Blue Light Special - Aisle 666

Yet another bit of data which supports the assertion that interest rate and prices, home prices specifically, must be correlated inversely in order to 'clear the market'. As offered here many times: capital, on credit, household expenditures are constrained by the nut needed to service the note. IOW, no one really cares what the interest rate and price are; what matters is the monthly nut. If the nut is within bounds, as set by the lender and/or seller, then the 'asset' can be bought. If not, then NOT. When interest goes high, the price must shrink in order to move the stock. Homebuilders will simply stop building if they figure that better times, lower interest, are nigh when they can boost price.

Data from the National Association of Home Builders showed that 22% of builders cut homes prices in April, down from 24% in March. Meanwhile, the share of builders who offered a sales incentive edged lower to 57% in April from 60% in March. Sentiment among homebuilders in America held steady in April, NAHB said.

Again, as mentioned in these essays since time immemorial, what was in my callow youth the 36 month car note has been stretched out to as much as 96. Will we bust triple digits? Only They Shadow knows. For the arithmetically challenged, that's 8 years. Your buggy ends up with a huge total cost, but a monthly nut that fits your income.

You can test the difference.

Musk Ox - part the third

It bears repeating: Tesla/Musk really and truly aren't doing anything new and amazing. Do you know how long ago electric cars (battery division) came to be? The 1880s at the latest. What they didn't have then, that we have now, is the Li-ion cell. And, just to remind: Musk didn't invent any part of such. Nor did he create Tesla; he bought it, just like X. May haps both will expire.

The problem is, as Musk is finding out, that there exists no moat (to use MBA-speak) for him to exploit. Any large scale manufacturer of autos can switch to Li-ion propulsion without much trouble. And they are. All Musk did was create a meme. Kind of like the Orange Jesus. The Big Auto Industry should send him a candy-gram on his birthday for the next hundred years.

It's likely too much to say that Tesla is imploding as we watch. But the bloom is surely off the rose.

oops

One of the base themes of these missives: thou shalt not estimate beyond the range of the data set. Of course, the corollary is also mentioned in stride: time series analists do so as a matter of course. Getting the future right based on past experience is fraught with danger. If you're in the investing venue, you're told, as a matter of course, "past experience is not predictive of future returns" in various words. And, of course once again, the monetary authorities (esp. the Big Economies) use just such 'modeling' to set policy in such a way as to extrapolate the past data experience into the future data experience in the way that implements the desired policy objectives. Keeping employment 'high' and inflation 'low' at one and the same time is the authorities' walk down the razor's edge. It should come as no surprise that the authorities reflexively adopt policies their constituents (aka, Big Bidnezz) prefer irregardless of what the data says.

Some times it just goes sideways. Well, here is the tale of the Bank of England. It's sordid. And, highlights not only 'past is not necessarily future' theme, but (not explicitly, alas) that macro data is almost wholly sample data, and of unknown quality. Now, governments could, with simple legislation, enforce data collection of interest in signficantly larger, more stratified, samples. Or go Full Monty with census data. Doesn't happen, for the most part (there are, in the USofA, 'census' of some sectors). The reason that doesn't happen isn't cost, but rather that The Powers That Be at any time (whether left or right wingnut) want the 'flexibility' to implement some policy with the excuse that more granular data just isn't conclusive or up-to-date. The prime fig leaf for liars.

[The Bank] added that it would need to put in "substantial investment" to develop the data, modeling and staff to support the forecasts. The changes will take a while to put in place, and the bank will provide an update on its progress before the end of the year.

This is the report of the Review. Further, if you feel up to it, I don't right now, here's the Review.

Thought For The Day - 12 April 2024

Keep in mind: without a FISA with Teeth, Mad Dictator Don and his traitors in the Putin Wing of the GOP would be free to sell out any and all state secrets to Vlad, Xi, Erdogan, Orban, or other dictator-of-the-moment for pennies on the dollar. There is, of course, no other reason for him to tell Congress to kill 702. The Orange Jesus will need the moolah to pay his lawyers and judgments. While we voters don't get the chance to get rid of him knowing what he's done (and would do on steroids if he gets back in), at least the intelligence community knows what's passed between the Putin Wing and the dictators, and can take steps to mitigate the damage.

wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 is scared shitless that, someday, NSA will release the Kraken, meaning he and the Putin Wing will spend what's left of their sorry, treasonous lives in baggy orange jumpsuits. Guilty as sin.

Thought For The Trials - 11 April 2024

Another trial delay, another failure. So, here's a thought:

We know that the Orange Jesus nearly always loses.

So, what's malignant narcissist to do? As you know, if you watch enough L&O: cut a deal!! There's already rumours of the Orange Jesus willing to plead down to a misdemeanor. He cuts his losses. A lot.

That's, still, a long way from taking a plea on the felony. A long, long way. I sure wouldn't take it if I were Bragg.

Thought For The Trials - 10 April 2024

As I type, the first of the Orange Jesus trials remains on track for next week, so it seems necessary to provide some pre-trial testimony. Herewith.

Prosecutor: Ms. Daniels, please describe for The Court any identifying marks (scars, tattoos, moles, etc.) on the Orange Jesus's body that are not shown in known photos, videos and the like. If you do know of any.

Ms. Daniels: Yes, there are. In particular, the Orange Jesus has a severely bent Johnson, in the downward direction. The Orange Jesus would frequently brag that, in times when extramarital (or marital as oft times happened) companions were not easy to hand (job, he he!), he would fuck himself in the ass. I found that a disgusting statement, and activity.

Prosecutor: I ask The Court that the Orange Jesus be directed to the well and display his Johnson to confirm its conformance. He need not demonstrate fucking himself in the ass.

Hang John Scopes

Well, the knuckledraggers are at it again. The Lost Cause continues to pollute the USofA.

"Many of the claims made in this video are not aligned with scientific fact, but rather reflect the biased and ideologic perspectives of the extremists who created the video. ACOG is strongly opposed to the spread of misinformation about reproductive health."

And, of course, all anyone needs to know about anything is to be found in the Bible. The Old Testament, really. No need for that new-fangled stuff in that other Testament. The MARF^™(party like it's 1829) will never be happy until there's a Time Machine designed to run only backward, and we all are marched into halls to be sent back to those idyllic times, when men were men, women were women, darkies tended to the rich white folk, the population was minuscule (about 11,000,000 Free Whites and 2,000,000 Darkie slaves), and making babies was the prime directive. And they all pissed and shit in the creek.

The Wisdom of Carole King

I feel the earth move under my feet.
-- Carole King/1971

Was drinking my cuppa Joe in my local greasy spoon when the booth shook a bit. It's happened before when one of the local Jaba the Huts fell into the abutting seat. Nothing to write home about. Of course, when I got back and clicked on the pc, there was the news. 4.8 magnitude about 50 miles west of NYC, about 150 miles as the crow flies from where I type these missives. Reported to be felt in DC and Boston; Feuerstein's X feed was where I found out.

Who knew that NE got earthquakes? Turns out, with some regularity, but so small in magnitude that they're rarely felt. Here's why

Quakes on the East Coast can still pack a punch, as its rocks are better than their western counterparts at spreading earthquake energy across far distances.

For the NYC-philes, this comes as no great surprise. Although the fact that there is a distinct fault (not responsible for today's tremor) through the city might. Does to me. Years ago I saw some documentary on NYC, Manhattan in particular, which started with an across-the-Hudson profile of the skyline. It was obvious that it didn't make much sense. Lower on the island is a line of really tall buildings, moving north there's mostly rows of townhouse types, and then still farther north back to tall ones again. Why is that? Turns out that the tall ones are possible because the bedrock pokes up to the surface near the south end of the island, then heading north it dips down for some distance, then up again. It would be very expensive to put piles deep to the bedrock along the dip. So no one bothers.

If you live in NE, or remember your junior high (middle) school social studies (back when you could be taught that, of course), then you know that the Northeast has about the rockiest soils in North America. Getting crops to grow is a major chore. All those neat rock fences you see outside of cities aren't ornamental, they exist because those rocks had to be pulled out of the ground in order to have a semblance of a farm field. Rather than haul them away someplace (the front-loader didn't yet exist in the 1600s), pile them up as a fence.

And, of course the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) lunatics will blame the woke folk for pissing off the Christian God, who punished us with the tremor. I know, I know. We'll just sacrifice a few nubile virgins on a barge in Boston Harbor. God will be mollified.

By The Numbers - part the fifty second

A few times in these essays, I've complained about the socialism/welfare for the rich, in particular the drug industry. They take the work of academia and NGOs and leverage same into about the most profitable sector in the economy. And we, the sick, get to pay more for those drugs than anywhere else on earth.

Now comes new reporting that the gravy train may soon come to a screeching halt. Where does much of this research come from? Who pays for it? In large part, the USofA taxpayer.

According to the National Institutes of Health, the number of postdoctoral fellows supported by NIH grants has been steadily falling for more than 20 years, with a significant dip after 2020. The number of postdocs in the biological and biomedical fields has declined 9% between 2018 and 2022, and those in health-related fields have fallen by 8%, according to a survey published on March 20 by the National Science Foundation.

PhRMA bitches that they don't get enough credit for turning this basic research into sellable drugs. They sure don't seem to care all that much.

By using that technology to develop their mRNA vaccines for Covid-19, pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Moderna made a windfall in profits. Between 2020 and 2021, Pfizer saw its revenue nearly double. In the same period, Moderna's total revenue skyrocketed from $803 million to $18.5 billion, astounding growth the company said was "primarily due to commercial sales of (the) COVID-19 vaccine."

The golden goose ain't dead yet, but it's on life support. It's long been my contention that smart people do what they do just because they do what they do; they don't want to do anything else. If we're lucky, those in bio/chem/medicine who choose to skip straight to Big Pharma big bucks jobs are the dumb ones who don't really care about doing smart work. One hopes.

Mulkey Waters

By now, even if you only read or watch High Brow news, you've come across the threat by Kim Mulkey, LSU girls basketball coach, to sue the Washington Post should it publish a story she labels as false. Hmmm??? Didn't Nixon have something similar to say?? Or the Orange Jesus?? And most other sociopaths.

So, what's the story? Neither Mulkey nor the Post have, as I type, revealed the substance. But Mulkey at both Baylor and LSU, has a history. Here's a review. Near as I can find, neither that reporter nor the organ were sued by Mulkey. Red State collegiate atheletics has been deep in doodoo forever. Coaches that manage to win hardware get lavished with tens of millions of dollars in bakksheesh. Kids, a precious few, go on to get their own bakksheesh in the pros. The vast majority 'earn' a degree in basket weaving and some such, rather than a valuable skill or a measure of higher order thinking; just the pleasure of being cannon fodder for greedy adults. Wouldn't it be nice if LSU spent that $30+ million on science labs instead?

Who wins? On the whole, only the Mulkeys of the world.

The Rich Get Richer (and you know the rest)

Years ago, I saw reporting that the cost of living on Nantucket had gotten so out of hand that the service workers couldn't afford housing any longer and were commuting from Hyannis. Haven't, and didn't, made an effort to verify that with other reporting. But it certainly wouldn't surprise me. As they say about the Orange Jesus, everything he touches dies, and the same is true when the Rich invade someplace and evict the regular people. Alas, these same knuckledraggers continue to support the self same folks who exploit them.

Now, we find my beloved (but decreasingly so) Block Island moves another step closer to a terminal case of Nantucketitis. As a reminder: the Island is about 12 miles from Point Judith on the mainland which makes for a one-hour (car carrying) ferry ride. In season, you can get there in about the same hour (sans auto) from New London, Newport as well, at least. So what is the damn gummint of Rhode Island doing with its precious taxes? Paying to expand (paywall, but you get the gist) the airport on the Island. Bet you didn't know there was an airport?

I mean, the Rich want no part of an hour on an olde ferry chock-a-block with hoi polloi to get to their McMansion. The runway can accommodate a smallish Lear type; with just 2,500 feet of runway, your Boeing Business 787 is out of the question. They really need more space at the airport, now don't they? We haven't been there in season more than once or twice; too many obnoxious mainlanders. Deep 'shoulder season' is more better.

Wasn't it Fitzgerald who said the Rich really are different?

I Told You So - 21 March 2024

More than a few times in the course of producing these essays, the point has been made that the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) crowd bitches and moans about the "animals" hopping over the border. The problem is: more often than not the economic engines in the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) states depend on such "animals" to pick crops, mow lawns, pound roofing nails, and sundry other work that requires neither education nor learned skills. It helps if you can not fall off the roof on your own, since in the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) states (and, some not so) safety apparatus is regarded as a profit-sink. We don't need no stinkin harnesses!!

So, of course, the lamestream press has finally found the thread.

Some would also like to accelerate work authorizations of asylum seekers so they can start training sooner instead of having to wait 180 days, as required by federal law.

Yeah, how long does it take to learn how to pound roofing nails? Less than a Ph.D. in math stats, I'd wager. Not even 6 months. I guess an hour or two. Hell's bells, almost no one even uses a 2 lb. hammer anymore; all replaced by air guns fed by a stack of nails just like an AR-15. (007 used one to kill some bad guys; one right in the eyeball, cool.) And, one might suppose, that the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) native born sub-GED roofing nail pounders like things just as they are. I mean, once they're of age, they can run for El Presidente on the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) ticket! After all, the Orange Jesus can't possibly live much longer, and he ain't much smarter than your garden variety sub-GED knuckledragger.

Your Money or Your Life - part the second

Y'all remember what Dr. McElhone said, right? "Once you've done the easy 80%, what's left is a bitch!" And so it is in the drug industry. For some years, drug companies have been mining in the 'orphan drug' space, aka - seeking drugs for ever smaller patient populations. The Damn Gummint has aided and abetted this transition over the years with orphan drug acts, which bestows benefits to drug companies which target diseases of small patient populations. There's been some debate as to whether the definition of 'small' is way, way too large; but that's for another day.

This note once again deals with the prickly notion of how much to charge for disease altering/curing drugs which target said small populations. Recall the Orange Jesus:

America will never be a socialist country.

Well... NOT!! Without explicit Socialism, albeit for for-profit capitalists, much of USofA capitalists would be up a creek without a paddle. Subsidies all over the place, and the nefarious and pernicious drug industry which has been pursuing multi-million dollar drugs which even few of the 1% could afford. Who ends up paying for these drugs? You and me, of course either explicitly through government programs or insurance premiums.

So, we get this drug from Orchard (and its now recent Japanese owner), which cures (so far supported only by short-term data, by the way) a very, very rare disease in children; if not dealt with nearly immediately, even this new drug doesn't work.

And, of course, it should be noted that Orchard abandoned a previous orphan drug 'cure'. They were not alone in taking that avenue.

So, is it worth $4.25 million? Your money or your life? Well...

Here's an estimate of the average USofA citizen's life-long income: if we take the middle value for men, adjusted, it's $1.7 million.

So, 2 and a half times your money or your life!!

And, one should also note, that Amylyx conned FDA into approving their ALS drug on lousy data, but managed to make a bundle off it in just a few years. And, by the way, 'conned' isn't just an empty epithet. Amylyx offered up lousy data and an aggresive patient community against FDA, and won. Paper tiger.

Cui Bono - part the third

Well, I admit to being first in line to make fun of the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) crowd finding some woke conspiracy behind every galldurn fire hydrant. But the following events are hard to comprehend.

- one of the Boeing Plastic Planes (courtesy of South Carolina sub-GED workers) loses its flight controls and plummets for a moment.

- the man who blew the whistle on the shambles at the Plastic Plane plant turns up dead

With the first report of the 'upset' of the Plastic Plane, it sounded like garden variety clear air turbulence; this is not common, but not unheard of, fits the description of the incident. OTOH, we have the report of a passenger who stated that the pilot told him that the controls froze.

"[The pilot] said my gauges went down, everything went down for one or two seconds and they just lit up again and continued to function."

Now, compare that with what the whistleblower had previously stated:

Barnett, a former quality manager who had worked at Boeing for decades, had "discovered clusters of metal slivers hanging over the wiring that commands the flight controls," according to a 2019 New York Times report cited by CNN.

Barnett told the Times that if those "sharp" slivers "penetrated" the wiring, the result could be "catastrophic."

Only The Shadow knows.

By The Numbers - part the fifty first

Another day, another clinical trial failure: a schizo drug, been in 'development' since Hector was a pup. This compound with a p-value of .4825; not in the ballpark, but may be the same continent.

The takeaway from all this: CNS (central nervous system) drugs are no better than a crap shoot. Despite all the 'advances' in AI, we humans still don't know how our little grey cells actually work; and what it is that makes them stop working. If we did, we'd have figured all this stuff out a long time ago.

For once a sponsor does say, No mas!!

We will continue to analyze these data with our scientific advisors, but we do not intend to conduct any further clinical trials with pimavanserin.
-- Steve Davis - CEO

We Don't Need No Education - part the fifth

The Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts' Culture War is revving into high gear. Here's a recent account of the state of battle.

While teachers don't set the texts pupils read as part of the curriculum, Lee said teachers at his school had had complaints about books offered in classroom libraries. "Public schools should have books that represent all students," he said, explaining he offers age-appropriate titles related to Black history, women's history and Asian American history.
[my emphasis]

[What has been that trope that teachers and their unions are the ones "controlling" teaching?]

'I ain't got but four years of school, and the reddest neck in these here part of the woods, and I'll be Goddamned to let mah 12 kids know mor'n I ever did. Ya don't need no education to walk behind a horse plow or make babies. I do just fine at both. It'd be a damn shame if mah kids got smart and up and went to some big city. And one of the boys married some colored girl? That'd tear mah heart right out.'

And, of course, we've got Gov. DeMented

This bill says the whole experiment with DEI is coming to an end in the state of Florida. We are eliminating the DEI programs.
-- Gov. DeMented

Will the last educated person leaving a Red State please blow up the legislature? Won't hurt anyone; the pols will all be out swigging moonshine from jugs anyway under a cottonwood tree. And whittling KKK crosses for key fobs. Just hillbilly fun times.

By The Numbers - part the fiftieth

One of the sore points against FDA is the power to approve drugs in a provisional manner. If small, early trials indicate that a compound does some good, then the compound is allowed on the market, and the company is required to run a full-blown post-approval trial. This trial is supposed to be run expeditiously, but not always so.

Here's the problem: that postmarketing study has never taken place. In fact, it hasn't even been started. (Edit: looks like they've finally gotten it off the ground since the CRL was issued).

Amylyx developed a drug for ALS under such a protocol, and has run such a trial. And the drug failed spectacularly. The existing, albeit somewhat arbitrary, standard for success in statistical studies is p-value of .05 or smaller. Has been so for decades. The drug pulled .67. Not in the ballpark? Not on the same continent.

I haven't done the digging, but such a result, once again, calls into question the value of FDA giving provisional approval to compounds.

Sarepta's DMD drugs, particularly its first, got provisional approval. The confirmatory studies have not been done expeditiously. And Sarepta used (created?) the tactic of inflaming the patient community to pressure FDA to approve.

Initially, the FDA wanted Amylyx to run another, larger study before submitting its drug for review. But after receiving intense backlash from ALS patients and advocates, who have pressed regulators to be more flexible in evaluating potential treatments, the agency backtracked. Amylyx was allowed to apply for approval while simultaneously running that additional trial.

Note that the EU regulator was not impressed with the initial trials, and didn't approve. I suspect there will be much discussion of the structure and conduct of those promising initial trials.

By The Numbers - part the forty ninth

Ok, so the NCAA wants to add more teams to their hoop tournament (just the boys, so far according to the story).

What is the point? It appears that the small-time conferences feel they're being trampled by NIL/transfer portal/big deal conferences

[C]ollege basketball administrators fear that power conference schools will consider their own postseason if the NCAA tournament remains unchanged.

That statement makes little sense. It implies that the 'power conference schools' will bolt and have their own tournament if there're not more sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered? What?

The number of 16 seed teams that got past the 1 seed opponent in the first round: 2.

I suppose the 72/76 regime would just extended the play-in round(s)? Whichever way, it's just more cannon fodder for the professional hoop (mostly stateU) schools. Student-atheletes unite!!

We Don't Need No Education - part the fourth

The Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts' Culture War is revving into high gear. Here's today's account of the state of battle.

While teachers don't set the texts pupils read as part of the curriculum, Lee said teachers at his school had had complaints about books offered in classroom libraries. "Public schools should have books that represent all students," he said, explaining he offers age-appropriate titles related to Black history, women's history and Asian American history.
[my emphasis]

[What has been that trope that teachers and their unions are the ones "controlling" teaching?]

'I ain't got but four years of school, and the reddest neck in these here part of the woods, and I'll be Goddamned to let mah 12 kids know mor'n I ever did. Ya don't need no education to walk behind a horse plow or make babies. I do just fine at both. It'd be a damn shame if mah kids got smart and up and went to some big city. And one of the boys married some colored girl? That'd tear mah heart right out.'

And, of course, we've got Gov. DeMented

This bill says the whole experiment with DEI is coming to an end in the state of Florida. We are eliminating the DEI programs.
-- Gov. DeMented

Will the last educated person leaving a Red State please blow up the legislature? Won't hurt anyone; the pols will all be out swigging moonshine from jugs anyway under a cottonwood tree. And whittling KKK crosses for key fobs. Just hillbilly fun times.

Eyeless in Gaza

Yes, I purloined the title. Sue me. But there is a point to it; after all this time it finally occurs to me that the USofA intelligent community is falling down on the job. It's well documented that simple commercial satellites have high resolution cameras.

The best commercially available spatial resolution for optical imagery is 25 cm, which means that one pixel represents a 25-by-25-cm area on the ground — roughly the size of your laptop. A handful of companies capture data with 25-cm to 1-meter resolution, which is considered high to very high resolution in this industry.

So, what's been going on with the USofA's satellite imaging since the iconic Keyhole machines of the 1960s?

What can we civilians know about what the intelligence community can see from up in the sky? Here's a long essay.

In laboratory conditions, SAR has achieved resolutions less than a millimeter,

Now, that's implied to not be operational. Color me skeptical. When I was in DC (mid 70s to mid 80s), it was widely known(?) that Keyhole family satellites allowed one to read the NYT. From space. And that public disclosure of such capabilities from the intelligence community was very old news within the community.

What set me off on this old topic? A report in today's (dead trees version) NYT about the fiasco with the relief convoy.

The convoy that arrived in Gaza City before dawn on Thursday ended tragically. More than 100 Palestinians were killed after many thousands of people massed around trucks laden with food and supplies, Gazan health officials said.

Israel and the Palestinians now argue about who did what. Today's NRO (national reconnaissance office) machines certainly are overhead (if not then NRO/NSA/CIA are incompetent) and keeping an eye on all that. At least tell the two sides what really happened.

Brrr!

What with all the reports of global warming getting more aggressive, it was with some surprise that I read this report on Alberta's Premier restricting 'green energy' projects. The issue: "viewscapes". Whaaaa??

How can that be? Well, for one thing, Canada is far more 'federalist' than the good ole USofA; provincial administrations have far more authority vis-a-vis Ottawa than USofA states do to Washington. Alberta also, by coincidence, just happens to be a major petro state. One hand washing the other? You decide.

Moreover, that report and another today, tell us that Canada (well, the Western provinces) have been hit with near record cold this winter. What's a Canuck to do? Move to Abbott/DeMented land? Yikes!!

As all you other weather nerds know: for the USofA, esp. the Sovereign States of New England, short-term climate/weather is mostly determined by where the northern and southern jets go. For winter, if the northern jet stays in Canada, as it has been for most of this winter, we in the upper tier of the lower 48 can have southern air flow up to us. And so we get rain. Sometimes lots of it. Not the Weird Coast's atmospheric rivers, of course. And for them, winter rain is actually a problem. A significant amount of water is 'stored' in mountain snowpack. Exactly how many cubic meters of reservoir would be needed to store liquid water if there were little to no snowpack in the mountains, I haven't yet found. But it's clearly a lot. Consider that reservoirs need stable valleys, typically on rivers, which don't really exist where snowpack accumulates. Where to put such reservoirs? Only The Shadow knows. I'd vote for expelling the Orange County Rednecks and put them there; near enough to Tinsel Town.

It's a Small World, After All

Every free agent and draft season in each professional sport brings with it not only ludicrous payments to morons who happen to have some level of strength and coordination, but also bitching from fanatics in mid- and small-markets that they can't possibly compete with New York City, Boston, Chicago, LA, and possibly a few flyover country cities. It's nearly always elided that professional franchises get a substantial part of their revenue from league coffers and have their facilities paid for (in large part or in toto) by the taxpayers. Such a tough life.

But this kvetching begs the question: why should there be mid- and small-market teams in the first place? We know full well that shitkicker migration to cities hasn't abated, nor will it ever; progress is made in nice, dense, noisy places not where the only sound is grass growing and cows mooing. The "invasion" of illegals have no interest in settling in the burning Texas wasteland; they want the opportunity of Big Cities. Not because they're essentially Blue, but because they offer opportunity; same reason any Red Stater who isn't sub-GED bolts for a Big City. I mean, how dumb do you have to be to want to live under Abbott/DeMented/Sanders/et al? Prior to the end of WWII, all of these leagues expanded and contracted almost like clockwork. Teams came and went. Professional football for its first decades was a non-urban pastime (the Big Cities, unless you say Chicago, weren't represented).

On August 20, 1920, at a Hupmobile dealership in Canton, Ohio, the league was formalized, originally as the American Professional Football Conference, initially consisting only of the Ohio League teams, although some of the teams declined participation.
...
Only four of the founding teams finished the 1920 schedule and the undefeated Akron Pros claimed the first championship.
[the wiki]

The first teams:

Another meeting was held on September 17, 1920 with representatives from teams from four states: Akron, Canton, Cleveland, and Dayton from Ohio; the Hammond Pros and Muncie Flyers from Indiana; the Rochester Jeffersons from New York; and the Rock Island Independents, Decatur Staleys, and Racine (Chicago) Cardinals from Illinois.
[the wiki]

With baseball, rather different. Baseball, once a 'major' league was established in the late 19th century, was a Big City thing.

In fact, there were dozens of leagues, large and small, at this time. What made the National League "major" was its dominant position in the major cities, particularly New York City, the edgy, emotional nerve center of baseball. The large cities offered baseball teams national media distribution systems and fan bases that could generate revenues enabling teams to hire the best players in the country.
[the wiki, my emphasis]

So, we eventually get both relocation (thanks, in the beginning, to the 707) and expansion across professional sports, and with them the creation of the mid-market team; Big Cities already filled. As ever more franchises were created in these non-Big Cities, viability becomes an issue. Why, oh why, are their baseball teams in Florida? (Not to mention... Hockey!) And so on. The motivation, clearly, is the growing population. Viewed as a player per citizen calculation, more teams do make sense. More young men eager to make money without much brains, and more people to fill seats. The problem, of course, is that expansion teams ended up in cities with marginal population sizes to support 30 or 40 or 50 thousand seat stadiums. Yes, the USofA population has more than doubled since the end of WWII, but not in shitkicker land.

Number of Major League teams, 1950 - 16
Roster size for said, 1950 - 25 (mostly)
Number of Major League ballplayers, 1950 - 400
USofA population, 1950 - 151,325,798
ratio - 378,314.495 (that's USofA humans per ballplayer)

Number of Major League teams, 2020 - 30
Roster size for said, 2020 - 30 (mostly)
Number of Major League ballplayers, 2020 - 900
USofA population, 2020 - 329,500,000
ratio - 366,111.111 (ditto)

Urban/rural split 1950 - 64% / 36%
Urban/rural split 2020 - 80% / 20%%

There was a day when NYC (counting all the boroughs) had 3 teams. That's how you keep up with population growth.

What does all that mean Mr. Natural? They ain't be no dilution of talent. Just the opposite, and even more so when you consider the number of Black and off-shore players competing for those jobs in those years; hint, the competition was even tougher in 2020.

Luckily (I've been searching for some time, and finally hit paydirt) there is some data on revenue sources over time, in baseball.

In 1962 the MLB average for local media income was $640,000 ranging from a low of $300,000 (Washington) to a high of $1.2 million (New York Yankees). In 2001, the average team garnered $19 million from local radio and television contracts, but the gap between the bottom and top had widened to an incredible $51.5 million. The Montreal Expos received $536,000 for their local broadcast rights while the New York Yankees received more than $52 million for theirs. Revenue sharing has resulted in a redistribution of some of these funds from the wealthiest to the poorest teams, but the impact of this on the competitive balance problem remains to be seen.

Socialism in atheletics!!! Sacre bleu!! Oh, wait... welfare for the billionaires is the way of the world. So, is it possible for a small-market team to make money without any seats in the seats? May be.

In Major League Baseball, 48% of local revenues are subject to revenue sharing and are distributed equally among all 30 teams, with each team receiving 3.3% of the total sum generated. As a result, in 2018, each team received $118 million from this pot. Teams also receive a share of national revenues, which were estimated to be $91 million per team, also in 2018.

So, it would seem so. $209 million for nothing, and your chicks are free. Also, new franchises pay a fee to the teams. Here's the last round.

After whittling down the field to four finalists (Northern Virginia, Orlando, Phoenix and Tampa), MLB announced Phoenix and Tampa as the two expansion franchises on March 9, 1995. Announced to begin play for the 1998 season, each ownership group paid a $130 million expansion fee to enter the league. The ownership groups paid $32 million in July 1995, $25 million in July 1996, $40 million in July 1997 and $33 million in November 1997. In addition, the two expansion teams gave away their rights to $5 million from baseball's central fund for each of the five years following expansion (1998 - 2002).

What's up? A long CBS piece, worth reading.

Almost anywhere baseball expands in the coming years will rank in the bottom half to bottom third of TV markets. Therein is part of the argument against expansion. Why should owners make room at the table, reducing their share of the profits and the talent, to add more small-market teams? The answer might be as simple as the instant gratification offered by an exorbitant expansion fee.
[my emphasis]

An insight not often found in general journalism, much less the sporting variety.

Economists refer to the "substitution effect" in these cases. It's similar to opportunity cost. If a family of four is spending money at the ballpark, it won't be spending money at the movies. Stadiums aren't value creators so much as they are value re-distributors, from other local businesses to themselves, often without the best-compensated employees pumping those dollars back into the economy. One study even found a local economy improved after a team left the area.
[my emphasis]

And, by the bye, Food Stamps is another case of substitution effect: every buck a Welfare Queen doesn't spend at the local Mega Mart is a buck she can spend on lottery tickets or cellphones or baseball tickets or whatever else. I suppose, even an iPhone. You're welcome, Tim.

The same is true of casinos. And every entertainment venue; one can only be a net revenue generator if it brings in $$$ from outside its economic territory; specifically the tax authority (mostly a state) that subsidizes it. The first, and most blatant, example is Atlantic City (there's a good reason Batshit J. Moron couldn't make it there, or anywhere) and possibly worse, The Nutmeg State. Yet Damn Gummints keep betting on long shots. Spend money on better education? Well, only if there's no Woke Shit. (They don't in Nevada, of course!]

Ode to the Sub-GED Class - part the second

This is one of those days when I get the creepy feeling that Krugman reads here. Yeah, I wish. But the fact remains, his topic for today (dead trees division) reflects, almost entirely, the thesis that the rural, enraged, white men that make up MARF^™(party like it's 1829) are self-victims. What he doesn't come out and say, and it bears repeating, is that their predicament is, yes self-inflicted. What makes rural Red states so loathsome is that these sub-GED chuckleheads are in their uneducated, poor, unhealthy situation just because they keep electing politicians who protect the guy who owns the town. And the county. And the state, and just once, the country. Gummint for the 1%. It's that simple.

In the crudest sense, rural and small-town America is supposed to be filled with hard-working people who adhere to traditional values, not like those degenerate urbanites on welfare, but the economic and social reality doesn't match this self-image.

The Farm Bill alone pours billions of Bongo Bucks into fly-over country every year. Some goes to the sub-GED residents, I suppose. Not much of it, I'd wager.

Speaking of Traditional Values, aka Antebellum envy, there's more in the paper on Tradition (full-throated Tevye in the background) today.

A Right Wing judge takes on the Supreme's Right Wing folks.

Scores of decisions, including ones from every avowed originalist justice, have relied on post-ratification traditions, as Sherif Girgis, a law professor at Notre Dame, demonstrated in a comprehensive exploration of the topic published last year in The New York University Law Review.

"Though increasingly dominant in this originalist court's opinions," he wrote, "the method has no obvious justification in originalist terms."

If you don't, or can't (too many free looks or no subscription), read the piece, it's about the difference between what "originalist" means and what "traditionalist" means and why using the former to cover up doing the latter is naughty. We read and hear the former offered as justification for all sorts of nonsense, but, it turns out, the real thrust of an argument is that progressive/woke/Blue/Democratic policies destroy "traditional values". And what might they be? Almost entirely the desire of the rural, poor, unhealthy, uneducated sub-GED chuckleheads to force the other 80% (yes, those rural Yahoos are no more than 20% of the USofA) of us to live like they do. Among those were the quotes from a 13th century judge and 17th century 'law'. As if anyone at those times knew anything about medicinal chemistry (yes, there is such a thing).

And, for good measure, the report goes on to quote Justice Breyer from a forthcoming book:

"The public's methods for managing their affairs will need to change with the circumstances," Justice Breyer wrote. "The judge's job is not to read literally those constitutional provisions written 250 years ago without regard to such changes."

Well, let's party like it's 1829!!!

You vote for autocrats, well OK. But don't come bitching at those of us who know better, when you find you've not got a pot to piss in, nor a window to throw it out of thanks to the pols you keep voting for, keeping the 1% fat and happy.

Cui Bono - part the second

Well, the NYT (via The Athletic, which while 'together' in print doesn't show up on the NYT web site?), reports on the Tennessee/Virginia suit to unfetter the NIL scam; mostly benefiting Red State Schools foobah and hoops programs.

Which brings us to the title's question: who'll benefit from openly paid athletes (not, anymore, student-athletes)? The suit is brought on behalf of those two states' public universities, as one might expect from Red State administrations. On the one hand, some small portion of these foobah and hoops kids can get rich. On the other hand, if this case is upheld and national (which the reporting says it would be) in scope, then we'll see the destruction of most inter-collegiate college athletics. Why MAD? Simply because all those Billy Bob's with extra moolah from their carwashes and other endeavors will pile money into the Power Conference teams, and leave the rest with no way to compete for above average athletes. And the rich will get richer, just because these schools will, inevitably, be the beneficiaries of post-season tournament largesse as well since they will be winners in conference play.

Corruption in a wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 universe. Just what we need.

But there is, may be, a positive to all this corruption. The have nots - smallish state schools and private schools, will in due time finally realize that pouring money into arenas and coach salaries and the other festoons of semi-pro athletics is a complete waste. They can then go back to treating inter-collegiate sports as the dessert of academia, and not the entree. And, in doing so, will turn out graduates who rightly value learning and brains over touchdowns and dunks.

Kind of win-win: the dummies waste four or five years deluded into thinking StateU sports will turn them into multi-million dollar draft picks, while the graduates of schools that shun the bait-and-switch scam turn out graduates who actually know something of value. Blue states crush Red states, just like the First Civil War. There's a reason Boeing can't get a working 787 out of South Carolina. he he he

And, of course, should this unfettering of NIL be upheld all the way to the Supremes, there'll be a knock-on effect in professional sports, foobah and hoops in particular. Professional sports organizations widely enforce revenue sharing and salary caps. Those will be held to be, as well, in violation of antitrust laws. And, once again, cui bono? As before, the rich will get richer, the poor die off. The so-called small market teams will wither and die, as they should since they never should have been created in the first place. Many, if not all, will, again in due time, be replaced by additional teams in large population centers just as was true before the 707.

By The Numbers - part the forty eighth

"Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me!" just finished up, and ran some of their usual non-commercials, of which BritBox was one. And said blurb listed "Death in Paradise" as a reason to pony up the moolah. Fortunately, one can watch the show, somewhat delayed, on PBS; at least so far. According to the wiki there are 8 regular episodes per season/year and for the last 3 years, a Christmas special; a Christmas murder does sound a bit macabre, of course.

That works out to be 9 murders per year. Now, the population of the fictional Saint Marie is said to be about 10,000. The audience doesn't know how many other murders happen in the remaining 43 weeks of the year, but what's the number of murders, and population, of the real island, Guadeloupe, where the show is produced? Enquiring minds needs to know.

Population - 378,561 (2024)
Murders - 45 (2015)

Saint Marie murder rate (not annualized) 9/10,000 = .09%
Saint Marie murder rate (annualized, assuming of course that the citizens are always bloodthirsty) 52/10,000 = .52%

Guadeloupe murder rate = .01%

Just don't set foot in Saint Marie!!

By The Numbers - part the forty seventh

Now that Orange Jesus has embarked on his latest Grift with gold plated (yeah, right) kicks at $399, let's run a few numbers, shall we?

Back in the old days, I knew some folks in small business, who imparted the rule-of-thumb of small business (and TTO is certainly no more than that):
⅓ to materiel
⅓ to labor
⅓ to owners

According to the latest tally, Orange Jesus is on the hook, in toto, for $600,000,000. So, at best, Orange Jesus pockets $133 per each pair. So, class, how many gold plated kicks does he need to shift in order to cover the vig?

Well, $600,000,000 / $133 comes out to - 4,511,278 pairs of kicks. Are there that many sub-GED rubes just itching for a pair of gold plated kicks? Only The Shadow knows.

By The Numbers - part the forty sixth

Well, I suppose I should 'fess up: there's only one show on HBO that I care about, that's John Oliver late Sunday night. And, due to the strike, there wasn't much of John for a while, thus when he returned it was only a few weeks, then went to hiatus. Last night was the Grand Return. And, of course, he ended the episode with a bang.

The late-night host John Oliver has offered to pay Clarence Thomas $1m annually — as well as give him a $2m tour bus — if the Republican judge resigns from the US supreme court.

Color me blown away. Takes that New Zealand bird mugging up a notch or two.

The very last minute or two of the show. He made it a point of telling us, including Uncle Clarence if he's watching, that the dough is Oliver's not HBO's. Now, naturally, there's a (just near?) 0% chance that Oliver will have to cough up the dough. Oliver's point, naturally, is that the hypocrisy of Uncle Clarence's public statements about just being a Regular Joe Sixpack who prefers to hang out with other Regular Joe Sixpacks rather than The Elites is tangible. As Oliver showed, Uncle Clarence early on declared that his goal was "to be rich". Naturally, Uncle Clarence's cabal of billionaires will now just front (well, more likely back-door) him the cool $1,000,000, lest his greed overtake his animus for the hoi-polloi, and stall their plan for MARF^™(party like it's 1829). No one needs no education to walk behind a horse-plow and make lots of babies!! We still gots lots of Indians out West to kill!

A More Modest Proposal

High schoolers, current and former, are well aware of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal", yes? Well, later time, different place, but time for another.

Now that the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts have impeached Mayorkas for not following their policy demands (not exactly a high crime or misdemeanor), whatever they may be at the transitory whim of Orange Jesus, there has been room for Another Modest Proposal to solve the immigrant-at-the-border-problem all along. Herewith.

Send a regiment to the Rio Grande, and set up machine gun nests every hundred yards or so, mow done the miscreants as they cross the border (it's in the middle of the river, in case you didn't know). Their lifeless bodies will just float on down to the Gulf of Mexico (kinda, sorta sending them back to where they came from). Or, may be snipers, which would be cheaper, one migrant, one bullet. Problem solved. The ghost of Swift would be proud.

The Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts certainly hasn't come up with anything more effective, and, at the behest of the Orange Jesus, killed (he he) the carefully negotiated pact (which is very un-Democratic, i.e. the Sleepy Joe Party caved to the MARF^™* brigade) to address the issue.

* - Make America Redneck Forever

Bitch, Bitch, Bitch

These days, the sports pundits (kind of an oxymoron, if ya tink about it for a second) have been bitching about how high the scoring has been this year, and a few recent. Well, they're ignorant morons. If you're old enough to remember, or smart enough to look it up, you can see that during the middle of the Celtics Dynasty (to pick a time-point at random), 1960, the average was 118. It stayed at or above 110 until the 1971 season. And, lo and behold, fell like a rock when the 3-pointer was imported from the ABA. Thankfully, not that hideous ball. It hasn't come close since.

Welfare for the Rich: The American Way

There is an old saying, presented a few ways, in the econ bidnezz - "The tragedy of the commons"; that doc, by the bye, isn't from some aggro-Woke cabal, but Harvard Business School. So there! Point 5 in the doc is, surprise, all about groundwater. Didn't take long to find it. Being Taxachusetts born and raised, 'commons' always has resonated as 'Boston Common', and does have some history. In the bad olde days, the Common was used as a common pasture for livestock. You can guess what happened.

During the 1630s, the Common was used by many families as a cow pasture. This traditional use for a commons quickly ended when the large herds kept by affluent families led to overgrazing and the collapse of the Common as pastureland.

So, today we find out that another New England state's administration, decided to cave to Big Bidnezz, aka Poland Spring and siblings:

Mainers don't want Poland Spring to lock our communities into bad deals, and certainly not bad deals that last for decades.
--Margaret M. O'Neil (D, Saco)

This situation isn't new, by the way. It got a mention in these here parts way back in 2015. Once Nestle got a hold of Poland Spring, the aggression really ramped up. One suit.

The rich get richer and the poor have kids. And, who cares about the kids and grandkids and so on? Yeah, we're gonna leave them a burnt out cinder of a planet? Party like it's 1829!!

Pot Meet Kettle

You've heard it, right? "That's the pot calling the kettle black?" Some, the yunguns especially, may interpret that as some kind of racial slur. I suppose some might even try to use it that way, but that's not where the meme comes from. In days of olde, when knights were bold, cooking was down on a hearth, aka, a rig in the front of the household fireplace. Any vessel that was used turned black on the exterior, of course. So, both pots and kettles acquired that same patina of grime. It's now used as a meme for hypocrisy.

Well, good ole Rick Pitino says that college Hoop Players should live with a 'salary' cap. At least in the Big Conference schools. Is Coach Rick worried about having to field a team from year to year, certain that if he lands a diamond in the rough as a frosh, he'll skedaddle after March Madness has run its course? You betcha.

Pitino took to social media and suggested there should be a salary cap between $1.5 million and $2 million for the Big East and Power Five conferences when it comes to basketball.

Well, why not just slide all the way down the slippery slope:
- no limit on years of 'eligibility', thus sub-NBA stars can keep getting their dough from StateU after StateU until they're 35 or so
- no requirement to actually attend classes
- no limit on sources and amounts of NIL funds

NCAA has been the minor leagues for foobah and hoops, and more recently bazebah, for decades. Will college sports be any 'better' with the fig leaf torn off? Well, the bettors might like it.

Watery Grave

Recently I saw an oldish shoot 'em up, set in and around present day (1967) Los Angeles, with Lee Marvin as the anti-hero, "Point Blank". Rather good movie. One of the shootings happens in Los Angeles in what looks like a 300 foot (or so, at the top) wide empty concrete ditch. I found out that this concrete ditch is actually the Los Angeles River. I assumed that in times (way) past, this was a natural river and that the concrete ditch was merely poured into the existing course. Who knew?

Well, natives have always known, of course. However, what with the Noah-esque rain the past few days, photos of the half-full, or thereabouts, waterway have been popping up all over the place. Here's one example.

My sister, et al, are farther south near San Diego, where the onslaught has been kinder.

By The Numbers - part the forty fifth

If you're enamored of real car racing, aka Formula 1, not that 'drive straight, turn left' stupidity that is NASCAR, then you've also heard that The Hammer is going Italian. How will this likely turn out? My take: not well.

First, there is the problem of who's First driver? Leclerc ain't likely to say, 'have at it matey', now is he? Will Ferrrari always give The Hammer the bestest car? May be; after all, Leclerc ain't done all that well, either.

Second, is it reasonable for a 40 year (geezer time in F1, BTW) to win the Championship? Not so much. Here's the list of the oldest ones. Only 3 have been 40+, and that last was 1966. How many races in that season? Just 9, and the other 40+ driver seasons were either 7 or 8 races. Fangio won it 5 times (the table is odd, in that it lists 1954 twice, because Fangio changed teams in mid season), but only once in a 9 race season. Next year: 24, the longest season yet. Make no mistake, driving a F1 racer isn't something Ralph Kramden could do.

Third, Ferrari has been trailing Red Bull and Mercedes forever, so why assume that they'll leap frog both in this, the final 2 years of the formula? Seems unlikely. Then, 2026 brings a new formula (said to be very different from the current), and again, Ferrari is pitching from behind second base. Again. The Hammer will be 41 when the next formula is in force. It's always taken some seasons for teams to figure out the loopholes in the formula, so how old will The Hammer be by then? 43? 44? And for those in the know, a few years back (2019) FIA finally caught Ferrari driving a truck through the regs (they did well for a few seasons, but didn't get a championship).

It appears that The Hammer has been too clever by half.

By The Numbers - part the forty fourth

Rut Roh!! It's reported that the Arab-American, (read? Muslim community?) isn't happy with Sleepy Joe's tepid support for their cause in Gaza.

Number of Arab-Americans - 1,698,570

Number of Jewish-Americans - 7,150,000

Number of Muslim-Americans - 4,500,000

Number of Christian Arab-Americans - not a tidy figure, might be 1,000,000 or might be 2,300,000

Not that any group can reliably be defined as monolithic, but it don't look good for the Palestinian supporters. And that's just a few minutes of letting my Fingers do the Walking Through the Yellow Googles. Pretty much means the full reality is much murkier. Orange Jesus, as usual, will find a way to leverage his hypocrisy to capture the brain limited sub-groups.

By The Numbers - part the forty third

A report to make Gov. DeMented pleased as punch.

In Europe, reported measles cases rose more than 40-fold last year compared with 2022, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

We don't need no jabs!!! If God said we did, we would do it. But he doesn't and we won't! Party like it's 1829!!!

As if this sort of scourge wasn't predicted by the folks who know about disease and vaccines. Idiots are running ever more of the planet.

"We actually knew this was going to happen, so it's not news for us," Dr. Crowcroft said of Europe's rise in measles cases.

"There are times when there's absolutely no pleasure in being right, and this is one of those."

Who Dun It - part the first

Just a short note. Real short. Since the Max9 door plug blow-out on that Alaska plane (Alaska has had its own case of shoddy maintenance), there've been contradictory reports about whose employees last fiddled with said plug. Early on the finger was pointed at Boeing workers in Renton, then reporting that, yes it happened at Renton, but the workers were from Spirit (no explanation why they were in Renton in the first place, but it sure looks like they were/are there), now reporting just says Boeing in Renton.

One more case of McDonnell-itis?? Enquiring minds need to know.

Boeing Boeing - part the fifteenth

Well, I find more confirmation laying Boeing's screwups at the feet of the "acquired" McDonnell-Douglas. This has been an open secret, among those in touch with airplane manufacture, ever since the buyout/merger/takeover.

What got lost in all this shuffling is a corporate culture that once prized engineering and safety, replaced by one that seemed to be more focused on delivering profits over perfection. The Boeing community in Seattle has been vocal about attributing this slide to the acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, whose leaders took over Boeing's top jobs and reshaped the culture around cost control.

As the old saying goes, "you're not thief until you get caught". May be the 787/737 fiascos will be the slap in the head that fixes things? Nah.

X (not, nee Twitter) Marks the Nightmare

It should not be novel to hear from me that XML is the devil's spawn. It might be novel to read a lengthy (more or less)post mortem of a major IT scandal on-going in the UK. Not much in USofA news, but has been around since I subscribed to "The Guardian". In a nutshell: some years ago, The Royal Mail was partially privatized, and eventually the Post Office system was computerized. In the UK, there are some 14,000 post offices, some large proportion of which are just counters in some small business in some village run by that small business owner. When all this shifting happened, back in the late 1990's, it was decided to computerize said 'offices' with a centralized system. The datastore of record is Oracle.

The origins of what is called Horizon is convoluted, but began with a software contract with a (no longer extant) company called ICL, now part of Fujitsu; the latter very much in the dock, as the Brits say.

Here's where it gets interesting. Almost immediately, Horizon began dunning small business owners of Post Office locations with account shortfalls, i.e. theft from the Post Office. Many were convicted and sent to prison and some committed suicide. Yes, you read that last bit correctly.

The linked paper goes into much detail about the debacle, but the interesting (at a technical, not social, level) bit is that these chuckleheads who coded Horizon built it on Oracle and XML!!! This at the time when using XML was rudimentary; kind of like servlets in raw java before myriad frameworks.

Great idea!! Mix relational with hierarchical!!! What could possibly go wrong?

Basically, everything.

Because Legacy Horizon was developed before the use of XML became widespread, Attribute Grammars fulfilled this function [not yet implementations of XML Schema] in Legacy Horizon.

Yeah, just a bunch of un-verified character strings. What could possibly go wrong?

If you're still interested, much more reporting continues.

Cui Bono - part the first

Well, at long last the Newspaper of Record, aka NYT, has fessed up that macro is tough to do. And twice on the same (dead trees version) day. One says that macroeconomics blew it, while the second says that inflation is down again.

They're both interesting reads, so I commend them to you.

Macro is tough to do for two related reasons: 1) almost no macro data is census, but samples and 2) it's in the interest of Big Players to spin what data is available to suit their agenda. We saw that sort of shit from Gov. DeMented during Covid. If you ever believed that the experience in FL was as asserted by Gov. DeMented and his henchmen, there's a really historic bridge from Brooklyn ripe for sale. And, of course, there's the case of Orange Jesus and his $10 billion net worth.

The first report does, more or less, get to the heart of the matter: economists, as most data wonks, predict from past data and experience, even when the events driving current experience have no precedent in the available historical data. Covid disruption, to put it nicely, is most closely modeled on the Spanish Flu pandemic (and, no, it didn't come from Spain). Any data from more than a century ago, even if the macro folks looked at it, would be structurally irrelevant to today.

So, why did the macro wonks claim that the Sky was sure to Fall any day now? Because they ignored the structural reality staring them in the face. The Fed had plenty of data showing that, coming out of the height of Covid, that two facts were unambiguous: households had hoarded a few trillion Bongo Bucks because so much supply had shrunk. While approaching normalcy post-Covid, it was believed that supply would ramp up. Didn't happen, in large part because so much supply is centered in China, and Xi is a xenophobic imbecile who demanded his Zero Covid, no foreign vaccine nonsense. Cui bono, anyone?

The net result has been it's taken somewhat longer to burn off that hoard of cash. Now that the tank is nearing empty, and supply is returning to pre-Covid levels... well, wattayano, supply and demand are kissing each other on the lips.

Will the Soft Landing stay on course until Election Day? Orange Jesus has said he wants, among other evil events, a great recession for Sleepy Joe at least as bad as the one that got Dubya tossed from the White House. No, he didn't explicitly mention Dubya. Likely his brain no longer remembers back that far. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he's behaving more and more like Alzheimer's Ronnie in his last days as Prez. Saints preserve us.

The Oracle of Atlanta - part the third

Well, CDC has moved JN.1 into the current-week column (full data, not estimate) of the data set, and it's now shown as 42.1% and a bit lower than the first published (estimated) value of 44.2%. Aren't stats wonderful?

By The Nmbers - part the forty second

Oh my! The Orange Jesus has run up a new bill for shooting off his mouth - $83,000,000.

Way back when he lost the first Carroll case to the tune of $5,000,000. In that case, he set to appeal and had to post a 110% bond, or $5,500,000.

If past is precedent, then 110% of $83,000,000 is a whopping $91,300,000!!! That takes a hurtful chunk out of his asserted $400,000,000 in pocket cash. I guess we'll find out if he really does have that much folding green. Or, may be, he'll go begging to this sub-GED knuckledraggers to pay his bill. As he always has.

By The Numbers - part the forty first

Now that Gov. DeMented has slunk off stage extreme-right, he can go back to book burning in sub-GED Florida. His own peaceable Kingdom. He, and his sub-GED acolytes, know that ya don't need no book larnin to walk behind a plow and make babies! We'll still party like it's 1829! So far, I think, he's only able to degrade public schools; the private ones can do so at their leisure. But what's the scope of private 'schools' in FLA?

Some data from the State, which is aggregated

Total enrollment in private schools - 445,067
Private schools - 2,556
Christian - 515 (80,291)
Jewish - 55 (12,231)
Non-sectarian - 968 (they don't tell us)
Montessori - 166 (15,869)

And, oh yeah, the knuckledraggers of PragerU have full reign in Gov. DeMented's state. Party like it's 1829!!

What? Me worry? I forget

There's been years, if not decades, of conflict between PhARMA and the Rest of Us over the contribution to new drugs by the Damn Gummint and academia and other NGOs. One study found 100% of new drugs over a decade or so were based on foundational findings from that group. In other words, drug companies steal from the commons. Of course they do.

Overall, NIH funding contributed to research associated with every new drug approved from 2010-2019, totaling $187 billion.

So, as you might expect here, comes yet another research finding from academia that drug companies will attempt to leverage without sharing the fruits. We'll see. May be drug companies will hope we forget?

The study from Dr Nicholas Ashton, of the University of Gothenburg, and colleagues is published in the Jama Neurology journal.

America The Bountiful

Only in America. Well, one would hope. Rednecks unite!

A Kentucky state lawmaker and 2018 winner of the television competition Survivor had to hastily scrap a proposed measure that — if approved — would have unintentionally legalized sex between first cousins.

And, if you believe it was "unintentional", then there's a bridge in Brooklyn you'll just love to buy.

Music Lesson

If you're into CD music, from way back, and eschew things like streaming and such, you're in for a surprise. I sure as shit have been. New Beethoven symphonies are generally dismissed as a waste of time. But, then, I read this piece which mentions the set from Osmo Vanska and the Minnesota Orchestra. He/it sounded familiar, so off I went to let my fingers do the walking through the Yellow Googles.

Much praise from most everywhere. The 4/5 and 2/7 discs arrived today, and they're mind blowing. Not that they are Beethoven as has never been heard before; I'm not giving away my Kleiber 5/7 any time soon.

But these discs do represent something that has been possible since the dawn of the CD: dynamic range as would be heard in a concert hall. The Red Book dynamic range is in the realm of 100db, but most CDs are compressed to all get out. These, the ones I have in hand but it's safe to say the entire set, are anything but. If you normally set your volume control to, say 10 o'clock, expect to set to midnight. If you don't the piano moments will be nearly inaudible. OTOH, be prepared to hold on to your hat during the crescendos. You will test not only your ears, but the quality of your phones and/or speakers.

Vanska also follows the recent Del Mar edition, so you will hear a slightly different symphony.

By The Numbers - part the fortieth

As I type this, the future whereabouts of Bill Belichick aren't public. I am among, what I suppose is, a minority here in snowed-in New England in that I've little use for the man. The sports pundits have been cumming all over themselves for years proclaiming him the GOAT of not just foobaahh coaches, but all head honchos in all sports. Horse shit.

Here's the number:
without Brady - 84 and 103

Yeah, that's genius. Some claim that, at least, he's the guy who got Brady. Well, not so much. He wasn't actually the GM, after all.

Brady - 199th pick in sixth round
Belichick is widely regarded as a genius for turning lead into gold, but few ever ask the obvious question: why was it that Bill ignored Brady for 5 rounds, too? Could it be that 199 was a 'what have we got to lose' toss away pick? Or did he believe the meh Combine numbers same as everybody else? Enquiring minds need to know.

A GOAT foobaahh coach gets more wins out of a roster than their revealed talent warrants. Bill ain't ever come close to that. If he were such a coaching guru, he'd have turned Bledsoe into Brady. He wouldn't have stunk out the joint after Tom Terrific went South.

The Oracle of Atlanta - part the second

Well, CDC has moved JN.1 into the near-week column of the data set, and it's now shown as 38.8% and the upper PI limit just a tick higher than the first published value of 44.2%. Aren't stats wonderful?

RIP TGIF

One of life's guilty pleasures was watching Anthony Bourdain traipse around the world, reveling in local food, quite often street offerings. At various times, he drew not laudatory comparisons with what he ate there to American equivalents; the American versions he lumped into the category "TGI McFunster's". I admit that in times past I and the little woman spent time at one of those establishments, but not for the food and/or drink, but the satellite video trivia. Don't recall the name of it, alas.

But now we find the list of locations being axed, some here in The Land of Steady Habits. What's surprising is that the one in this shithole town is spared, but the one in the tonier town of Newington is not; off with its head. A puzzlement. The same seems true of the dead ones in Taxachusetts; they're among the nicer suburbs of Boston. One/only in Columbia, MD is also listed. For those not in the know, Columbia was/is a semi-ritzy 'planned community' attached to Washington. When I was a Fed, Columbia was a town for the upper-crust bureaucrat. Hard times have fallen?

It's Gander Time

Sleepy Joe is scheduled to give a speech later today and according to reports it's to tell the USofA that Orange Jesus and his cabal are a threat to democracy and so forth. Pussy Prose. May haps there is an alternative?

Perhaps the better approach is to tell us that if Orange Jesus gets his way with SCOTUS, whatever they say about Orange Jesus applies to Sleepy Joe, too.

Orange Jesus asserts:
1 - there was no insurrection
2 - but even if there were, POTUS is immune from prosecution
3 - what he said early on, "I have to the right to do whatever I want as president" really is true and for all POTUS

If SCOTUS rules that such is the case, then Sleepy Joe does have the authority, through Executive Order, to find Orange Jesus unfit to be on any ballot. Orange Jesus is toast, and there's not a thing he can do about it.

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Retribution's a bitch.

May haps Sleepy Joe will reveal a set of truck nuts banging against his thighs, not the pair of wrinkled raisins he's demonstrated to date.

By The Numbers - part the thirty ninth

Well, Happy New Year. And, since this is likely the most important year in the history of the USofA since 1861, let's look at some of the numbers which will affect the outcome.

Crooked Hilary vote total:  65,853,514 
Orange Jesus vote total:    62,984,828

Sleepy Joe vote total:   81,283,501 
Orange Jesus vote total: 74,223,975 

~7,000,000 more for Sleepy Joe, but ~5,000,000 came in CA. Electoral College - Boo!!

%-age of GDP from Sleepy Joe counties:    71%
%-age of GDP from Orange Jesus counties:  29% 

Sleepy Joe support from the sub-GED crowd:    28%
Orange Jesus support from the sub-GED crowd:  35%

Blue state Federal dependency:  12.4% 
Red state Federal dependency:   22.6% 

[remember those Congresscritters from Red states crowing about Damn Gummint aid to them, which they voted against?] Education: Red states are dumb as a sack of hair. (Select BA or higher.) jobs - Covid-19 skews both numbers

Sleepy Joe new jobs:   13.2 million 
Orange Jesus new jobs:  5.2 million  

Sleepy Joe baksheesh:           $0 
Orange Jesus baksheesh: $7,800,000 (at least)

Sleepy Joe's favorite teeVee show:    "How The Universe Works"
Orange Jesus's favorite teeVee show:  "Swamp People"