Will the media end up doing more economic damage to Hawaii than the fires?

by philg

The loss of life in the Lahaina fire is sad, of course, but this post is about the economics. Folks I’ve talked to here in the Northeast (I’m traveling around via Cirrus) who’ve followed this by scanning media headlines have the impression that much or most of Maui has been destroyed and/or that all of Hawaii is a no-go zone for tourists. To the extent that they would have considered a vacation in Hawaii, therefore, they would now postpone it for at least a year or two.

Estimates of direct property damage from the Maui fires seem to be in the $3 billion range. But the big airport and the big resorts were untouched, so there wouldn’t be a rational reason for tourists to avoid Maui this winter. Hawaii’s extended lockdown was a serious self-inflicted wound from 2020-2022. About 20 percent of the state’s economy, pre-coronapanic, was tourism. Total revenue for 2019 was nearly $18 billion in pre-Biden money. If media hysteria reduces tourism by even 20 percent, therefore, the economic damage from journalists will exceed the economic damage from the fires.

Here is an example… “The Hawaii fires are a dire omen of the climate crisis’s cost to Pacific peoples” (Guardian). Note that it is not the “Lahaina fires” or the “Maui fires” but fires that have covered all of Hawaii.

From the righteous at CNN… “Survey of devastation left after Hawaii wildfires”.

If Hawaii is “devastated”, does that mean the winter of 2023-4 is a good time for a visit?

Update, September 1: “Tourists Were Told to Avoid Maui. Many Workers Want Them Back.” (NYT) Nearly a month after the fire, Maui, a tourism-dependent island with a hotel room for every seven and a half households, is hosting fewer visitors than at any point since the coronavirus pandemic. Pristine beaches sit empty, even those that are many miles from Lahaina. Hundreds of unused rental cars are parked in fields near the island’s main airport in Kahului, where planes arrive half full. … The implosion of Maui’s economy, of which tourism comprises about 40 percent, has been swift and severe. State economic officials estimate that the island is seeing about 4,250 fewer visitors each day than normal, representing a loss of $9 million a day. In South Maui, seven of every 10 hotel rooms sit empty, compared with about two in 10 during normal times.

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Taxpayer-funded Rainbow-First Retail in Pasadena

by philg

Loyal readers may remember some Pride Month scenes from Park City, Utah in “If Rainbow Flagism is the state religion, why do individuals and businesses need to buy their own rainbow flags?“:

if 2SLGBTQQIA+-ism is our state religion and the trans-enhanced rainbow flag is our sacred symbol, why do private businesses and individuals need to organize worship?

I took a trip to Pasadena, California on July 30, 2023, a month after the official end of Pride. I found a great bank for elites that offers much better interest rates than Bank of America and other banks that serve the peasantry.

They’re supervised by the diversity-crisis-tackling San Francisco Fed, so I’m sure that my money will be “safe as houses.” On the sidewalk in front, one see the result of Californians’ commitment to eliminating inequality:

Pasadena offers a conventional American Rainbow-first Retail experience. The observant Muslim, for example, must pay obeisance to the merchant-displayed rainbow flag if he/she/ze/they wants clothing to wear, shades for his/her/zir/their house, or a car to drive:

In case a merchant forgets, however, just as in Park City, Utah, the city has stepped up with tax dollars. Sidewalks and transformers are painted with the sacred rainbow (this would be contrary to the law in Muslim-governed Hamtramck, Michigan):

If these sacred messages were still up on July 30, 2023, a full month after the nominal end of Pride, when do they get removed?

The city government’s convention center and tourism org explained how the symbols went up in a June 1, 2023 press release: “All Are Welcome in Pasadena” Kicks off June in Pasadena, California”:

The enchanting rose gardens are in full bloom, pride events paint the town, and Visit Pasadena, the city’s official tourism organization, celebrates pride with a citywide Pride campaign with the simple, yet powerful message that “All Are Welcome in Pasadena.”

History is hardly ever tidy, but Pasadena, California has been proudly celebrating all identities since The Boulevard Bar was established over 40 years ago. Today, it remains one of Pasadena’s staples. In 2014, Pasadena was recognized as the “Second Gayest City in America” by The Advocate. This marked a historic moment, when a gay couple exchanged wedding vows on a wedding float during the Tournament of Roses® Rose Parade for the first time ever during live broadcasts around the world.

This year, The City of Pasadena raises the Pride Flag once again at City Hall this June, with a flag designed by non-binary artist Daniel Quasar and made by San Diego-based Pride Flag SD, followed by a series of interactive and family friendly events. In historic Old Pasadena, visitors will experience the district’s powerful “commUNITY” campaign and “All Are Welcome” messaging while enjoying romantic and diverse shopping and dining experiences. In October, SGV Pride will celebrate National Coming Out day with a celebration at Central Park, with the historic Castle Green and the majestic San Gabriel Mountains as a backdrop.

Here’s something unfortunate… the City implies that there is something unhealthful about the 2SLGBTQQIA+ lifestyle that requires additional vaccines, e.g., against Long Monkeypox:

It’s a “family-friendly event” for kids to watch adults get injected?

A few more photos from July 30… (note that some stores have two “all are welcome” rainbow stickers on the front door):

What if you need a bonus hole in your body? That can be done with Pride (sticker lower left):

Here’s a restaurant with three pride stickers (the multi-colored rose is an official City of Pasadena Pride symbol):

Also, it doesn’t have to be the official Pride month for Californians to take pride in wearing masks. A restaurant:

What if you are injured by COVID-19? These billboards across from the Burbank airport offer legal help and healing cannabis:

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Harry’s Crummy Razors

by philg

Readers may recall my comparative razor tests of 2019 (see Dorco Shaving Test: 7 blades good; 4 blades bad) and a 2022 update: Jeremy’s Razors vs. Almighty Dorco. Dorco, the Korean engineering and manufacturing titans behind the Dollar Shave Club, bested Gillette and crushed Jeremy’s for shave quality.

Costco was selling Harry’s razors earlier this summer so I decided to give the system a try. The handle is much too light. The blades aren’t as good as either Gillette or Dorco and nicks/cuts are much more prevalent. A fresh-from-the-box Harry’s blade is inferior in practical quality to a Gillette or Dorco blade that has been used for 2-3 weeks. I can’t figure out how this product is so popular. The power of advertising?

Maybe the answer is that Harry’s, like Gillette and Tranheuser-Busch (Bud Light), celebrates the miracle of transgenderism.

My advice to those who want to celebrate the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community every morning… buy Gillette instead.

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How much does aviation add to real estate values in vacation destinations?

by philg

Happy National Aviation Day!

I’m celebrating on Mount Desert Island, home to Acadia National Park, having arrived here via ghetto-class Cirrus SR20. I’m staying in a neighborhood of oceanfront houses that were worth $2-4 million pre-coronapanic. This evening, about 30 folks gathered for dinner two houses over. Everyone who wasn’t a full-timer had arrived by air, either private or scheduled, to the BHB airport. The lockdowns and Internet (lucky to get 80 Mbits down and 10 Mbits up here) added a lot of value to these houses, but I think that aviation is responsible for much of the value.

I can’t find any economic analysis of how much out-of-the-way vacation spots have increased in value now that they’re accessible by air. These places were worthless before the railroads. Bar Harbor became conveniently accessible via rail, it seems, in 1902 (Wikipedia). The place took a hit from the invention of modern air conditioning by pioneering female engineer Wilma Carrier ( A/C made staying in New York City or Washington, D.C. more tolerable) and then got a boost from improvements in aviation. The overnight sleeper trains from NYC might have been as comfortable as today’s Cape Air flights, but coming to Bar Harbor from Alabama (we met some folks at a restaurant who vacation in Acadia every year) was impractical.

[If we’re climate change alarmists, which I hope that we all are, we can also look at the benefits to Bar Harbor, Maine from CO2 emitted by aviation. Maine isn’t a pleasant place to swim yet, but if Greta Thunberg is correct this could be the next Miami Beach.]

Some over-sharpened iPhone pictures from a carriage road in Acadia:

View from my friend’s back yard:

Cars and Coffee at the Seal Cove Auto Museum:

The big hotel in downtown Bar Harbor:

The only rainbow flag that I could find downtown (note the lack of trans-enhancement):

What it has looked like most of this summer:

Climate change has brought a wet/cold summer to Vermont, Maine, and Quebec.

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Where are the gardens and museums created by the Silicon Valley rich?

by philg

Below are some recent photos from the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California. A railroad, streetcar, and real estate baron left this gift of beautiful gardens and arts to Californians and tourists. Today’s Silicon Valley rich are much richer than Henry Edwards Huntington was. Why aren’t they creating amazing art museums and gardens? A Walmart heiress did that in Arkansas with Crystal Bridges, but I haven’t heard of the tech billionaires doing anything similar. Why not? Is creating a world-class garden and/or museum not sufficiently ambitious for today’s elites? They want to instead say that they saved humanity from disease or landed humans on another planet?

Some inspiring bonsai:

Inspiration for your golden retriever and a room in which to relax after the kill:

An all-gender restroom before you venture out into California gridlock:

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Email service for seniors: delete all marketing email and mailing list email by default

by philg

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.

Readers: What do you think of the idea?

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Movie recommendation: Sorcerer

by philg

What’s going on with various unions in Hollywood being forced to strike? Roughly 99.7% of Hollywood executives are Democrats (source). Why won’t committed Democrats pay workers a fair wage?

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).

From Friedkin’s obituary in the NYT, a Ukraine connection and also one to the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community:

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.

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Harvard requires the 2020 COVID vaccines; how well do they work in 2023?

by philg

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.

Following the link:

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.

Also, for good measure…

Flu: one immunization after July 1, 2023

(The flu vaccine isn’t available to those 13-64 years of age in the UK, but the public health experts at Harvard require it for healthy college-age humans.)

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:

If any of the above is memory-holed:

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Proud that the “very core” of one’s mission is unconstitutional?

by philg

“‘Shocked and dismayed’: Civil rights group blasts DeSantis’ Disney district for eliminating DEI programs” (USA Today):

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!)

Related:

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Why are climate change alarmists also passionate about maximizing human health?

by philg

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:

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:

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