Immigrants expand our economy, but millions of immigrants exiting the U.S. don’t shrink our economy

by philg

Immigration Logic 101 requires us to believe that low-skill immigrants expand the U.S. economy (aggregate GDP growth) and make everyone in the U.S. richer (per-capita GDP growth).

We’re informed that the U.S. economy is growing or, at least, not shrinking.

We’re informed that, apparently contradicting the two items above, that the U.S. is becoming impoverished in immigrants (not as enriched by enrichers). “Immigrant Population in U.S. Drops for the First Time in Decades” (New York Times):

An analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center found that between January and June, the foreign-born population declined by nearly 1.5 million. … experts predict looming negative economic and demographic consequences for the United States if the trend persists. Immigrants are a critical work force in many sectors, and the country’s reliance on them is growing as more baby boomers retire.

Covering a somewhat longer time period and announced with a bit more color, DHS says that 2 million migrants are no longer among us:

If immigration makes us rich how is it possible that de-immigration doesn’t make us poor?

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Reparations from the Gates Foundation for every Black American who is forced to buy a new PC due to lack of security support for Windows 10?

by philg

Today is the end of security support for Windows 10, thus making it impractical to run a Windows 10 machine connected to the Internet (Microsoft does have a paid Extended Security Updates program, in fairness, for one more year). As noted in $2449 of e-waste thanks to Microsoft (and best way for kids to organize and sort photos?), a lot of people with perfectly decently machines are being forced to upgrade. Meanwhile, the Gates Foundation is sitting on about $80 billion in assets, i.e., roughly $1500 for every American who identifies as Black (including Zohran Mamdani).

How about a law to confiscate the assets of the Gates Foundation, which have thus far escaped any federal taxation and which are headed out of the country (see “Bill Gates to Direct Majority of $200 Billion Pledge Toward Africa’s Future”; the $200 billion maybe includes some money yet to be donated?), and give them to the people who built this nation, i.e., Black Americans (see 1609 Project), so that they can replace their perfectly functional Windows 10 machines with Windows 11 machines that will perform the same tasks using the same applications at very nearly the same speeds?

Separately, how are we doing with Where are the 16 TB M.2 SSDs? (July 2025)? The only thing worse than $200 billion flying out of the U.S. is having to get creative about moving stuff off the C: drive.

Here’s the guy who won’t be paying even $1 in tax on those $200 billion in profits saying that other rich people should pay more in tax:

Here’s Bill Gates saying that there is too much wealth inequality in the U.S. (CNBC 2019):

He wants higher capital gains tax rates for the capital gains tax that he doesn’t pay (since he donates the appreciated assets to his foundation, which then ships the money to Africa). He doesn’t want to give his $200 billion to low-income Americans, which would immediately reduce wealth inequality in the U.S., but will instead give $200 billion to people in Africa.

Queers for Palestine makes more sense to me than what Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation are doing!

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Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine

by philg

Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day to those who celebrate. In the spirit of the holiday, here are some photos from the Abbe Museum, which is devoted to telling the story of the Wabanaki to anyone willing to pay $18:

Note that a person who is able-bodied and able-minded but who chooses to refrain from work gets in free via his/her/zir/their SNAP/EBT card. The person with a developmental or intellectual disability, however, is charged $16. The museum admits in various places that it occupies stolen land and, to their credit, admits the rightful owners for free (“Tribal ID” is required so Elizabeth Warren would be excluded).

Masks were encouraged on June 10, 2025. Note the fine Maine summer weather (50 degrees and rain/mist all day):

Inside the museum, roughly half of the visitors took the mask encouragement to heart (“to lungs”?), though I also observed a couple of ceremonial chin diapers. In a victory for common sense, a family visiting had 100 percent mask coverage rather than one member wearing a mask and then becoming infected by the non-masked members after returning home.

Two out of three masked in the photo below:

Here’s a Land Acknowledgement, which also informs via Science that the “Native communities [] have lived here for thousands of generations” (even with a Palestinian rate of reproduction, it is tough to understand how “thousands of generations” can fit into the 13,000 years that archaeologists say is how long people have lived in Maine):

And a statement about genocide and decolonization:

Nobody seems to like the idea of giving the land back to its rightful owners and paying rent.

The men’s room was ready for Tim Walz’s visit:

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Titania McGrath on the Israel-Hamas deal

by philg

From the Islamic Republic of Britain:

Separately, I’m amazed that Donald Trump was able to address the Knesset today. I get jet lag just thinking about a trip to Israel. #NotMyPresident is 79 years old. How does he have the energy?

In case the author is arrested and imprisoned and all of her content memory-holed, a screen shot:

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Emperor Sonos S2 has no clothes?

by philg

We have a bunch of 15-year-old Sonos gear that doesn’t comply with the new Sonos S2 religion. I thought it might be nice to upgrade the whole house, especially because the 10- and 12-year-olds don’t have phones with which to control music in their respective bedrooms. They could use a Sonos Era 100 or Era 300, for example, with voice control. (Senior Management quickly realized that there was a flaw in this plan, which is that Sonos doesn’t have parental controls. The 10-year-old could select gangster rap, for example, from the typical streaming service or SiriusXM.)

I picked up a $479 Era 300 as an experiment and used a Sound Level app on my phone to try to make sure that the volume level was equalized between the Era 300 and the legacy gear.

The Era 300 is Dolby Atmos-compatible, which sounds great until you realize that the popular music streaming services don’t generally provide Atmos content (it’s more for video?). A listening panel of two adults and two kids was assembled and concluded that a single Era 300 in my home office doesn’t sound obviously better, though maybe brighter, than an old Sonos Gen 1 Play:5, which has an eBay value of about $100. For listening from a desk chair, both of the magic Sonos devices were easily defeated by a pair of 13-year-old desktop Audioengine P4 speakers ($250) driven by a 10.5-year-old Windows 10 PC via optical S/PDIF through a NuForce Dia desktop DAC/amp with a mighty 18 watts of power (maybe the heir to the discontinued NuForce would be the USB-driven 50-watt AudioEngine N22?).

Admittedly, the near-field monitor comparison isn’t fair since the Sonos devices are intended to fill a room with sound. That said, I wonder if Sonos’s best idea wasn’t Sonos’s first idea: a networked DAC/amp that drives conventional bookshelf speakers. If one is content with the deprecated S1 gear, these amps, e.g., ZP120, are available on eBay for about $100 vs. $800 for the functionally similar latest version. The Era 300 weighs 10 lbs. and it’s what the typical person would stop at in one room. The old Sonos ZP120 is 5 lbs. A cheap Sony bookshelf speaker weighs 10 lbs. So it’s 10 lbs. of gear vs. 25 lbs (10+10+5).

(The latest amp is 125 watts/channel vs 50 or 55 watts on the older units, a difference of just over 3 dB in SPL. You could either content yourself with the roughly 100 dB max SPL that you’d get with an low-sensitivity speaker (85-87 dB) and 50 watts or get some high-sensitivity speakers (Klipsch, JBL, Triangle; I got some Klipsch outdoor speakers rated at 95 dB for our modest back yard).)

I also tested the Era 300 against a 20-year-old Sonos ZP100 amp driving 30-year Radio Shack Optimus LX5 bookshelf speakers, which have ribbon tweeters (!) and are available on eBay for $50-80/pair (originally $200-300/pair). The Radio Shack speakers, each of which weighs just 7.5 lbs., were separated by about 6′, which no doubt helped. The $150ish combination of decades-old used gear absolutely crushed the fresh-from-the-box $479 Era 300.

If you had the space, you could buy a used ZP100 or ZP120 and a couple of brand new tower speakers (about 100 lbs. total) for less than the cost of two of these wimpy Era 300s.

Maybe it’s worth paying $5,000+ to upgrade a house from Sonos S1 to Sonos S2 because the voice control, which runs locally on the device, is so convenient? Sadly, no. It failed at simple requests, such as “Hey Sonos, play Mozart string quartet” or “play Beethoven Pastoral piano sonata”. It works for volume up/down, but so do the physical buttons on legacy Sonos S1 gear.

Maybe it’s worth paying $5,000+ to upgrade a house from Sonos S1 to Sonos S2 because the S2 app is so much better than the S1 app? In my limited trial I didn’t find anything to love about the S2 app. One purported selling feature for the latest Sonos devices is that they can function as Bluetooth or AirPlay speakers. But if your primary use case is Bluetooth or Airplay there are much cheaper options than Sonos.

For those who are passionate about social justice, the big advantage of the latest Sonos gear is that one can listen while being 2SLGBTQQIA+ (photo from the Sonos home page):

One can also listen and set up while being Black:

I’ll try to end on an uncharacteristically kind note. I’ve probably purchased about 20 Sonos devices over the past 20 years and I think only one has died. On the third hand, this solid reliability record makes the latest $700 Sonos more vulnerable to competition from a $100 previous generation device sourced via eBay.

Related:

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“Inhuman treatment” of immigrants in the U.S.

by philg

Taxpayer-funded NPR:

Pope Leo XIV weighed in on U.S. politics, saying that Catholic politicians must be judged on the full range of their policy positions and suggesting that the country’s treatment of immigrants is “inhuman.”

“Someone who says I’m against abortion but is in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life,” Pope Leo said. “And someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”

Immigrants suffer “inhuman treatment” in the United States, according to this expert. Also, millions of humans voluntarily show up every year seeking this inhuman treatment. Center for Immigration Studies:

The government’s January 2025 Current Population Survey (CPS) shows the foreign-born or immigrant population (legal and illegal together) hit 53.3 million and 15.8 percent of the total U.S. population in January 2025 — both new record highs.

(Note that the size of the “illegal population” is difficult to estimate and see also Is U.S. immigration policy a form of animal hoarding?)

Fans of logical conundrums may also appreciate this communication from someone on a selfie yacht who communicated that the Israeli Navy disabled his communications:

Loosely related, “Foreign Ministry: Flotilla to Gaza had no humanitarian supplies” (Jerusalem Post). In other words, the selfie yachts were literally carrying nothing more than selfie subjects.

Finally, nobody can accused JetBlue of treating immigrants inhumanely. From a recent flight, in which they invite customers to watch movies specifically related to Hispanic Heritage Month:

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María Corina Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize

by philg

Progressive friends who never previously mentioned María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan politician, now celebrate her winning a Nobel Peace Prize. I wonder how carefully they’ve researched this lady. First, let’s have a moment of silence for Hugo Chavez, whose premature death robbed him of the Nobel Peace Prize that was his due. Perhaps we can reflect on the words of Noam Chomsky when he met this lion of democracy and peace:”I write about peace and criticize the barriers to peace; that’s easy. What’s harder is to create a better world… and what’s so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela is that I can see how a better world is being created.”

(Collectively, of course, the Venezuelans created such a great world in Venezuela that the Biden-Harris administration decided that 100 percent of Venezuelans were eligible to live in the United States, thus enabling them to replicate their success on a larger scale.)

Let’s see how truly peaceful the heiress to Barack Obama’s Mantle of Peace truly is. An unbiased “news” article from America’s journalists at The Week:

… many have started to point out that the 58-year-old is a strong ally of Israel and openly backs the country’s decision to bomb the largely unarmed civilians of the Gaza Strip. While there is no known evidence to argue that she supported the one-sided attack on the Palestinian civilians, Machado is undoubtedly an ally of Benjamin Netanyahu. In the past, the centrist-right leader had even declared that if she gains power, she will restore diplomatic relations with Israel.

It’s a fact that Israel launched a “one-sided attack on the Palestinian civilians” and this fake Peace laureate somehow supports the attackers rather than the unarmed and Peaceful Gazans.

(The Week’s article is a little confusing, actually. The “civilians” of Gaza are “largely unarmed”. Does that mean that some civilians in Gaza are armed with rockets, machine guns, etc., but are still considered “civilians” because they don’t also have tanks?)

Related:

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Equal Protection Clause as implemented by the City of Cambridge (buy stuff from women)

by philg

Here’s a recent email from the City of Cambridge, a taxpayer-funded enterprise that in theory is bound by the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause:

Everyone is encouraged to join the celebration by supporting Cambridge women-owned businesses and other entrepreneurs during the month of October and beyond. To find women-owned businesses in your neighborhood, visit the online Cambridge Business Diversity Directory.

The full event page links to this directory, which says “The Directory aims to elevate businesses owned by women, people of color, veterans, people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and individuals of Portuguese descent.” The event page also notes “These events recognize, support, and are inclusive for all who self-identify as women or with womanhood, including transgender, gender fluid, and non-binary persons.”

I can’t figure out how any of this is legal. What in the Constitution allows a city to favor citizens (and migrants!) of one gender ID out of the 74 recognized by Science? And what in the Constitution allows a city to prepare a business directory that excludes most companies owned by white males unless they swear that they’re 2SLGBTQQIA+?

Readers: What are you doing this month to increase your purchases from companies that are purportedly owned by “women” (however the term may be defined) and reduce your purchases whose owners have other gender IDs?

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Nobel-grade Science as a career

by philg

From the author of Chaos Monkeys:

My former PhD advisor got the Nobel Prize (John Clarke at Berkeley). It was without question the dullest work I’ve ever done in life and should have left earlier.

Related:

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Oregon governor’s primary qualification is lesbianism?

by philg

Oregon’s governor has been posting her opposition to the federal government’s plan to clean up mostly peaceful Portland, e.g., this tweet:

Not having previously heard of this person, I visited her official web site to learn something about her background:

On November 8, 2022, Tina Kotek made history along with Maura Healey of Massachusetts, becoming the first openly lesbian governors elected in American history.

Throughout Tina’s professional career as an advocate for those in need, she has carried the value of service instilled in her by her parents to get real results for Oregonians.

Tina’s grandparents came from Eastern Europe in the early part of the last century to find opportunity and a better life. Her parents were proud first-generation Americans. They believed in hard work, being informed citizens, and encouraging their children to follow their dreams.

Tina moved to Oregon from the East Coast in 1987, and fell in love with the beauty of the state and the openness of the people. She finished her undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon, graduating without student debt because of a Pell grant, work study assistance, and affordable tuition.

Tina came out as a lesbian in her early twenties. While it wasn’t always easy, each experience coming out to others strengthened her resilience. While getting her graduate degree, Tina fought for and won domestic partnership rights for faculty and students at the University of Washington.

The word “lesbian” appears four times in this official biography, including in the very first sentence. The reader learns about the governor’s passion for lesbianism twice before learning anything about a job that the governor might have had prior to becoming governor (unless one considers “having sex with other women” to be a job?). In other words, the reader might reasonable infer that the governor’s primary qualification for being governor is lesbianism (or “identifying as a lesbian”).

From 2020 (AP), the mostly peaceful city:

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