taxes on only 30% of her income?

What stops corporations from tipping? John Q. Nerdly volunteers to work at Nvidia as a software engineer keeping the CUDA flame alive. If the company appreciates what Mx. Nerdly does, Nvidia can give him/her/zir/them a $20,000 weekly tip (purely voluntary). Now Mx. Nerdly doesn’t have any taxable income. If the tips arrive weekly, Mx. Nerdly never risks working for more than a week without some financial compensation. In fact, Nvidia could eliminate that risk by providing a “first week tip” that is comparable to a month of regular expected tips.

In Kid perspectives on contracts I chronicled a situation where I paid a contractor more than he said (and the paperwork said) I was required to. He wouldn’t have to pay taxes on the amount that I added voluntarily because that was a tip?

Chevrolet dealers will soon be selling the ZR1 version of the C8 Corvette at a $50,000 markup. What if they say that their supply of these 1,064 horsepower cars is limited and they will be happy to sell them at MSRP, but unfortunately must limit sales to those who are decent tippers (where “decent” is defined as a $50,000 tip)? (This would be a great car for going to Publix except that Chevy eliminated the front trunk to make 1,000+ hp happen. The rear trunk isn’t huge and it gets quite hot due to being next to the engine.)

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How are Islamic groups able to hold Islamic hostages?

by philg

Gaza is run by three groups:

  • the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”)
  • UNRWA (an all-Islamic staff except for a handful of white savior European atheists, such as Philippe Lazzarini (there weren’t any qualified Arabs to lead this funnel for US/EU tax dollars headed for Hamas?))
  • Palestinian Islamic Jihad

Today we learned about a man (“Farhan al-Qadi” might be the best transliteration of his name) liberated from Gazan captivity and returned to his family in Israel (military.com):

The military said Qaid Farhan Alkadi was rescued from a tunnel “in a complex operation in the southern Gaza Strip,” without providing further details. It was not immediately known if the rescue was made under fire or if anyone was killed or wounded during the operation. The 52-year-old was one of eight members of Israel’s Arab Bedouin minority who were abducted on Oct. 7. He was working as a guard at a packing factory in Kibbutz Magen, one of several farming communities that came under attack. He has two wives and is the father of 11 children.

Wikipedia says that all Negev Bedouins are Muslim.

So… we have Muslim Gazans who explicitly call themselves “Islamic” holding a hostage who is himself Muslim/Islamic. Where in the Koran or the Hadiths does it say that this is allowed?

Separately, how does the father of 11 children look this good (the photo below was before he was taken hostage by his Arab-Muslim brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Gaza)? An American man will often be reduced to overweight wreckage by just one wife and one or two kids, even in those cases where the wife doesn’t turn plaintiff.

Also, let’s see how western media covers this guy’s traditional Islamic lifestyle, i.e., the two wives. Our journalists say that they’re on a mission to combat Islamophobia. If so, it would make sense to suppress the information about this freed hostage having two wives in order to make Islam seem less alien to a Western audience. For example, the New York Times article “Who Is Farhan al-Qadi, the Rescued Hostage?” doesn’t mention his marital status, only a “family”. NBC says he’s “a father of 11”, but there is no mention of any females having participated in the 11 births (as with Pete Buttigieg in the hospital bed with his husband Chasten). (See below for how the same media outlets find polygamy very interesting indeed if it can be tied to the Mormons.) “‘Brought back to life’: Family hails rescue of Israeli hostage from Hamas tunnel in Gaza” (CNN): “On Tuesday evening, his brothers and 11 children, along with their cousins and neighbors, were busy putting up tents, chairs and lights ahead of his return to the village.” (a Buttigieg-style “family” for the “father of 11” according to CNN, with children but no mothers) Wall Street Journal: “Al-Qadi, an Israeli Muslim from an Arab community known as Bedouins, is the father of 11 children and a brother to 10 siblings. He lives in a small village in Israel’s Negev Desert.” (the size of the village where he lives will be more interesting to readers than that he has two wives; no reason to rephrase as “He lives with two wives in Israel’s Negev Desert”)

Finally, what if al-Qadi comes to the U.S. with his wives and 11 children? He claims asylum on the grounds that the Gazans have said that they want to eliminate Israel and Israelis and that he has a reasonable fear of being attacked again because the Biden-Harris administration is continuing to fund Hamas, UNRWA, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He settles in Rashida Tlaib’s district in Michigan. Wife #1 decides that she’d rather spend time with a neighbor and sues al-Qadi for divorce in the local family court. If Wife #2 also wants her freedom does she have to sue for divorce as well? Or does the first divorce render al-Qadi no longer married to anyone in the eyes of the Michigan family court? In theory, polygamists cannot become U.S. citizens (Nolo), but that shouldn’t affect their right to claim asylum and de facto permanent residence. Non-citizen residents of the U.S. have the same rights to file divorce lawsuits as citizens.

More from Nolo:

a refugee who was practicing polygamy before he immigrated will be required by U.S. immigration law to designate one wife as his legal wife to accompany him to the United States. Years later, after becoming a U.S. citizen, he might divorce that wife, and marry the woman who was formerly his second wife, in order to petition for her (on Form I-130) to immigrate to the United States.

Related:

  • in 2023, the New York Times devotes 20 pages to a tiny polygamist community that spun off from the Mormon Church in 1890
  • “The Persistence of Polygamy” (NYT, 1999) about “Mormon fundamentalists”
  • “Mormons seek distance from polygamist sects” (NBC, 2008)
  • Wikipedia: “The trans-Saharan slave trade, part of the Arab slave trade … In Al-Andalus, the area of medieval Iberia under Islamic control, black Muslims could be legally held as slaves … This all occurred despite the orthodox Muslim jurist position that no Muslim, regardless of race, could be enslaved … Even as late as the 19th century, many of the common people in Islamic society still believed that enslavement based on skin color, rather than based on religion, was approved by the religious laws of Islam” (but Farhan al-Qadi doesn’t have especially dark skin)
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More Newport Beach coast helicopter flight photos (and some masketology)

by philg

A few more photos of how the folks who say that they want to end economic inequality are living, from a Robinson R44 flight out of KSNA (Orange County Airport) up to Long Beach and then back down the coast to Dana Point before returning to refuel and then land (with a certain amount of fear and terror) on a rooftop adjacent to the airport.

I’d love to know what drugs the architect of the roof in the last photo was on!

If we ignore the water shortages, California does seem like a great place for golf. It doesn’t matter how cold the water is if the plan is to use the water only for decoration while trying to hit some balls:

Here are some folks who’ve probably figured out a way to avoid whatever new taxes Gavin Newsom might cook up (183 days/year in the Jackson, Wyoming house, for example?):

Unfortunate (termite treatment tent) and fortunate (personal oceanfront golf course?):

A lawn bowling court for communities of color?

Some hotels that could be turned into migrant shelters if Californians were willing to deliver on what they say are human rights:

Housing is a human right, but it’s also a human right to have a beach house and a yacht, which is why tax rates on California’s wealthy elites can’t be raised to pay for the housing that is supposedly a human right:

As in the previous post, the equipment used for the above photos is simple: Robinson R44, left front door removed, iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Let’s also have a look at some other photos from the trip. I saw three CyberTrucks in various parking lots in a 12-hour period:

For Californians to save the planet with these enormous vehicles will require the output of three continuously running steel mills.

The most expensive space in the mostly-empty office building where I was working is rented by a divorce litigator:

CVS in Irvine has to keep the deodorant locked up:

At SNA on the way back to Florida, I found a Follower of Science wearing an N95 mask over a full beard, an always-delightful scene, albeit contrary to the 3M instructions:

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Bring back betting on dog racing with stipulation that they have to be family dogs?

by philg

Happy International Dog Day.

Florida outlawed wagering on dog racing at the end of 2020, which effectively closed all of the dog tracks. The rationale for the ban was that the greyhounds who race professionally are treated cruelly, e.g., living in cages. Dogs love to run, though. I wonder if it would make more sense to allow gambling on dog racing, with classes organized by breed, so long as each dog lives in a standard family pet environment (no more than one dog per human household member, for example). Mindy the Crippler could compete in the Vicious Retriever 9-12 years category, for example, and would be thrilled to chase a rabbit. I would bet on her!

This might fall into the same category as my desire to see a Honda Odyssey minivan as an Indy 500 or Formula 1 pace car.

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ChatGPT 4o tackles the challenge of AC ducts sweating in an attic

by philg

The latest and greatest Florida houses are designed with closed cell spray foam insulation underneath the roof. This has the disadvantage that roof leaks are difficult to pinpoint, since the foam prevents the water from dripping directly down underneath the part of the roof that has failed, but seals the house against humidity because any attic space essentially becomes part of the air-conditioned and dehumidified internal space of the house.

Our house, sadly, dates to 2003. We thus have AC ducts in unconditioned attic spaces, which seems to work fine on the ground floor, but when we poke our heads up into the attic we find that it is moderately hot (85F) and extremely humid (80-85 percent relative humidity). The attic has soffit vents all around, which seem to do a good job of preventing super hot temps from developing, but they also allow humidity to intrude.

Current Florida code requires ducts insulated to R-8 inside unconditioned spaces. We have R-6 ducts. The air coming out of an air handler is typically about 20 degrees colder than the thermostat setting and we’ve measured about 52 degrees at a ceiling register. So let’s say that the duct temp is 50 degrees.

The Interweb doesn’t seem to have a simple formula for determining the outside temp of an R-6 duct given the inside temp. ChatGPT 4o, however, comes up with one:

Notice that, with this formula, the outside of the duct gets colder and colder with increased R value. A perfectly insulated duct, for example, would have an outside temperature exactly equal to the inside temp, a very curious result!

New prompt:

What if we increase the duct insulation to R-30? What would the outside temperature of the duct be? (the air inside the duct is still at 50 degrees)

Sheetrock has an R value of about 0.5, supposedly. Let’s see what happens when we plug that in:

What if we reduce the duct insulation to an R value of 0.5? What would the outside surface temperature of the duct then be?

Our future AI overlord has determined that putting cold air inside a duct will raise the temperature of the outside of the duct above the ambient temperature of the attic.

What is the solution to the sweating duct problem, you might ask? A quarter-baked approach, from the energy and building envelope expert who did our Manual J calculation:

You probably have too much ventilation in your attic. I had a similar problem in my house. I blocked off more than half of the soffit vents. The temperature in the attic went up a few degrees while the humidity came down dramatically because not as much humid air was coming in from the outside.

(He didn’t say this explicitly, but I am guessing that the relatively dry attic was due to the attic being exposed to dried-out cooled-off conditioned air from the conditioned space below.)

The half-baked approach:

Install a dehumidifier with a fresh air inlet on one or more of the house AC systems. Each dehumidifier can bring in at least 100 cfm of fresh air, thus creating a positive pressure within the conditioned spaces of the house. The result will be conditioned air being pushed up into the attic and, eventually, being exhausted through the soffit vents. Expensively dehumidified air goes out of the house via the attic instead of humid air coming into the attic. A dehumidifier consumes about 700 watts of power, so this will consume about $1000 per year in electricity at 15 cents/kWh (per dehumidifier).

The fully-baked approach:

  1. Remove all ceilings on the top floor of the house and the fiberglass insulation on top of those ceilings.
  2. Bring in a spray foam company to block off the soffit vents and spray foam over them and the entire underside of the roof
  3. Have the AC contractor put some small supplies and a return into the attic so that there is nowhere for humid air to hide (humid air is lighter than dry air so it will tend to rise to the top of a house)
  4. Have a drywall contractor come back to put new ceilings up
  5. Paint

Circling back to artificial intelligence, as embodied by the latest paid ChatGPT model (4o)… I’m impressed with how confident and erudite the machine sounds when making these simple physics calculations!

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Diversity goes to space (but can’t get back home)

by philg

“NASA Decides to Bring [$4.3 billion Boeing] Starliner Spacecraft Back to Earth Without Crew” (nasa.gov):

NASA will return Boeing’s Starliner to Earth without astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the spacecraft, the agency announced Saturday. The uncrewed return allows NASA and Boeing to continue gathering testing data on Starliner during its upcoming flight home, while also not accepting more risk than necessary for its crew.

This isn’t unconditionally great news for the astronauts. From The Sky Below (book by an astronaut):

my multiple spaceflights and spacewalks mean the likelihood of spinal trouble is almost as inevitable as an overloaded, rickety Jenga tower toppling over into a ragged heap. In space, the spine straightens and the intervertebral discs swell when not being compressed by gravity,

(the author spent about 8 weeks total in space)

Let’s check in with Boeing…

Each member of our global team brings something uniquely valuable to Boeing, and we grow stronger when everyone has an opportunity to contribute. Boeing remains committed to creating a culture of inclusion that attracts and retains the world’s top talent, and inspires every teammate to do their best work and grow their careers.

It turns out, though, that not all members of the global team are equally valuable. Black team members are apparently more valuable than non-Black ones. Boeing’s “Aspirations and Progress” section sets out “Increase the Black representation rate in the U.S. by 20%.” as the number one goal to achieve by 2025. Lower down on the page: “Fair360, a world leader in using data to assess companies’ commitment to inclusion, ranked Boeing 9th out of more than 160 companies reviewed.”

The “2024 Boeing Sustainability & Social Impact Report”:

We value diverse perspectives and continue to see more women and U.S. racial and ethnic minorities represented at nearly every level of the company compared with a year ago.

The company’s “Allies spreading awareness” page:

Their stories are part of a series celebrating the perspectives and accomplishments from LGBTQIA+ employees and allies across Boeing.

When her oldest child, Asher, recently came out as non-binary and embraced they/them/their pronouns, the family’s main priority was to be supportive and learn as much as they could about gender identity.

Elizabeth also looked into health insurance benefits and was able to connect Asher with Boeing’s Gender Affirmation Team, which provided information and resources to help Asher and family navigate through the transition process.

For Maggie Duckworth, advocacy for the transgender community is also a key component of her life. … The software engineer met her partner more than 20 years ago at an anime convention. The two bonded over the animated art where gender fluid characters were commonly a part of storylines. Later, Maggie’s partner, Ryn, came out as non-binary and now uses the pronouns they/them/theirs. “For a long time they were struggling with defining who they were,” Maggie said. “Then Ryn realized that they were (gender) neutral and we both felt relieved because we had found a definition.”

“I want to be an example for women in aerospace”:

One of [Chantel’s] main objectives in this role is to increase the representation of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers—a goal of personal significance.

If a person who identifies as a “woman” works at Boeing, one of the biggest tasks for which she is paid by Boeing shareholders is getting more “women” to go into STEM careers, regardless of whether those careers are at Boeing?

The most exciting part:

For the first time in her 8-year career, Chantel, a woman of color, reports to a director who is also a woman of color. Chantel believes she can support continued progress by ensuring other women in STEM see fulfilling career paths for themselves.

Her efforts help support our equity, diversity and inclusion commitment. In 2021, women’s representation at Boeing increased to 23.2% in the United States and 24.6% internationally. And representation for women of color at Boeing has increased at executive levels and throughout the company.

So the news isn’t all bad with Boeing. Diversity is up substantially year-over-year both right now and that was also true back in 2021.

The company’s most recent “feature stories” about the product:

Related:

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Favorite air show acts at Oshkosh 2024 (Canadians and drones)

by philg

Me, in 2018:

Least favorite airshow act: a synchronized drone array. These stayed pretty far from the crowd so it was essentially a bunch of lights that could have been replicated with a big TV (it is possible to project 3D onto 2D!). Unless the drones are all around a crowd I don’t understand why a 3D array of drones is more compelling to watch than a big TV (or your phone held up close to your eyes).

This year, however, the drones were integrated with the fireworks show and added a lot. The crowd for the Wednesday night air show was insane. Get there early with a group of friends and stake out a space near show center (Boeing Plaza) if you don’t want to stand through the entire show or view it from an angle (if you arrive at 7:30 or 8 pm for the 8 pm show the only spaces left will be to the north or south). There was a “Peace the Old-fashioned Way” opening with the Avro Lancaster (one of two airworthy examples worldwide; lock up your dams if you see one) and both of the world’s airworthy B-29s. Nate Hammond shooting fireworks out of the DHC-1 Chipmunk closed the show.

A few pictures of the Lancaster and B-29s while parked:

(It is unclear if Japanese visitors appreciate the cartoon character on a machine that was extremely destructive even before the atomic bomb, e.g., during a March 9, 1945 raid on Tokyo.)

One interesting act this year was the Canadian demonstration CF-18 team. “I’ve never seen an F-18 do anything like that,” said a friend who is an accomplished aerobatic pilot. Caleb “Tango” Robert mostly flew slowly and tumbled the aircraft in maneuvers that one is more accustomed to seeing from Extra and Gamebird pilots. Where the U.S. Navy flies the same type of plane as fast and loud as possible, the Royal Canadian Air Force, celebrating its 100th birthday this year, takes a more subtle approach.

The Snowbirds also showed up and played Elton John while doing gentle aerobatics in the 1966 Tutors (9!). Why not Celine Dion?

The Wisconsin National Guard put on a show that was the opposite of the Canadians’ mostly peaceful displays. They brought Blackhawk helicopters packed with troops, howitzers on the ground (“Let’s hope that Alec Baldwin isn’t behind one of those 155mm guns,” I said), and an F-22 and F-35 flying overhead in formation with a tanker. Much drama for the kids (we’re informed that kids are gentle peaceful creatures, but if kids were allowed to run governments I think that nearly all disputes would be settled via strategic bombing).

Bill Stein tossed around his Edge 540 and Mike Goulian tumbled in his Extra 330SC.

Here’s a video of relative newcomer Philipp Steinbach in the Gamebird:

I skipped the show on the one day that the Italian Tricolori team was flying. Here’s a video:

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S.C. Johnson Frank Lloyd Wright tour

by philg

Another installment in the series “Stuff to do on the way to or from Oshkosh.”

Racine, Wisconsin is not just a center of arts and crafts. It’s corporate headquarters for S.C. Johnson, a family-run company that commissioned some of the largest Frank Lloyd Wright projects ever built. As part of the company’s commitment to the community, they’ve been running free public tours since the FLW HQ opened in 1939 (best to go on a weekend because more of the spaces are open; photography isn’t permitted indoors).

Visitors are welcome in a transplanted 1964 World’s Fair pavilion:

The pavilion showed To Be Alive!, which won an Academy Award for short documentary (one of the three screens can be seen on YouTube) and today also shows Carnaúba: A Son’s Memoir, which chronicles a 1998 recreation of a 1935 trip in a Sikorsky S-38 amphib.

After checking in at the pavilion, you walk by a couple of statues of Elizabeth Warren’s family before entering the main building.

You then enter the Research Tower, a 150-foot-high monument to architectural incompetence:

Every part of the Research Tower felt cramped (FLW was short and loved to make tall people uncomfortable) and a single narrow staircase provides the only form of emergency egress. S.C. Johnson limited the usage of the building almost immediately due to concerns about fire risk and the local fire marshal in the 1980s issued an order making the building illegal to occupy. Fortunately, real estate in Racine, Wisconsin is not so valuable that it is imperative to tear down this white (red brick) elephant.

S.C. Johnson apparently wasn’t soured on starchitecture and chose the UK’s Norman Foster to design an employee cafeteria/gym/museum/etc. The replica Sikorsky S-38 hangs in the lobby. In this building you learn more about the company’s five CEOs, all from within the family and all with technical experience or training (the current CEO has a PhD in physics). One inspiring quote from Sam Johnson, CEO N-1, was engraved into the 2010 Norman Foster building and says that every person has a “spirit of adventure”. Fair to say that coronapanic proved that the typical human in his/her/zir/their 20s is precisely adventurous enough to cower indoors for a year or two, leaving his/her/zir/their apartment only to get whatever injections the local public health officials have dreamed up?

The Johnson family loved to fly. Sam, for example, seems to have had a Cessna Citation Jet and was also a big supporter of EAA. Flying down to South America and setting up an American-style research lab in the jungle worked about as well for S.C. Johnson in 1935 as it did for Ford in 1928 (see Book review: Fordlandia). Here’s the current CEO’s pilot certificate from the FAA’s web site:

(Having a Private certificate with a jet type rating is truly the mark of a rich person!)

In the film about the 1998 trip in the Sikorsky replica, Sam Johnson is candid about his struggles with alcoholism. Folks who believe in the power of genetics won’t be surprised to learn that his mother was an alcoholic. The typical alcoholic is soon the target of a divorce lawsuit: “The incidence of marital dissolution from W1 to W2 was 15.5% for those with a past-12-month [alcohol use disorder; “AUD”] at W1, compared to 4.8% among those with no AUD” (source). Either for love of Sam or love of the family fortune that could be accessed only via continued marriage, Sam’s wife got him into treatment at the Mayo Clinic rather than following the well-worn path to the local family court.

Jet pilots should be grateful to S.C. Johnson for all of the cans of Pledge that have been used to clean windows. New Englanders who enjoy the woods should be grateful for all of the cans of OFF! that are required during the mosquito-infested summer and tick-infested fall and spring. Our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters who shave their beards should be grateful for S.C. Johnson’s invention of Edge shaving cream (something the Followers of Science apparently reject, since they are often seen wearing an N95 mask over a full beard, contrary to the instructions that 3M includes with the mask). All of us can be grateful for Windex!

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