Sub-Zero refrigerator with R600a owner’s review

by philg

Back in October 2022, we ordered a $13,249 Sub-Zero refrigerator to replace a 42-inch-wide KitchenAid from 2003. The KitchenAid was a $500 landlord special wrapped in $3,000 (pre-Biden dollars) of cabinetry. It looked beautiful with panels that match our cabinets. Unfortunately, the fridge was set up with a single compressor and single evaporator. Cold air to the fridge was supplied via a duct/door from the freezer compartment to the fridge compartment. Failed insulation after 20 years between the two compartments resulted in frost building up every 3-4 weeks and causing the freezer to go down to -20F while the fridge went up to +50F or higher. The automatic defrost mechanism wasn’t hitting the location where this frost was building. KitchenAid’s latest and greatest fridges weren’t exactly compatible with our panels and, in any case, were out of stock. Everyone seems to like the local Sub-Zero service organization and friends with Sub-Zs were happy with the product, so decided to go “Full Douche”.

The new fridge showed up in mid-January 2024, 15 months after our order. Partly this was due to underpricing in a world of raging inflation (corrected to some extent; the current price is $14,250, a 7.5 percent increase that in no way suggests that the U.S. is plagued by inflation). Partly this was due to Sub-Zero having introduced a new product line that relies on R600a refrigerant, which is more energy efficient and also enables a more compact cooling system, thus resulting in 0.5 cu. ft. more freezer space.

The aesthetics, such as they are, take some getting used to. It’s a huge wall of stainless steel in what is otherwise a somewhat traditional kitchen. The cream-colored cabinet panels that we had before looked a lot better in my opinion. If you’re starting from scratch and have the option to do matching cabinet panels, I recommend that. Actually, if you’re starting from scratch and have the option to use a non-built-in fridge that can be purchased at any time at Home Depot for $1,000 to $2,500 (a dual evaporator model at the higher end), I recommend that! Despite its hulking size, this 42-inch-wide fridge holds only 24 cu. ft. in the two compartments combined. You can make a freestanding fridge look like a built-in simply by digging out a one-foot space behind the fridge. A 36-inch-wide LG freestanding fridge has 30 cu. ft. of space. It’s 36 inches deep without handles (compare to 26″ for the Sub-Z). It has dual evaporators, all kinds of fancy features including a clear door, and costs $3,200. If it were to die, Home Depot has a whole page of 36-inch wide freestanding fridges, including single-evaporator models (like our old KitchenAid!) starting at just over $1,000.

The first thing that we noticed is the noise. This fridge has, I think, two compressors. Each one is definitely louder than on a standard LG or Whirlpool fridge and the two together make a continuous rumbling that is audible from 15′ away. Everyone who comes to your house will be constantly reminded of what a rich douche you are!

The second thing is that the ice/water dispenser is a design failure compared to what KitchenAid, LG, or anyone else provides. A glass must go twice as deep into the fridge as on the old KitchenAid. If you’re trying to make a powdered drink, for example, it is impossible to stir and fill at the same time (was easy to do with the KitchenAid). More problematic, the water continues to flow for a split second after you take the cup away, thus resulting in a significant spray into the drip tray.

[Update April 10, 2024: After three months of use, we tried for the first time to remove the ice bin to dump ice into a cooler. The bin couldn’t be removed because there was ice stuck in a drop-down door that is part of the ice-making mechanism and maybe a sensor for when the bin is too full. Service was called!]

We haven’t had time to experience whether Sub-Zero’s ethylene gas filter (replace once/year for $65) and other preservation tricks will, in fact, keep produce in good shape for longer. A retailer in Maskachusetts did a test back in 2020 and concluded that “Sub-Zero was the overall winner. It did an excellent job on the grapes and lemon. The cucumber could have been fresher.” The Sub-Zero does have three completely separate sealed drawers in the freezer and four in the fridge, so maybe that helps reduce cross-contamination.

The fridge has built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It was easy to set up the app and the fridge on Wi-Fi. However, the app doesn’t seem to do what you’d want it to do, i.e., warn you that the actual fridge temp is nowhere near the set fridge temp. In fact, the app can’t show the current refrigerator temperatures (displayed on a panel inside the fridge), but only what it is set to do. This was obvious during the startup phase when the fridge was set to 37 and actually at 70.

[Update March 2024: The app alerted us to phantom temperature settings changes, usually by just a degree, even though nobody was in the fridge touching the controls. This resulted in a service visit and then a return service visit with a new control panel.]

The interior lighting is awesome. If you hire a decorator to come in once a week and arrange everything that you bought at Publix, the result will be a tasteful beautifully lit display. (Or cram in 35 cu. ft. of food, half of it expired, and it will look like our fridge.)

Owners seem to like Sub-Zero. Here’s the satisfaction ranking from Consumer Reports:

Maybe the old refrigerant was associated with a quieter compressor because Consumer Reports reviewed an older model and said that it was 5/5 on quietness. On the third hand, our house came with a ghetto $700 Frigidaire R600a-based 11 cu. ft. fridge built in 2018. It is completely silent (lives in a pantry closet, but we’ve never heard it, even when going into the closet to get items). So the latest and greatest Thunberg-approved Earth-saving refrigerant does not necessarily result in noise.

Three guys from the appliance store (Jetson in Stuart, Florida) came to deliver and install the new fridge ($275, including hauling away the aesthetically beloved KitchenAid). Although I usually don’t see color, I noticed that all three were Black. Skilled labor like this in Boston, by contrast, almost always involves a team of white people coming to the house; Blacks in Maskachusetts occupy a parallel society to which whites seldom gain access. It’s about a two-hour process for removal, delivery, and careful installation.

The KitchenAid lasted for 20 years so the good news is that we have to live with the wall-of-stainless look and the noise for only 20-25 years (median age for replacement of a Sub-Zero is about 22 years, supposedly). I’m still trying to figure out who thought stainless was such a great idea! It won’t accept fridge magnets, which is tragic. It isn’t easy to clean. If stainless steel is so beautiful, why not cover a bedroom or living room wall in stainless? (Elon Musk might be on board with this! He is a huge proponent of stainless steel in rockets and in the Cybertruck.) I guess that circles us back to building a nook for a 36-inch-wide fridge. The visual impact of one of those is much smaller both due to the reduced width and the lack of a compressor tower on top.

[Update: After three months, the fridge has required three service visits (see above). It may be that the mass-market companies have better engineering resources for controls and ice makers!]

Related:

  • the LG 42″ fridge that costs 2/3rds as much ($9k): “Stopped working several time and was Compressor was replaced and 4 months later it is not working again.” and “I bought and had this installed 10 weeks ago, but immediately had problems. … Finally, after 8 weeks, the technician identified the problem as a bent water hose inside the door — a result of poor manufacturing/assembly.” (the $55 water filter is weak by Florida standards; good for just 6 months or 200 gallons; Sub-Z’s is 1 year or 300 gallons for $69)
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Maskachusetts dumping migrants into a Black neighborhood

by philg

“[Lockdown and forced vaccination mayor of Boston Michelle] Wu acknowledges ‘pain’ of state plan to use Roxbury rec. center as overflow shelter site” (Boston.com):

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu responded to Gov. Maura Healey’s potential plan to use the Melnea A. Cass Recreational Complex in Roxbury as an overflow shelter site for migrants. Wu said she is working closely with the state to find solutions amid the ongoing migrant crisis, but expressed some frustration around the idea of using the Cass complex.

“For the first community where this is being proposed to be Roxbury, a community that over so many decades has faced disinvestment, redlining, disproportionate outcomes, it’s very painful,” Wu said during an appearance on WBUR’s “Radio Boston” Monday morning.

Amid historic levels of migrations, the emergency shelter system in Massachusetts has been under stress for months. Healey declared a state of emergency last year, and instituted a 7,500-family cap on the system. For months she has been pressuring federal officials and lawmakers to give Massachusetts more funding to deal with the crisis and make it easier for migrants to obtain work permits.

But the flow of migrants into the state shows no signs of slowing. More than 600 families were on a waitlist for emergency shelter as of Friday, and dozens of families have been forced to sleep at Logan Airport.

When I arrived at MIT in 1979, Roxbury was a Black neighborhood. This history describes what a hater might call a population replacement:

By the early 1970s, a combination of declining property values in Roxbury and rising values in the South End and discriminatory home lending practices had conspired to push Boston’s black community into Roxbury. As Latinos moved into Boston in greater numbers in the 1970s and ’80s, Roxbury became more heterogeneous. In 1990, the neighborhood was 79 percent African American, 14 percent Latino and 3 percent white.

[in 2019], Roxbury is 53 percent black, 28 percent Latino and 12 percent white.

It seems that there is no room for migrants in Weston, Wellesley, Dover, Concord (a sanctuary city), Lincoln, Newton (a sanctuary city), or other nearly-all-white towns with 1-2-acre zoning minimums. Maybe Newton doesn’t make sense because the teachers are on strike and migrants are entitled to a U.S. taxpayer-funded education (teacher strikes are illegal in Massachusetts, but 98 percent of the Newton teachers voted to break the law; apparently, they can’t be fired from their union job even when they violate the law).

Related:

  • America’s Welcomer-in-Chief is visiting Jupiter, Florida today! “President Biden heads to Jupiter, Miami for high-priced campaign events” (WPTV): “On Monday night, the White House announced he “will participate in a campaign reception in Jupiter” at an undisclosed location at 2 p.m. after arriving at Palm Beach International at 12:15 p.m. … Details on the Palm Beach County visit are being kept tightly quiet, but it is likely to be a pricey event.” (a border open to low-skill migration enriches American elites by about $500 billion per year in pre-Biden dollars: Harvard study using pre-Biden levels of immigration as well as pre-Biden dollars (i.e., it is probably closer to $1 trillion/year for the rich today))
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Attitudes toward immigration in the mid-1970s

by philg

An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford describes a vigorous debate about whether approximately 50,000 Vietnamese refugees should be admitted to the U.S. This was a non-representative group containing the professional and managerial elite of South Vietnam. Nonetheless, opposition was intense, including among liberal Democrats who today would be demanding more immigration. George McGovern, for example, and California governor Jerry Brown (he sought to make it illegal for private groups with California to help Vietnamese immigrants settle).

Other countries, such as the Philippines, were even more hostile to taking in these educated migrants.

Ultimately, closer to 125,000 refugees arrived in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War. That’s comparable to the number who walk across the southern border and introduce themselves to our border patrol agents every 12 days (300,000+ per month).

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Audible: Updating Dickens with 2SLGBTQQIA+-ness

by philg

I recently listened to an “Audible Original” production of David Copperfield. My reivew:

If you love the ideas of two young English gentlemen getting naked together, massaging each other, and taking a shared bath, this is the novel for you. I downloaded the text from Project Gutenberg, however, and it seems that Dickens did not write these scenes of gay male passion. It should perhaps be retitled “Rainbow Copperfield” so that readers don’t get confused.

Helena Bonham Carter is fantastic as you might expect. Six stars for her.

It’s an interesting window into how the past can be quietly reconfigured to align with contemporary religion. A young follower of Rainbow Flagism, for example, might never realize that Charles Dickens was not a coreligionist.

Disney did the same thing with Dear Evan Hansen, but on a much faster clock. I attended the show in 2019, back when it was still legal to enter a theater in New York City. Part of my review:

One group that might not love the show is LGBTQIA. “This must be the only new Broadway show without an LGBTQIA theme or character,” I remarked. My companion, a regular at the theater, agreed, but that might be because her LGBTQIA teacher typically chooses LGBTQIA-themed shows for the public middle school crowd. The only reference to LGBTQIA issues is when teenage boys are anxious to avoid being perceived as gay (“that’s how it is in my school, too,” said the 12-year-old next to me).

When the play was turned into a purportedly faithful movie, the doctrinal error was corrected. The character who mocked gay male sexual activity in the play was turned into one who engaged in gay male sexual activity in the movie.

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Somerville, Maskachusetts votes for permanent Hamas rule of Gaza

by philg

“Somerville City Council calls for ceasefire in Gaza” (Boston Herald):

The Somerville City Council is requesting President Biden to call for a ceasefire in Gaza but stopped short of endorsing a measure calling for the dismantling of Hamas and the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Roughly 500 supporters packed Somerville City Hall on Thursday, crowding the Council Chamber and two overflow rooms to make their voices heard that fighting must come to an end in Gaza.

Councilors deliberated for well over two hours before approving in a vote of a 9–2 resolution that received multiple amendments. It explicitly calls for an “enduring ceasefire, provision of life-saving humanitarian aid in Gaza, and the release of all hostages.”

If there is an “enduring ceasefire” doesn’t that also mean enduring rule by the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”)? Separately, the parallelism here is tough to miss:

Councilor Kristen Strezo proposed an amendment demanding the dismantling of Hamas as well as the dismantling of the Netanyahu administration.

From state-sponsored public radio/TV:

Somerville is the first city in Massachusetts to call for a ceasefire, according to the local advocacy group Somerville For Palestine. Other local governments, including San Francisco and Minneapolis, have also passed resolutions. Cambridge City Council will hear its own ceasefire resolution on Monday, and it’s expected to pass.

I would love to see one of these cities take the next logical step and vote to have Hamas officials come over and govern a city here. If Hamas is an ideal government for Palestinians then why isn’t it an ideal government for Americans, both documented and undocumented?

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An Ordinary Democrat: Gerald Ford biography

by philg

I’m listening to what is supposedly one of the best books of 2023: An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. It’s a good reminder of a lot of history 1940-1980.

The book devotes a fair amount of space to Ford’s career-ending decision to pardon Richard Nixon. The mental space that Americans devote to the prosecutions of Donald Trump certainly prove that Ford was correct in his belief that the U.S. wouldn’t be able to move on to tackle other challenges if Nixon weren’t pardoned. (Various state and local prosecutors could, nonetheless, have continued to harass Nixon for violating state/local laws but they chose not to.)

The book reminds us that the U.S. used to be a Christian society and that Americans, including Ford, were sincere believers in Christianity. Prayer is often a preclude to making a decision, for example, and Christian values are cited as a reason for making a decision. One of Ford’s reason for pardoning Nixon was that it was required by Christian principles of forgiveness.

Ford’s political beliefs seem to line up pretty well with today’s Democrats. He was pro-immigration for anyone with a tale of woe to share. He wanted 18-year-olds to vote (the 26th Amendment was passed in 1971 and signed by Nixon; Florida never voted to approve it!) and he supported most forms of welfare state expansion. In other words, Ford wanted to ensure a voter base of Americans who had never worked and would never work. Where he was out of step with today’s politicians is opposition to deficit spending. Ford considered a $30 billion budget deficit horrifying and a $100 billion deficit unimaginable (for comparison, the deficit for FY2023 was about $1.7 trillion and is on track to be higher in FY2024). He believed that deficit spending would fuel inflation, which was his bête noire. Speaking of inflation, though, many of his ideas were similar to today’s politicians, e.g., when prices go up the government should shovel out cash to people whose purchasing power has been reduced (i.e., if there is too much cash in the economy, thus generating inflation, you solve the problem by injecting more cash). Ford was passionate about deregulation to increase the U.S. economy’s production/supply capability, but that doesn’t make him misaligned with today’s Democrats, few of whom support the kind of intensive regulation of transportation, for example, that we had in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Fall of Saigon is covered extensively, good background for those interested in what seems to be a continued pattern of U.S. military failure. The heroism of the helicopter pilots is referred to. They flew in terrible weather and were exposed to small arms and RPG fire from the ground in order to rescue Americans and Vietnamese from rooftops and the U.S. embassy. Let’s never complain about having to fly a Robinson R44 again!

The book reminds us how much less competitive the U.S. was. There weren’t any obstacles to getting into the University of Michigan, for example, which is today far too elite to be a realistic possibility for most white or Asian Americans. Similarly, with no elite connections or claim to victimhood, Ford found the gates of Yale Law School open to him in 1938.

The book didn’t turn me into a huge Jerry Ford fan. He was a full participant in the delusional government spending and expansion programs that resulted in the hyperinflation of the Jimmy Carter years. But the decisions to pardon Nixon and Vietnam-era draft dodgers seem to have been good ones (Wikipedia has some background on these).

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Americans with no reputations get paid tens of millions for harm to those non-existent reputations

by philg

“Trump slammed with $83M verdict for repeatedly defaming advice columnist E. Jean Carroll” (New York Post):

The jury verdict was broken down into $65 million meant to punish Trump, $11 million to help Carroll rebuild her reputation and another $7.3 million to compensate her for her pain and suffering.

The plaintiff won $5 million in a previous lawsuit against the hated Trump. She’s 80 years old, 13 years beyond Social Security full retirement age. Has she lost out on job opportunities because Trump said that she was a liar? I hadn’t ever heard of her until she put herself into the public eye as a New York department store rape victim (the first jury actually did conclude that she was lying about having been raped).

A somewhat similar case… “Rudy Giuliani must pay $148 million to 2 Georgia election workers he defamed, jury decides” (CBS):

Two election workers had reputations worth more $33 million., apparently, because they could lose $33 million in actual damages to those reputations. And then they suffered more emotional distress than if they’d been run over by a car and paralyzed or if they’d actually been killed.

Americans who had no public reputation will now be some of the richest people on Planet Earth due to compensation for damage to those non-existent reputations. This is a shocking resource allocation result in what is a mostly planned economy!

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Massachusetts Democrats refuse to pay fair union wages

by philg

From one of the nation’s most progressive cities… “Newton[, Maskachusetts] schools closed Tuesday as teacher strike continues” (NBC):

Students in Newton, Massachusetts, will be home for another day on Tuesday as the public school district’s teachers remained on strike.

The Newtown Teachers Association is also pushing for increased wages, better parental leave, reduced class sizes, affordable health care, mental health resources for students, social workers at schools and more.

What percentage voted correctly in 2020? State-sponsored NPR says 82 percent:

We are informed that lack of union representation and the existence of Republicans are the obstacles that prevent American workers from getting paid what they are worth. How can we explain the need for unionized workers to strike against an all-Democrat city government?

“Progress reported in Newton teacher strike, classes canceled for 5th day” (NBC):

Among the sticking points is teacher salaries and counselors in every school.

If people break the law, the smartest thing to do is change the law. “It is illegal for teachers to strike in Mass. What’s the argument for changing the law?” (boston.com):

The Newton Teachers Association became the latest group of educators to go on strike in Massachusetts last week when 98% of its members authorized a work stoppage. As classes were canceled again on Thursday and the NTA racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, some lawmakers are continuing a push to make future strikes like this legal under state law.

In Massachusetts, public employees including teachers are prohibited from going on strike. That has not stopped teachers unions in communities like Brookline, Andover, Haverhill, and Malden from taking to the picket line in recent years.

When(if?) the kids finally do come back into the classroom, the law-breaking teachers can give them a lecture about how laws should be obeyed!

Related:

  • “Newton School Committee approves indoor mask-wearing requirement for students, staff, and visitors” (Boston Globe, August 2021), regarding the potential end of a 1.5-year school closure during coronapanic: On Monday, one member of the schools’ medical group, Dr. Ashish K. Jha, wrote on Twitter that the group believed it’s safe to bring children back to schools full-time. He praised the city’s advisors as an “amazing group of world-class experts.” (Florida didn’t have “world-class experts” so the school employees were ordered back into the classroom by Ron DeSantis a year earlier than Newton’s)
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When does the next wave of COVID-19 death start in Australia?

by philg

If you ask Google about “Australian open tennis”, the noble software defaults to showing “women’s singles”:

Note that uber-hater Margaret Court is highlighted at the bottom. From the Daily Mail:

In 2017, Court – a Christian pastor – shocked countless tennis identities and supporters after she boldly declared the sport was ‘full of lesbians’.

She also previously labelled gay marriage ‘a trend’ and the 24-time Grand Slam winner stunned many in tennis circles after stating her belief that transgender athletes have no place in professional sport.

If we click on “men’s singles”, we learn that Djokovic has been out in the wild infected Australians with his unvaccinated body:

A Scientist in the audience shouted “get vaccinated mate” at the ailing Serb last week (Daily Mail), but there is no evidence that Djokovic heeded this commonsense call.

What’s the latest Science on shots for someone such as Djokovic who has previously recovered from Long COVID? “Boosters do not work in people who have had COVID” (Dr. Hater Vinay Prasad):

This paper is a population based observational analysis of boosting, but restricted to people who had COVID. Austria has pretty good records and pretty good testing, but not perfect.

First these authors actually report, all cause death, and it is lower in boosted groups. They write, “All-cause mortality data indicate modest healthy vaccine bias.”

(people who get vaccinated tend to have been healthier to begin with)

And, “No individual younger than 40 years died due to COVID-19. “

(Djokovic is 36, so if he were Austrian he would be safe.)

Combining all of the above, Australians aren’t safe from death even if they’re boosted and an unvaccinated Djokovic is polluting the air with SARS-CoV-2 virus. When do vaccinated-and-boosted Australians over 40 begin dying in massive waves?

Related:

  • “‘How ironic’: Anti-vaxxers hijack tragic Aus Open death” (News.com.au): Heartless anti-vaxxers have hijacked the death of a much-loved British sports reporter who collapsed in Melbourne while covering the Australian Open. The family of UK Daily Mail sports journalist Mike Dickson, 59, announced his sudden death late Wednesday evening. “We are devastated to announce that our wonderful husband and Dad, Mike, has collapsed and died while in Melbourne for the Aus Open,” they shared in a statement. … “Journalist who tried to cancel Novak over not taking the Covid shots, collapses and dies suddenly. He was fully vaccinated,” Erin Elizabeth, a health blogger and anti-vaccine activist, said. … “The journalist who bullied Novak Djokovic for two years because he didn’t want to participate in the human experiment has now ‘suddenly and unexpectedly passed away’,” he wrote. “Maybe this wouldn’t have happened if he were unvaccinated.”
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College admissions essays should be written in a proctored environment?

by philg

A friend is relaxing now after writing more than 20 college admissions essays. “For rich families,” he explained. “It’s normally a competition among the professional essay writers who’ve been hired, but we decided to do it ourselves.” (“do it ourselves” means the parents, both Harvard graduates, did most of it)

The question for today is why elite kids are allowed to have this kind of advantage. If a college wants to see how a 17-year-old writes, wouldn’t it make sense to have the 17-year-old sit in a big room set up like the SAT or AP test environment? The prompts would be kept hidden until the morning of the exam so that applicants couldn’t show up with memorized professionally-written responses. This would also solve the ChatGPT problem.

If colleges are sincere about leveling out the disadvantages of coming from a poor family, why haven’t they adopted this obvious approach?

Separately, a report on the continuation of elite schools’ race-based admissions system… “After Affirmative Action Ban, They Rewrote College Essays With a Key Theme: Race” (New York Times):

Astrid Delgado first wrote her college application essay about a death in her family. Then she reshaped it around a Spanish book she read as a way to connect to her Dominican heritage.

The first draft of Jyel Hollingsworth’s essay explored her love for chess. The final focused on the prejudice between her Korean and Black American families and the financial hardships she overcame.

All three students said they decided to rethink their essays to emphasize one key element: their racial identities. And they did so after the Supreme Court last year struck down affirmative action in college admissions, leaving essays the only place for applicants to directly indicate their racial and ethnic backgrounds.

But the ruling also allowed admissions officers to consider race in personal essays, as long as decisions were not based on race, but on the personal qualities that grew out of an applicant’s experience with their race, like grit or courage.

This led many students of color to reframe their essays around their identities, under the advice of college counselors and parents. And several found that the experience of rewriting helped them explore who they are.

Sophie Desmoulins, who is Guatemalan and lives in Sedona, Ariz., wrote her college essay with the court’s ruling in mind. Her personal statement explored, among other things, how her Indigenous features affected her self-esteem and how her experience volunteering with the Kaqchikel Maya people helped her build confidence and embrace her heritage.

The Times features a future physician:

In her initial essay, Triniti Parker, a 16-year-old who aims to be the first doctor in her family, recalled her late grandmother, who was one of the first Black female bus drivers for the Chicago Transit Authority.

But after the Supreme Court’s decision, a college adviser told her to make clear references to her race, saying it should not “get lost in translation.” So Triniti adjusted a description of her and her grandmother’s physical features to allude to the color of their skin.

If this is her BMI at age 16, maybe she will ultimately specialize in prescribing Ozempic?

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