Sound Like a Native Speaker
When I was starting to learn French as a Peace Corps volunteer in French-speaking Africa almost 50 years ago, a fellow volunteer who was fluent in French gave me the same good advice this person is giving here.
Aww, Isn’t That Cute!
I know what you are thinking… Ford is reading a bedtime story to his grandkids.
Not exactly. It was lunchtime. We are at a hotel in LA. The kids were acting up and the adults had not yet finished their food. So, I entertained them with one thing I was sure they would be interested in. I am commentating on an animated, made-for-children short movie on the many varieties and purposes of poop.
What It Takes to Be Middle Class in America
I’ve shared studies like this before. But I found this one from SmartAsset to be particularly useful.
Take a look at these facts, for example:
* It’s much harder to be middle class in the north than the south. Particularly along the coasts. You can be middle class in Florida with an income between $50,000 and $60,000. But in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, it will take between $80,000 and $100,000.
* New York is the worst. The middle class there don’t earn enough to keep up with the rising cost of living. While other notoriously pricey cities have a middle-class income that trends closely with the state’s general cost of living, NYC wages lag behind. Of all cities examined, the cost of living in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan are 43%, 70%, and 138% higher than the national average, respectively.
* Incomes that put one in the middle of the middle class are highest in the West Coast tech cities. Three out of the top five cities with the highest income thresholds for the middle class are in the San Francisco Bay Area. To earn in the middle of the middle class there, you need to be making more than a hundred grand.
* The hardest place to earn more than a middle-class income? That award would go to Fremont, California, where $300,000 isn’t enough. (The middle-class income range there tops at $311,936 per year.)
Click here to read more of the study results.
$190,000 for Doing Nothing?
When Musk fired so many twitter employees and nothing obviously bad happened to the business afterwards, I wondered, “What were all those fired people doing?”
It turns out that unproductive employees are a feature of many big tech companies. Example: Madelyn Machado, 33 years old, was hired in 2021 by Meta for $190,000 a year to work as a recruiter. But she was told not to expect to hire anyone in her first year, given that she would still be learning the recruiting ropes.
Click here.
Reporting on this in The Free Press, Nellie Bowles wrote, “I’m convinced that every big tech company is five really sweaty guys in a basement and then gleaming, open-plan offices of people like me: delightful humanities grads who have meetings about the best protein powder for our green smoothie (pea!) and the gender implications of unread messages being bold (masculine aggression). Every once in a while, one of the five tries to leave the basement and we quickly convene a series of meetings to get him fired.”
Hunter Biden for President in 2024
It’s unfair to accuse Hunter Biden of wrongdoing, my liberal friends and family members say. It’s all fake news. It doesn’t matter that there is now proof that he received tens of millions for “consulting services” from Russia, China, and Ukraine when his father was VP.
That doesn’t prove anything, they say. And his documented history as an alcoholic and drug addict? He’s bravely gotten beyond that, they say. He’s channeled the pain into his artwork, you see. And he’s a great artist. Which is demonstrated by the high prices various undisclosed patrons pay for his work.
But here are two facts that they can’t reconcile. Joe Biden has a net worth of $9 million, which makes him about the poorest president since Jimmy Carter. But Joe’s son, this kid that barely got through college, got kicked out of the Navy, and spent a large part of his life partying with hookers? He is worth $160 million!
I wonder – do the people that rationalize this, do they have any idea how much you must make to acquire a net worth of $160 million?
One guy is so impressed with what Hunter’s achieved that he is saying that Hunter, not Joe, should be the Democrat’s nominee for president in 2024. Click here.
Mexico Has a New Industry: Renting Wombs
There is a new – well, not quite new, but an industry in Mexico that is growing really fast. It’s in the “health care” field. They call it surrogacy. It boils down to this: affluent but childless American couples paying poor Mexican women to grow babies for them from fertilized eggs.
The eggs are not the mothers’ eggs. They are from the “adoptive” mothers. Or, in the case of gay couples or adoptive mothers that can’t produce healthy eggs, from third-party donors. What it amounts to is a sort of womb rental program.
If that sounds weird, know this: According to the source below, it’s making a lot of couples happy, and conveying millions of dollars to poverty-stricken Mexican women.
Here’s how it works.
The COVID Response: What We got Wrong.
Have You Heard of Project Next Gen?
Project Next Gen is a $5 billion government program advertised as “accelerating the development of new coronavirus vaccines and treatments, seeking to better protect against a still-mutating virus, as well as other coronaviruses that might threaten us in the future.”
The idea, they say, was inspired by Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” that rushed vaccines to the market in 2020. In this case, the Biden administration is “partnering” with private-sector pharmacological companies to “keep ahead of” coming mutations.
“It’s been very clear to us that the market on this is moving very slowly,” Ashish Jha, the White House coronavirus coordinator, said. “There’s a lot that government can do, the administration can do, to speed up those tools… for the American people.”
(Translation: “We sold hundreds of millions of shots when they were mandatory. Now that they are not, all these damn skeptics are crashing sales. This project should allow us to make gobs of money the next time the mandates roll around.”)
An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn
Directed by Jim Hosking
Starring Aubrey Plaza, Emile Hirsch, Jermaine Clement, Matt Berry, and Craig Robinson
Released (US) Oct. 19, 2018
Available on various streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime
I liked it.
I watched it because, like ten million other folks in America, I’m a fan of Aubrey Plaza. But I’m also a big fan of Jermaine Clement (from Flight of the Conchords). So that, and the poster featuring Craig Robinson with a golf cap on his head, was enough to get me interested.
Before deciding to watch a movie, though, I usually want to know who’s directing it. In this case, I didn’t recognize the name. Jim Hosking. I looked him up. He’s a British film director, writer (he co-wrote this script), and composer of half a dozen short films and only three features. His prior features had titles like The ABCs of Death 2 (2014) and The Greasy Strangler (2016).
That intrigued me.
So, I watched it, thinking I might shut it off after five minutes. But it brought me in and held my attention. It’s funny. And it’s clever. Ultimately, it’s charming. Maybe this will help: Imagine if Napoleon Dynamite was directed by David Lynch.
If that that sounds like fun to you, I can recommend it. If it makes you feel uncomfortable… well, don’t bother.
From TS re the Open Carry Question:
“I’ve been on the fence about this subject for a long time. I shared the popular idea that the visible presence of guns would dissuade criminals. However, I live on the nicer side of a college town. And just this summer, two drivers got into a road rage incident, drove to the supermarket by my house, and shot each other in the parking lot like it was a 19th-century duel.
“I understand road rage. But obviously, if neither man had a gun, they would likely still be alive. I even wonder what would have happened if only one had a gun. The part of me that has some faith in humanity thinks that even an enraged driver wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man. But if you see someone else draw a gun and you have a gun as well – well, of course you are going to fire.
“I also believe that criminalizing the ownership of guns at this point would only mean that law-abiding citizens give up their guns and criminals have a field day. But again, it only seems like open carry laws have succeeded in turning otherwise law-abiding citizens into trigger happy gunslingers the moment an opportunity arises. Do we really trust ‘law-abiding citizens’ to become judge, jury, and executioner in the heat of the moment?”
From RC re Paradise Palms:
“I’m delighted to hear of and read about your magnificent efforts to beautify and engage South Florida in a way for everyone to experience. This note is just to let you know that you are appreciated and respected.”
These guys do a good job or explaining the health benefits of quitting sugar. Click here.
New Orleans: A Brief Visit; Rekindled Affection
K and I flew in from LA after visiting some of the grandkids to celebrate our anniversary and take another look at a city we’ve always enjoyed.
We hadn’t been here in 12 years. In that time, the city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, then pounded again by several other hurricanes, and then economically strangled by the COVID shutdown. Not to mention the usual political corruption and bureaucratic incompetence. New Orleans has a reputation for being dangerous, although, like most cities of its size, most of the crime takes place in drug-dominated neighborhoods. As a tourist, as long as you don’t wander into an obviously bad neighborhood, drunk and alone, at night, the Crescent City is safe and welcoming.
The city’s economic poverty is evident in the degenerate state of the roads and sidewalks and the condition of its public buildings. But that is more than offset by its rich social and cultural history, which is still very much present in the diversity of its architecture, customs, cuisine, and populations. A visitor can see the footprints of the American, Spanish, and French colonizers, the African slaves and freemen, the Creoles and the Cajuns. Not to mention the many other cultures that immigrated into the city over the last 150 years and became part of its local color and heritage. I love New Orleans for all of that.
Another reason I love New Orleans is the food and drink. As far as food is concerned, New Orleans reminds me most of Rome. Its restaurants favor common, vernacular cuisine. And, like Rome, you don’t need a guidebook to locate a good restaurant. They are ubiquitous. If the joint looks interesting and reasonably clean, it’s pretty much guaranteed to serve a good meal.
There was a time in my life when an evening in New Orleans was about drinking on Bourbon Street until I could barely walk home. This week, K and I were glad to discover that the city is replete with interesting and even elegant bars and lounges that serve up all sorts of fun and tasty specialty cocktails that are not meant to knock you off your barstool. And the wine lists are not just extensive and well curated, the prices are generally very good.
New Orleans is the heart of southern jazz and plenty of other forms of American music, too. On any given night, there are literally hundreds of places you can go to listen to great music, not to mention the street corners where buskers play for change.
And finally, New Orleans has this tradition of not taking itself too seriously. It’s about “Where is the party today?” And that Mardi Gras impulse manifests itself every day in the French Quarter where it is no longer possible to distinguish oneself by sporting a handlebar mustache along with eye shadow and a tutu. “Relax,” the city says. “We’ve got you covered.”
I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I suppose it’s because, in coming here this time, I’ve been reminded of how much I love this city. And in case you’ve never been here or, like me, it’s been a dozen or more years, to encourage you to check it out.
Gun Control: I Said I’d Get Back to You
As promised, I’ve spent a fair amount of time this week researching the question I asked on Tuesday: Do gun control policies reduce gun-related deaths?
What I discovered is that most of what one is likely to read about the gun control issue is influenced by political leaning and based on unproven theories, anecdotal evidence, and correlative (i.e., non-scientific) studies.
A study conducted by the Rand Corporation reviewed most of the research published between 1995 and 2020. In the introduction to the report, the authors acknowledged that “a lot of what is out there are cross-sectional studies – observational research that basically just compares gun violence statistics at one point in time in a state that has a specific law to those in a state that doesn’t. That type of study is prone to mixing up correlation and causation,” they said.
In fact, they found only one set of laws that were conclusive: laws that restricted child access to guns. These significantly and incontestably reduce firearm suicide, unintentional self-injuries and death, and homicides among young people.
However, they also said that, despite the flaws among the studies and the biases among the conclusions, there was more evidence than not that gun control laws work. Except for drug-related murders and accidental killings, gun control laws do reduce gun-related deaths. Not greatly, but to a degree. That’s what they think.
What I think…
Considering that gun control is such a powerful political issue, I expect that future studies will continue to be flawed by biased intent and/or unmerited conclusions. (A Democrat will tell you that the US has more gun-related deaths than any developed country. A Republican will tell you that if you control for just one factor – population – the US is not even in the top 10.)
To know for sure whether gun control laws reduce gun-related deaths, we need more randomized studies controlled by every factor that might count, including age, wealth, location, race, religion, and culture. Since that won’t happen any time soon, I’m going to have to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. And I suppose that means that I’ll continue my interactions with people, but assume that they are packing heat. As to whether I will… I’m not going to say.
Interesting
* The US has more registered guns (393 million) than any other country in the world, with an average of 1.2 per person.
* Gun-related deaths in the US rose from 34,000 in 2012 to 48,000 in 2022.
* Gun-related killings by type: Suicide 58%; Homicide 39%; Accidental 2%; and Police Shooting 1.2%.
* According to Pew research, most Americans on both sides of the aisle agree on two questions about gun control. 85% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats believe that people with a mental illness should not be allowed to purchase guns. 70% of Republicans and 92% of Democrats support background checks for private and gun show sales. However, when it comes to expanding concealed carry rights, banning assault weapons, and tracking gun sales though a federal database, Democrats are strongly supportive, while Republicans are strongly negative.
One of the minor debates stemming from this issue is the question of whether “guns kill people” or “people kill people.” Here is an example of someone expressing the former position.
And here is a comic response.
Americans Are Working Less
In one of the news feeds I read, an essay titled “Working hardly or hardly working” caught my eye. According to the author, burnout among American workers is “running rampant.” The reason? “The average American works 400 more hours a year than Germans do.” The good news, he says, is that “the trend is changing…. A University of Maryland study shows average US workweeks dipping 30+ minutes since 2019.”
Some key figures:
* High-earning young men were at the top of this trend. Their average reduction is the highest at 1.5 hours.
* Self-proclaimed workaholics are down, too. From 55 hours a week to 52.
The rise in virtual employees since the pandemic shutdown is obviously another important factor.
“The trend’s stickiness is hard to estimate,” the author says, “but it’s great news for the nation’s collective mental health as long as it lasts.”
True. Unless you believe that productive work is the cornerstone of wealth building, and that an essential component of mental health and happiness is working purposefully. (Which should include one’s job, since that takes up the largest share of one’s work time.)
Are Housing Prices Out of Whack?
Housing prices have risen 40% since 2020. They peaked last autumn and have edged down since then, but only by a total of 5%. They are still, by long-term historical standards, very high. In 1971, as Bill Bonner points out in a recent edition of Bonner Private Research, it took the average American about 36 hours of labor each month to pay an average mortgage on an average house. Now, the figure is 110 hours.
“Things that are out of whack have a way of getting back into whack,” Bonner says. “Economists call it ‘regression to the mean’…. It’s one of the most powerful forces in finance…. A recession in [today’s] housing market would make it a lot easier for people to keep a roof over their heads.”
Bill’s been mostly right about real estate prices since I’ve been reading him. (About 30 years.) And I’m inclined to agree with him on this. If you are looking to sell, do it soon. If you are looking to buy, you might do better to wait.