Have South and Central America become more conservative because the voters who wanted a massive welfare state all moved to the U.S.?

by philg

The idea of ever-larger-and-more-compassionate government seems to have fallen out of favor lately in Central and South America. Here’s a graphic attributing the shift to the dismantling of USAID (source):

What if the reason is the Biden-Harris administration’s open border policy? Suppose that everyone in Central and South America who wanted to live in a cradle-to-grave work-optional welfare state migrated to the U.S. in 2021-20244. The voters who are left behind are, therefore, the conservative ones.

Separately, how are people feeling about yesterday’s election in Brazil? If it didn’t take a few weeks to count the votes and include a last-minute reversal can it be considered in any way free or fair by California standards? Also, I thought that the U.S. was the only democracy in which an 80-year-old could win the demanding chief executive job but, per usual, was apparently wrong.

(It looks like Lula won using some of the same tactics that Democrats have used recently in the U.S. AP: “Legislation to reduce the country’s workweek from six days to five and weekly working hours from 44 to 40 without reducing pay was approved by Congress 10 days before the runoff. … In September, Lula announced a 15% increase in payments under Brazil’s main welfare program, Bolsa Família, which bases benefits on family size and the number of children. The increase took effect this week, days before the election, and will benefit nearly 50 million people. … Lula on Wednesday endorsed credit relief and tax incentives for small businesses, giving them access to low-interest government loans through public banks and allowing them to renegotiate some of their debt. … Lula also is sending to Congress a bill to establish zero-fare public transportation on weekends.” Question: How is Lula going to argue that Elon Musk will pay for it all? Also, maybe this could be a positive for the U.S.? Brazil right now has a much lower personal income tax rate than the U.S. does, about 27.5% vs. over 50% for Californians and successful New Yorkers. With all of the new state-administered transfers, Brazil might raise its top tax rates and, thus, become less of a competitive threat to the U.S. for certain kinds of enterprises. France is the only nation with a larger welfare state, as a percentage of GDP, than the U.S. and they’re not much of a competitor.)

Related to the human export angle, “Caracas Is Eerily Safe. State Death Squads Made Sure of It.” (New York Times) mostly attributes improved safety in Venezuela to Delcy Rodríguez and Nicolás Maduro killing suspected criminals, but the open borders may also have been critical:

It’s undeniable that security has improved in Caracas and much of the rest of the country, but criminologists expressed skepticism over that figure, which would give Venezuela one of the lowest murder rates in the Americas.

Mass migration also played a role, with gang members constituting a small percentage of the millions who fled Venezuela’s economic collapse.

And just where did Venezuela’s most criminally-adept citizens end up? The NYT doesn’t say, nor do they mention José Antonio Ibarra, the Venezuelan enricher who killed Laken Riley. U.S. taxpayers will be funding Mr. Ibarra’s room, board, health care, and security for approximately the next 60 years. Mr. Ibarra won’t be able to vote in any Venezuelan elections due to his residence-for-life here in the U.S. (source)

Loosely related, If the dark days don’t have you in a suicidal mood… (quoting a Michel Houellebecq novel):

Are you from Brittany?” he asked. “Yes—from Saint-Brieuc!” she replied happily. “But I really like Brazilian dance,” she added, obviously trying to absolve herself for her disinterest in African dance. Much more of this and Bruno would really get irritated. He was starting to get pissed off about the world’s stupid obsession with Brazil. What was so great about Brazil? As far as he knew, Brazil was a shithole full of morons obsessed with soccer and Formula One. It was the ne plus ultra of violence, corruption and misery. If ever a country were loathsome, that country, specifically, was Brazil. Sophie,” announced Bruno, “I could go on vacation to Brazil tomorrow. I’d look around a favela. The minibus would be armor-plated; so in the morning, safe, unafraid, I’d go sightseeing, check out eight-year-old murderers who dream of growing up to be gangsters; thirteen-year-old prostitutes dying of AIDS. I’d spend the afternoon at the beach surrounded by filthy-rich drug barons and pimps. I’m sure that in such a passionate, not to mention liberal, society I could shake off the malaise of Western civilization. You’re right, Sophie: I’ll go straight to a travel agent as soon as I get home.”

In the Department of Election Predictions, it is the 10th anniversary of this tweet:

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If you cancel your New York Times subscription they’ll offer you about 85 percent off

by philg

The NYT recently raised the price of my subscription to $29/month (maybe it was $8/month before?). Given that half of their content isn’t news, but rather a daily reminder that Democrats still hate Donald Trump, I clicked “Cancel Subscription” and that put me into a pipeline where I was offered a $1/week deal for a year ($52/year rather than $348/year; an 85% discount).

What was on the front page when I canceled? Trump is bad because of something he did or said about Ohio. People in Iowa are more sophisticated than progressive New Yorkers previously thought because it turns out that Iowans also hate Trump. A member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community in New Hampshire might become a senator.

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Protesters in Marseille carry the French flag according to the New York Times and the Palestinian flag according to X

by philg

“Looting Left Damage and Fear on Paradise Street in Marseille” (NYT, today):

A week ago, mostly peaceful demonstrations in cities across France devolved into clashes between protesters and the police. Then looters entered the fray, breaking into stores, supermarkets and shopping malls, and hauling off whatever they could.

Selected by the New York Times editors, a photo of the typical protester, apparently a huge French patriot:

What is shown on X from the same event in Marseille? Translation from Grok: “In Marseille, my city, to my great despair, it is not the French flag that flies but that of Hamas.”

(Given our failure, thus far, to force the Iranians to surrender, this is perhaps not the best time to joke about the official French flag being white. On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal suggests that Trump’s painfully slow strategy might be working. “Iran’s Fleet of Shadow Tankers Has Run Out of Oil After Monthslong U.S. Blockade” says “Tehran had millions of barrels of crude in tankers in Asian waters that gave it a steady flow of cash. Now, that oil has dried up.” See also “Iran Is Now Losing Overland Trade Routes to U.S. Pressure” (WSJ). On the third hand, what difference does any of this make if Iran can use domestic materials to make electrical power, drones, and missiles?)

Separately, who will be watching the Paris NFL game tomorrow? France wasn’t violent enough and, therefore, they had to import violence from the U.S.? ESPN:

The article notes that the “real football” fans won’t be able to see too many dusty old paintings and sculptures:

Major museums, including the Louvre and Orsay Museum, are closed Saturday, though tourists were lined up to enter Notre Dame Cathedral. French authorities are intent on preventing a repeat of recent violent unrest.

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The 2026 Kwanzaa stamps are available

by philg

Who is old enough to be sending traditional hardcopy Christmas/New Year’s cards this year? Good news for fellow Boomers: USPS.com has the new Kwanzaa stamps.

But maybe your friends and family would rather learn more about fentanyl?

Sunflowers, which the USPS tells us are “native” (immigrant humans make every native-born American’s life better; immigrant plants are disastrous, though):

For those passionate about social justice, the bad news is that there is still no George Floyd commemorative stamp. Nor is there a stamp regarding the genocide committed by the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell. Perhaps these lowrider stamps will be some consolation, though I don’t think our Honda Odyssey qualifies:

Speaking of lowriders, here’s a picture of one from a October 2026 Cars and Coffee (see Cars and Coffee at the Birthplace of the IBM PC (Boca Raton, Florida) here in Palm Beach County. Notice the hateful transphobia (the implication that a pregnant person who is “expectant” identifies as a “mother”):

Paint detail on another lowrider at the event:

And a 1979-ish Chevrolet Monte Carlo:

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The long tail of losing tax base via lockdown (and of gaining tax base by rejecting Faucism)

by philg

A woman around age 30 who works for Cleveland Clinic here (yes, I know that it sounds like a contradiction, but Cleveland Clinic has a massive operation in SE Florida) shared her Floridian Origin Story. She and her now-husband came to Fort Lauderdale on vacation in 2020 and discovered that it was possible for young people to enjoy a mask-free lockdown-free lifestyle without being felled by SARS-CoV-2. The couple packed up and moved and never looked back to their deep roots in Massachusetts (the now-wife had grown up in a house that her grandparents purchased and her parents still live there).

How much tax base was lost via the transformation from Massachusetts to Maskachusetts? The immediately loss was modest, only about 5 percent of perhaps $250,000 in joint income or $12,500 per year in state income tax. Figure another $2,000 in lost sales tax and $5,000 per year in lost property tax (whether the couple had rented or purchased). A total of $20,000 per year.

What’s the long tail? The parents are executives back in MA and they’re approaching retirement age. They are planning to keep their house on Cape Cod, but live in Florida for most of the year so that they can spend time with their daughter and any grandkids. If the daughter hadn’t been driven to Florida by the lockdowns, mask orders, vaccine orders, etc., the parents wouldn’t have followed. The state will likely lose at least another $40,000 per year in tax receipts and won’t get the state estate tax that they’d hoped to harvest from the dead bodies of the parents. (See Effect on children’s wealth when parents move to Florida.)

Although Florida lacks both income and estate taxes, these folks are contributing to the Florida economy and tax base by living here. Thus, it seems that Ron DeSantis’s decision to reject Faucism and follow the Church of Sweden will pay financial dividends to the state for many decades to come.

Loosely related, sunset approaches at Pine Glades Natural Area, about 20 minutes from Abacoa.

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Media reports that a self-driving Tesla killed a pedestrian

by philg

I learned today from scanning headlines that a self-driving Tesla had killed a pedestrian, e.g., “Tesla in ‘self-driving’ mode kills pedestrian”. In other words, Elon Musk has not only killed our democracy, but his machines are gradually killing us as individuals.

Here’s another example:

I had assumed from the headlines that the Tesla had been blinded by some glare and had run over an unfortunate U.S. resident in a city crosswalk. Some hours later, I clicked on one of the articles and learned that the crosswalk was on a six-lane portion of Interstate 80 Vallejo, California. The “pedestrian” was attempting to cross the Interstate at about 2:30 am. He stepped from the shoulder directly into the path of the car.

(Update: It seems as though the “pedestrian” may not have been killed by Evil Elon at all. SFGate reports “Though the dash camera footage reviewed by officers showed the Tesla braking as it steered to the left, the right side of the car struck the pedestrian, CHP said. After the Tesla crash, the pedestrian was lying in the traffic lanes and was hit by another driver, CHP said. The driver of the second car did not stop and has not been identified by authorities. The pedestrian had fatal injuries, and the Tesla driver, a 26-year-old man from San Francisco, remained at the scene, CHP said.” So the crossing-attempt victim was whacked by the side of a slowing-down Tesla and then run over by a full-speed human. Presumably it was the second encounter with a steel behemoth that resulted in death.)

None of the heroic journalists behind these articles mentioned that it is illegal for anyone to walk on or across Interstate 80 in Vallejo, California. CA Veh Code § 21960 has one exception to this rule, but it does not permit crossing:

… Notwithstanding any order, ordinance, or resolution to the contrary, the driver or passengers of a disabled vehicle stopped on a freeway or expressway may walk to the nearest exit, in either direction, on that side of the freeway or expressway upon which the vehicle is disabled, from which telephone or motor vehicle repair services are available.

Only loosely related… my dream of a “pedestrian”-killing Tesla Y L seems to be receding ever deeper into 2027. The range-squanderingAWD version is the only one available (“Launch Edition”) and it wouldn’t be delivered until, probably, March 2027:

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Yann LeCun proves that it is possible to do AI research without ever having met a human

by philg

One of the big questions of our time is whether AI can improve AI without any human assistance. Here’s an X post from Yann LeCun, someone who is considered to have done useful work in AI:

He responds to the (admittedly absurd) reveal of the Tesla Roadster with “Cute demo, but totally impractical.”

Can we infer from this that Yann LeCun has never met or observed a fellow human? Most human purchases are, of course, impractical. Almost nobody needs a pavement-melting SUV. If “practical” sold cars, every car would be either a Honda Civic or a Toyota Sienna, depending on family size. (Our beloved Honda Odyssey would get the axe because, though it is more fun to drive than the Sienna, it uses more gasoline to accomplish a similar practical mission.)

If LeCun can be useful in AI without knowing the first thing about humans, should we infer that AI left alone will produce better AI?

In case the above tweet is memory-holed and with the bonus inclusion of a thoughtful response from Tesla’s CEO:

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Why hasn’t Cornell already paid Jane Doe?

by philg

Jane Doe, also known, depending on what media someone consumes, as “the Cornell Plaintiff”, “Jane Hoe”, “the Cornell Skank”, “the Cornell Genocide Survivor,” and/or “Lucy Craig”, alleges, in the first count of her cash-seeking civil lawsuit, that Cornell University was negligent:

Cornell’s top executive has admitted that Cornell was negligent. From state-sponsored PBS:

Fair to predict that the Cornell Plaintiff is going to be the richest person ever to have attended Cornell? At this point, a jury’s only job will be to figure out what percentage of Cornell’s $12+ billion she gets. Assuming a normal amount of hatred of the university by average Ithaca residents, we’re witnessing the creation of a billionaire? (I wonder if AI has exacerbated town/gown hatred. Cornell is jammed full of humans who are less intelligent than ChatGPT and who yet have guaranteed $500,000/year compensation packages for the rest of their lives. What could be more insufferable to a member of the jury who works at an honest job, e.g., electrician?)

I think that all of the money has to come from the institutional defendants, such as Cornell, the sorority she was a member of, and the fraternity. By explicitly naming all of her purported attackers, the anonymous-until-the-NY-court-messed-up plaintiff is ensuring that none of them will ever have any money because none of them are going to be able to get white-collar jobs. ChatGPT, Esq.:

Here’s Jane Doe’s perspective on the executive who has admitted negligence (and my response, which connects the survivor Kristin Krouse to the Cornell Genocide victim):

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Who pays when a jury finds that a survivor is lying?

by philg

“M.I.T. Scientist Wins $6 Million in Sexual Harassment Defamation Suit” (New York Times):

The biologist, David Sabatini, was among the most prominent scientists in his field, and ran a research lab at the Whitehead Institute, in Cambridge, for 24 years. His lab studied cellular biology to better understand neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, diabetes, and aging.

He was forced out of his lab in 2021 after an internal Whitehead investigation concluded he had a past sexual relationship with a younger and less experienced colleague, Kristin Knouse, over whom he had a career-influencing role. The investigation also found that his lab had maintained a sexualized atmosphere. Dr. Knouse said that the relationship was coerced.

But Dr. Sabatini denied his lab had an improper atmosphere. He maintained that his relationship with Dr. Knouse had been consensual and that Dr. Knouse had schemed to get him fired and disgraced after he became interested in another woman.

Nearly five years to the day after he filed his defamation lawsuit, a Suffolk County jury agreed with him, finding that Dr. Sabatini had proved in court that Dr. Knouse had defamed him and interfered with his ability to work.

The Whitehead Institute, in a statement after the verdict, said that earlier legal claims against the institution had already been dismissed, adding, “Therefore, Whitehead was not a party to this case, and the decision and judgment only apply to Drs. Sabatini and Knouse, the parties in the case.”

It’s a remarkable day when a Maskachusetts jury doesn’t #BelieveWomen. But who will pay for the $6 million judgment against the survivor? MIT/Whitehead somehow skated free of this lawsuit despite having run a kangaroo court and tossed Sabatini based on statements that a jury found were obvious lies (truth is an absolute defense against defamation so the jury couldn’t have found that the survivor defamed Prof. Sabatini without finding that the survivor lied). Maybe the survivor, Prof. Knouse, has homeowner’s insurance and that means, as with the lies that Amber Heard and the ACLU told about Johnny Depp, we will pay? We might already have paid if MIT funded Knouse’s defense, in which case our tax dollars were used. If homeowner’s insurance paid for the defense then we’ve already paid via higher premiums. On the third hand, this Courthouse News article says that Sabatini was 50 and Knouse was 29 at the time of the sexual relationship. Absent family money, it would be rare for someone in her early 30s to be a homeowner or even a condo owner in Cambridge.

Grok says that MIT/Whitehead skated free because they fired Sabatini for violating a “consensual relationships policy” (maybe he was supposed to file some paperwork and didn’t?). It references this LegalClarity site, which covers some of the twists and turns in the case.

Here’s Kristin Knouse:

Related:

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InSinkErator instant hot water success-via-failure tale (and a dishwasher question)

by philg

Because I’m incredibly lazy, one of the first additions that we made to our house in 2022 was an InSinkErator under-sink instant hot water dispenser (Home Depot):

It failed in 2023 (leak under the sink, quickly caught thanks to our Chinese brothers and sisters at Govee) and InSinkErator offered to come out to replace it or send a replacement so that I would do the labor myself in exchange for a new 3-year warranty. I chose the latter option not because it was easy, but because I thought it would be easy (it actually wasn’t too challenging since all of the connectors were the same and no wrench was required).

The tank failed again this month, not with a leak, but by failing to heat. I called InSinkErator again, having a dim memory of the above conversation. They came back with “the warranty on the replacement expires in November 2026” and, again, offered to send me one more device and extend the warranty to 2029. The device retails for $300 right now at Home Depot ($400 at Amazon) so I’ll take this win-by-losing. (Imagine if the device had lasted just another few weeks!) Given that both adults in the household work from home and we use the instant hot water for cooking as well as making tea, the device probably made over 1,000 gallons of near-boiling water before dying. That sounds pretty good until you reflect that a standard domestic hot water heater will make the same quantity of hot water every week or so and last for 8-10 years. Admittedly, the whole-house hot water heater isn’t heating to as high a temperature. ChatGPT says that the higher temp can lead to more scale build-up and also that packing everything into a compact enclosure shortens the life.

We had the opposite consumer experience with our noisy unloved Bosch 300-series dishwasher the other day. This was installed by the previous owner shortly before we moved in. It’s almost $1,000 for a new one, which is absurd considering that a higher-rated-by-Consumer-Reports-and-quieter Chinese Midea MDT24P7CST is $700 (Midea is now rated #3 in reliability among dishwasher brands by CR, just behind Bosch/Thermador and Miele; I wonder if Miele will continue to be able to charge $4,000 for a dishwasher that is $2,000 in Europe and that doesn’t perform better than whatever Midea cooks up for its next generation). The racks began to fail probably about a year ago, but we didn’t notice until just recently when rust stains began to appear on the dishes. The plastic coating on the steel tines is worn away. Bosch has a five-year warranty on the racks and decided that we didn’t qualify even though the machine is likely right at the five-year mark. We could get new racks for around $300, I think, including shipping, but I decided that it would be a fun project for the kids to use a Dremel tool and a hand file to remove the rust then apply Plasti Dip ReRACK ($21; smells like 1970s model airplane glue), which is supposedly good for about a year.

(We’re apparently not efficient in our use of dishes and pots/pans because we fill and run the machine 2-3 times per day. Adjusted for vacation time away from the house, this is about 800 runs per year and the Federales say that 215 runs per year is the average (source). Miele aims for its machines to last 5,600 cycles, which they say is 20 years (it would be 7 for us). Some older Bosch literature says that they aim for 4,000 cycles over 10 years and our machine is probably close to the 4,000-cycle number. So our racks, perhaps, failed right on schedule. This makes me wonder why the dishwasher manufacturers don’t put a cycle counter display on the unit. Customers might feel better about a failure and an expensive out-of-warranty repair if they could see that a machine had saved them from handwashing 3,286 times, for example. The LG ThinQ app shows that we’ve used our washing machine more than once per day, on average, in the past couple of months, but doesn’t give a grand total for the lifetime of the machine. Our ghetto-class Bosch 300 doesn’t connect to Wi-Fi or the app, but ChatGPT says that even those with new machines and the Bosch app can’t see a lifetime cycle count.)

Readers: what dishwashers do you love? The Bosch that we have claims to generate 48 dBA of noise (that’s in a test chamber). In our open kitchen/family room it is way too loud and interferes with conversation, TV-watching, etc. As noted above, the machine is running for 4.5-6.5 hours on an average day (2-3 cycles at over 2 hours each). Cleaning performance is okay, but seems to have gotten weaker over time (circulation pump feebling out? The machine was serviced with a new one about three years ago; ChatGPT says that the top-of-the-line Bosch Benchmark has exactly the same pump/heater as our $900 one). It isn’t completely dead, but I’m considering euthanasia (have to find a Canadian to help?) because there is no fix for the loudness. An appliance sales guy absolutely loves his Cove (Sub-Zero) dishwasher, but a friend has one and she says that she can hear it running from a kitchen table 15′ away (not obtrusive, but audible). Consumer Reports hasn’t tested the Cove for cleaning or noise, but gives the brand a low rank in reliability (that’s based on a survey). Some people love Miele, but as noted above they mark them up to insane numbers here in the U.S. (Bosch, by contrast, is a similar price in Germany and the US). LG makes big claims for their one-hour wash, Consumer Reports found that LG cleaned better than Bosch, and Yale Appliance (big YouTube channel) says that LGs have the lowest first-year service call rate, but some online reviews say that LG was noisy for them and CR gives LG low marks for reliability and satisfaction. We have a Monogram range and Monogram makes huge claims for the low noise level of their latest ZDT900 dishwasher, but nobody has reviewed it (CR gives Monogram low marks for both reliability and owner satisfaction). Does anyone have a dishwasher that they love for (a) true silence, and (b) cleaning performance on the one-hour cycle?

Finally, as long as we’re talking cooking, I thought the kids might want to get some explicit instruction in cooking from The Joy of Cooking, but then realized that the 1975 book on the shelf (1) had ten pages about aspics that might not engage them, (2) wasn’t printed on acid-free paper, and (3) had some issues with binding separation. The 2019 update is quite a bit plumper, despite the aspic section having been reduced from 10 pages to 1. It’s amazing how much can be communicated compared to online recipes (10 pages per recipe vs. 10 recipes per page?).

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