Hotel life in Seattle, minimum wage $16/hour

by philg

From seattle.gov:

The Seattle Office of Labor Standards (OLS) announces that the 2019 minimum wage for all large employers (employing more than 500 workers worldwide) will be $16.00 per hour. In past years, there was a two-tier system under which large employers that contributed toward individual medical benefits paid a lower minimum wage than those that did not. This two-tier system ends in 2019. Also, beginning on January 1, 2019, small employers (with 500 or fewer employees) must pay at least $15.00 per hour.

From the Hyatt Regency, in a confirmation email:

HOUSEKEEPING SERVICE IS PROVIDED EVERY OTHER DAY BEGINNING AFTER THE 2ND NIGHT OF YOUR STAY UNLESS OTHERWISE REQUESTED. PLEASE INDICATE YOUR PREFERENCE FOR HOUSEKEEPING SERVICE AT CHECK IN. THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING HYATT REGENCY SEATTLE.

The “housekeeping every other day” message was regarding a $300+/night stay.

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Do CNN viewers think that Donald Trump is a god?

by philg

I recently spent two weeks on site at a big law firm as part of my software expert witness slavery. There are TVs in the reception and common areas of the firm, all of them locked to CNN so as to prevent unorthodox thoughts or deeds (e.g., changing the channel to Fox News!). Every time I helped myself to coffee, on-tap fizzy water, or waited for someone, therefore, I was watching CNN.

What did I see on this Channel of the Righteous? Except during commercial breaks, one name was on the screen at nearly all times. Whose name is more important than that of any human on Planet Earth? To Christians, “Jesus,” perhaps, or simply “God.” Thus a program on a Christian TV network might mention “Jesus” or “Christ” in every few sentences. Here are some sample screens:

Yes, the word “Trump” appeared on screen roughly 99 percent of the non-break time during my informal survey.

Could it be that Trump is, from the point of view of CNN viewers, actually God or at least “a god”?

More evidence… a virtuous friend recently shared the following meme on Facebook:

“Every time T says something racist or otherwise offensive, simply respond ‘Epstein‘. That’s what he’s covering up. Don’t take his bait.”

His Facebook friends don’t know Trump personally. If they’re “responding” to Trump without ever talking to him in person, isn’t the implication that they regard Trump as supernaturally omnipresent?

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Can the Second Amendment survive?

by philg

A comment in response to my July 4 question “What’s great about the United States?”:

The right to keep and bear arms, of course! Do I need to elaborate? I should think that the readers of this blog wouldn’t need the lesson to understand why it’s so important to millions of Americans. Tens of millions of your fellow citizens exercise that right every single day, year in and year out, and aren’t ashamed to be armed citizens despite the mendacity and lack of respect shown to them.

Our current media and cultural environment may label me a pariah, but I’m not afraid of people calling me names based on a twisted, biased, and ignorant interpretation of what the 2nd Amendment really means to the average person. To me, it means that our country values the individual so much that ordinary people are trusted to own and keep weapons that belong to them. It’s a fundamental statement of the worth of the individual and it just can’t be overstated. I think everyone will miss it greatly if it ever stops being so.

We started out with laws, including the Second Amendment, designed for a population of 4 million yeoman farmers who accepted both risk and personal responsibility. Now there are 330 million residents of the U.S. and risk-aversion grows every year. Flying a little Cessna was considered an acceptable risk back in the 1950s, but most people today insist on a higher level of safety and idiot-proofing. Similarly, any risk of being shot by an unhinged person is enough to drive a lot of people to demand (at least on Facebook) protection from an all-powerful government (as in Leviathan).

Readers: What’s the chance of the Second Amendment surviving in our society on its current trajectory?

Related:

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Parachute from a Cirrus stuck on top of a helicopter

by philg

From Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture 2019):

For years, especially during night flights, I have been wondering “Why can’t a Robinson R44 have a ballistic parachute like in the Cirrus, stuck on top like the pod for the Apache.”

Now it has been done! Zefhir from an Italian aerospace parts manufacturer, Curti. And it is turbine-powered! (via an APU engine, as per usual for jet-powered aircraft of this weight)

Experimental for now. Certified one day?

(An Apache crew visited Oshkosh…

)

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Immigrant-Employing, Gay-Loving, Muslim-Respecting

by philg

From a July trip to Washington, D.C.:

This particular outlet of Nando’s Peri-Peri is in Chinatown. Note that while Christianity and Judaism are respected to a lesser degree (smaller font) than Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Buddhism are not respected at all.

If Bernie Sanders makes the 15-block trek from the Capitol, he will be pleased to see that the restaurant promises to pay equally, regardless of “ability”.

Related:

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Meet at Din Tai Fung in Seattle, 5:15 pm on Wednesday

by philg

Seattle readers: in case you’re not following the comments on a previous thread, we will meet at Din Tai Fung, 600 Pine St (Pacific Place), at the unfashionable hour of 5:15 pm (latest reservation available; alternative is to wait for an hour) on Wednesday, August 7. We all have to be there to be seated, so please show up on time!

Looking forward to discussing the big issues and the small dumplings.

(For anyone who can’t make the above, I am also happy to meet at Top Pot Doughnuts on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday mornings! Staying at the Hyatt Regency.)

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Eisenhower was a moon landing denier…

by philg

… at least when it came to the value of the Apollo project. Here’s a June 18, 1965 letter in the EAA Aviation Museum, from former President Eisenhower to astronaut Frank Borman:

He describes JFK’s pledge to race to the moon as “a stunt” and points out that the timing of the announcement was calculated to distract the public from the “Bay of Pigs fiasco” (JFK and his team discarded militarily superior plans left over from the Eisenhower Administration).

Eisenhower points out that it would have made sense to spend $2 billion per year on stuff that might have “definite benefits to the peoples of the earth.” But the river of tax dollars dumped into Apollo did not make sense to him.

The other big learning from the museum visit was how Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne was able to work without the exotic materials of the Space Shuttle. The museum explains that the spacecraft/aircraft essentially pancakes or belly flops into the atmosphere, thus slowing down quickly and not building up high speed and high heat like the Shuttle does.

[Update after seeing comments from readers and talking to a friend who is an actual rocket scientist at NASA: the main reason that SpaceShipOne does not need the elaborate heat shielding is that it is suborbital and going much slower than the Space Shuttle. There is no new technology better than the Shuttle’s old tiles, but the old technology of ablative heat shielding is what most current space ship designs are using. One good feature of ablative shielding is that as it flakes off it carries away built up heat. The one promising innovation is establishing a boundary layer of gas on top of the surface exposed to re-entry heat, much as jet engine components are cooled by a layer of flowing fresh air.]

A portion of the museum concentrates on machines of war, which inevitably produce death. What is sufficiently upsetting as to require a trigger warning?

How about a double secret trigger warning and substantial drapery?

This is why God gave us always-with-us camera phones: (the “Fat Man” atomic bomb model directly across from a patron)

Eisenhower’s Air Force One for shorter hops, a twin-engine piston:

(Today a Boeing 757 would be used instead of this six-seater.)

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Americans can’t afford to live in America: heartland edition

by philg

“America’s Housing Affordability Crisis Spreads to the Heartland” (Bloomberg) says that Americans with ordinary jobs can’t afford to buy houses or apartments all across the U.S.

“Financial Crisis Yields a Generation of Renters” (WSJ) notes that the median age of a home buyer is 46, the oldest ever recorded and homeownership rates for younger Americans “have fallen sharply.” The article notes “Home prices have outpaced wage gains.” Costs are up by 21 percent (after adjusting for the inflation that the government tells us does not exist) while income is up only 2 percent (2000-2017).

Related, from https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/03/25/city-rebuilding-costs-from-the-halifax-explosion/ :

I talked with a guy recently who is involved in a $1.5 billion project to create 2,700 “affordable” apartments here in the Charlestown section of Boston (story). That’s $555,555 per apartment (less than 1,000 square feet on average) on land provided for free (city already has a housing project on the same footprint). Presumably these will be higher quality than whatever was built in Halifax in 1918.

[Note: poor people who are selected by the housing ministry to move into one of these apartments would actually be rich almost anywhere else in the world if they could only get their hands on the $555,555 capital cost as a direct grant instead of as an in-kind service! If they could also get their hands on the monthly operating cost and combine that with interest on the $555,555 they would be able to enjoy, without working, a middle class or better lifestyle in many of the world’s beach destinations.

How about folks who work at the median wage? That’s about $23/hour in Massachusetts (BLS) or $46,000 per year. NerdWallet says that someone earning this much in MA can afford a $258,500 house if he or she has saved $60,000 for a down payment, has a top credit score, and spends $0/month on food and other non-housing expenses. Zillow says $274,416 on a nationwide basis. So a dual-income couple in which both partners earn the median wage wouldn’t be able to afford one of these units without a taxpayer subsidy, even if landed were free and the unit were sold at zero-profit construction cost. The U.S. has apparently become a society in which Americans can’t afford to live like Americans!

But the caravans of folks streaming over the southern border and claiming asylum will surely be able to do better?

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American regulations meet smart immigrants: free college tuition with guardianship

by philg

Sadly paywalled, but one of my favorite recent news articles: “The College Financial-Aid Guardianship Loophole and the Woman Who Thought It Up” (WSJ).

A smart immigrant from Bulgaria read the rules for college financial aid written by comparatively dumb Americans and figured out how any child can get a free college education, as long as the parents are smart enough to waltz down to the local probate or family court and transfer guardianship.

Of course, under the “almost everything is a federal crime” system, the government is now planning to make an example of her.

Related:

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