What would a 2024 presidency look like? You don’t have to guess - Trump is telling us loud and clear.

Jamelle Bouie in an opinion piece for the New York Times enumerates them:

• would purge the federal government of as many civil servants as possible.
• would install an army of political and ideological loyalists whose fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to either the rule of law or the Constitution
• plans to turn the Department of Justice against his political opponents, prosecuting his critics and rivals
• pledges to root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream
• institute a program of mass detainment and deportation of undocumented immigrants
• “remove” homeless Americans and put them in tents on “large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities"
• rid the United States of as many immigrants as possible, including a proposal to target people here legally — like green-card holders or people on student visas

Jamelle Bouie concludes:

Americans are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things that have been hidden from view. But the mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen.

And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.

After years of rumors, James Cameron has finally remastered The Abyss in 4K and is releasing it in theaters for one night only on December 6th. One of Cameron’s most underrated movies.

Three years into Brexit - many of the voters are now realizing how they were duped.

My plans for me and my wife, was not to retire, but spend winters in Spain. It’s changed because I can still spend the winter in Spain, but its the amount of money I’m made to spend to have that. That luxury. Before I didn’t have to think about that luxury. It was already made for me.

Unfortunately the bubble has burst. There is so many people selling up in Spain, pensioners who just can’t afford to live there. Because the insurance alone, got me to travel 90 days and back, 90 days and back, with my health 2,300 [pounds] for insurance. On top of the 6,000 pounds for rent.

When asked - would you vote for Brexit again?

I wouldn’t even consider voting to come out with Brexit. I would not consider doing it. The simple reason is we was promised. Lets get it right - It was all about stopping people from coming into England. Forget the trimmings around the edges, it was just stopping people. Our Prime Ministers and others telling us all these pretty things, which like a fool, we fell for it. It’s as simple as that.

And here is an other pensioner on the situation:

I don' think Spanish will turn English away. Because they are a big part of the economy here.

What did you think would happen? We are in an interdependent world now. The EU members understand that and are willing to work together to bring about better outcomes for their citizens.

More importantly - why would the Spanish pay for services that do not benefit them? You can’t join a club and then not pay the dues because ‘they are so important’ and still be expected to remain a member.

The amount of ignorance, arrogance and lack of self awareness is mind numbing. Maybe the MAGA Trumpers here in the US should look at Brexit and learn a valuable lesson.

But then again – MAGA takes ignorance, arrogance and lack of self awareness to an all new level.

According to the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), there were 3.7 million homeschooled students in the USA during the 2020/2021 school year. The institute’s data also shows that from late March to early May of 2022, 5.22% of all school-age children were homeschooled.

An entire industry has sprung up around servicing those who are homeschooling their children. Heather Stark writes about this industry as an insider:

Before the pandemic, we partnered with schools to deliver our curriculum. When the shutdown occurred, we lost those partnerships, but we found the homeschool crowd. This community accepted us wholeheartedly.

For the past three years, we’ve traveled to more than 20 homeschool conferences. Our company has a lot of supportive and excited customers. We even get return customers whom we love reconnecting with at these events.

However, there is a faction that prickles at our presence. B and I try to brush it off, but even the smallest splinter, when not addressed, can cause an infection.

[…]

We’re in Florida. I walk down an aisle and notice a red glare, a tinge that no other aisle has. It takes me a moment, and then it hits me: This whole aisle is political organizations. None of it has to do with education — just politics — and every booth has some red in it.

I pass some signs that read “Ron DeSantis World.” B says it looks like they’re mimicking the Disney font. Several booths are conducting podcast interviews. I look up the podcasts on my phone and see that each one spreads conspiracy theories.

I pass another booth where a man and a woman are talking about gun rights… at a homeschool conference. Then I pass a Moms for Liberty booth. My stomach drops.

Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg have previously produced Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Now comes the trailer for a third series about WWII: Masters of the Air. On Apple TV+ in January.

The corporate class is so emboldened they aren’t even hiding it. General Motors CEO Mary Barra is the highest-paid of the Big Three CEOs, making about $29 million a year. She has received a 34% increase over the last four years. The United Auto Workers union is demanding a 40% hourly salary increase over four years. So far, hey have only been offered a 20% increase. At the very least, the auto worker should get a 34% increase over the next four years, just like the CEO received over the last four years. In a CNN interview, Barra defended her high earnings:

CNN’s Venessa Yurkevich:

They are asking for that in part because they say CEOs like yourself, leading the Big Three are making those kind of pay increases over the course of the last four years. You’ve seen a 34% pay increase in your salary. You make almost $30 million dollars. Why should your workers not get the same type of increases that you are getting leading the company?

Marry Barra:

Well if you look at compensation, my compensation 92% of it is based on the performance of the company.

So what she is saying is:

My compensation depends on how hard our employees work. I deserve it.

We need stronger unions leading to real wage increases and prosperity in the labor market.

From the start some notable differences ultimately lead to German neighborhoods to be a lot more walkable livable and lively. American neighborhoods to be nearly completely dependent on cars…

An interesting take on a major cause of the current US housing affordability crisis.

As an American travelling to Europe, you notice this immediately. Every neighborhood just seems to be more integrated and self suficient. And you can get to just about anywhere by walking or bicycling. More importantly its is safe to walk and bicycle in European cities.

In the US, zoning rules segregate people by economic capability. Just drive around any suburb in the US and this becomes obvious.

From the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania:

Americans have less confidence in vaccines to address a variety of illnesses than they did just a year or two ago, and more people accept misinformation about vaccines and Covid-19, according to the latest health survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania.

The survey conducted October 5-12, 2023, with a panel of over 1,500 U.S. adults, finds that the number of Americans who think vaccines approved for use in the United States are safe dropped to 71% from 77% in April 2021. The percentage of adults who don’t think vaccines approved in the U.S. are safe grew to 16% from 9% over that same two-and-a-half-year period.

Despite concerted efforts by news organizations, public health officials, scientists, and fact-checkers (including APPC’s project FactCheck.org) to counter viral misinformation about vaccination and Covid-19, the survey finds that some false or unproven claims about them are more widely accepted today than two to three years ago. Although the proportion of the American public that holds these beliefs is, in some cases, still relatively small, the survey finds growth in misinformation acceptance across many questions touching on vaccination.

American refusal of science and their refusal to follow common sense will bring about another COVID-19 emergency if thing keep going in this direction.

Jose M. Gilgado writing on the beauty of finished software:

Our expectations for software are different from other products we use in our daily lives.

When we buy a physical product, we accept that it won’t change in its lifetime. We’ll use it until it wears off, and we replace it. We can rely on that product not evolving; the gas pedal in my car will always be in the same place.

However, when it comes to software, we usually have the ingrained expectations of perpetual updates. We believe that if software doesn’t evolve it’ll be boring, old and unusable. If we see an app with no updates in the last year, we think the creator might be dead.

This one of software’s advantages and also its curse. Good software will evolve at the pace the users demand - the important thing is that the interface stays consistent and honest to the use case.

Ilana Buhl, 30, is an American living in a luxury, 2-bedroom apartment in Copenhagen, Denmark with her husband and son. The couple pays $2,100 a month in rent. Ilana is a primary school teacher and shares snippets of her life abroad on social media.

It’s amazing when you minimized stress over healthcare, gun violence, employment, and have access to public transit. Everyone of those things is non existant for most people in the US. Just the amount of anxiety and stress leads to so many mental and physical health problems in the US.

The US is rapidly falling behind on every aspect of quality of life.

Alexa St. John and Nora Naughton reporting in the Insider:

… almost all current EV product is going for under sticker price these days, and on top of that, some EVs are seeing manufacturer’s incentives of nearly 10%.

That’s as inventory builds up at dealerships, much to the chagrin of dealers. While car buyers are in luck if they’re looking for a deal on a plug-in vehicle, executives are finding even significant markdowns and discounts aren’t enough. These cars are taking dealers longer to sell compared with their gas counterparts as the next wave of buyers focus on cost, infrastructure challenges, and lifestyle barriers to adopting.

Just a few months after dealers started coming forward to warn of slowing EV demand, manufacturers appear to be catching up to that reality. Ford was the first to fold, after dealers started turning away Mach-E allocations. In July, the company extended its self-imposed deadline to hit annual electric vehicle production of 600,000 by a year, and abandoned a 2026 target to build 2 million EVs.

In scrapping plans with GM to co-develop sub-$30,000 EVs, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe said the shifting EV environment was difficult to gauge.

The average price of electric cars (sedans, small hatchbacks, sport models, etc.) in the US is close to $76,000. Electric vehicle (EV) driving range and electric car mileage per charge varies, but typically drivers can expect an average of 250 miles in a single charge. Keep in mind there are factors that can affect an EV’s range, including weather, battery size, and more. Compare this to a mid size hybrid selling between $25,000 and $35,000 with 600 mile range.

EVs as they are currently marketed are luxury items. Sure they are fuel efficient and have low maintenance compared to combustion engines but they are expensive. Those with the disposal income to afford EVs have for the most part bought them. For the rest of the market the EVs just don’t justify the price tags.

The problem is not with EVs as a technology. The real problem is the auto makers have not built cars that the average consumer can purchase. That means $25,000 to $35,000 price point.

This is young man asks a an intelliget question far beyond his age - whats even more surprising is his response to Dr. Tyson’s answer:

Thank you and I’m going to have to research half the words of that explanation.

The youth of today give me hope….

We’re capable of anything, and culpable for nothing. It’s true. They can’t touch us.

Ridiculously comical. Completely accurate.

50 countries that you can drink the tap water in - maybe:

The graph uses data from Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which rates water quality based on the number of disability-adjusted life-years lost per 100,000 persons — the so-called DALY rate — due to unsafe drinking water. On the graph, countries with an EPI score of 100 have the cleanest water and are in the top 5th percentile. However, the lower the number, the worse the DALY rate due to dirty tap water.

The closer to the center of the droplet, the cleaner your tap water, and vice versa.

Ten countries at the center of the droplet have a perfect score. All are from Europe. In other parts of the continent, the EPI score drops off precipitously. Saudi Arabia, which is colored blue on the map based on CDC data, does not do so well on this map (score: 51). The bottom 24 countries on the list are all in Africa. If you’re thirsty in Liberia (9.5), Lesotho (7.2), or Nigeria (4.3), don’t use the tap. Go buy a bottle of something. It’s what Americans are doing, despite being in the blue club.

As usual - the United States ranks lower than its peers. Unsurprisingly the happiest Nordic countries (Norway, Finaland, Sweden, Iceland) all have 100% scores. Actually, I think the US is ranked generously given the recent issues with the tap water in Flint, Michigan and as the AP is reporting half of the US faucets likely contains “forever chemicals”.

The solution is to monitor your local public utilities dinking water reports and see how your locality is on clean tap water standards. Please do not buy water bottles. They cause unbelievable amount of damage to our environment. Besides, bottled water can be up to 3,750 times more expensive than tap water. You can purify your own drinking water using a purifying pitcher or better yet have an under sink purification system installed. I use the Aquasana 3-Stage Max Flow Claryum Under Sink Water Filter System myself and highly recommend it.

One of the most underated technical capabilities of Apple is its ability to transition its user base entirely new architectures seamlessly. Over the years, Apple has transitioned from - in order:

• MOS 6502
• Motorola 68000
• Motorola PowerPC
• Intel X86
• Apple Silicon

This chameleon like capability has allowed Apple to stay on the leading edge of the computer industry for nearly half a century. Thats right, Apple has been on the bleeding edge of computing for an astonishing 48 years. In that time we have seen the rise and fall of Commodore, Atari, Sun, IBM just to name a few. Each advance in CPU architecture has been a death nail to countless industry giants.

Apple remains, and thrives through each of these transitions. Apple is now building its own CPU architecture - Apple Silicon - and will be taking its future in its own hands. So far, they are winning the new CPU wars.

Jacob Bartlett has written an excellent article on the Apple CPU architecture migration through the ages.

The Economist identifying the true profiteers in the obscene American health care system:

Pharmaceutical firms and hospitals attract much of the public ire for the inflated costs. Much less attention is paid to a small number of middlemen who extract far bigger rents from the system’s complexity.

Over the past decade these firms have quietly increased their presence in America’s vast health-care industry (see chart ). They do not make drugs and have not, until recently, treated patients. They are the intermediaries—insurers, chemists, drug distributors and pharmacy-benefit managers (pbms)—sitting between patients and their treatments. In 2022 the combined revenue of the nine biggest middlemen—call them big health—equated to nearly 45% of America’s health-care bill, up from 25% in 2013. Big health accounts for eight of the top 25 companies by revenue in the s&p 500 index of America’s leading stocks, compared with four for big tech and none for big pharma.

[…]

The Affordable Care Act of 2010 limited the profits of health insurers to between 15% and 20% of collected premiums, depending on the size of the health plan. But it imposed no restrictions on what physicians or other intermediaries can earn. The law created an incentive for insurers to buy clinics, pharmacies and the like, and to steer customers to them rather than rival providers. The strategy channels revenue from the profit-capped insurance business to uncapped subsidiaries, which in theory could let insurers keep more of the premiums paid by patients.

The only cure is to remove the bloat and go to a single payer system.

It’s colleges. Elite colleges. The mouth of the River from which this and all manner of radical left illiberal, yes illiberal, nonsense flows.

[…]

Elite schools should no longer be called elite - just say expensive. Which maybe why they breed a particular brand of detestable graduate. A personality type that does not emerge from Chico State.

Couldn’t agree more with Maher. Expensive colleges today are a four year resort - where you learn to think like the crowd and con the masses.

If you aren’t majoring in the hard sciences, engineering, or medicine - do yourself a favor. Don’t go to these four year colleges - get a library card and join the “real world.” You’ll avoid the crippling debt and learn a lot more - and you’ll be a nicer person.

Tami Luhby reporting for CNN:

The annual cost of family health insurance coverage at work soared to an average of nearly $24,000 this year, according to KFF’s Employer Health Benefits Survey, released Wednesday. That’s up 7% from last year.

Employees are shelling out an average of $6,575 for their share of the premium, up almost $500, or close to 8%, from last year, the annual survey found. Their companies are footing the rest of the bill.

The American health care system is obscene. Why on earth is health care tied to work? These increases that are paid by the employers are a tax credit for employers anyways, so lets just cut out the middle man here.

We need to get to single payer universal health care.

Colours taken from Dieter Rams legendary product collection for Braun.

Must. Push. Button.

Ben Terrett on the new Ikea store in London:

The old Top Shop on Oxford St will soon be an Ikea. While they are carrying out the refurbishments they’ve made the front of the building look like a massive Ikea blue bag. I love this.

It’s a simple idea, maybe the most obvious idea, and all the better for that. Nothing else needed.

This is brilliant.