Trying to help my mom get some benefit from Internet/Web without all of the bad stuff and headaches, I’ve come up with a product idea: an email system in which marketing and mailing list messages are all automatically deleted by default. There can be a separate page in which the senior him/her/zir/theirself or a young relative can click “yes, do let in a flood of emails from Source X”. It is easy to sign up to email lists, e.g., if a senior does any shopping online or participates in social media, and hard to quit (buried in the fine print). So build an email system from scratch or add this behavior into AOL, Gmail, or some other webmail system.
My mom got to the point with her AOL account that she could never find relevant emails because they were buried in a tide of mailing list crud.
I recognize that Google deals with this already to some extent by having separate tabs for Promotions and Social, but it’s not quite as big a hammer as I’m suggesting.
While it is sad that the Netflix Cleopatra (3% audience score) spinoffs might be delayed by the refusal of Democrats to pay their workers properly, the public can still watch Sorcerer, the recently deceased director William Friedkin’s favorite among his movies (French Connection and Exorcist are the best known).
William Friedkin, known to his friends as Billy, was born in Chicago on Aug. 25, 1935, to Louis and Rachel (Green) Friedkin. Both parents were Jews who had left Ukraine early in the century with their families to escape the tsarist pogroms. His mother, who was known as Rae, was an operating room nurse; his father worked a variety of low-paying jobs.
“The French Connection” was rejected by every studio in town before Richard Zanuck, in his final days at 20th Century Fox, gave it the green light. Convinced that the film required a street-level documentary feel, Mr. Friedkin spent weeks on the beat with the two police officers who had broken the French Connection drug case. He said he paid an official at the New York Transit Authority a $40,000 bribe to overlook the rules and allow the famous chase sequence to be filmed.
He later called “Sorcerer,” in an interview with Indiewire in 2017, “the only film I’ve made that I can still watch.”
The lurid “Cruising” (1980), with Al Pacino as a New York City detective who goes undercover in the city’s gay S-and-M bars to solve a murder, aroused the fierce opposition of gay activists, who objected to the film’s portrayal of gay men and who picketed the location shoots, much to Mr. Friedkin’s dismay.
Another great movie from this guy: To Live and Die in L.A. (you wouldn’t have wanted to be hoping to get anywhere near where they filmed the car chase on the day(s) of filming!)
Trigger warnings: the employer of the main characters in Sorcerer does not comply with OSHA regulations; seat belts are not always worn; the roads and bridges that they traverse were not approved by Pete Buttigieg.
On August 7, 2023, I was checking some Harvard University academic calendar dates and found the following page:
COVID-19: To keep Harvard healthy, if you will have an “on-campus presence,” you must comply with Harvard University’s COVID-19 immunization policy. You are required to submit documentation within 10 days of registering for any course with any on-campus presence. You risk being dropped from your on-campus courses, even after classes begin, if you do not upload your documentation in an expedited manner or if your status is non-compliant. Visit the Immunization Requirements page for details.
Harvard University requires 2 FDA- or WHO- authorized COVID-19 vaccinations, OR 1 bivalent dose for all eligible students.
You must submit proof of vaccination (or medical or religious exemption documentation) to University Health Services if you will have any on-campus presence.
You are required to submit documentation within 10 days of registering for any course with any on-campus presence. You risk being dropped from your on-campus courses, even after classes begin, if you do not upload your documentation in an expedited manner or if your status is noncompliant.
A few questions… the J&J one-shot COVID-19 vaccination was FDA-authorized (though never “approved”). Why does Harvard then demand 2 shots? Let’s assume for the sake of argument that college-age students benefit from COVID-19 shots. Is there any evidence that the 2020 COVID-19 shots provide any benefit with respect to the currently circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2?
Related:
Lost in the coronapanic shuffle, an April 2020 paper from the Annals of Internal Medicine: “The Effect of Influenza Vaccination for the Elderly on Hospitalization and Mortality” (Anderson, Dobkin, and Gorry). They looked at the UK where hardly anyone gets a flu shot under age 65 and almost everyone gets one at age 65. “Turning 65 was associated with a statistically and clinically significant increase in rate of seasonal influenza vaccination. However, no evidence indicated that vaccination reduced hospitalizations or mortality among elderly persons.” (in other words, the flu shot might prevent a few days of illness, but it doesn’t reduce the death rate)
When announcing that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ district governing Disney World abolished its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, District Administrator Glen Gilzean Jr. name-dropped his previous employer, the Central Florida Urban League.
“Our district will no longer participate in any attempt to divide us by race or advance the notion that we are not created equal,” Gilzean, who is Black, said in the Tuesday announcement. “As the former head of the Central Florida Urban League, a civil rights organization, I can say definitively that our community thrives only when we work together despite our differences.”
But that civil rights organization is an affiliate of the National Urban League, which, in a statement sent to the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida, blasted Gilzean and the decision.
“The National Urban League and our nationwide movement of more than 90 local affiliates are shocked and dismayed by Glen Gilzean’s betrayal of the values at the very core of our mission,” said Marc Morial, its president and CEO, in a statement to the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida.
“His rejection of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion principles is a rejection of the Urban League Movement and the pursuit of racial justice itself,” Morial said. “We vigorously and emphatically reject any implied association with Mr. Gilzean’s current words or actions. His crass political expediency is all the more offensive given his previous vantage point to the harm he knows it will cause.”
The district, which DeSantis now appoints the board of, said its decision came after an internal investigation found its previous leaders “implemented hiring and contracting programs that discriminated against Americans based on gender and race, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.”
The district says “gender and racial quotas” were also given to contractors, which drained it of cash as it looked for complying businesses, which were “aggressively monitored” for their racial and gender practices.
“The so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives were advanced during the tenure of the previous board and they were illegal and simply unAmerican,” Gilzean said.
Race-based college admissions was recently ruled illegal/unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. But the Urban League says that promoting race-based hiring and contracting is the “very core” of its mission.
Separately, here’s Oga’s Cantina in Hollywood Studios, June 19, 2023:
(Not to be confused with Mos Eisley Cantina in Episode IV!)
Here’s Greta Thunberg, who says that humanity is going extinct (the precise date is unclear), protecting her slender young body from attack by SARS-CoV-2:
Week 254. When you travel without flying, you often find yourself stuck on trains nonstop for several days. Today is one of those days, which means that the Friday strike this week will be from a train. #FridaysForFuture#ClimateStrikepic.twitter.com/LxaojyvWP6
Why worry about COVID-19 if these are the end times for humanity? When we burn up in the atmosphere will we be complaining about our Long COVID and Long Monkeypox symptoms?
I observed the same phenomenon at a two-day MIT CSAIL anniversary event. It opened with a declaration of climate alarmism (“existential threat”) and then featured talks about (1) using advanced computerized techniques, such as AI, to attack rare medical conditions (thus reducing the death rate by 1 percent?), (2) “data-driven AI Healthcare”, (3) “Can Financial Engineering and Data Science Help Cure Cancer?” (from Andrew Lo, who didn’t mention that diabetes is always ready to kill elderly cancer-free humans), (4) AI matching of humans to medical specialists for superior treatment just before the planet melts, (5) “AI for Genome Medicine”, (6) AI for equitable health care (by Marzyeh Ghassemi, whose web site explains more), (7) machine learning for clinical AI and drug discovery, (8) drug improvement via AI, and (9) “AI guidance for the future of health care”.
Staying perfectly healthy right up to the moment that Earth becomes hotter than Venus was, in fact, the most common topic.
Wouldn’t it make more sense, though, to shut down most computers due to their use of planet-warming energy? Even if a server is powered by wind or nuclear, it would make more sense to use that electricity to power a carbon capture system. Suppose that we can allow ourselves the luxury of a few hyper-efficient computers. Wouldn’t it make the most sense to use them to maximize human happiness during these twilight years (or months?)? Have software suggest parties and other in-person gatherings that people can attend, for example.
I also observed this recently in the San Francisco Bay Area. The same folks who said that they thought humanity was doomed due to climate change were also diligently wearing their N95 masks. And they’re worried about HIV because humans need a great immune system when climate doom arrives to kill us all? Rockridge BART station:
I stopped overnight at Hanscom Field (KBED) and visited Cambridge, Lexington, Lincoln, and Concord, MA.
Shay’s is a bar in Harvard Square that was famously committed to ensuring drunkenness among Harvard Business School students (a good hunting ground for child support profiteers?). What is Shay’s committed to now?
I wonder if they will get a ticket from the city for failure to use the trans-enhanced rainbow flag that is the federal government’s official symbol.
A friend and I stopped to pay $40 for an Indian “street food” meal (that would have cost $1 in India?). I washed my hands in the All Gender Restroom.
The suburban towns were packed with signs advocating against the construction of additional hangars at Hanscom. If they get their way, the result might be an increase in the number of private jet flights that irk the almost-rich neighbors. Instead of the rich douche’s plane living at Hanscom in a new hangar, it will have to be ferried in for the flight and then ferried out by the crew to New Hampshire or Plymouth or wherever else hangar space was found. Jesus loves Black people and Rainbow Flaggers (but not the trans?), according to the First Parish Church in Concord, MA, but Jesus hates private jet hangars:
The righteous who oppose jet hangars say that they’re doing it because they love Mother Earth and hate CO2. But if they hate CO2, why do they live in huge heat-wasting single-family houses in car-dependent suburbs? Shouldn’t they all have sold their SUVs and moved into apartments in Boston or Cambridge?
Downtown Concord was dead as a doornail on a Sunday evening. We were the only customers incurring the risk of indoor dining at an Italian place. Sometimes locals ventured in wearing masks (not always N95s) to pick up takeout (SARS-CoV-2 is terrifying, but not so terrifying that you’d be willing to boil your own pasta?).
Traffic was a disaster, even on a Sunday, due to all of the new bicycle lanes that have been introduced. Streets that were formerly two-lane bidirectional are now one-way with a car lane and a bike lane (separated by ugly plastic stick-ups). I did see a handful of people using the bike lanes, unlike in the Washington, D.C. area. Old Georgetown Road, for example, has been reduced from 6 lanes to 4 due to the allocation of two bike lanes, one in each direction. I stayed overlooking this critical DC thoroughfare and, over a 40-hour period, saw exactly 1 bicycle. If federal government workers ever stop pretending to work from home, I predict even more epic traffic jams!
Any mention of Florida yielded an array of warnings: 101-degree ocean water, the existence of Ron DeSantis (cue the Two Minutes Hate), epidemic leprosy, books and education banned, etc.
Due to a business appointment in Los Angeles right after Oshkosh and the uncertainty of how long it might take to cross the Rockies in the Cirrus SR20 (a day if the weather is clear and winds aloft are calm or a week, if climate change has generated clouds and strong winds at 12,000′ (turbulence and downdrafts on the lee side), I decided to fly United out of Chicago’s O’Hare airport. A 35-year-old single friend and I departed EAA AirVenture on Saturday and we pondered our options for an overnight visit to Chicagoland. My default destination is the Art Institute, so I suggested downtown. This was not appealing to him. We ended up in the northern suburbs of Deerfield and Northbrook, which happens to be where a second cousin of mine lives with her husband. During a visit to the Chicago Botanic Garden, they said that they wanted to move out of Illinois due to a reduced quality of life that began in 2020 and was continuing to slide downward. They almost never went into the city anymore due to a perception that the risk of crime was now too high. Even their posh suburb had suffered from retail space vacancies (half the stores in a strip mall where we ate dinner (at House 406) were vacant).
They’re stuck in Illinois/suburban Chicago for now due to the need to care for elderly relatives, but perhaps eventually they can escape before they need to pay the state’s $211 billion in unfunded pension liabilities (that’s about $17,500 per current resident, so perhaps Joe Biden can fix via executive order? It’s not that different from the student loan obligations he sought to transfer to the working class).
What interests me is that witnessing and noting the sharp decline that began during the lockdowns did not shake my cousin’s or her husband’s faith in Faucism. They continue to believe in Science-driven lockdowns, school closures, mask orders, and vaccine coercion. Nor has their perception of increased crime and disorder in Democrat-governed Chicago within Democrat-governed Illinois caused them to question their 100-percent confidence in government by Democrats. Their stated perception is that various places in Florida offer magnificent lifestyle and infrastructure benefits compared to suburban Chicago, but they would never move to Florida “because of politics.” What do they think would pull the city of Chicago out of what they say has been a nosedive starting in 2020? “The city doesn’t spend enough on the poor. There are too many people in Chicago for whom going to prison isn’t that big a difference compared to their current life so they have no incentive to stay out.”
The value of their house is perhaps 30 percent lower than it would be if Chicago were safe and vibrant and rich Chicagoans hadn’t moved to Florida. So this has literally hit them where they live and yet their faith remains as strong as ever.
One of my pet theories is that Americans’ political beliefs are actually religious beliefs, not subject to rational analysis. I relate the above story because it confirms my pet theory. I.e., like any good Scientist, I like to follow confirmation bias.
In Los Angeles, I rented a Chinese-made Polestar 2 electric vehicle from Hertz. Here’s one of their PR images:
The experience of driving my Nevada-registered car in California was wonderful. The car crushes the road at 4,500 lbs., doing far more damage than a (much lighter) Honda Accord or Toyota Camry. Had the car been California-registered, it would have been subject to an absurdly low $100 fee for use of the roads, nowhere near what a peasant driving a 2010 Toyota Camry pays in gas tax. But because the car was registered in Nevada, my laptop-class use of the highways was entirely paid for by peasants who will never be able to afford a fancy new EV. This is part of California’s plan for addressing the inequality crisis (of not enough inequality?).
I wouldn’t personally buy this fine Swedish/Chinese machine because it lacks a Dog Mode and, therefore, Mindy the Crippler would never forgive me. However, the car is nicer in many ways than a Tesla. There are more buttons for critical controls, for example. Instead of sticking an touchscreen in the middle and calling that a dashboard, there is a virtual instrument cluster behind the steering wheel. This can be set to display mostly a map with directions.
The Polestar 2 seemed quieter than the Tesla 3 and CarPlay support, which Tesla lacks, made it easy to jump in and go. I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the automatic steering (there was no hardcopy manual in the car; there is an online explanation, but I can’t understand it). The adaptive cruise control seemed to be somewhat smoother and smarter than what we have on our beloved 2021 Honda Odyssey. If you’re accustomed to a conventional car, the transition to the Polestar 2 is quicker and easier than with a Tesla (see Douche for a Day: a Tesla 3 from Hertz).
I’m glad that Hertz didn’t try to kill me with a gas-powered BMW, which California’s public health experts say is deadly to the person who dates to “operate” it:
Los Angeles traffic seems to be as bad as ever, despite the large number of people who pretend to work from home. The locals who joined me for an 8 am business meeting had all left their houses before 6 am and then waited at coffee shops near the destination for an hour so as to avoid being stuck on the freeways. Everyone who had gathered then wanted to flee no later than 2 pm so as to avoid the afternoon gridlock. Is reliance on private cars rational? Any time that I checked Google Maps it showed that public transit would take more than twice as long as driving, no matter how bad the traffic.
After my JSX trip BUR/OAK, we had a small gathering of readers of this blog essentially at the Rockridge BART station. A sign from the Rockridge Market Hall:
They serve food and claim to be passionate about avoiding infection, but I couldn’t find any bathroom for handwashing. Eventually a couple of us ended up across the freeway at Trader Joe’s in the all-gender restrooms:
I decided to take BART into the city, another way for elites to collect subsidies from peasants (mass transit riders earn more than the average American). Payment is not as advanced as in the Netherlands (tap in with any credit card and tap out once you reach your destination). You can create a virtual Clipper card for free in Apple Wallet, however, and then fund it. A BART employee came out of his booth to show me, carefully donning a cloth mask before emerging (I noticed the same behavior among other BART workers in booths).
BART runs so infrequently at mid-morning that it would actually have been faster to get an Uber from station to station than to ride BART from station to station. (Bonus: Ubers can use the HOV-2 carpool lanes because there are always at least two humans in an Uber.) The Google Map calculation below was done while actually on an elevated BART platform.
While waiting, I was assaulted by noise from the adjacent highway and exhorted to consume pharma:
Once on the BART train fueled by a river of taxpayer cash, I learned that it is conventional to carry a large tub of Vaseline:
At the Embarcadero station, riders are informed that “We all deserve respect”:
A friend picked me up downtown and we proceeded in his car to a parking garage, where we were warned by public health experts and also about the potential for noble locals to liberate anything left in the car:
I’m trying to set my mom (89 years young) with various modern services, including an Alexa video device via which relatives can “drop in” (Mom is not great about connecting to Zoom). It turns out that much of the modern electronic world is off limits to those who lack mobile phones. Everyone wants two-factor authentication and a lot of services, such as Google Voice, depend on the user having a traditional mobile phone number as well (we tried and failed to set up Google Voice with Mom’s landline).
What’s the cheapest way to get a mobile phone number that can accept a handful of text messages per month? It would be even better if this phone were virtual and could be manipulated via a web browser. Do those prepaid burner phones chew up monthly fees even when they’re not used? My mom wouldn’t have to be the actual user of the phone. I could have the physical phone or use the web site of a virtual phone.
… and also the best airport terminal for straight people. The Harvey Milk Terminal began to open in 2019, but construction was paused for coronapanic and the $2.4 billion building is scheduled for completion in “late 2024”.
I visited at 10 pm on a Wednesday evening and the terminal benefitted by being only about 20 percent full. Due to the high ceilings, the claustrophobic Fall of Saigon feeling should be avoided even at 100 percent. The architects and planners put some effort into making the airport quiet and seem to have succeeded in the carpeted gate areas.
What if you’re stuck for a while and need WiFi and a desk? The free WiFi is available without an annoying advertisement or an acceptance of terms process:
How about the work surface?
(Nit: It’s been only a few years, but the power outlets (“loose like wizard sleeve”) and USB-A jacks (loose and/or broken) haven’t aged well.)
What if you want to lounge instead?
What if you want to play?
There are a lot of restaurants, but maybe not enough to deal with a capacity crowd:
What if you want to teach the kids about Harvey Milk? Certainly, the airport is more forthcoming than ChatGPT. If you ask, based on the Wikipedia article, “Was there anything wrong about Harvey Milk having a relationship with a 17-year-old boy?” ChatGPT says “This content may violate our content policy”:
The airport features larger-than-life images on the walls from which teenage boys are absent:
(Regarding Scott Smith, Wikipedia notes “18 years his junior” while the caption at the airport is silent on the age difference between Messrs. Milk and Smith.)
If you’d like to sip coffee while studying the exhibits…
Need a gender-neutral restroom after the coffee?
Thirsty again after learning about the importance of Harvey Milk? There are water-refill islands:
One proposal was to rename the entire airport “Harvey Milk International” (USA Today), but that was rejected. For now, therefore, it is only the magnificently designed Terminal 1 that bears the hero-to-almost-all-Californians’ name:
