Freeze Your Credit Now

(Image from Dealing with Dementia)

In early 2015 I read about how freezing one's credit can provide protection against one consequence of identification theft: a crook being able to open a new loan, credit card, or line of credit in my name.

I paid $10 to each of the three major credit-reporting agencies, Experian, Transunion, and Equifax, not to furnish credit reports to new lenders who come asking. It has been a minor hassle to unfreeze the accounts to obtain car leases and a new Apple Card, but it's been worth the $10 charge to sleep a little easier every night.

Credit freezes have cost nothing since 2018, so everyone should do it.

The good news is that freezing your credit is less of a pain than it used to be. It became free and simpler under a 2018 federal law following the massive Equifax breach the year before. But it does take a little more effort than locking your door...

Aside from making it a little less convenient to apply for a loan or credit card, freezing your credit costs nothing and has virtually no downside. It doesn’t hurt your credit score. Landlords and employers can still run a credit check. Existing creditors can increase your credit limit.

Making it harder to open new lines of credit might also be a form of financial discipline, since you won’t be able to sign up for buy now, pay later offers or store credit cards without first unfreezing your credit...

To freeze your credit, you must go online and request a freeze at all three of the major credit bureaus: Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. Reversing the process requires going through each bureau again.

To prove who you are, you will need to have a government ID, like a driver’s license, pay stubs and utility bills. Once set, it should take less than a half-hour to complete the process, says Miklos Ringbauer, a financial adviser in California. He encourages clients to keep their credit frozen and only lift the freeze for short periods, such as when they plan to apply for loans. After the initial setup, the freeze can be turned on or off with a few clicks, he said.

Freezing credit doesn't relieve one of the need to review one's existing bank, credit-card, stock-brokerage, retirement, etc. accounts for unfamiliar transactions, but it's a necessary part of a scam-protection program.

Out of Rhythm

Lester Beach, South Lake Tahoe (Chron)

Moderate weather is forecast for this Labor Day:

Tranquil weather is expected in the Bay Area for the holiday weekend as west-southwest winds keep marine air flowing from the ocean to the land, preventing temperatures from climbing too high. Sunday will be the windiest day of the extended weekend, with gusts up to 30 mph.

Along the coast, the ebb and flow to the marine layer will keep temperatures in San Francisco in the 60s to low 70s with morning and evening clouds from Friday through Monday. Oakland should reach the mid-70s each day, while San Jose will steadily be in the low to mid-80s.

It looks like a good weekend to get away.

During my working years I looked forward to holiday weekends. Dates were circled months in advance, and travel was scheduled to minimize the use of paid vacation. Holiday weekends took a lot of work, but the payoff was often great.

Now that I'm retired I don't much care for long weekends. Shopping centers, restaurants, and supermarkets are crowded on what would normally be a weekday, and the local bank and post office are closed. I rarely go on long car trips, especially not when most other people are on the road like the upcoming Labor Day weekend.

I do regret being out of rhythm with the rest of America.

Stanford's Creative Writing Contretemps

Part of the School of Humanities and Sciences (CEO World)

IMHO, it didn't look like "-isms" (for once) had anything to do with this decision, but after award-winning writer Joyce Carol Oates hinted that sexism was a factor, a "national backlash" resulted.

Stanford creative writing layoff ‘scandal’ ignites backlash among authors and students

Stanford University’s announcement that 23 creative writing instructors will be pushed out of their jobs and replaced has set off a national backlash in the literary community and among students in the program.

“Why would senior faculty vote to fire their colleagues who are doing so much of the work of teaching?” celebrated author Joyce Carol Oates posted on social media, raising questions about whether Stanford’s decision was meant to save money or was inspired by rank sexism.

“I am puzzled most by the lack of simple collegiality & generosity at one of the most wealthy universities in the world,” Oates wrote. “Stanford’s endowment could support an entire nation. Yet, much-admired (writing instructors) were fired after having requested modest raises which would have brought their salaries to levels far below senior faculty.”

Also, she noted, “only male senior professors voted to fire.”

Background from the Chronicle article: Pulitzer-prize winning author Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) founded Stanford's creative writing program in 1946. At the same time Texas oilman E.H. Jones, brother of Stanford English professor Richard Foster Jones, established both the Stegner Fellowships and Jones Lectureships.

The Fellowships were monetary grants for the students and the Lectureships funded short-term teaching appointments that the Stegner fellows could apply for. Over time the short-term appointments morphed into long-term positions.

A Stanford working group

decided to restore the intent of the Jones lectureship and give new Stegner Fellows “the opportunity to apply to be Jones Lecturers once they have completed their fellowships,” [Dean of School of Humanities and Sciences Debra] Satz said in her letter...

The new appointments will be one year “with the possibility of renewal for up to four more years.”

Undoubtedly there are some excellent instructors who have been let go, but I applaud Stanford for forcing new blood into the lectureships, but more importantly "restor[ing] the intent of the Jones lectureship." Too often we have seen donors' wishes being disregarded, and it's a sign to future donors that Stanford will abide by their instructions as best it can.

SF Public Art: the Latest Chapter in the Culture War

Piss Christ

Lefties used to laugh at the bluenoses who wanted to put fig leaves on nude statues.

They mocked the negative reaction by many Christians to Andres Serrano's Piss Christ (1987), a crucifix submerged in a jar of the artist's urine. A work of art should provoke feelings in the observer, they said, your personal morality limits you.

Four decades later Progressives turned a blind eye to the toppling of historical public works that reflected "power, privilege, white supremacy, patriarchy and colonialism." The destruction accelerated during the George Floyd riots of 2020.

The city had its share of monuments destroyed in 2020 when bronze statues of Junipero Serra, Ulysses S. Grant and Francis Scott Key were all knocked off their pedestals by protesters in Golden Gate Park. The city removed the statue of Christopher Columbus at Coit Tower to avoid a similar fate. All four statues are now secured in storage.

2018: SF removed an "Early Days" statue depicting
a white missionary towering over a supine Indian.

Now San Francisco will spend $3 million from a Mellon grant to determine which works are acceptable and which are offensive.

San Francisco is about to embark on evaluating its nearly 100 statues and monuments to figure out which ones no longer represent the city’s values and should be removed from view, relocated or re-interpreted with explanatory plaques.

The debate over the city’s monuments began in 2018 with the removal of the “Early Days” sculpture from the Pioneer Monument in the Civic Center because it represented a Native American seated before a Spanish Catholic missionary. The effort gathered steam amid the racial-justice movement in 2020 that followed the murder of George Floyd. That year, crowds toppled statues throughout the country that glorified Confederate Civil War leaders, which critics said paid homage to the country’s racist past.

The survey of San Francisco’s civic art collection — funded by a $3 million Mellon Foundation grant — will be conducted by an outside firm and should be completed by January.

The project, called “Shaping Legacy,” was discussed at an Arts Commission meeting last week when senior project manager Angela Carrier explained that looking at San Francisco’s monuments and memorials as a whole shows “a concentration that talks about power, privilege, white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonialism.”

“These monuments no longer represent the values that we say the city stands for,” she added.

IMHO, this is a self-defeating move by Progressives. Keeping the "bad" monuments up would be a constant reminder of San Francisco's white supremacist past and prove that this claim has validity.

Another observation, updated now that Progressives control big cities, media, and the elite colleges: art, like free speech, can still provoke, as long as it doesn't go against the Progressive narrative.

We'll end this post with a quote include in the article from Stanford History professor James T. Campbell:

"To me, the real danger of these kind of exercises is not so much historical erasure as self-congratulation, with all of us pointing accusatory fingers at our benighted forbears and patting ourselves on the back for our own superior moral wisdom,” he said. “It’s worth asking what San Franciscans a hundred years from now might say when they audit us."

I Refer to Myself

as "your humble blogger" for a reason.

When I bought the prepared ramen at Nijiya Market I dumped the contents in a large bowl and heated it for three minutes per the instructions (I assumed that the soup was in gelatinous form).

Upon stirring the noodles, vegetables, and pork, I discovered the hot soup was in a plastic bag which should have been cut open and emptied before microwaving.

The next time I bought the ramen there was a new warning sign, "Please remove soup bag first and pour into the bowl." The ramen company must have heard from other customers to add the warning.

It is comforting that I wasn't alone in my stupidity.

The Cowboy Wok

Yet another cooking appliance that's catching fire:

There is a new cooking fixture at backyard barbecues, hiking trips and tailgates across America: the cowboy wok.

Also known as a discada or simply a disco, this sizable metal disc is a versatile cooking pan designed for use over an open fire, propane burner or grill. Similar to paella, the term discada refers to the specialized pan and the dish commonly prepared in it.

Initially fashioning them from farm plow discs, cowboys and ranchers long embraced them to prepare hearty meals over the campfire. The cookware subsequently became a mainstay in Northern Mexico and the Southwestern U.S. for generations.

They're bigger than an Asian wok and much heavier. One aficionado uses one that weighs 65 pounds. Were I a hunter who likes to cook his game over an open flame the discada would be an essential part of my toolkit. But I'm not the target market, and my woks will do just fine.

The Bleakness of 1942 Wasn't So Bad

Writer Bob Greene came across a real-life reconstruction of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks on the streets of New York.

But what was this strange tableau doing on New York’s streets on a radiant midsummer afternoon? Before me stood a stage-set-like replica of the diner, its front wall and window frame constructed of wood but with no glass pane, its counter a life-size version of Hopper’s brushstroke image right down to the stools, the twin metal coffee urns, and an actor dressed in white like the counterman in the painting, poised to serve some java.

I quickly learned that this was part of a four-day off-site exhibit by the Whitney Museum of American Art to honor Hopper’s work. People lined up waiting for their chance to sit on the stools and pose as though they were part of the painting while their friends took photos of them through the make-believe window with the “Only 5¢, Phillies, America’s No. 1 Cigar” sign above it.

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks (1942), Art Institute of Chicago

Although I was familiar with the painting, it was many years after my last art-appreciation course that I began to understand why the work strikes such a chord. Bob Greene explains:

A diner late at night, with few customers and a sole employee putting in his hours, embodies a quiet drama all its own, which is what makes Hopper’s painting pack its lasting power. The dialogue—or lack of it—within the four walls is left to the imagination, rendering it somehow more profound than anything a soundtrack might reveal...

In the 1942 painting, the world outside the diner might as well not have existed. The emptiness on Hopper’s streets emphasized the closed universe within the establishment’s walls.

The characters reek of the loneliness in the urban environment (the artist said that a restaurant in Greenwich Village was its inspiration), but I would take that bleakness today, where there are no all-night diners in the big city, let alone ones with huge plate-glass windows.

Books Discarded Wistfully

I'm going through some of the books in my not-completed pile and have had to face an uncomfortable truth: if I live to a hundred I'll never finish some of them because, frankly, I have other things I'd rather do.

Nevertheless, guilty feelings remained until book reviewer Maya Chung gave permission to (h/t Ann Althouse), Go Ahead, Put Down That Book [bold added]

This week, Sophie Vershbow asked English teachers, librarians, writers, and readers when it’s okay not to finish a book. My answer to that question is: almost always, unless you’re writing a review of it; in that case, please read it from cover to cover. You might think that, as a book-review editor, I’d have a completist attitude toward reading. In reality, I tend to drop books early and often...

I often find that I can prematurely part ways without angst even with a volume I’m thoroughly enjoying; I know that if I’m meant to finish it, I’ll find my way back eventually. Of course, if I want to recommend a book widely or rave about it on the internet, I need to complete it, in case the story takes an unexpected turn or something happens in the last few pages that changes my perspective. The same rule applies if I feel like hating. “Not finishing a story weakens your ability to properly assess it,” Vershbow advises. “It’s fine to abandon a title, but if you do, keep the strong opinions to a minimum.”

Not long ago, one of my colleagues told me about a rule her friend’s mother’s book club follows, and I’ve been sharing it with friends when they admit that they’re struggling through this or that beloved title: Subtract your age from 100, and you’ll end up with the number of pages you need to read before dropping a book. Only 20 years old? You’ll need to read 80 pages before you can move on. But if you’re 90, you need to read only 10. By that age, you’ve earned the right not to spend a second of your time on something that doesn’t bring you joy.

In a couple of weeks the church is having a parking-lot sale, and I'm donating some of my uncompleted books (pictured). I'll discard them wistfully, much as I gaze on foods that I no longer eat. I'll follow Ms. Chung's "100 minus" rule, however, and read at least 29 pages--I have already done so with many of them--before putting them in the box.

Stonestown Galleria: Foodie Paradise

Our lunch at Marugame Udon

For the past decade, even during the COVID lockdown, we've stopped at Stonestown Galleria whenever passing through San Francisco because of the food. From 2019:

In recent years, the 66-year-old mall in the Outer Avenues has quickly and quietly become a top culinary destination in San Francisco, thanks to a flood of new restaurants that have brought crowds ready to line up for freshly made noodles, fruity boba tea and, most recently, Japanese souffle pancakes.

In 2024 Stonestown is adding more restaurants:

The San Francisco mall already considered by some to be a foodie paradise is about to get another infusion of trendy eateries. Three new restaurants are opening at Stonestown Galleria in the next year...

Le Soleil, a Vietnamese restaurant in the Inner Richmond, is expected to open a second SF location at the mall by the end of the year. The restaurant, which serves dishes such as bo luc lac (shaking beef) and imperial rolls with pork and vegetables, also has a Hong Kong location. Le Soleil will take over the former Banana Republic space, reported KRON-TV.

Supreme Dumplings, a Seattle area restaurant known for its soup dumplings, is expected to open at Stonestown by the end of 2024 or early 2025. With two existing restaurants in Bellevue and Kirkland, Washington, this will be Supreme Dumplings’ first California restaurant. The restaurant will be in the former LensCrafters space on the second floor of the mall, according to KRON.

Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya, a Japanese chain with over a dozen U.S. locations, is also slated to open at Stonestown in the first quarter of 2025. The bulk of its American restaurants are located in the Seattle area, with this one being its first in California. According to KRON4, it will replace the popular souffle pancake spot Gram Cafe, which is closing after Aug. 27.

Within the past few years, Stonestown has become a food hub, bringing in popular international Asian restaurant chains such as Marugame Udon and Kura Revolving Sushi Ba

We have more restaurants to try, so Stonestown will continue to be a place for us to stop.

About Elon Musk: Another Reason You Should Read Beyond the Headlines

The 2.800 sq. ft. home was the property of Gene Wilder. Elon Musk sold it to Wilder's nephew.

Elon Musk forecloses on homeowner is a headline that seems to confirm the worst suspicions about a billionaire and his greed; that is, until one digs into the story and the homeowner sings his praises (!). [bold added]

In 2020, tech mogul Elon Musk agreed to sell one of his Los Angeles homes to filmmaker Jordan Walker-Pearlman and his wife, Elizabeth Hunter, for $7 million. Walker-Pearlman had grown up in the Bel-Air house—the longtime home of his uncle, the late “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” actor Gene Wilder—and Musk agreed to loan the couple most of the money they would need to buy it.

“He could have sold it for so much more,” Walker-Pearlman, a film director and writer, told The Wall Street Journal in 2022. “His sensitivity to me can’t be overstated.”

The facts, as noted in the article:

2013 - Elon Musk buys the late Gene Wilder's home for $6.75 million.

2020 - Musk lists the home for $9.5 million but sells it to Jordan Walker-Pearlman for $7 million and provides him with a $6.7 million loan, a much higher advance than any bank would allow.

2024 - The Musk loan managers file a notice of default after Walker-Pearlman fell behind the loan payments. Walker-Pearlman lists the home for $12.95 million ("Musk’s representatives have made it clear that they have no intention of forcing a sale").

Normally a foreclosure is bad news for the homeowner, but look at the overall picture. Jordan Walker-Pearlman and his wife, Elizabeth Hunter put $300,000 down, lived for four years in a house they never could have afforded were it not for a billionaire's generosity, then stand to receive $5.25 million ($12,950,000-6,700,000 mortgage-1,000,000 selling expense plug estimate) on the sale.

That's a $4.950,000 profit, 16.5 times their down payment, a 1,650% return on investment. On a yearly basis, that's 105% per annum over four years [$300,000 x (1+1.05)^4].

Elon Musk has given away multi-million-dollar profits to someone he probably never knew four years ago. Are billionaires greedy? Sometimes, but not always.

Note to Kamala Harris' speechwriters: that's how one does a "return on investment" calculation. It would be nice if you show your work, but I'm not holding my breath.

Kamala Harris: the Play within the Play?

Jean Hagen and Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain

My favorite musical is Singin' in the Rain, largely because of its famous song-and-dance numbers. The simple romantic plot occurs against the backdrop of the transition from silent to talking pictures, and the cartoonish villain is Jean Hagen's Lina Lamont, who forces ingenue Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) to dub over Lina's high-pitched screech so that Lina can keep her leading-lady status.

Amherst professor Hadley Arkes likens Kamala Harris to Lina Lamont: [bold added]

Movie buffs often look for a film that catches the political moment. Before Joe Biden dropped out, it might have been “The Last Hurrah” (1958). Now it’s “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), a picture about the emergence of the “talkies” in the mid-1920s, when sound was added to films.

The shock came when glamorous figures suddenly had to speak and, in some cases, their voices and accents made the audience cringe. The captivating siren, threatened with exposure in “Singin’ in the Rain,” is the invincible, unteachable Lina Lamont. In the movie, Lina is played by the veteran Jean Hagen, but the turnabout comes in our own politics, where she is played by Kamala Harris.

Or rather, Ms. Harris is now our Lina Lamont, who must be carefully guarded by her handlers and barred from speaking, for her own good (and that of the Democratic Party). That her managers have kept her shielded and confined to scripted performances confirms their own judgment that she simply isn’t up to it.

In “Singin’ in the Rain,” Lina’s songs are dubbed while she lip-synchs. Ms. Harris can make the sounds; the point of resemblance is that the words aren’t hers. So it was, one might say, for all presidents between Herbert Hoover and Barack Obama. Calvin Coolidge used to plead that he had to decline so many invitations to speak because he didn’t have the time to do the research. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speechwriter Sam Rosenman knew the style and sensibility of the patrician figure for whom he was trying to write. With Ms. Harris, there is no fixed persona or style, confirmed in writing and speech. She is something for her writers to invent.

In real life Jean Hagen was an excellent actress who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Singin'.

It would be an ironic life-imitates-art twist against Prof. Harkes' thesis if Kamala Harris were a Jean Hagen who performs well in unscripted moments, and that her "drunken Kamala" and "word salad Kamala" videos were all her being captured in a weak moment or even an act (is she really that Machievallian?).

The Banks Aren't X-ing X

(WSJ photo)

When Elon Musk bought Twitter in October, 2022, for $44 billion, most financial observers opined that he substantially overpaid for the stock.

Twitter had been a giant in social media. It was unrivaled as the nation's water cooler, where everyone went for the latest news and opinions on the events of the day. Although it attracted millions of eyeballs every day, Twitter couldn't figure out how to monetize the traffic. Neither selling ads or subscriptions generated revenue to justify a $44 billion valuation.

Twitter also came under fire during the Trump Presidency as it began censoring "misinformation" that turned out to be accurate, yet allowed through information that was later shown to be untrue. The bias all went in one direction, against conservatives and for liberals.

Elon Musk believed that he could make Twitter profitable, but I doubt that his primary motivation was investment, i.e., that it would be a slam-dunk turnaround winner. IMHO, his motivation was equally to create one of the few free-speech platforms that would be widely read. Elon Musk also has a provocative streak, and the purchase of an entity that the Progressives thought they controlled was guaranteed to infuriate them. As I wrote last year

Elon Musk's current net worth has been estimated at $241 billion. His purchase of Twitter was, IMHO, for both investment and personal enjoyment, and he seems to be deriving immense pleasure from seizing control of the Progressives' playground and reminding them daily that he has it. Losing 11% of his net worth on something that interests him is not the best outcome, but he can afford it.

Nearly two years after Twitter (rechristened "X") was taken private, the Wall Street Journal reported on X's financial status:

The $13 billion that Elon Musk borrowed to buy Twitter has turned into the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-09 financial crisis...

The banks that agreed to underwrite a deal that even Musk said was overvalued did so largely because the allure of banking the world’s richest person was too attractive to pass up, according to people involved in the deal. Musk and other investors ponied up around $30 billion to buy the company, giving the banks some cushion in case things were to go wrong.

The banks—which also include Barclays, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, BNP Paribas, Mizuho and Société Générale—have been able to collect hefty interest payments from the X loans. They are generally for seven to eight years and carry rates several percentage points above the benchmark for investment-grade companies. And the banks could still ultimately be made whole if X is able to cover its interest obligations and repay the principal when the loans mature...

But nearly two years after Musk’s acquisition, X’s business is still struggling to climb out of the deep hole it fell into under his ownership—the company last year said its value had fallen by more than half, to around $19 billion.

While data indicate that use of the app rose amid the explosion of political news in recent weeks, there isn’t evidence that that is translating to a meaningful recovery in the advertising revenue that long sustained the revenues of the company, which pre-Musk struggled to maintain profits. Musk has gone from telling advertisers who fled the platform to “go f— yourself” to suing them and a trade group this month, claiming they illegally conspired to boycott X. The group has said it plans to rebut the claims in court.

Servicing the loans isn’t helping X’s financial health. Even before rates stopped rising, Musk said its annual interest payments total around $1.5 billion.

Banks typically have a number of legal ways to force X to make good on principal and interest. However, IMHO, they're being patient because they have their eyes on a bigger prize--upcoming financing and/or public offerings involving SpaceX, Tesla, and other Musk-controlled entities.

The deal presents a Catch-22 for the banks. On one hand, they are eager to be well-positioned to work with Musk and his six companies that range from electric-vehicle maker Tesla to Neuralink and xAI. Many view a possible initial public offering of Musk’s rocket company SpaceX or his Starlink satellite business as a fee-generating event that they don’t want to miss out on.

Elon doesn't forget those who stuck by him and who crossed him.

A Roman Tradition

Mark Zuckerberg commissioned a seven-foot sculpture of Priscilla Chan, 39, his wife of 12 years:

The statue, commissioned by Zuckerberg, was created by New York-based artist Daniel Arsham and placed next to a tree in what appears to be a lush garden.

...The statue’s design, with its flowing silver garment, looks like a mashup of ancient Roman Sculpture and the T-1000 from Terminator 2. According to Zuckerberg, the inspiration came from the former: he captioned the photo “bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife.”

Priscilla Chan

Having been married nearly half a century, I've run out of ideas for gifts (that I can afford) for my wife.

Mark Zuckerberg, currently worth about $185 billion, doesn't have my problem.

The Bread of Life

Today's Gospel was from John 6:

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

The lady minister discussed Holy Communion, the sacrament in which Christians partake of bread and wine that represent the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

Then she gave a quick overview of transubstantiation and consubstantiation, doctrines that Christians have argued about for centuries. The former is the Catholic tenet that the bread and wine are actually transformed into Jesus' body and blood, while the latter is a belief that the bread and wine remain intact but are joined with Jesus' body and blood during the mass.

Queen Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I (1533-1603), before she became Queen of England, rejected both doctrines and accepted the Calvinist principle that the bread and wine were but symbols; Jesus Himself wasn't physically present during Communion, though God was. She wrote:

Twas God the Word that spake it,
He took the Bread and brake it:
And what that Word did make it,
That I believe and take it.

Elizabeth I of England, along with Isabella of Spain, were among the greatest--and keenest--monarchs in European history. Their actions (financing Columbus' expeditions, driving the Moors out of Iberia during the Spanish Inquisition, defeating the Spanish armada and keeping England independent from Spain) shaped the world today.

Four centuries before women's rights, these powerful women didn't understand that they should have stepped aside to let white males control everything.

Put a Sparkle in Your Life: You May Not Have a Choice

"Sparkles" emojis have come to represent artificial intelligence:

The sparkles emoji has become a near-ubiquitous symbol that applications are powered by artificial intelligence. Even ChatGPT doesn’t know how it started.

If you’ve searched something on Google, written an essay on ChatGPT or used the AI features on Slack, Spotify or dozens of other apps, you’ve seen a version of the small stars used to indicate magic. Of the top 10 software companies by market capitalization, at least seven use a sparkles emoji in conjunction with their AI applications.

“This is the biggest example of an entire industry effectively saying, ‘OK, this symbol is our representation of this kind of feature,’” said Keith Broni, editor in chief of Emojipedia, a website that documents the meaning and usage of emojis.

[Since early 2021] the symbol has since spread like wildfire in the Silicon Valley hive mind. Design and marketing executives at software companies said they started using sparkles because everyone else was doing it, helping customers widely understand that the symbol meant AI.

Widespread adoption across the AI industry isn't surprising; sparkles are harmless, happy, and remote from the dystopian AI future that many are worried about. Your humble blogger, who limits his emoji insertions to a smiley face, doesn't buy into the premature joy and won't be sparkling any time soon.

It's Not the Same as Lying to a Real Person

(WSJ illustration)

Yes, I have lied, and continue to lie, to websites. Like most others, I do it for my own protection. [bold added]

When you sign up with a social network, e-tailer or other service, you often have to give your name, email or phone number, and birthday. Some sites ask for a street address and more personal or private items, such as gender or mother’s maiden name.

The demands can feel intrusive, and giving sites all that information means that hackers could get access to it. So, a lot of people just sidestep the issue: They lie. When websites ask for information, they make up names, birthdays, street addresses and anything else you can think of.

“It’s a common technique for individuals to use false or pseudonymous contact information and birthdays and other personal details,” says John Davisson, senior counsel and director of litigation at the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. “So that in the event of a breach, or in the event that the company you’re providing information to wants to use it in some way, like targeted advertising or to sell to a data broker, you’re protected because the information is not high-fidelity information and not going to be of use.”

I give restaurant and retail websites fake identifying data whenever possible because the information doesn't seem crucial to the business that I want to do with them. If they catch me and kick me off, well, I can live without their product or service.

At financial institutions I have to be truthful in order to access the accounts. Although they have much more security than websites in other industries, they're not impregnable; therefore I check the activity and balances once a month.

The virtual, online world has brought many conveniences that also carry new risks. Only give out the minimum information necessary; websites are not your friend.

California Gas Prices: the Answer Always is More Regulation

The Phillips 66 refinery in Rodeo (Merc)

We've posted before about why California gasoline prices are higher than the rest of the country (gas taxes, "boutique" gas formula, banning new Internal Combustion Engine cars after 2035, etc.).

As refineries close down, the ones that remain have been accused of price gouging--any person capable of critical thought might ask herself why refiners are abandoning such a profitable business--but critical thinking about Progressive governance has been sorely lacking for decades.

The long-term supply outlook has become so dire that last week the Progressive government floated trial balloons about California seizing control of the refineries. Realizing that running refineries (and bearing responsibility for the inevitable debacles) was a step too far, Governor Newsom proposed a bill that he thinks will stabilize fuel prices. [bold added]

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced a first-in-the-nation plan to require petroleum refiners to maintain minimum fuel reserves to avoid supply shortages he says create higher prices at the gas pump.

The proposal would authorize the California Energy Commission to require state refiners to maintain a minimum supply, which would help prevent gas price spikes and save Californians hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Newsom said profit spikes for oil companies are overwhelmingly caused by refiners not backfilling supplies when they go down for maintenance.

The industry is likely to have to build storage facilities in order to hold the gasoline reserves. Also, the gasoline reserves themselves have a cost. As students learn in Finance 101, all assets on the balance sheet are financed through debt or equity (for analytical purposes debt is assumed). Adding storage and gas-reserve assets will increase interest expense which the companies will try to recover through higher prices.

Higher prices are what Governor Newsom was trying to avoid, but if the regulator doesn't allow the expense to be passed through to the customer, the exodus of refiners will accelerate. In the one-Party state, the answer to unforeseen consequences of regulation is always more regulation that will make the problems worse.

SFGate Gives Kamala Harris Advice That She Will Ignore

I'm behind the times: I thought that the San Francisco Chronicle still owned the free SFGate website, which was founded in 1994. (SFGate runs several Chronicle articles verbatim every day, so perhaps my mistake was understandable.)

That relationship lasted 25 years, until the Chronicle's parent, the Hearst Corporation, split the two organizations, complete with separate news and editorial staff. Technically they are now sister publications owned by the parent Hearst Corp.

She can think on her feet. WaPo reminds us that
she weathered the SF crime lab scandal in 2010.

Although SFGate leans left in its Opinion section, it's much more centrist than the Chronicle which still carries the flag for DEI, slavery reparations, etc. The following SFGate editorial advice to the Vice President would never be published in the Chronicle:

The GOP says San Francisco is a mess. Kamala Harris should agree. [bold added]

The San Francisco attacks will be potent. The city has long had a national image problem, and it’s not just people who don’t live in the city who feel that way; poll after poll from recent years shows San Franciscans themselves believe the city is on the wrong track. There’s a reason this year’s leading mayoral candidates are accusing one another of copying their policy proposals on police staffing and public safety.

But Harris could take a course of action that would not only parry the attacks but also help solve another problem she has. She can throw San Francisco — the city where she launched her career in electoral politics — under the bus.

Let’s back up. Harris has two major weaknesses to overcome if she wants to win the White House. The first is the issue that is, frankly, San Francisco. Harris’ national ascent started in San Francisco, when she became the city’s district attorney in 2004; her mantra that she can “prosecute the case against Donald Trump” is her directly campaigning on her tenure in the city. The problem is people across the political spectrum now view the city as a wasteland of needles, vacant storefronts and cars with shattered windows.

The second is the fact that Harris is a career political shapeshifter, and that shapeshifting — specifically her attempts to cater to the progressive wing of her party in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries — has left her exposed to attacks that she’s a radical leftist who wants to defund the police and weaken enforcement against illegal immigration. Early polling confirms that Harris’ biggest issue is that she's perceived as too liberal. This week, she named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a gun owner and hunter who used to represent a rural congressional district, as her running mate, reportedly in part because of his possible appeal to rural and exurban areas that traditionally vote Republican.

Throwing San Francisco under the bus helps Harris with both weaknesses. She is already stylizing herself as a tough-on-crime prosecutor and someone who is more of an immigration hawk than Trump. She should more specifically portray herself as the last non-radical San Francisco district attorney. She has a set of spinnable facts that can tell the story of San Francisco’s demise and how it was not because of her but rather despite her. It’s because of her departure (she left to become California’s attorney general in 2011) that San Francisco went to s—t, she can say. After all, her two successors, George Gascón and Chesa Boudin, are now national bogeymen with name ID for anyone who has watched even five minutes of Fox News while visiting their grandma for a holiday.

The editorialist, Eric Ting, proposes a plausible defense against future Republican attack ads against San Francisco. Ms. Harris can say, look at the mess it became when I departed, my successors went too far left, and my policies will restore it.

That strategy can work, but it will also require the Harris campaign to admit that she made some mistakes in the past (e.g, supporting 2014's Prop 47, which lowered some felonies to misdemeanors, including property crimes involving less than $950).

However, reversing course requires some facility in argumentation, and Vice President Harris has not demonstrated that skill in the past five years. That's probably why her handlers will keep her under wraps as long as possible.

Toward A More A-peeling Future

(Eatright photo)

For several years we've been buying organic produce because they are supposedly raised without pesticides. When we do buy non-organic vegetables and fruits, we wash them thoroughly. However, washing does little to eliminate pesticides. [bold added]

In April, Consumer Reports released its data showing an "alarming" amount of pesticide residue on fruits and vegetables sold in American grocery stores. Those hazardous pesticides include organophosphates, which have been shown to have "neurodevelopmental effects," and carbamate insecticides, which also have "toxic effects such as interfering with the reproductive systems and fetal development." While this report was distressing on its own, a new study is showing that washing your produce does not remove all the pesticide residues found on food.

The paper, published in the American Chemical Society’s journal Nano Letters, was meant to showcase the research team's new process to detect pesticides in food — which is indeed a spectacular scientific step forward — the paper also unveiled that "the risk of pesticide ingestion from fruits cannot be avoided by simple washing." And even peeling may not be enough. "Notably, the distribution of pesticides in the apple peel and pulp layers is visualized through Raman imaging, confirming that the pesticides penetrate the peel layer into the pulp layer." However, the team noted that peeling is better than doing nothing at all.

"We believe that the peeling operation can effectively avoid the hazards of pesticides in the fruit’s epidermis and near-epidermal pulp, thereby reducing the probability of ingesting pesticides," the researchers wrote in their report. Dongdong Ye, a professor at China’s School of Materials and Chemistry at Anhui Agricultural University and an author of the paper, additionally shared with The Guardian, “Rather than fostering undue apprehension, the research posits that peeling can effectively eliminate nearly all pesticide residues, contrasted with the frequently recommended practice of washing.”

The "glimmer of hope" is that

the Consumer Reports analysis also noted that pesticides presented "little to worry about" in about two-thirds of the foods it tested, including "nearly all organic ones."

So, if you can, buy organic, which can have a costly premium today, but is likely to be worth the price in the context of your longevity.

A Friend Indeed

(Washington Post illustration)

Malcolm Gladwell's 2008 book, Outliers, popularized the 10,000 hour rule ("you need to have practiced, to have apprenticed, for 10,000 hours before you get good.") How much time do we need to build close friendships? The answer: 200 hours.

We need between 40 and 60 hours together for an acquaintance to become a casual friend, according to a study by Jeffrey Hall, professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, who surveyed adults who moved to a new location as well as college freshmen in their first two months of school.

In order to move from casual friends to close friends, you need to spend an additional 140 to 160 hours together for a total of about 200 hours, the study found.

However, deeper interactions can accelerate that timeline. You can form a close bond in less than 200 hours, Hall says, with meaningful conversations and a willingness to be vulnerable.

Conversely, spending 200 hours together doesn’t necessarily mean a person will become a close friend. They have to want to be your friend. Some co-workers can spend 300 hours together and never become close friends.

200 hours may not seem like much, but it is the equivalent of five work-weeks.

I've let friendships founder, but when I've exhibited genuine need, friends--some unexpectedly--have come running to my side. At such times 200 hours seems like a small price to pay.

The Greater Intolerance

Bob Casey and Josh Shapiro (WSJ photo)

Two successful, popular, Pennsylvania governors have been sidelined by the Democratic Party because of their religion:

Bob Casey Sr. was one of the most prominent Catholic Democrats of his time. He was also a proven vote-getter in a key state. In 1990 he won his second term as Pennsylvania’s governor by a margin of more than 2 to 1 and carried every county in the state but one.

Yet in 1992 his party didn’t permit him to deliver a speech at its national convention. The problem: Casey wanted to express his pro-life views. The snub came to symbolize the left’s turn away from Catholics, who had once been dependable supporters. While today’s party still includes prominent communicants—including Joe Biden and Sen. Bob Casey Jr.—they have found it necessary to abandon their support for unborn life.

Perhaps Gov. Josh Shapiro’s fate is a sign of a similar turning point. When Kamala Harris on Tuesday announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, some worried she’d passed over Mr. Shapiro because he’s Jewish and Zionist, much as Casey was slighted for being Catholic and pro-life.

Mr. Shapiro is remarkably popular in Pennsylvania, an even more crucial state now than in 1992. His public acts—from spearheading a grand-jury report on sex abuse in the Catholic Church as state attorney general to making a conciliatory statement after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump—have revealed sure political instincts.

Yet many on the left were scandalized that he was on Ms. Harris’s shortlist. They viewed his support for Israel as disqualifying. Activists have labeled the governor—who attends Beth Sholom Congregation in Elkins Park, Pa., and has sent his children to Jewish day school—“Genocide Josh” owing to his criticism of anti-Israel protest mobs and the boycott, divest and sanctions movement. Critics have also pointed to a 1993 college newspaper article that described Palestinians as “too battle-minded” to coexist with Israel.

Mr. Shapiro, who has disavowed that column, holds views that were mainstream within the Democratic Party until very recently. He supports the Jewish state’s right to defend itself but has denounced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “one of the worst leaders of all time” and accused him of making Israel “less safe.” That isn’t exactly hard-edged Zionism, but some nonetheless perceived Mr. Shapiro as too extreme.

Christianity has been a whipping boy--not without justification--through most of American history. From the Salem witch trials to Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, from the Scopes monkey trial to the current pro-Life movement, Christianity has been vilified as a white, patriarchal religion. (The key role of Christians in the abolitionist movement is ignored or played down.)

Now the greater intolerance is coming from the left, which has excluded pro-Life Catholics and supporters of Israel from positions of power. Instead Progressives welcome pro-Palestinians who call for the eradication of Israel and its people "from the river to the sea."

I hope the latter is not what the Democratic Party believes and hope VP Harris denounces this point of view; if she doesn't and becomes the next President, then God help the Catholic and Jewish peoples.

The Spam Indicator

Costco and Hormel are again running their semi-annual Spam sale.

In March the sale price on an eight-pack was $22.99-$5.00=$17.99.

This month both the list price and the discount are a dollar higher, so the net price is the same ($23.99-$6.00=$17.99). At $2.25 per can, the sale price was the same as it was in October, 2022.

If I were part of the Biden-Harris Administration I would trumpet this as a sign that food inflation has abated, but I doubt that many of them purchase canned luncheon meat, and even fewer track its prices.

Those Vagabond Shoes

(WSJ Illustration)

The ex-New York-now-Florida uber-rich are back in NYC for the summer. Conversations with their wealthy friends who stayed behind are laced with one-upmanship (one-up-personship?):

It’s summertime, and wealthy New Yorkers who moved to Florida are back North. From East Hampton to Kennebunkport, everyone’s in the same sandbox now. It’s time to compare who has the shiniest bucket: those who decamped or those who stayed.

Palm Beach: the best decision ever? Yep, or so they claim. They golf before work and take a dip on Billionaires’ Row beachfront after work. It’s only two hours by speedboat to go bonefishing in the Bahamas.

But for true Manhattanites, moving somewhere for fishing ease seems positively boneheaded. Asked if he’d ditch New York for enduring sunshine, mega-developer Aby Rosen prefers the big-boy pond. “Wow, gee whiz, how great I’m so free, swimming with kids in the middle of a workweek,” he responded facetiously. “I mean, who does that? I don’t want to putz around. Midweek, I’d rather go to Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center or hear good jazz downtown. Kill me if I have to jump on a boat on a Wednesday evening!”

F. Scott Fitzgerald said the rich "are different from you and me." Nothing distinguishes a person more than language, and what the rich talk about is very different from normal people, too.

Chevron's Departure: the Self-Ruination of California

Closing Chevron's Richmond refinery will have substantial
negative impact on California's gasoline supply chain.

Last week's announcement by Chevron that it is moving its headquarters from San Ramon (35 miles east of the Peninsula) to Texas comes as no surprise.

IMHO, old-timers in ownership and management had Chevron hanging on in California because of sentimentality over its 145-year history in the State; however, repeated public excoriation of the oil and gas industry and laws that made it increasingly costly to operate took its toll.

When California announced that it wanted Chevron to close down operations 10-25 years in the future--but not yet--there was no reason for it to adhere to California's timetable. [bold added]

Chevron, which dates its origins to the California Star Oil Works, which struck oil in the Santa Susana Mountains of Southern California in 1876, characterized the move from San Ramon to Houston as merely an ordinary managerial consolidation.

However, given its prominence, Newsom’s recurrent vilification of the industry and his vow to end sales of gasoline-powered cars as a way of becoming carbon-neutral by 2045, the move’s political aspects could not be ignored.

Initially, Newsom posted on social media a video denouncing oil industry “price gouging,” including a melty-face emoji characterizing the industry’s reaction to California’s efforts to dampen gas prices.

But his office quickly took down the video and issued a statement saying Chevron’s announcement “is the logical culmination of a long process that has repeatedly been foreshadowed by Chevron.”

...California has seen a steady exodus of corporations, as the Bay Area Council noted, thus reinforcing its image of hostility to business.

Just days earlier, Elon Musk, who had already moved his Tesla corporate headquarters to Texas, announced that X and SpaceX would follow.

Chevron’s announcement also comes amid a flurry of layoffs and corporate retrenchments in the Bay Area’s high-tech industry, which have contributed to the state’s having the nation’s highest unemployment rate.

Moreover, we may not have heard the last of Chevron’s moves. The company had been warning California officials that it might close its two refineries in the state, which are major producers of the state’s unique gasoline blend.

Voters in Richmond, the site of one Chevron refinery, will decide in November whether to impose a special tax on the refinery, $1 per barrel, and the company has accused Richmond’s leaders of “playing chicken” with their largest taxpayer and employer.

Progressive politicians who accuse refineries of price gouging should ask themselves why those greedy capitalists are shutting down the refineries and foregoing such a profitable business. Such self-reflection is foreign to the one-party state. In fact, one risible solution promises to dig the hole deeper.

Enter Mr. Newsom’s energy commission, which is charged with investigating the causes of California’s high gas prices. A commission staff report this week failed to find wrongdoing but nonetheless floats state control of the refining industry.

One idea is to “purchase and own refineries in the State to manage the supply and price of gasoline.” At least the commission concedes there are “significant legal issues” to address and “there are complex industrial processes that the State has no experience in managing.” That’s for sure.

Sacramento can’t currently provide basic public services such as reliable power. How would it run an industry it wants to shut down? The report wonders too: “As demand for fossil fuel declines, will the presence of State-owned refineries inhibit an orderly phase out of refinery capacity?”

If Democrats in Sacramento want to reduce refinery production, nationalizing the industry a la Venezuela would work. But as the report muses: “What would drive how the State managed the refinery? Profit? Maximize production? Minimize production?” This is hilarious.

Sure, manage an oil refinery when the government cannot even manage the services such as education, public transportation, and police protection that it is supposed to provide. If we weren't laughing, we'd be crying.

Friendly Takeover

With some of the largest, most successful companies (Tesla, Oracle, HP, and now Chevron) in the Bay Area moving to Texas because of onerous taxes and regulations, it's hard to name a company that is certain to be here a century from now.

Even trillion-dollar "megacap" corporations like Apple, Nvidia, Google, and Facebook can have their fortunes worsen suddenly, and California, seeing taxpaying individuals and companies fleeing its hostile business climate, will devise ways to squeeze the remaining golden geese. Those companies better have their "go bags" ready.

There is one private entity, however, that not only will stay here but has expanded its footprint throughout the 20th century and will do so in the 21st.

Koret Field at Notre Dame de Namur University (Chron photo)

Headline: Plans for Stanford’s new Bay Area campus move forward. [bold added]

Stanford University’s plan to purchase a historic Catholic university property on the Peninsula and turn it into a satellite campus for up to 2,500 students, faculty and staff is taking shape, according to newly released documents.

Belmont officials this month released a draft environmental impact report, the first public document detailing Stanford’s option to purchase the nearly 46-acre site of Notre Dame de Namur University in the city. In the works since 2021, the deal — if it goes through — would continue Stanford’s push into San Mateo County after local concerns about growth forced the university’s withdrawal of a huge expansion plan for its main Palo Alto campus in 2019.

Stanford already operates Stanford Redwood City, a 35-acre health care facility and administrative satellite 5 miles north across the Santa Clara County line. The proposed new acquisition, to be called Stanford Belmont, is 13 miles from the Stanford campus and a 20-minute drive up Highway 101.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, which had a $36.5 billion endowment in 2023, has the deep pockets and structure (e.g., no quarterly earnings reports to shareholders) to endure the lead times necessary for Bay Area real estate projects.

The University also has a growing long-term demand for its education and health services that will populate its projects as soon as they are completed.

The installation of Economics Professor and Business School dean Jonathan Levin as its President, the arrest of demonstrators who took over and damaged its property, and the reinstatement of standardized admissions tests indicate that Stanford is setting aside the excesses of Progressivism, DEI (diversity,equity, and inclusion), and wokeness, which is more reason to expect it to survive into the next century and beyond.

Microplastics Filter

My son bought and installed a microplastics filter under our kitchen sink. He's concerned about keeping his boomer parents healthy, and, unlike me, he keeps abreast of environmental news.

I've been skeptical about all the climate doomism that makes our lives expensive and needlessly worse--get rid of our incandescent bulbs, gasoline cars, and reliable nuclear and fossil fuel power plants!--but there might be something to the concerns about microplastics, which are in the seas around us: [bold added]

Microplastic particles are widespread in Monterey Bay anchovies and the diving seabirds that eat them as a main food source — which could possibly impact the birds’ reproductive systems, according to a new study.

Scientists at UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance studied microplastic pollution in Monterey Bay by testing microplastic particles in the water and in anchovies and common murres, a bird species found in abundance in the region.

They found that 58% of anchovies and 100% of murres had microplastic particles in their digestive tracts, according to the study published Nov. 4 in the Environmental Pollution journal.

The study also comes two months after California became the first state in the United States to begin requiring water agencies to test for microplastics, which can be found everywhere from clothing, food packaging, drinking water and the ocean. Another recent study by Stanford University scientists found that whales are ingesting “colossal” amounts of microplastics that mainly come from the fish they feed on.

The troubling increase in cancer among young people causes us to ask what's different about us when we were kids in the 50's and 60's, and the leading factors seem to be excess sugar to less sunshine and exercise. The ubiquity of microplastics may be an answer, too.

Once an Asset, Now a Liability

Proximity to San Francisco was once an asset but is now a liability to some Bay Area counties.

Headline: San Francisco's rotten reputation is killing tourism across the Bay Area [bold added]

According to the survey results, the city’s rotten reputation — regardless of whether this perception was valid or not — is actively deterring domestic travelers from even considering the rest of the region.

A striking number of respondents, nearly half in some cases, agreed that San Francisco’s woes have made visiting a county like Sonoma unattractive, even though it’s 45 miles away and vastly different from the city.

We unwound at the Kenwood Inn in Sonoma County

Fixing San Francisco's problems isn't as critical to the economic health of counties that are tech-based, but those dependent on travel and leisure, like Sonoma and Napa, have been particularly affected.

Speaking from personal experience, we've been very satisfied with overnight trips to Wine Country. Napa and Sonoma counties are well over an hour's drive from San Francisco, but both geographically (hot and dry during the summer) and culturally they feel much more distant. Here's hoping that they can endure the pain while San Francisco fixes itself.

The Arrogation of Godly Language

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's,
and unto God the things that are God's"
----Rubens' The Tribute Money

Catholic priest Brian Graebe of the New York Archdiocese decries the secularization of "godly language": [bold added]

[The] arrogation of godly language for civil matters follows a recent trend in political discourse. That was perhaps most notable after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. In condemning the attacks, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to the building as a “temple of democracy.” A temple is a place to worship God and, in a specific Judeo-Christian understanding, to offer him sacrifices. The U.S. Capitol is famous, iconic, and worthy of protection and respect. But it isn’t a temple, and democracy isn’t a religion.

Other examples abound, from Donald Trump’s declaring himself the “chosen one” to congressmen condemning anti-Israel demonstrators for “desecrating” various landmarks, not simply defacing or vandalizing them.

Jesus warned against confusing the things of God with the things of Caesar. Yet an increasingly irreligious culture seeks to adopt these orphaned words. In so doing, many give an outsize importance to the things of this world, to civic monuments and political processes. Scripture reminds us that we have no lasting city here and that the world as we know it is passing away.

My own pet peeve is the gross over-use of the phrase "existential threat," as in "Trump is an existential threat to democracy" or "climate change is an existential threat to the planet." Why the apocalyptic language for these problems--indeed, if these are problems at all?

Mr. Trump, even if he does become President, will be gone in four years, and there are no signs that his political philosophy--supposedly the ruin of America's constitutional order--has a cohesiveness that will last years beyond his term in office.

As for climate change--it appears that the elites who say that it's urgent we solve the problem now or we're all doomed don't behave as if that's true.

My humble advice is not to panic, don't give the Chicken Littles more power over our lives, and go to church (or study the Cold War's mutually assured destruction philosophy) to learn what a true apocalypse might look like.