Where will Palestinian and other migrants who’ve settled in Vatican City move now that Pope Francis has died?

by philg

Pope Francis was celebrated by U.S. media primarily for two positions:

  • it is immoral for a country to refuse to accept welfare-dependent migrants
  • the fighting in Gaza is the only war to which anyone need pay attention and Israel is the evil aggressor behind the fighting (although any Pope is infallible, Israelis would probably take issue with this and point out that Arabs started the overall war in 1948 and the Gazans started the most recent battles by invading Israel and taking civilians hostage on October 7, 2023)

Presumably the Vatican, therefore, under Pope Francis’s direction, took in at least thousands of migrants with a special emphasis on Palestinians (built up with Chinese-style apartment blocks, Vatican City’s 121 acres should be able to hold at least 50,000 cherished migrants). Where will these folks go now that Pope Francis is gone and his replacement might not share Francis’s love for the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), UNRWA, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad?

The Catholic Church did not take sides in World War II (i.e., it was neutral regarding the policies and actions of Nazi Germany), but Pope Francis was quick to weigh in the Hamas side of the recent fighting in Gaza. Example from state-sponsored NPR:

See also this January 2025 Catholic World Report:

In a decree issued last month by the Holy See, the monetary sanctions and prison sentences for those who violate the strict security regulations of Vatican City have been considerably increased.

The document, signed by Cardinal Fernando Vérguez Alzaga, president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, provides for monetary fines ranging from 10,000 to 25,000 euros (about $10,200 to $25,700) and prison sentences ranging from one to four years.

These fines will apply especially to those who enter by means of violence, threats, or deception, bypassing border controls or security systems. In addition, those who enter with expired permits or do not meet the established requirements will receive administrative sanctions ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 euros (about $2,060 to $5,145).

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Tesla hatred and thinking literally

by philg

A friend’s sister lives in a rich all-white all-Democrat suburb of Chicago. Her Tesla was parked at the top of her driveway and she found the following note on it:

A dispute among white Democrats regarding 50 shades of righteousness was, of course, gold from my point of view and I immediately deployed it on X and Facebook. I assumed that a quiet claim of authorship would be understood as ironic given (1) the expressed desire of the author to remain anonymous (“signed, your neighbor”), (2) the legible and, therefore, likely feminine handwriting, (3) the inconsistency with viewpoint-diverse Florida, and (4) the inconsistency with the rest of my social media and Web output. Of course, I was wrong!

Here’s part of a post from a university professor turned Facebook executive turned venture capitalist:

Concerning an example of a Tesla being “keyed” as an act of protest, and the owner understandably complaining about it:
I’m sorry this happened to you. It’s regrettable. I think it’s immoral and antisocial, in the ways you do.
But I do think the issue here is whether the conditions obtain to make it justified, rather than merely the structural claim that it’s wrong because it’s property destruction.
If the KKK were active in town and terrorizing and killing people with impunity, symbolic property rights infringement as a social retaliation would be regarded as understandable by many people.
There are of course many reasons to object to even that. It’s unlawful. It’s vigilante justice. It can be seen as socially destabilizing. So there are people who will say it’s never ok.
But many people think that unlawful civil disobedience is OK when the injustice issue is sufficient to warrant what they regard as a proportional response.  There’s a strong history of this in America. We like “law and order” but if we think the law is unjustly favoring the wrong order, we sometimes accept the moral appropriateness of unlawful behavior.
So I think if you want to object to this, it needs to be met at that level. And I must say that folks who own these vehicles who are upset about these events, do not seem to be acknowledging that and engaging with it as such. At least not that I’ve seen on social media.

When someone puts this much thought into the nuance of keying a Tesla (“civil disobedience” for Democrat A to damage Democrat B’s car), it is time to spring into action.

On the theory that the most believable lies contain some element of truth, much of my reply is true. There is a board-certified emergency medicine doc who shares an alley with us (access to garages in our neighborhood is via alley so that houses don’t have ugly garage doors in front). He is married (being divorced in our part of Florida, due to a feminism deficit, lacks prestige). He does have a Model Y from a couple of years ago and, in fact, recently said that the car made it from Gainesville to our neighborhood via self-driving without a single intervention (3.5 hours).

Despite the elements of truth, it didn’t occur to me that the thoughtful Facebooker wouldn’t see the attempt at humor. He has some familiarity with my failure to conform to righteous political dogma, for one thing. His response:

I think what you did is exactly the right kind of response. You aren’t trying to upset someone or retaliate against them with violence or property destruction, or some other sort of harm, lawful or not. Your interpreting their car is potentially problematic and you’re explaining to them why and mentioning the broader context. I think that even somebody who disagrees with your views should find that admirable.
Maybe somebody should create flyers with different interesting points on them and master distribute them to protesters and encourage them to leave them on cars instead do destruction.

The flyers could have a URL where the specific issue is being discussed and requested the person who owns the car participate.

A female Deplorable attacked me in the same thread and I admitted that the note was authentic, but my authorship wasn’t. That prompted the thoughtful original author to ask

So you didn’t write this note? But you left it for your neighbor? Or not even that?

When I confirmed that I was not the heroine behind the note, he added

Many of the things that I’ve seen you post on make you seem not just like somebody who disagrees with me politically but like a very mean spirited or unkind person. I was pleasantly surprised by this, but I can see now that actually you think that graciousness is worth mocking.

So… he is a kind person willing to look at the positive aspects of keying someone’s Tesla while I am an unkind person for mocking anti-Tesla hysteria among those who, just months ago, were saying that everyone should drive a Tesla in order to stave off a climate emergency.

Much the same thing happened on X. In response to a Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (99% as progressive as Queers for Palestine?)…

Some responses…

Sad that a professor at MIT and Harvard is so blissfully unaware as to think this is the first time an election has been bought. The naïveté is stunning.

(The guy clicked through to my profile, upgraded me from humble “teacher” to august “professor”, and didn’t learn enough from the context of my other posts to realize that this was a joke.)

From a “data scientist”:

You’re actually a retard aren’t you?

60,000 views and seemingly hardly anyone cottoned on to the claim of authorship being a joke.

Let me close this out with a photo from Sun ‘n Fun (Lakeland, Florida), in which a Tesla uses camouflage to hide from visiting progressives.

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Our Easter Experience

by philg

About half of the people we encountered today (in the neighborhood, at the Norton Museum of Art, at Tropical Smokehouse) wished us a “Happy Easter”. It wasn’t so happy for the turkey whose breast I roasted in the LG steam oven (not very steamy, actually), but the kids enjoyed their Thanksgiving-inspired Easter dinner.

A Louise Nevelson is one of the highlights of the sculpture garden for me.

Back in the neighborhood (let’s hope that our kids don’t demand this level of signage!):

Easter should be more important than Christmas, I think, even for non-Christians, and yet a lot more effort is made to communicate the Christmas story.

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Is the government keeping Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s pupusa recipe secret?

by philg

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the noblest, most valuable, and most important resident of Maryland, made a pupusa-based asylum claim in 2019 (AP):

Abrego Garcia grew up in El Salvador’s capital city, San Salvador, according to court documents filed in U.S. immigration court in 2019. His father was a former police officer. His mother, Cecilia, sold pupusas, the nation’s signature dish of flat tortilla pouches that hold steaming blends of cheese, beans or pork.

The entire family, including his two sisters and brother, ran the business from home, court records state. Abrego Garcia’s job was buying ingredients and making deliveries with his older brother, Cesar.

“Everyone in the town knew to get their pupusas from ‘Pupuseria Cecilia,’” his lawyers wrote.

A local gang, Barrio 18, began extorting the family for “rent money” and threatened to kill Cesar — or force him into their gang — if they weren’t paid, court documents state. The family complied but eventually sent Cesar to the U.S.

The vast U.S. immigration bureaucracy found the pupusa story credible. The home-based business made such great pupusas that it was ripe for extortion by a powerful gang. Presumably, no judge would have made this finding without having seen the recipe for the Abrego Garcia pupusas. Yet, as with the JFK assassination investigation files, there has been a massive coverup and the pupusa recipe hasn’t been released. Why not a Freedom of Information Act request to ICE to get the recipe so that every American who is passionate about due process can make pupusas every night until Mr. Abrego Garcia is free.

Here’s a Maryland Senator, Mr. Abrego Garcia, an interpreter, I think (why bother to learn English if you’re in the U.S. for only 15 years?), and margaritas (from X):

In the meantime, we have ChatGPT:

Here’s a basic pupusa recipe — traditional Salvadoran stuffed corn cakes — with just a few ingredients:

Ingredients:

For the dough:

  • 2 cups masa harina (corn flour, such as Maseca)
  • 1½ to 2 cups warm water
  • ½ tsp salt

Common fillings:

  • 1 cup shredded mozzarella (or Salvadoran quesillo if available)
  • Optional: refried beans, cooked pork (chicharrón), or loroco (a Central American edible flower)

Instructions:

  1. Make the dough:
    • In a large bowl, mix masa harina with salt.
    • Slowly add warm water and knead until you get a soft, pliable dough that doesn’t crack or stick to your hands. Let it rest for 10 minutes.
  2. Prepare fillings:
    • Mix cheese with beans or pork if using.
    • Divide the filling into about 6–8 portions.
  3. Form the pupusas:
    • Wet your hands and divide the dough into 6–8 equal balls.
    • Flatten a ball into a 4-inch disc, place a spoonful of filling in the center, then pinch the dough closed around it.
    • Flatten it gently into a thick disc, about 4–5 inches wide.
  4. Cook:
    • Heat a lightly oiled skillet or griddle over medium heat.
    • Cook each pupusa for about 2–3 minutes per side, until golden and slightly blistered.
  5. Serve:
    • Serve hot with curtido (a lightly fermented cabbage slaw) and tomato salsa.
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Five-year anniversary of California filling its skate parks with sand

by philg

It’s the fifth anniversary of #Science in California filling skate parks with sand. The video of Venice Beach below, from ABC, is good because it also shows that the beach itself has been closed (part of the “Safer at Home” orders:

Same thing happened in San Clemented, California a few days earlier (Fox News).

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The old white Democrats who wanted public schools closed for 18 months now gather en masse without masks

by philg

As a keen follower of The Science, my main take-away from the Democrats’ nationwide anti-Trump mass gatherings was “Why aren’t they wearing masks?”

A sea of old white people crammed together (source), none of them masked:

These are the same people who demanded that public schools be closed for 18 months, and that peasants be ordered to wear masks outdoors. Old white Democrats demanded that, except for mostly peaceful BLM protests, the subjects would be forbidden to assemble more than 25 people outdoors (Maskachusetts December 2020), or no more than 3 households (California, October 2020), or no more than 10 people from 2 households (Colorado, October 2020)).

What happened to The Science?

Montpelier, Vermont, formerly a center of the mask religion:

The Righteous in Boston have their Palestinian flag and they say “Trump is Stupid”, but they aren’t smart enough to wear masks:

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Annals of tourism promotion

by philg

A post on X by John LeFevre:

I’ve been to Thailand a dozen times or so when I was living in HK and Singapore.

I always felt bad for people who made it a bucket list or honeymoon destination from the other side of the world.

Don’t be fooled by the White Lotus hype; it’s disgusting:

Phuket – crowded and gross beaches.
Koh Samui – average beaches, terrible SCUBA.
Bangkok – horrible traffic, dirty, and Patpong will scar you for life. The Mandarin Oriental is cool but that’s about it.
Pattaya & Krabi – where society’s dregs go on vacation.
Phi Phi Island – where backpackers go for drugs, and the water is filled with trash. Even the beaches from the movie The Beach are too murky to even snorkel.
Chang Mai – full of ped0s, fake temples, and depressed elephants.

Thailand is only nice as a really cheap alternative for deviant Germans or lower class Brits to retire; it’s better than some dreary place like Liverpool in terms of women, weather, and the price of a pint.

My response, of which I am proud:

Thank you for applying for a job at the Tourism Authority of Thailand. Based on your essay, however, we are unable to offer you employment at this time.

Note that I actually liked what little I saw of Thailand on a 2001 business trip there. See “A Photographer’s Guide to Bangkok”, from which these photos are excerpted:

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Federal government weighs in on a 15-year-old pupusa dispute (Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia)

by philg

Our energetic government employees have been vilified for inefficiency (most recently by the notorious DOGE), but the example of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia shows that federal workers can be very energetic indeed.

CNN:

Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, entered the US illegally sometime around 2011, but an immigration judge in 2019, after reviewing evidence, withheld his removal. That meant he could not be deported to El Salvador but could be deported to another country. A gang in his native country, the immigration judge found, had been “targeting him and threatening him with death because of his family’s pupusa business.”

(“could be deported to another country” is inconsistent with what Democrats on X and Facebook are saying, i.e., that the noble Abrego Garcia had the right to permanent residence in the U.S.)

ChatGPT, regarding the value (in 2025 dollars) at stake in this deadly dispute:

​In El Salvador, pupusas are a beloved and affordable staple. Typically, a standard pupusa costs between $0.25 and $1.00 USD, depending on factors like ingredients, size, and location.

A federal employee, in other words, determined that a gang member who didn’t like a pupusa ten years earlier (maybe the gang prefers panes rellenos?) was lying in wait for Mr. Abrego Garcia to return to El Salvador so that he could be executed. Therefore, Mr. Abrego Garcia could stay safe in the U.S.

(It’s unclear to me why Mr. Abrego Garcia is safer in Maryland than in El Salvador. The murder rates in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. are more than 20X higher than in El Salvador. The border was fully open for four years and any Salvadoran, including cornmeal-hating gang members, could enter the U.S. and stay permanently temporarily (latest extension by the Biden-Harris administration, oddly in conflict with the fact that the State Department rates El Salvador as safer for American travelers than France or my beloved Sweden (see below).

Additionally, Mr. Abrego Garcia would be at risk in Maryland from his wife, with whom he apparently has a history of physical violence (ABC). Suppose that she has availed herself of her 2nd Amendment rights during Mr. Abrego Garcia’s sojourn in El Salvador? He returns to Maryland as a hero to all Democrats and is promptly filled with lead by the wife.

Surely the United States is now home to far more non-imprisoned violent Salvadorans than El Salvador itself (which successfully exported nearly all of its violent criminals to the U.S. and then imprisoned the rest).)

I’m at a loss to understand how Americans imagine that our English-speaking government workers are capable of sorting out what happened in a pupusa exchange 15 years ago.

Separately, here’s a hero of climate change alarmism:

According to Maryland Sen. Van Hollen, we’re in a “climate crisis” exacerbated by a “climate emergency.” What’s the right thing to do in that situation? Tap into a lake of Jet A and fly roundtrip to El Salvador without first making any appointments (nytimes):

It wasn’t possible to meet via Zoom or phone?

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LLMs combined with offshore and immigrant grifters make supervised bank accounts even more necessary

by philg

I’ve written about this repeatedly based on my interactions with old people… the U.S. desperately needs a simple-to-establish bank account, with associated credit card, that can be supervised by a second person. This would be useful for some young people, but it would be primarily for the elderly to prevent them from being cheated out of their savings and Social Security. The idea is that they could enter into small transactions at reliable merchants without restriction, but if they try to buy something over a threshold amount or transfer funds over a threshold, an Account Protector’s approval is sought, e.g., via text message “Grandma is trying to pay $700 for diet pills advertised online. Press 1 to approve.”

‘Gold Grifters’: Inside the growing scam using couriers to pick up gold bars from victims is a recent ABC story:

Kris Owen, a 79-year-old Vietnam veteran, had planned to spend his golden years in Indiana with his wife, Karen. They wanted to spend more time with his son and travel the world together.

Owen received a pop-up message on his computer in 2023 saying that his personal information was compromised — and was told to call a phone number.

When he did, an individual posing as a federal agent said they would safeguard his money and instructed him to convert some of his savings into gold bars, Owen told ABC News. After weeks of communications and after receiving what he thought was a letter from the FBI, Owen purchased $80,000 worth of gold bars.

“They told me to wrap it in a box … with Christmas wrap paper,” Owen said.

He then took his gold to a grocery store parking lot near his house, he said, expecting to hand it over to a federal agent so the gold could be kept in a secure location. A car soon pulled up next to Owen and he placed the gold in the back seat before the driver took off.

The FBI and a local Indiana police department had Owen go undercover to try to catch an individual who was supposed to receive $50,000 from him. Owen, wearing a wire, met with the individual at a parking lot and placed a box with fake cash in the individual’s back seat.

Law enforcement followed the individual, who they later identified as Abdul Mohammed, and took him in for questioning. He was charged by federal prosecutors with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and two counts of wire fraud.

Mohammed, who later fled the country, was a courier — an individual recruited to pick up gold bars or cash from victims, according to law enforcement officials.

(Our government tortures airlines and private pilots with APIS and eAPIS manifests of who is on every outbound flight and all passengers’ passport details and yet Abdul Mohammed was able to easily leave after being arrested, charged, and then released by our revolving door justice system?)

In an exclusive phone interview, ABC News spoke to a suspected courier from jail as he faces charges in two states for his alleged involvement in gold bar schemes.

Yash Shah, 27, who was originally charged with multiple felonies in 2023 related to the scam, claims he does not know where the gold is going. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years probation, but he was arrested again last November for his alleged involvement in a Maryland case. He is currently being held without bond in a New York detention facility.

“I’m not a criminal or anything like that,” Shah told ABC News. “I’m just a normal person. They [were] just saying … if you wanna make a little more money, you have to go pick up the package, and you have to just drop it over there. That’s it.”

Shah claims he was hired by someone from India and was paid between $800 and $4,000 to pick up packages, some which contained gold bars. His attorney, Nicholas Ramcharitar, said Shah took between five and 10 trips traveling all over the Northeast as a courier.

Mr. Shah wasn’t suspicious when offered 50X what UPS charges for the same service because… he is not a criminal?

What’s the LLM angle?

“These tech support pop-ups that initiate the whole scam emanate from a call center in India,” Delzotto said. “So we have a lot of focus on India with [a lot of] these illegitimate call centers.”

LLMs will be a lot more successful at fooling us than Indian humans (they still say “the reason of my call” instead of “the reason for my call”), so the bleeding out of American wealth to scammers around the world is likely to intensify. Right now our banking system has only two modes: (1) you’re a fully capable adult who can distinguish Agent Abdul Mohammed from a real FBI agent, (2) you’re a mental vegetable who can’t buy socks at Amazon and all of your money is held in trust and the bank takes instructions from the trustee(s). But a typical 79-year-old doesn’t fit well into either of these modes. He/she/ze/they is, one hopes, nearly capable of Mode 1 banking, but some kind of second signature or text message approval or something should be required before $80,000 is withdrawn.

Related, a March 2024 New Yorker story:

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In-dash exercise equipment for self-driving cars?

by philg

Traffic in the U.S. is going to get slower every year as the population continues to expand via immigration and children of immigrants (Pew, 2015). Self-driving systems are going to get better every year, but perhaps not good enough that they can be completely unsupervised. What are people going to do on multi-hour car trips where they still have to sit in the driver’s seat and look at the road? How about exercise? With more time lost to traffic jams Americans will have less time to hit the gym or walk in the neighborhood so we’ll get yet fatter and weaker unless the car itself becomes a gym.

Suppose that resistance bands were built into the dashboard, floor, doors, and ceiling of the car. I asked ChatGPT to generate an image of this, but the request fried our future overlord’s brain.

It could look something like this image from Amazon, but with the band attached to the door or the dash instead of to the wall:

I know that there’s a fine line between stupid and clever. Which side of the line is this idea on?

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