How is the wage-price spiral going?

by philg

The smartest people in the U.S. say that a wage-price spiral cannot occur. “Giving Workers a Raise Is Not Going to Make Inflation Worse” (New York Times, October 2):

At the moment, wages are rising faster than inflation, which means that “real,” or inflation-adjusted wages, are rising.

“There is almost no evidence” that wage increases lead to inflation, Rosenberg wrote. His firm conducted a statistical test (called Granger causality) that found inflation causes wage increases, but not the other way around. He predicted that rather than passing along higher wage costs to customers, companies would be forced to swallow them and accept lower profits.

In other words, the Science of Rosenberg and Granger proves that cars and bicycles sell for the same amount because higher costs for producers don’t shift the supply curve and change the equilibrium price.

Here’s the latest from our local schools:

The School District of Palm Beach County reached an agreement with the Palm Beach County Classroom Teachers Association (CTA) that will give an average 7% pay increase and one-time 3% bonus to instructional employees. The agreement was approved by the School Board during its Special Meeting on October 4, 2023. The significant raise demonstrates the District’s commitment to fairly compensating teachers for their hard work and dedication to students.

There is no possibility of the price of property tax going up to pay for this, according to the New York Times.

September 2023: Hollywood agrees on a new, higher-paying, contract with writers; “an 18 percent pay bump and a 26 percent increase in the base rate with which residual payments are calculated” (Washington Post)

October 2023: “Streaming services keep getting more expensive: all the latest price increases” (The Verge).

Received October 10, 2023, regarding the supply for our 10-year-old crack addict:

Also from October: “Ford Already Covering UAW Wage Increases With Huge 2024 F-150 Price Hikes”.

July 2023: “Disneyland Workers Could Get Nearly $20 an Hour Following Appeals Court Ruling”.

October 2023: “On the most popular days, though, Disneyland is raising prices by more than 8% to $194. For a five-day ticket, Disneyland raised prices by nearly 16% to $480. The park also raised the price of various add-ons. Disneyland’s Genie+ product, which gives customers access to shorter lines, will now cost $30 a person, up by $5. For five-day tickets, the price for Park Hopper, which lets customers go between Disneyland and Disney California Adventure Park on the same day, also rose by 25% to $75. Disneyland also raised the price for parking and other products, including its Magic Key annual passes.” (Wall Street Journal)

Readers: What else have you seen that could be considered evidence for my discredited theory that a wage-price spiral could occur?

The good news: if your own income isn’t keeping up with inflation, you can save money by shopping at Costco. On a September 25, 2023 visit, they were offering a bottle of Champagne for $4,500, including a free glass.

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Science says to throw out all of your appliances

by philg

Planet Earth can be saved if we all throw out our 2-10-year-old appliances that are in perfect working condition. That’s the Science according to the New York Times… “The Climate Fight Will Be Won in the Appliance Aisle” (Oct 1, 2023):

Two of these [Inflation Reduction Act] programs are tax credits meant to give Americans a tax discount when they install a new rooftop solar system, a geothermal-powered heater, a heat pump or another technology that reduces demand for carbon-emitting fossil fuels. Unlike other tax credits in the law, these programs have no income cap, so they can be used by wealthy Americans who can presumably afford to pay upfront to install residential equipment like a water heater. But like other new tax credits in the law, they require Americans to have some federal tax liability in the first place. If you owe nothing on your taxes, then you can’t get a discount.

The I.R.A. introduced a pair of rebate programs meant to help working- and middle-class Americans afford to upgrade appliances and other features of their homes. These two programs, known as HOMES and HEEHRA, are important. When it’s finally put in place, HEEHRA will lower the cost of heat pumps and other climate-friendly appliances at the point of sale, making them more affordable to consumers, including those who are not even aware of the policy. More than perhaps any other programs in the law, these rebates are meant to allow low-income Americans to reduce their monthly energy costs. And because they involve direct cash grants, using the rebates will not require oweing any taxes to the federal government. That is huge for retirees and Social Security recipients, many of whom have no earned income and little to no federal tax liability.

The climate fight might be waged in the streets. But it will be won in the appliance aisle.

It is, of course, wonderful that working-class renters must pay for the new high-end air conditioning systems enjoyed by elite homeowners. But I’m confused as to how this can save the planet. If people throw out working appliances and buy new ones, which have to be manufactured, shipped, and installed, won’t that actually increase CO2 emissions? If so, should we consider New York sustainability expert William Lauder to be the greatest environmentalist of the moment? He pushed a 6-year-old house into a landfill:

The new house, presumably, will include higher-efficiency Sub-Zero refrigerators with R600a refrigerant. Our planet, then, began to heal when the excavators started work on this obsolete 6-year-old 36,000-square-foot house.

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The recent flare-up in Israel, explained by Massachusetts public school principal

by philg

The public high school for kids in our former suburb of Boston has a new principal (source):

The Lincoln-Sudbury Regional District has appointed Dr. Andrew Stephens as the new Superintendent/Principal of Schools. Stephens had been principal of Lexington high School since 2017.

Prior to that he spent 10 years as Principal of Duxbury High School and four years heading Hull High School. He began his career as a history teacher in Vermont before returning to Massachusetts, where he taught for three years at Newton North High School spent another three as an assistant housemaster. Stephens is a graduate of Colgate University, where he obtained a B.A. in history, and Johnson State College in Vermont, where he got his master’s degree in education. He also holds a Certificate of Advanced Educational Studies from Boston College and an Ed.D. from Northeastern.

Dr. Stephens applied all of the above education to an analysis of the flare-up in the war that Arabs declared 75 years ago, with an email to the students, taxpayers, and parents who enjoy life in means-tested public housing (they’re not “on welfare”, though they pay nothing for housing, health care, food, home broadband, and smartphone):

Dear [Lincoln-Sudbury] Students and Families:

I write tonight with a large measure of sadness over the events that occurred over the past few days and want to acknowledge the violent conflict occurring between Israel and Palestine. While the conflict seems very far away from LS, it is not. We have members of the LS Jewish and Muslim communities who are directly impacted by this conflict and its consequences both from an affinity standpoint, and from the fact that folks here may have family and friends who live in that area. It is important that we as a school and learning community are cognizant of this fact.

Given the news coverage and access we all have to images of the atrocities from the past weekend, there is an emotional impact on all of us, particularly with our young people and those with connections to the region where this conflict is occurring. It is essential that we as a learning community acknowledge what is happening and express empathy and kindness to one another, especially during times like this. It is essential that we all work to provide our students and staff with safe spaces at LS that bring life to our values that everyone belongs and that we will support those who need it.

To that end, it is likely that our students and staff have been following the events over the past few days and engaging in conversations about the causes and impact this conflict may have from a global and local standpoint. Here are some resources to help families navigate such conversations with our young people. At school, we want to support anyone impacted during this significant and impactful conflict and strongly urge students who are impacted by the recent events to access in-school supports from their counselor and/or any trusted adult.

These are difficult times in the world and I hope that you join me in sending thoughts and prayers to the Israelis and Palestinians who are living through this terrible conflict.

This is a strange thing for Dr. Stephens to be concerned about when one considers that both Lincoln and Sudbury are crammed with Climate Doomers (maybe this is why “These are difficult times in the world”?). If humanity is going extinct in the medium-term, what difference does it make if a small percentage of humans are killed via war?

The email gives full nationhood status to “Palestine”. Note also the assumptions that Muslims from, e.g., Pakistan or Indonesia, will be anti-Israel and pro-Hamas (“an affinity standpoint”) and that a public school counselor in Massachusetts will be able to “support” a Muslim student who is upset that some of those who carry guns on behalf of Hamas have been killed by the Zionist entity.

Apparently, some recipients complained about the above email. Part of a follow-up from Dr. Stephens:

The message was not clear with respect to the fact that the attacks on Israel over the past weekend were perpetrated by terrorists and resulted in violence and atrocities that have shocked the global community. These attacks, which do not represent the views of many Palestinians and Muslims, should be condemned and were impactful at a deeply personal level to many people in our school and community.

Note the inconsistency with the first message. If Palestine is a country and Hamas is the government of that country (with broader support than Joe Biden enjoys among Americans), why are the armed men directed by Hamas “terrorists”? Why aren’t they “soldiers”? In the first message, the assumption was that Muslim students at the school would naturally have “affinity” for Hamas. In the second message, it turns out that there are “many” Muslims (among 1.8 billion worldwide) who do not support Hamas.

When did school bureaucrats start having sufficient time to comment on climate change, shootings thousands of miles away, wars on the other side of the globe, etc.? Maybe it coincides with a reduced workload on the job due to an increase in the number of school employees per student? Example:

Finally, let’s have a look at the expert on events in what he refers to as the country of Palestine:

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Why won’t the government abide by its own minimum wage law? (jury duty in Maskachusetts)

by philg

A friend in the Boston suburbs was recently sentenced to state court jury duty. He’s an immigrant, so he had some naïve questions, such as “What happens if you are stuck on in a long trial? Who pays your salary?” We had to explain to him that if you’re a government worker you get paid at 100 percent while you do no work, but if you’re a working-class day laborer you get nothing. The Maskachusetts law says that laptop class members will get money from their employers for at least the first three days of jury duty while the working class scrambles to find rent money.

Our self-employed friend would be getting $50 per day starting on Day 4 of his involuntary presence in the courthouse. Why is that interesting? Massachusetts minimum wage is $15 per hour (real money in pre-Biden terms!) and jury service may be 7 or more hours per day (i.e., minimum wage for this job would be over $100 per hour).

Why won’t the government abide by its own minimum wage law?

Separately, here are the livestream messages from our imprisoned friend:

  • the jury pool is 90% white; we watched a video where nearly everyone was a person of color and a woman; video mentioned diversity three times; the video told us how blacks and women couldn’t serve on juries
  • (responding to “what are prospective jurors talking about?”) just boring so far. we’re sitting quietly; everyone is on phones; or reading books if a geezer; i am the only one with a laptop

I asked about COVID-19 prevention. The virus was serious enough that some school systems in Maskachusetts were shut down for 18 months, 5-year-olds were ordered to get an experimental vaccine in order to be in public places, peasants were ordered to follow Fauci and wear their cloth masks, and it was illegal to work except in “essential” businesses such as marijuana stores. Our friend reported that the government crammed all of the potential jurors into a single room so that their respective respiratory viruses could be fully distributed. Only 2 out of about 60 jurors wore masks and nobody working for the court, including the judge, wore a mask.

After a 4-hour SARS-CoV-2 incubation session, which started at 8 am on a Wednesday, everyone was sent home. Not a single person out of the 60 present was needed. Cases were postponed or settled (#LoveWins?).

In one sense it isn’t surprisingly that an enterprise that pays nothing for labor would make no attempt to use labor efficiently. On the other hand, given that hardly any jury trial would get organized before 10:00 am (judges tend to hear motions at the beginning of the day), I’m surprised that the court makes people show up at 8:00 am. Why not at least let people sleep late and avoid rush hour? Or put people on a 1-hour standby list: potential jurors are not required to come in, but they must be available to show up within one hour of getting a call. I couldn’t find any court anywhere in the U.S. that does this, so presumably there is a flaw in the idea, but I can’t figure out what the flaw is.

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Are American taxpayers the biggest funders of Hamas?

by philg

“Trump’s Claim that U.S. Taxpayer Money Funded Hamas Attacks Is False” (New York Times, October 8). If the NYT says that something is “false” and Trump is involved, perhaps it is worth investigating..

Although we say that we don’t like Hamas, they are the legitimate government of millions of Palestinians and have more popular support than Joe Biden does among Americans (AP: “The poll found that 53% of Palestinians believe Hamas is ‘most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people,’ while only 14% prefer Abbas’ secular Fatah party.”)

The most expensive services provided by the U.S. government to residents of the U.S. are, in Gaza, paid for by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), established in 1949. UNRWA pays for health care, schools, food, etc. for as many Palestinians as want them (fueled by these unlimited resources, Gaza has one of the world’s highest rates of population growth and, thus, there are more customers every day).

The U.S. is the largest donor to UNRWA (source):

Every American tax dollar that the U.S. sends to UNRWA to fund standard government services frees up a dollar for Hamas to spend on whatever it may choose.

From the NYT, a few months after Joe Biden took office, “Reversing Trump, Biden Restores Aid to Palestinians”:

The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it would restore hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid to Palestinians, its strongest move yet to reverse President Donald J. Trump’s policy on the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict. … The move will once again make the United States a leading donor to the United Nations agency that assists about 5.7 million Palestinians in the Middle East.

It is true that we haven’t directly funded Hamas’s military operations, but by funding UNRWA to provision Palestinians with education, health care, food, etc. we are the primary enablers of Hamas’s military (much larger than the economic activity of Palestinians would otherwise be able to support).

My personal rating of Trump’s statement: Substantially True. The U.S. seems to be the biggest money source for Hamas, which “strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine” (charter, which also says, “The day that enemies usurp part of Muslim land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim”).

[Of course, schizophrenically the U.S. also funds Hamas’s enemies, sending $billions to Egypt, which keeps its border with Gaza closed and won’t allow Palestinians to emigrate to Egypt (they built a wall, bizarrely with help from the U.S., which says that walls don’t work), Jordan, which has opposed Palestinian military efforts, and Israel (“the Zionist entity”). So it would similarly be accurate to say that the U.S. enables larger militaries in Egypt, Jordan, and Israel.]

Curiously, quite a few American Democrats who don’t identify as Muslim are now tweeting about “standing with Israel” (they’re also going to stand with Ukraine, with the 2SLGBTQQIA+, and in how many other places?). In other words, the very people who have been funding Hamas since the beginning of the Biden administration are now saying that they somehow support Hamas’s enemy.

Here’s the principal funder himself:

The top Democrat in Congress:

The top Democrat in Congress when the funding for Hamas was restored:

The #2 Democrat in Congress:

Governor French Laundry:

The Democrat who runs San Francisco:

The Democrat who runs Los Angeles:

New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker 2018 (source):

Senator Booker today:

How was Hamas going to achieve Booker’s 2018 objective of getting rid of walls in Palestine if not via military action against Israel?

The Black Lives Matter folks in Chicago (relevant to a comment, below):

Related:

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Recent settlers in the U.S. demand decolonialization in Israel

by philg

I hope that everyone is engaged in solemn reflection on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

A recent rally in New York City included attacks on Jewish Israelis for being colonizers/settlers. What’s interesting about this? The photos of the pro-Arab group appears to include many Americans who are either recent immigrants of children of recent immigrants (i.e., “settlers” or “colonizers”, part of the continued displacement/replacement/dilution of Native Americans and part of a global wave of Arab/Muslim expansion that started with the original Arab conquests (622-750 AD)). People from Arab and Muslim countries were generally ineligible for immigration to the U.S. until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

How would they feel if Native Americans could gain political power here and begin a program of decolonialization by deporting everyone who didn’t have at least an Elizabeth Warren-style claim of Native American ancestry?

From the Daily Mail:

No outdoor event in NYC would be complete without Faucists wearing their masks against an aerosol virus (primitive surgical mask in the background for the image below):

The pro-Israel counter-protesters fight under the banner of the scared rainbow:

Note that the sacred rainbow can also be used by those opposed to Israel, e.g., “Queers for Palestine”. From the folks who boycott Israel:

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New York Times on the crisis in Israel

by philg

The New York Times has been predicting doom for Israel for months.

July 2023, “In Israel, High Stakes for High Court: Democracy’s Fate”:

From Hungary to India to Brazil, how judges responded to attacks on their independence helped decide whether would-be autocrats prevailed in constraining the courts.

Over the last few decades, attempts to weaken the courts around the world have become recurring signals that a democracy is in trouble. Attacks on judicial independence were early steps toward one-party dominance in Russia, Turkey and Venezuela, for example.

But a move to limit the authority of the courts — like the new law adopted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition barring judges from using the longstanding legal principle of “reasonableness” to overrule government decisions — does not make democratic collapse inevitable. It’s more like a flashing red light, and how the judiciary responds can begin to decide how much damage is done.

From climate change alarmist Thomas Friedman, July 2023, “The U.S. Reassessment of Netanyahu’s Government Has Begun”:

Why is Israel’s cabinet trying to crush the country’s Supreme Court? Why did President Biden tell CNN that “this is one of the most extreme” Israeli cabinets he’d ever seen? And why did the U.S. ambassador to Israel just say that America is working to prevent Israel from “going off the rails”?

The short answer to all three questions is that the Biden team sees the far-right Israeli government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, engaged in unprecedented radical behavior — under the cloak of judicial “reform” — that is undermining our shared interests with Israel, our shared values…

They just find it hard to believe that Bibi would allow himself to be led around by the nose by people like Ben-Gvir, would be ready to risk Israel’s relations with America and with global investors and WOULD BE READY TO RISK A CIVIL WAR IN ISRAEL just to stay in power with a group of ciphers and ultranationalists.

But it is what it is — and it’s ugly. Tens of thousands of Israeli democracy protectors blocked roads and highways and besieged the Tel Aviv airport on Tuesday to make clear to Netanyahu that if he thinks he can snuff out Israel’s democracy just like that, he’s badly mistaken.

If the hundreds of thousands of Israeli democracy defenders, who have taken to the streets every Saturday for over half a year, can’t stop the Netanyahu juggernaut from slamming this bill through, it will, as former Prime Minister Ehud Barak wrote the other day in Haaretz, “degrade Israel into a corrupt and racist dictatorship that will crumble society, isolate the country” and end “the democratic chapter” of Israel’s history.

Friedman says that he’s unhappy about Hamas’s recent military success in the war that the Arabs started 75 years ago (see my Israel background article from 2003; no need for an update because nothing substantive has changed):

Any prolonged Israel-Hamas war could divert more U.S. military equipment needed by Kyiv to Tel Aviv

(i.e., Ukraine is the real ally)

Separately, let’s keep in mind that a country’s resources are finite. The Arabs in Gaza are among those who have vowed to destroy Israel (as U.S. Congressional Rep. Rashida Tlaib tweeted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”). Instead of spending the summer keeping track of what practical steps these Arabs were taking toward Rashida Tlaib’s goal, Israeli progressives were out protesting. They perceived Netanyahu as their biggest enemy and didn’t consider the possibility that the pen wasn’t mightier than the sword. The protests against cutting back the power of Israel’s courts were negligible, however, compared to the time, money, and energy that Israel spent fighting SARS-CoV-2. This fight apparently yielded no benefits because the country ended up with a higher rate of “excess deaths” than do-almost-nothing Sweden. Instead of cowering at home, Israelis under 65 could have been in military refresher training, manufacturing weapons;, etc.

One strange aspect of media coverage of this fight is that it is characterized as being against “terrorists” or “militants” and not soldiers of a legitimate government. Hamas enjoys more support among Palestinians than Joe Biden does among Americans. Why aren’t the people carrying guns on behalf of Hamas, which represents the interests of a majority of Palestinian Arabs, then referred to as “soldiers”?

From 2021, “Poll finds dramatic rise in Palestinian support for Hamas” (AP):

A new poll released Tuesday finds a dramatic surge in Palestinian support for Hamas following last month’s Gaza war, with around three quarters viewing the Islamic militants as victors in a battle against Israel to defend Jerusalem and its holy sites.

The scientific poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research also found plummeting support for President Mahmoud Abbas, who was sidelined by the war but is seen internationally as a partner for reviving the long-defunct peace process.

The poll found that 53% of Palestinians believe Hamas is “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people,” while only 14% prefer Abbas’ secular Fatah party.

Related:

  • “Gaza struggles to accommodate the living and the dead as population grows” (Reuters, 2022): “Its population is set to more than double within the next 30 years to 4.8 million and already land is running out.”
  • from the United Nations, which guarantees health care, education, food, etc. to every baby born in Gaza: “The population growth rate stands high at 2.8% and it is expected to remain stable due to decline in mortality rates while fertility rate remains one of the highest in the Arab region standing at 4.06, with high disparity between Gaza and West Bank, 4.5 and 3.6 respectively. … The increase of youth population in Palestine for the past 20 years reflects the highest increase in the Arab countries”
  • “UNRWA textbooks still include hate, antisemitism despite pledge to remove — watchdog” (The Times of Israel, 2022): Among the content [taught in the United Nations-run schools] that IMPACT-se flagged was a grammar exercise teaching that “the Palestinians sacrifice their blood to liberate Jerusalem,” the statement said. Other exercises include sentences about “Jihad warriors” against “the occupier,” commitment to “liberate” Palestine, and “resisting the enemy courageously,” according to the report. A poem teaches students that to die as a martyr by killing Israelis is a “hobby.” Islamic education material depicts Jews as “inherently treacherous, and hostile to Islam and Muslims,” including another grammar exercise implying that Jews are impure and defiling the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. “Israel is described as having been implanted by an imperialist, European, colonial, anti-Arab conspiracy with the goal of dividing the Arab world,” IMPACT-se said. Israel is erased from the UNRWA material and the entire area of the Jewish state is labeled as modern-day Palestine. Students are given exercises of naming Israeli cities as Palestinian, it added. …. Sheff said the majority of the $338 million that the US funds for UNRWA goes to education. [i.e., American taxpayers fund all of the above]

From Ilhan Omar:

Harvard perspective:

Joint Statement by Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups on the Situation in Palestine

We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.

Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum. For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise to “open the gates of hell,” and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced. Palestinians in Gaza have no shelters for refuge and nowhere to escape. In the coming days, Palestinians will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel’s violence.

The apartheid regime is the only one to blame. Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years. From systematized land seizures to routine airstrikes, arbitrary detentions to military checkpoints, and enforced family separations to targeted killings, Palestinians have been forced to live in a state of death, both slow and sudden.

Today, the Palestinian ordeal enters into uncharted territory. The coming days will require a firm stand against colonial retaliation. We call on the Harvard community to take action to stop the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians.

  • African American Resistance Organization
  • Amnesty International at Harvard
  • Bengali Association of Students at Harvard College
  • Harvard Act on a Dream
  • Harvard Arab Medical and Dental Student Association
  • Harvard Chan Muslim Student Association
  • Harvard Chan Students for Health Equity and Justice in Palestine
  • Harvard College Pakistan Student Association
  • Harvard Divinity School Muslim Association
  • Harvard Middle Eastern and North African Law Student Association
  • Harvard Graduate School of Education Islamic Society
  • Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine
  • Harvard Islamic Society
  • Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine
  • Harvard Divinity School Students for Justice in Palestine
  • Harvard Jews for Liberation
  • Harvard Kennedy School Bangladesh Caucus
  • Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Caucus
  • Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Women’s Caucus
  • Harvard Kennedy School Palestine Caucus
  • Harvard Kennedy School South Asia Caucus Leadership
  • Harvard Muslim Law School Association
  • Harvard Pakistan Forum
  • Harvard Prison Divest Coalition
  • Harvard South Asian Law Students Association
  • Harvard South Asians for Forward-Thinking Advocacy and Research
  • Harvard TPS Coalition
  • Harvard Undergraduate Arab Women’s Collective
  • Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo
  • Harvard Undergraduate Muslim Women’s Medical Alliance
  • Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Students Association
  • Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee
  • Middle East and North African Graduate School of Design Student Society
  • Neighbor Program Cambridge
  • Sikhs and Companions of Harvard Undergraduates
  • Society of Arab Students
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A server that also works as a water heater

by philg

Readers may recall that I love reengineered systems, e.g., Build downdraft paint booths for K-12 schools?

In Florida, people are using heat pump water heaters that also serve to cool the garage. From miserable cold/damp England, a different idea: a computer server whose waste heat is used for domestic hot water.

This is covered in a recent MIT Technology Review magazine article:

“This is where I prototyped the thermal conductor that carries heat from computer processors to the cylinder filled with water,” he says, opening his workshop door to reveal a 90-liter electric boiler. “We ran the first tests, and we understood that it could work.” Jordan is cofounder and chief technology officer of Heata, an English startup that has created an innovative cloud network where computers are attached to the boilers in people’s homes.

Next to the boiler is a computer tagged with a sticker that reads: “This powerful computer server is transferring the heat from its processing into the water in your cylinder.” A green LED light indicates that the boiler is running, Jordan explains. “The machine receives the data and processes it. Thus we are able to transfer the equivalent of 4.8 kilowatt-hours of hot water, about the daily amount used by an average family.”

Can this save our beloved planet? Absolutely!

When you sign up with Heata, it places a server in your home, where it connects via your Wi-Fi network to similar servers in other homes—all of which process data from companies that pay it for cloud computing services. Each server prevents one ton of carbon dioxide equivalent per year from being emitted and saves homeowners an average of £250 on hot water annually, a considerable discount in a region where 13% of the inhabitants struggle to afford heat.

They hired the scientist from Back to the Future:

What else is in the September/October issue? There is a 5-page article on open-source software, whose 40th anniversary is apparently now. The canceled Richard M. Stallman is credited as having started the movement, but there is no photo of him. Nor of Linus Torvalds. Nor of Guido van Rossum, the Python nerd. The editors found room for just one photo and it is of a person is not credited as having written any software, open source or otherwise:

Note that the photo caption is factually incorrect. People were using the term “open source” prior to 1998. One example is Eric Raymond‘s The Cathedral and the Bazaar. I found a version that seems to date from 1996 (since 1991 was “five years ago”).

I was one of the first GNU contributors in the mid-1980s. I had released a good deal of open-source software onto the net, developing or co-developing several programs (nethack, Emacs’s VC and GUD modes, xlife, and others) that are still in wide use today.

Note that the Deplorable Second Amendment-loving Raymond does not explain what he means by this term, but simply uses it expecting readers to understand it. Thus, it seems doubtful that the term was new in 1996.

“Tiny faux organs could crack the mystery of menstruation” is also interesting.

part of human physiology: menstruation. Heavy, sometimes debilitating periods strike at least a third of people who menstruate at some point in their lives … people with heavy periods … Many people desperately need treatments to make their period more manageable… Why some people have much heavier periods than others remains an open question. … why humans menstruate … Some labs instead use tissue removed from people who have had hysterectomies … help explain why some people are prone to miscarriages.

How long before these brilliant Scientists realize that approximately half of “people” have very light periods indeed and that there is a fairly simple test to predict whether a person falls into this category?

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New Yorkers love migrants until they meet some

by philg

The Harvard nerds found that suburban elites in Boston loved immigrants until they believed that immigrants were living among them: “After riding with Spanish speakers, white commuters favored anti-immigration policies”.

A different set of Harvard nerds found that elites profit from a flood of low-skill migrants almost exactly to the same extent that working class Americans lose money (a $500 billion annual wealth transfer in pre-Biden money; the elites get the higher rents and pay the lower wages while the peasants pay the higher rents and receive the lower wages that Econ 101 says are inevitable with an expansion in labor supply).

These studies are being repeated in New York City right now. Elites who own hotels are making bank while residents living in non-elite neighborhoods are the ones who incur costs, such as congestion, higher rents, and lower wages related to the tiny percentage of asylum-seekers who’ve found their way to NYC.

From today’s NYT, “Migrant Crisis Tests New Yorkers Who Thought They Supported Immigration”:

[State Senator John Liu] whose senate district includes a large immigrant population, said many of the complaints about migrants were not coming from areas that have been traditionally anti-immigrant. Instead, he said, protests followed the shelters, so “even in parts of the city that tend to be very pro immigrant, many of those residents are up in arms.”

Just like their brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Maskachusetts, New Yorkers love undocumented immigrants… so long as none live anywhere near them.

In College Point, Queens, a working-class neighborhood near La Guardia Airport, Jennifer Shannon, 53, said she believed in helping those in need, including the women in a homeless shelter that opened there in 2019. But after a respite center for migrants opened in July, Ms. Shannon was livid.

“We just added 500 more people to a community that’s already falling apart,” she said.

During the early days of the pandemic, Ms. Shannon started a neighborhood association to support food pantries and provide meals to emergency medical workers, earning citations from Mr. Adams — who was then Brooklyn borough president — and State Senator John Liu.

But now she says the migrants have devalued life in the neighborhood.

“We have people sitting all over people’s private property, drinking, smoking marijuana, hanging out until 4 in the morning in the municipal lot, blasting music,” she said. “It’s a disgrace.”

“It’s not everybody in there. You have people who are genuinely just trying to get away from hell and make a better life for themselves. But that’s not who you see sitting in the park benches at 11 o’clock at night, with their friends, men urinating in broad daylight. That’s what we’re seeing.”

Migrants are exempt from the sacred duty of vaccination!

In Astoria, Queens, Shabbir Suhal, 40, an accountant with three children in public school, said he was alarmed by published reports of students from shelters being permitted to attend school without being immunized against polio, measles, chickenpox and other diseases. Under state law, students in temporary housing have 30 days to start the process of getting immunized.

One great part of the article, which describes roughly 100,000 people who do not work and get their housing, food, health care, education, etc. at taxpayer expense… the NYT informs us that migrants come to NYC for “generous public services” and also that New Yorkers “reject the suggestion that immigrants want handouts“. Just as free housing, food, health care, home broadband, and smartphone is not “being on welfare” (because the person enjoying these means-tested programs may not receive a direct cash transfer), a non-working person who lives in an NYC hotel at taxpayer expense does not want a “handout”.

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Burning Man 2023 Debrief

by philg

A friend washed off all of the Playa mud and shared his experience of Burning Man 2023, Rain Edition.

What was great? He arrived on Thursday before the official event began and enjoyed a week of “Unnaturally perfect weather; no dust.”

His favorite art was a gigantic cube made from intermediate bulk carriers (IBCs). An IBC out of IBCs. Each cube had a light and became a pixel. “People could climb it. A few broke ankles,” he said. “The perfect example of ingenious art that is awe-inspiring by its simplicity and beauty out of materials that can be reused after it is taken apart.”

Overall, though, he felt that the art was not as awe-inspiring as in previous years. “There was a proliferation of laser-cut sh*t all over the Playa, including the otherwise-magnificent Temple. That’s a lazy way to build something intricate.” Perhaps this is because some of the A-listers didn’t show up this year. Unlikely in a typical year, tickets were easy to come by. What else wasn’t so great? “There are still too many plug-and-plays. The ebikes. They move too fast and the riders are like Tesla drivers: annoying people in a hard-to-explain way. Burning Man bikes are supposed to be crummy and hard to pedal. It shouldn’t be effort-free to move around.”

How about the art cars, now that Mayan Warrior has been destroyed by fire? (“They spent at least $8 million on Mayan Warrior”) “Titantic’s End is an art car iceberg is supposed to raise awareness about climate change. It has an interior room chilled to 32 degrees, lasers, massive sound, and everything else than can be done with an unlimited CO2 budget,” my friend noted. “We were not impressed.”

After a week of good luck, the rain began on Friday morning. With only shreds of mobile phone service, which immediately collapsed as soon as the event began in earnest, attendees had limited access to weather forecasts. “Rich people had Starlink, but everything went down after it started raining. The rangers told us no more rain coming and it f**king poured for days,” he said. What would he have done if he’d been better informed? “We would have partied way harder at the beginning and then left Thursday night.” Was it that bad? “It was a crisis made for social media and schadenfreude, but really not that different from going on a ski vacation and getting injured after a day or two. Some people kept partying, but we were discouraged so we stayed in our tents. Nobody could drive an art car, bike, or even walk in shoes. You could walk barefoot, but it was nasty.”

Dare we touch on the bathroom situation? “Porta-potties never became completely full, but were really gnarly, even for hardened ravers. We ended up finding a plug and play with $10K composting toilets on the last day. They had graciously opened their toilets to everyone. People had been prepared to pee in bottles and poop in trash bags, but it didn’t quite come to that.” Was the situation inevitable? “Toilet pumping and camp water deliveries stopped Friday morning. The cops had heavy equipment and super off-road dune buggies, but they just disappeared. Maybe they could have parked a pump truck at each station and kept pumping, for example.”

Was he sorry that there wasn’t a muscular response from President Joe Biden? “All the camps were sharing. Nobody went hungry or thirsty. The vibe was a little like Central American post-earthquake.”

What about the escape? “We tore down and mooped over a couple of days and I made a run for it but the rented car got stuck. I managed to walk back and pull myself out with my team and our biggest truck and return to our now-empty campsite for a cold and wet night. The next morning, Monday I guess, I mapped out the best route by foot, around bad streets and stuck vehicles. I deflated the rental car tires and went for it, but still got stuck. Some a**holes aggressively yelled obscenities at us for trying to escape, other people came out and pushed us. Once I got to K street, I cut out on playa and just plowed thru the swampy parts and banged my way out onto the gate road and out.”

What about the fact that the gate was closed for both in and out? “I heard that people were being stopped and could not get out, but when i decided to blast my way out early Monday morning there were no cops in sight. The gates were open, but not advertised as open. A campmate who arrived in a Toyota Land Cruiser managed to get out on Sunday night. He has a lot of experience off road and had traction pads with him.”

Who cleaned up the mountain of muddy trash that he left behind? “We did a full pack and moop before we left. We left a guy behind with the 4×4 truck and 8000 lb. trailer and supplies. He stayed till Temple burn left the morning after. So we cleaned up; not like the f**kers who ‘walked it out’ leaving all their sh*t behind.”

Summary? “We were well prepared so mostly it was the loss of part of the event and being stuck at camp a few days, but I got out right before Exodus so other than the nail-biting stress of getting to pavement, it was totally easy drive.”

What about the folks who waited for the official opening of the gate? He sent me this photo of Exodus:

Will we get a more thorough dissection of what could have been done better from the burners who know the event best? My friend says “No. People aren’t comfortable complaining about the Burning Man organization. They get over it or stop going.” Does it matter that failings won’t be examined? “In the end, Burning Man is like California. It’s so resource-rich that no amount of mismanagement can ruin it.”

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