Why are we still out of paper towels and spray cleaner?

by philg

It has been six months since coronapanic started. Why is the local Target still out of paper towels, spray cleaners such as Formula 409, cleaning wipes, etc. People are actually using way more of these items? The Chinese can build a hospital for 5,000 patients in 10 days, but American factories can’t expand production in 6 months?

From August 26, 2020, the Target store in Watertown, Maskachusetts:

(shoppers were continuously reminded via the overhead audio system that wearing a mask was required, a bit like being at an airport and hearing warnings about unattended baggage over and over again)

Maybe AOC and Ed Markey are right? Capitalism is a failure?

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U.S. retail will have permanently shorter European-style hours as a result of coronapanic?

by philg

With tens of millions of Americans on the “$600 per week and chill” plan, a lot of retailers shortened their hours. In theory, things should be getting back to normal (it was a brief shutdown to “flatten the curve,” right?), but at least our local supermarkets seem to have kept their new shorter hours.

Are we on track to become more like Europe, where if you don’t want to conform to the standard hours you won’t be able to get meals, food, etc.? (walk around Paris and see if you can find a 24-hour CVS!)

Readers: What have you seen in your regions of the country? Are hours still curtailed?

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COVID-19 kills the malls

by philg

Some of our recent helicopter flying has been with a photographer tasked with getting pictures of shopping malls in the context of highways, cities, etc. What are these for? “Everything is for sale now,” he said. “They’re all going bankrupt.”

Is it actually too late for these spaces? If schools need more square footage to do in-person learning, why not rent the vast department stores to local school districts? Because the schools aren’t actually willing to pay? In Shanghai, a typical mall might have half the space devoted to after-school programs for children, e.g., dance or English-language instruction. Perhaps that can’t work in the U.S. because at any time a governor can make it illegal to operate the after-school program.

Readers: What else can be done with these spaces? If retail and most other forms of gathering are outlawed, what is the value of a lot of climate-controlled space?

Related:

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Forgeries in the reopened art museums?

by philg

Today is the day that our biggest art museum, the Metropolitan, will supposedly reopen. I wonder if art museums will survive given that people now have to (a) book in advance, (b) show up at a precise time, and (c) wear a mask. It might be more pleasant to stay home and walk unmasked around the neighborhood and/or be entertained with a screen.

If you want to get back into the art world, let me recommend this Washington Post article on Gaugin forgeries.

It is possible that a real Gaugin is more offensive than a fake one:

And yet, today more than ever, Gauguin is a highly divisive figure.

To his admirers, he was one of the last great romantic adventurers, a former stockbroker who sloughed off bourgeois conventions and voyaged across the world to live out a dream. He was, they say, a visionary artist who was determined to learn from other cultures, and who used his expanded awareness to make some of the most ambitious, original works of the modern era.

To others, however, he was a scoundrel who traveled to French Polynesia and shamelessly stole creative ideas from cultures he barely knew. These critics also see a man who abandoned his wife and family to father children with teenage girls in the South Seas, relationships that he got away with due to his colonial prestige but that can clearly be seen as more sinister today.

Eating organic food and breathing unpolluted air nearly killed Gaugin and he was sick and weak before dying at age 54, but there are a fair number of works attributed to the artist in the year before he died.

A school group at the National Gallery of Art back in 2016. They won’t have to endure this kind of excursion now that they’re all fully virtual!

A sculpture that might have to be canceled:

Related:

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Banksy can sell anything except migrants

by philg

The British artist Banksy can sell almost anything, including a more-than-$1-million work that shreds itself as soon as purchased. We are informed that low-skill immigration makes a country richer and yet Banksy cannot sell the migrants that he has collected. See “Banksy’s migrant rescue boat stranded at sea with more than 200 on board” (Reuters):

A rescue boat funded by British street artist Banksy has issued urgent calls for help, saying it is stranded in the Mediterranean and overloaded with migrants who it has been unable to bring ashore.

The Louise Michel, named after a French feminist anarchist, started operating last week. It is trying to find a safe port for the 219 migrants it has picked up off the coast of Libya since Thursday.

Another said the boat was unable to move and “no longer the master of her own destiny” due to her overcrowded deck and a life raft deployed at her side, “but above all due to Europe ignoring our emergency calls for immediate assistance.”

The 30-metre long Louise Michel, a former French Navy boat daubed in pink and white, was bought with proceeds from the sale of Banksy artwork.

From designboom:

Related:

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If voting is more difficult, e.g., due to USPS shutdown, shouldn’t that favor the Democrats?

by philg

My Facebook feed remains alive with those who are convinced that Donald J. Trump will win the election via making it more difficult to vote, e.g., by shutting down the U.S. Post Office and/or discouraging voting by mail. Donald Trump is literally Hitler and nobody will vote against him unless voting is extremely convenient.

Some New York Times articles:

In other words, Trump is the biggest danger to the U.S. in the history of U.S. politics. But if lines at the polling station are longer than usual, Democrats, who are smart enough to recognize Trump as the dictator he is, will simply walk away. “Yes, Trump is a dictator and the U.S. is turning into Nazi Germany, but I can’t spare a whole hour or take a 1 in 100,000 risk of contracting coronaplague to save democracy.”

(Conundrum: if masks work, why is there any risk at all in masked adults gathering in a wide-open polling place? if masks don’t work, why are we demanding that elementary school children wear them?)

At least for the moment, I am not interested in the truth of these propositions. I am just fascinated by how it is possible for people to believe that (1) a second term for Trump will cement a U.S. descent into a dictatorship, and (2) the people who recognize this will not bother to vote against the dictator if there is any obstacle in their path.

Related:

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Richard Jewell movie

by philg

Who has enjoyed Richard Jewell, a Clint Eastwood movie streaming on HBO?

It is a great example of how to make a compelling movie even when the outcome is known in advance. (The story concerns the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and the security guard who found a suspicious backpack. Richard Jewell’s actions might have saved 100 lives. He quickly went from hero to main suspect as a team of 20+ FBI agents pursued the “look for the keys under the street light” method.)

For pilots and anyone else who has to make decisions with incomplete information, it is an interesting demonstration of our human ability to convince ourselves and to fit new information into our existing way of explaining an event. The FBI was hugely over-committed to their theory that Jewell, whose personality quirk of zealotry-in-law-enforcement was both the thing that motivated him to notice the backpack and also the thing that made him seem like a possible unhinged murderer.

Recommended.

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Did either the Republicans or Democrats present a clear plan?

by philg

The conventions are almost over. Did either the Democrats or Republicans present something that could be characterized as a coherent philosophy or clear plan?

I struggle with the use of “left” and “right” in the U.S. because it seems as though these terms presuppose a philosophy of some sort and I haven’t been able to discern any (Group A trying to use government power to grab money from Group B is not a philosophy, but an expedient).

What did either party promise to do? For the Republicans, did they promise to do some stuff starting in 2021? If so, why didn’t they do deliver the promised items back in 2017 when they had a larger share of Congress? For the Democrats, what do they say that they will do?

Finally, did either party essentially make the same promises as Hugo Chavez? As I wrote in this book review:

According to Carroll, Chavez promised the same things as leaders in other countries:

  • To a country that already had a free public health care system for the poor he promised additional health care services/schemes
  • To government workers and people whose skills were not in demand he promised that they would be enriched through taxes on the most successful private sector workers (and that the new higher taxes would not discourage those private sector workers from continuing to work as hard as they formerly had)
  • To most voters he promised that they could enjoy a better standard of living without either working more diligently or learning new skills (i.e., the government would either raise wages or reduce prices).
  • That he would protect citizens from foreign invasion/influence via an expensive military.
  • That he would reduce income inequality.

I’m convinced that Chavez was the greatest politician of our age. He kept getting reelected in fair elections despite the country’s downward economic and social spiral.

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Tesla implements my kid-in-hot-car alarm 17 years later

by philg

From 2003, “Lack of wireless Internet killing children”:

A recent AP story talks about the increasing number of children dying after being left in sealed cars by mistake. As a society we have 99% of the infrastructure necessary to prevent this. Most newer cars have an alarm system and automatic climate control. The alarm system implies a vibration sensor, a microphone (for glass breakage), and a little computer that is up and running all the time. The automatic climate control implies an interior thermometer.

With a bit of programming the car can recognize that (a) someone is inside the car making noise and moving around a bit, and (b) that the temperature is climbing to an unsafe level (or getting too cold in the winter). Now what? If we had a wireless Internet for the price of $3 in chips the car would be able to send an instant message to the owner and the local police to come back and check the car. (Of course you could do this now if you wanted to buy a $300/year cell phone subscription for the car, which is essentially what the GM OnStar system does, but most people wouldn’t be willing to pay the extra $300/year for something with such a low probability of ever being used. Hence the need for a better national infrastructure.)

From last week, “Tesla seeks approval for sensor that could detect child left in hot cars”:

Tesla Inc. asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for approval to market a short-range interactive motion-sensing device that could help prevent children from being left behind in hot cars and boost theft-prevention systems.

So it wasn’t a terrible idea, but it did arrive 17 years after I thought it should have.

Related:

  • Car/Kennel (my 2003 plan for something like Tesla’s Dog Mode)
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Shutting universities due to plague and the Cat in the Hat

by philg

Just as the Swedes said back in March and April (interview with an MD/PhD), since coronavirus is now a permanent companion for humankind, if ye seek ye shall find. American universities have embarked on massive testing programs and are discovering that young humans can be and are infected with coronaplague. To protect our delicate society, they’re virtuously shutting down.

Does this make sense? Let’s refer to the infamous racist tract, the Cat in the Hat:

‘that is good,’ said the fish.
‘he has gone away. yes.
but your mother will come.
she will find this big mess!
and this mess is so big
and so deep and so tall,
we can not pick it up.
there is no way at all!’

If the students are sent home, yes, why won’t we find a big mess of coronaplague wherever they decide to live? Instead of gathering with fellow students at College A and possibly infecting middle-aged Professor B, they’ll gather with their high school friends and possibly infect their middle-aged parents, with whom they will be stuck living indefinitely. Is it plausible that the net result will be reduced overall plague?

Evidence in favor of shutdown: the Swedes closed their universities back in March, one of only a handful of things that they did other than simply giving the finger to the virus. But the idea there was to slow down the virus and avoid overwhelming the medical system (the Swedish government overestimated the need for ICU beds by more than 3X). The Swedes never said that closing universities would make the virus go away or keep young people from spreading it to each other within a few months.

Evidence against the effectiveness of any shutdown: “‘Do you really need to party?’ WHO asks world’s youth” (if old people are telling young people to do something “for their own good” we can almost always win by betting against, right?)

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