Category: Uncategorized

Post #2094: Eighty pounds and no further progress.

 

After losing a total of 80 pounds, at a steady rate of five pounds a month, my weight loss has stopped.

I reached 205 in the middle of January.  I still weigh about that.  I have not yet glimpsed 200 on the scale.

 

Is this because:

A)  In some mysterious and unspecified way I have permanently slowed my metabolism by dieting, and thus am now doomed never to reach “normal” weight of 185 pounds? Do I simply now have a slow metabolism?

B) My body simply wants to be 205 pounds.  (Though, if so, I wish it had spoken up sooner.)  And so, nothing I could ever stand to do will ever get my weight below that “natural” level.  I am now doomed never to reach a “normal” weight of 185 pounds?  Am I simply “naturally fat”?

OR …

C) I’ve been eating too much.

After checking with the oracle, all indications point to C.

Edit 3/5/2025:  Weight loss resumed when I stopped eating too much. I’m now under 200 pounds and on track for a target weight of 185 sometime around the end of May. 

Teaspoons are tablespoons, and other things that suck about dieting.

Above, that’s a 300 calorie peanut butter sandwich.  It consists of a slider roll (about 3″ in diameter) and two tablespoons of peanut butter.  I know the sandwich contains exactly two level tablespoons of peanut butter, because I took the time to measure it.

The peanut butter is the thin brown line barely visible between the two halves of the roll.

I was appalled by this sandwich.  First, by how little peanut butter that was.  But mostly, by how much peanut butter I had been routinely using, of late, when I made one of those freehand, without measuring anything.

And as goes peanut butter, so go most of the portions I’ve been eyeballing.

A common teaspoon, in the silverware drawer, is typically about a tablespoon, in terms of its capacity.  My coffee cup (mug) is more than two “coffee cups” worth of coffee.  My smallest soup bowl, comfortably full, holds about a bowl-and-a-half, as calorie lists typically equate “a bowl of soup” to mean an 8-ounce cup.

I knew all of that, intellectually.  But, somehow, of late, I’d been turning a blind eye to it.

Funny how your mind will play tricks on you.

Particularly if you want it to.

Recalibrating and downshifting

I have committed that most basic sin of long-term weight loss, portion creep.  This is such a common thing that essentially all guides to long-term weight loss tell you to guard against it.  If you don’t routinely measure everything, then once in a while you need to do that, if only to remind yourself of what the portions of food should be, to match the calorie counts you’re using.

To be clear, portion creep doesn’t occur at random.  It has not, for example, inflated the amount of lettuce I eat weekly.  I have not suddenly been faced with a large weekly bill for cabbage or cucumbers.

Instead, the fact that portion creep only occurs for high-calorie, typically high-fat foods, tells me that this is not simply sloppiness.  It’s my brain, working to sabotage me.

And so, for a week or two, I’ll be measuring out “the good stuff”, meaning, energy-dense foods.  Things that are high in fat, mostly, but also starches.  Just enough to remind myself of what the actual portions are, that correspond to the calorie counts I’ve been using.

It’s also worth nothing that the problem items are energy-dense foods that don’t naturally come in fixed quantities.  Of which peanut butter and salad dressing are the poster children.  But also including cheese, meat, and some soups.

In the end, this is just the flip side of the volumetrics approach to dieting.  With volumetrics, you eat lots of items with low calorie density (calories per ounce).  Which boils down to non-starchy vegetables, fruits, and a smattering of other items.

More lettuce.  Less salad dressing.

It’s not rocket science.

Conclusion:  We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Source:  Amazon.

After more than a year, and 80 pounds of weight loss, my diet has ground to a halt.

I’d love to blame my metabolism.  Or my genes.  Bad luck.  Astrological sign.  Tariffs.  Republicans.

Anything but point the finger at myself.

But the fact is, weight loss at this pace is based on just a 500-calorie-per-day energy deficit.  And it doesn’t take much screw that up.  A heavy hand with a few high-calorie foods will do it.

So, maybe this is the end of my weight loss.  Maybe not.  Maybe these excess calories are merely the symptom of my body finally getting tired of losing weight.  Maybe I won’t be able to stand going back to a true 1500 calories a day or so.

There’s only one way to find out.  And that’s to be strict about everything I eat, for a while, and see if the weight loss picks back up.  Or see if I’ve reached the end of my diet.

Post #2093: Explaining Trump trade policy. This one secret changes everything!

 

The Wall Street Journal characterized the Trump tariffs on Canada and Mexico this way:

That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?

In this post, I’m going to explain what the WSJ and more-or-less all other professional economists are getting wrong about this issue.

This one trick insight changes everything.

The WSJ editorial page may have been a bit blunter than some.  But it’s a fair reflection of informed opinion on this topic.  It’s almost no exaggeration to say that everyone with any professional interest in economics, international trade, or foreign affairs has been baffled by the reasoning behind the Trump tariff proposals.

But maybe, just maybe, these tariffs are not as irrational as they have been made out to be. 

I believe that all the professionals in international trade misunderstand the simple policy logic that drives us inevitably to these tariffs.

I claim that the fundamental error that professional pundits are making is in thinking that these tariff have anything whatsoever to do with U.S. international trade policy.

The inescapable logic of the Trump tariffs.

Viewed as trade policy, these tariffs are every bit as dumb as the WSJ said.  But viewed from a different perspective, they make absolutely perfect sense.  And that’s because these tariffs aren’t Federal trade policy, they are Federal income tax policy.

Huh?

The income tax cuts from the first Trump administration are set to expire.  Depending on who’s doing the estimate, those tax cuts cost the Treasury $300B to $400B a year.  Ish.

To get them extended, without increasing the deficit, you need to find at least $300B a year to make up the loss.

And, to increase the difficulty factor, you’re a Republican, so raising a tax on anything is out of the question.

What’s the easy, no-effort way to achieve that goal of finding $300B a year, without increasing Federal tax revenues?

First, you must adamantly insist that tariffs are not taxes, and that Americans don’t pay for import tariffs.  No matter how stupid everyone who knows anything about anything says that assertion is.  You must insist that tariffs are not taxes, because you, as a modern Republican, are not allowed to raise taxes.

Next, you sort your trade partners, from high to low, in terms of dollar value of imports.  Pick a good round number like 25%.  And go down the list until 25% of the value of imports exceeds $300B.

Even though, again, anyone who knows anything about trade policy will tell you that makes no sense.  I mean, you haven’t even focused on the countries where we have the biggest trade deficit.  You haven’t (say) accounted for strategic materials, or domestic industries that depend on imported parts, or your own vulnerability to retaliatory tariffs.

Instead, you’ve sorted our trading partners by descending order of value of imports (only).

That’s literally as deep as the thinking goes.  Because that’s as deep as it needs to go, to achieve the goal.  Which, recall, is domestic income tax policy, not international trade.  And that’s because the value of imports (less reduction in demand, when the tariffs are imposed) is what determines your revenue.

Now see how far down the list you need to go, before you get your $300B a year.

Answer:  Canada, Mexico, and China.

And suddenly, the entire two-part “policy” snaps into focus.

These tariffs have nothing to do with trade policy, America’s position in the world, or anything else that a reasonable person might consider.

Instead, look at what this policy consists of:

 Part 1:  You must keep insisting that tariffs are not taxes, because you are not allowed to use the t-word, as a Republican.  This part of the policy is required, because the goal is to raise Federal revenues significantly without saying the t-word (taxes).  So everybody has to agree that tariffs are not taxes, and that Americans do not pay their cost.  Even though everybody who knows anything about international trade will tell you that’s incorrect.

Part 2:  Target countries not in terms of our trade deficit with them, or other practical considerations like impact on U.S. industry, but solely in terms of the value of what we import from them.  And that, too, makes sense, because import volume is what determines your tariff revenue, less the reduction in demand that will occur once prices rise in response to the tariff).

Why is it now 25% each for Mexico and Canada, and 10% for China? My guess is, that’s because that’s when they hit the required projection of tariff revenues that they need. Why are we now talking about tariffs on everything, from all countries, characterized now as “reciprocal tariffs”? Best guess, the revenue target has changed, or the estimated revenues from the existing tariffs have changed.

Conclusion

Sometimes it’s difficult for really bright people to understand how not-so-bright people think.  Or for those with expert knowledge to understand the rank amateur.

If the Trump tariffs appear divorced from any rational thinking about international trade, that’s because they are.

But from the Trump administration standpoint, that’s not a bug, that’s a feature.  That doesn’t mean that they were done at random, or that they were otherwise harmless.  Merely that trade policy was not the point.

Instead, import tariffs are simply a) a potentially large source of revenue that b) you can claim is not a tax.  From that perspective, this two-part policy makes perfectly good logic.  If not much sense.

It’s only a bit of a poetic justice that you get to keep your tax cuts largely favoring the wealthy, by substituting tariffs whose burden falls disproportionately on the poor (for the simple reason that the rich have a high rate of savings.) 

Thus, the secret to understanding the logic of the Trump tariffs is that trade policy is just an innocent bystander.   If what you really care about is extending tax cuts, then, eh, if your solution messes up North American manufacturing for the next decade or so, so be it.  

Republicans have agreed to hold hands, close their eyes, and claim that import tariffs are not taxes on Americans.  And ignore how badly this screws up big chunks of U.S. manufacturing, starting with automobiles.

And, ka-ching, there’s the free $300B in revenue you need to extend the existing tax cuts.

Which is what really matters.

Wonky addendum:

Note, by the way, that if this goes through — if those tariffs are counted as revenue, against the Treasury’s losses from the tax cuts, then …

… well, back in the day, when rules still existed in the Federal government, then those tariffs would be permanent.  Or, at least, as permanent as the tax cuts that they funded.

(This, from PAYGO, originally developed around 1990, and, as of 2019, fully in force in both the House and the Senate.  Any legislation passed by the Congress had to be paid for by a combination of tax increases and spending cuts, unless an exception is made, by a supermajority vote.  Here’s a rather complicated explanation from Wikipedia.)

I’m not sure how this would work, under PAYGO, as the tariffs are not based on legislation.  But I would bet that there’s a way for Republicans to claim the money, as they extend the Trump tax cuts.

So, to be clear, this is once again completely unlike normal tariff policy.  If these are put into place, and Republicans (at least mentally) count the revenue against the losses from the tax cuts, then these tariffs must be, for all intents and purposes, permanent.

Luckily (?), there appear to be no rules whatsoever governing the Federal government now.  So we don’t have to worry about these becoming permanent.

Post 2092: These are a few of my favorite things.

 

These are three things that I try to bring to mind, as I read the news, and the Trump Takeover unfolds.

I take it as given that the reader knows this Presidential transition is not normal.

And that breaking stuff is easy.

In order, my three main points of reality-based comfort are:

The Fed

Source:  Via Wikipedia, “By AgnosticPreachersKid – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6282818”.

It makes a nice mantra.

I chant that, in my mind, to calm the jumpies that I get, whenever I start thinking about who now has access to what, where, within the computer system that literally makes U.S. Government payments.

Sure, they’ve let the barbarians into the Treasury, and while that opens the door to all kinds of potential mischief and avoidable security issues, I should stay focused on the dollar.  Because everything I own is denominated in those.

So, who makes (creates) the dollar anyway?  And, likewise, who runs the banking system?

The answer I come up with is the Fed. Not Treasury.

At which point I breathe a sigh of relief.  And try to fix that fact firmly in my head.  The (security of) the dollar depends on the Fed, not the Treasury.

At least for now.  I think.

This, despite the Treasury being tasked with creating the physical tokens we exchange as money, in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.  But a) don’t confuse that with real money, and b) they do that, in effect, under license and control of the Fed, as the bills themselves are Federal Reserve Notes.  It’s why even the lowly $1 bill has a unique serial number on it.

Global warming

The science there is pretty good.  We’ve got a handle on the major trends, under a business-as-usual scenario.  No shortage of credible warnings.

Without a doubt, the pro-fossil-fuel, anti-renewable, climate-change head-in-the-sand posture of the Republican party, at this moment in time, will eventually stand out as having been spectacularly dumb.

Even if I’m an optimist on this — a position that does not come naturally to me — and assume we’ll eventually get a handle on climate change, our descendants will curse us for at least the easily-avoidable costs we now impose.

Better not to burn it.  If you can avoid it.  That’s the minimal answer to fossil fuels.

By that lowest-bar criterion, Republican global warming policy flunks.

Science ain’t going nowhere.  All this anti-science nonsense, in the long run, all of that loses. 

It may take a while.  But it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.

Medicare?

 

I read where Musk’s Team was going to identify fraud in the Medicare program.

I’ve been around Medicare most of my professional life. FWIW.  So this was a very comfortable topic for me.

And I said, fraud in Medicare?  I’d bet you can find some. 

There always has been, always will be, fraud in Medicare.

Ideally, you’d like to keep it to minimum. As would any insurer.  Or any sane individual, for that matter.

My point being that it’s not as if this issue of fraud has passed unnoticed.

To the contrary.  I can vaguely recall the Medicare program having, effectively, competitions among contractors, to see who could flag the most fraud.  And I vaguely recall that IBM and Watson itself took on this task, at some point.  But without anything much happening.  My memory or not, there’s too much money to be made in stopping it, if nothing else.

Thus, I see a proposal to throw de-identified Medicare claims data up against the latest AI, and … see what sticks?

Not a bad idea. 

I’d be surprised if it hasn’t already been tried. Twice over.  Perhaps Musk has access to a “better” AI?  Perhaps the Medicare claims processors were behind the times?  Or perhaps not. Or maybe it doesn’t matter, or the problem remains ill-suited to AI.

In any case, fraud in Medicare claims.  Been there.  Done that.

I’d bet they’re going to find some.

But no more than anybody else.

But if so, that would be reassuringly normal.  Everybody takes a hack at fraud in Medicare.  To the point where I’m pretty sure there ain’t no low-hanging fruit.  Or not much.

But I recall that Medicare got stung badly, recently, by a novel scam that involved buying up dying DME suppliers, and thereby obtaining the existing DME suppliers’ licensure (registration?) with the Medicare program.   Whoever bought up those dying DME businesses then abused that portfolio of strategically purchased DME suppliers’ credentials.  A lot. Billed the fill-in-the-profanity-here out of them.

Then, last I heard, successfully skedaddled with the cash. 

A notable black eye for Medicare, at the very least. That’s where I lost the thread.  But that’s a novel and well-thought-out scam.  Perhaps that was a one-off.

Separately, when you get right down to it, this Administration knows a thing or two about Medicare fraud.  Here’s a Washington Post article about the several Trump pardons of individuals convicted of serious Medicare fraud (reference).  It’s not often that you get a name to attach to a $1B Medicare fraud scheme.  In the context of “pardoned by the President”.

 

Conclusion

 

This morning, the plants in my yard are weighted down with a quarter-inch of accumulated sleet.  Meanwhile, the sleet has turned to sporadic rain.

I am sitting in front of a lit wood stove, as I write this.  Between the weather, and the way the USA is headed, I needed some fire.

Something basic.  Comforting.  But real.  Something I think I understand.

I want my life to be more along the lines of a stack of kiln-dried firewood.  And a bit less like a dumpster fire.

If that’s not too much to ask.

Post #2081: Eighty pounds and still a loser.

 

This morning I reached 205 pounds.  In my underwear, admittedly.  But it still counts.  So I’m calling it 80 pounds lost, since September 2023.  BMI is now just under 28.  If I can lose another 20 pounds, I’ll finally make it to the upper limit of “normal” weight.  Something that I honestly never thought I would ever see.

This post summarizes a few more things that I didn’t expect from losing that much weight.

And, while I’m at it, how helpful or not Google’s AI would have been, in dealing with these changes.

They are, in order:

  • My mattress is too hard.
  • My sneakers are too stiff.
  • My balance is much better.
  • My weight loss remains on trend.

My mattress is too hard

Google AI score, 50%.  Good solution, totally wrong reasoning.

I never considered body fat to be part of the overall mattress-comfort equation.  But apparently, this is well-known, at least in the sense that Google’s AI knew about it.

After a couple of months of waking up with numb patches of skin on my hips and thighs, it finally dawned on me that, together, my mattress and I have lost a lot of padding.  And, as if the AI read my mind, the addition of a 2″ memory-foam mattress topper has solved the problem of a too-hard mattress.

That said, the rest of the AI’s “reasoning” was wrong.  The problem has nothing to do with firmness — the tendency of the mattress surface to sink downwards with weight.  The firmness of the mattress is just fine.  And putting a mattress topper on doesn’t affect the firmness, and can’t fix a mattress with the wrong level of firmness for the sleeper.

It’s the level of padding on top of that structure that’s the problem.

I give the AI partial credit on this one.

My sneakers are too stiff

Google AI score, 0%.  (I’d give it a negative if I could).  On this question, Google’s AI hallucinated the reasoning and offered really bad advice.

You expect to buy new clothes when you lose a lot of weight.  And I have, right on down to my underwear.  But I didn’t expect to have to buy new shoes.

For the past couple of decades I’ve worn Nike Air Monarch shoes.  These are plain-Jane sneakers with lots of padding, heavy construction, and very thick soles with the Nike Air technology.

These were, effectively, the perfect shoe for an obese-but-active person.  The thick air-cushioned heel was more-or-less exactly what a fat person needs.

As a bonus, buying new sneakers was a no-brainer, because Nike kept these in production for decades.  I think that’s because Nike has a steady market of devoted wearers consisting of a) heavy people, and b) people who spend a lot of time on their feet, like nurses.

The thick soles were comfortably flexible for my old, 285-pound self.  But at 205, they’re like walking on padded boards.  To the point where it became almost comically difficult to, say, run on a treadmill while wearing them.

Though, to be fair, I don’t think the average purchaser of Nike Air Monarchs does a lot of running.

So, for the first time in two decades, I bought an actual running shoe.  One with lightweight construction and flexible soles.  I’ll never be a graceful runner, but running feels a lot better with a more flexible shoe.  At least I no longer have to hear “slap-slap-slap” as I plod along on a treadmill.

My balance is much better.

Google AI score:  33%.  From what I can tell, the only point it got right is that it’s easier to maintain control when you have less mass.  The rest of it appears to be imaginary.

My balance is vastly better than it was.

To test your static ability to balance, just stand on one foot.  In medical parlance, this is the “single leg stance” test.  Health care providers assume that this measures something about your neurological health.  Eyes open, hands on hips, standing on one foot, if you can’t count to five before you fall over, you’re at enhanced risk of falls.  But if you get past ten seconds, apparently, you’re good to go (reference).

Near as I can tell, at 205 pounds, I can stand on one foot until I get bored.  That was not true of my 285-pound self, to the point where Wii Fit always told me that, physically, I was ancient, because it could sense how much I wobbled around when standing on the Wii Fit scale.  At any rate, I just now stood a minute, on one foot, and while it requires concentration, it seemed like muscle fatigue would set the limit there, not balance per se.

But I think this is entirely explained by physics, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the state of my nervous system or musculature.

First, fat people — or at least those with a lot of belly fat — have a higher center of gravity.  Most of the weight I lost was from the waist up.  That, for the simple reason that I never had much fat on my legs (or arms), typical for “central obesity” in fat males.  And I had a big gut.  This means that my center of gravity is now lower.  That by itself, makes me more stable.  (Apparently, the whole story is more complex, and involves both lowering the center of gravity, and moving it closer to the spine.)

Second, I now have a better power-to-weight ratio.  By reducing my fat, the ratio of muscle mass to total weight has risen.  This means that for any given off-balance situation, I’m more likely to be able to bring myself back to an upright position.  (Crudely, 40% more power, reckoned as 285/205=~1.4.  That assumes neither loss nor gain of strength, for the muscles used for balance.)

In any case, it’s not rocket science.  Consider loading a backpack with 80 pounds of bacon, putting that on, and trying to keep your balance.  That was more-or-less the situation when I started on this course back in September 2023, compared to where I am now.

Improved balance is no surprise.  And it required no improvement in nervous system or musculature to achieve it.  It just required taking off the backpack.

My weight loss is on trend.

Google AI score:  100%.  Google simply repeats the conventional wisdom, which is that long term weight loss inevitably proceeds by fits and starts, not smoothy.

If you read about people who’ve lost a lot of weight, all you seem to hear about is how hard it eventually gets, how they plateau, how tough it is to keep the weight off.

For some reason, none of that seems to apply to me.  I have lost weight at a weirdly steady rate of 5 pounds per month.

I can only guess why I’ve had this unusual experience.

  • As I’ve lost weight, I’ve lowered my daily calorie target.
  • I monitor my diet, separately from counting calories.  Simply put, if I don’t wake up hungry, I know I ate too much the day before.
  • I eat a very simplified diet, so “cheating” isn’t really possible.

But at this point, I think that’s mostly due to having an incredibly simplified diet.  This makes it easy to keep track of how much I’ve eaten each day.  And, more importantly, it keeps me away from food that gets me off track or amps up my sense of hunger.

Breakfast is a cup of coffee with a serving of protein powder in it.

After that, I eat five (or so) 300-calorie (or so) meals a day. Typical meals include:

  • A garden salad with a nice high-fat salad dressing.  (Without the salad dressing, my body does not seem to register salad greens as any type of food, hunger-wise).
  • A bowl of frozen berries, topped with “protein pudding” (Jello no-sugar chocolate pudding mix made up using whey protein powder).  Tastes like ice cream, gives you as much protein as a quarter-pound hamburger.
  • A bowl of home-made soup of some sort.
  • Peanut butter sandwich on a “slider roll”.
  • A breaded fish filet on a slider roll.
  • A 300-calorie piece of cheese.

All of that is fine, tasty food.  None of it is stuff that leaves me begging for more.  Some of it is from-scratch cooking, some of it is disgusting mixes of chemicals (no-sugar Jello).  None of it includes a large amount of carbs at one time.

Anyway, after a lifetime of obesity, this is what works for me.  I eat a very limited diet, the upside of which is that I never have to think much about what I eat.  And, after a year-plus of this, it doesn’t even occur to me to eat something outside of that narrow range.

Nor do I crave the foods I used to eat.

Weirdly, it now feels wrong to eat a full meal, as one might at a restaurant, or over the holidays.  And from the standpoint of weight loss, that’s a really good thing.

Interestingly, when I deviate from this — over the holidays, say — it takes me the better part of a week to get back on track.  I think it’s the combination of readily-available calorie-dense foods (e.g., stuffing from the turkey), and a lot of foods rich in simple carbs (e.g., desserts) that disturb blood sugar and insulin levels and set off a fresh bout of hunger a few hours later.

Conclusion:  My diet and my new tastes evolved together.

Here I am, where I thought I’d never be:  Within striking distance of having a “normal” weight.

If I can achieve that, it’ll be for the first time since I went off to college.

I cannot say, exactly, why I’ve finally been able to lose weight.

But in the end, now that I know what it takes, I think that in the past I just under-estimated what it took to undergo sustained weight loss. It more-or-less required a complete revision of lifestyle.  Giving up alcohol was a big part of it.  Giving up refined-carb meals (e.g. spaghetti and meatballs) was part of it.  Finding a convenient fat-free protein source (whey powder) helped.  Giving up all pretense of “normal” eating patterns helped.

But the bottom line is that what and how I eat now bears almost no relation to how I lived in the past.  And, apparently, for me, that’s what it took, to get significant, sustained weight loss.

Let me emphasize how this is not like I’m a different person.  I still find all that stuff appealing.  (“That stuff” being “all those yummy foods I used to eat”.)

Hand me a Dorito right now and I’d snarf that down.  No questions asked (other than those directly related to hygiene.)

But it’s as if I no longer find that stuff compelling.  Or something.

In any case, I never even consider buying a bag of Doritos.

But that’s been gradual.  A few months into this weight loss, I might stroll the chips aisle at the Safeway occasionally, to pick up something.  But to dole it out. By the countable-small-hundreds of calories.

Later in the process, I’d stroll the aisle and buy nothing.

Now? I never go down that aisle.  Never think to do so.

Never’s a strong word.  Maybe one of those single-serving size bags at the 7-11?  There’s another habit that I’m out of.  Gotta be a couple of years since I visited a 7-11.

My change in diet and … tastes? occurred gradually.  And to some large degree, mutually.

If I’d gone from my previous diet, to how I eat now, in one step, I don’t think I could have stuck with it.

It’s very much that when I gave up my excesses with drink, I gave them up for food as well.

Either that, or I felt so crappy being sober all the time that I didn’t eat as much.

Take your pick.

The only real point here is that I didn’t clean up my act all at once.  I never “went on a diet”.  It’s just that the longer I was on this track, and the more weight I lost, the narrower and more simplified my diet got.

The bottom line is that I didn’t intend to get to this point. Things just kind of evolved.  And what you see above is (so far) the final product of that evolution.

The nice thing is that it’s not my tastes, by my cravings, that have evolved over this diet.  I progressed more-or-less by tossing the worst offenders out of my current eating habits, metabolically speaking.  And then, just vowing to drop the weight and clean my diet up further as I went a long.

I still like all that stuff I used to like.  I just don’t eat it.  And I’m fine with that.

How screwed-up is that?

If all goes well, based on the graph, I’ll achieve “normal” weight sometime late this spring.   We’ll see how it plays out.

Post #2074: Coffee chemistry Christmas, part II: Aeropress.

 

On the path to coffee snobbery, there is no better starting place than Walmart.

That’s where I just bought a made-in-USA Aeropress single-cup coffee maker.

In the end, coffee is all about chemistry.  Chemistry and physics.   Chemistry, and physics, and ruthless efficiency … and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Continue reading Post #2074: Coffee chemistry Christmas, part II: Aeropress.

Post #2047: Bitter disappointment.

 

Bad news and bitter disappointment are no strangers to me, as I get older.

In my darkest moments, I see my entire puny flash of existence as a series of failures.  Permanent and un-fixable.  I can’t turn back the clock.  That knowledge is my constant companion as I age my way to the grave.

But, looking on the bright side, with all that practice, I should be able to take the election results in stride!

And yet, I’m having a hard time doing that.

America.  This is not my country any more. Continue reading Post #2047: Bitter disappointment.

Post #2041: Think of it as evolution in action.

 

I think it’s time to face facts about this whole “internet” thing.

America, as it exists, was not set up to deal with it.  And now our Democracy is failing, and surely looks like it’s going to be replaced by an oligarchy.  With the most recent muscling of the Washington Post into silence being an excellent example.

To be clear, the internet revolution:

1: Has largely turned journalism into a charity.   What’s left of journalism.  In the case of the Post, it’s a private charity.  But in no sense does the Post make enough money to survive on its own.  Particularly, with the current incompetent management.

2:  Has made it almost unimaginably easier and cheaper to spread lies and rumors.

3:  Has spawned entire professional classes whose job it is create attractive disinformation.  So it’s not just random lies and rumors, it’s stuff carefully crafted to be “sticky”.  It’s material developed with considerable expertise, professionally designed to attract and mislead.

4:  Has allowed the crazy to cluster and self-reinforce.  With the help of Jewish space lasers, and Q, and weather control, and … the list seems almost endless, in hindsight.

5:  Reinforces a winner-take-all economy.  Ebay, Amazon, Facebook, and similar are essentially natural monopolies, like electricity.  Just unregulated  The result is an economic and societal landscape dominated by oligarchs, with a concentration of wealth that would have been unimaginable in (say) the post WWII era when America dominated the globe.

6:  Requires a huge Federal budget deficit to support the extreme concentration of income in few hands.  Because the rich have such a low marginal propensity to consume (that is, they spend only a sliver of their income), somebody has to borrow and spent a ton of money every year, or the large net savings of the rich would tank the economy.  (They put the money in the bank, somebody else has to take it out of the bank, or there’s not enough spending to support current income.)  Thus, we’re on an unavoidable path toward bankruptcy, as a country, because the large annual Federal deficit is needed to offset the annual net savings of our collective super-rich, to whom an increasing share of GDP flows.

Or maybe we just like spending money.

But having such a large share of the money, end up in so few hands, produces in the U.S. a political system driven by the desires of the oligarchs.  The fact that the Supreme Court blessed having the rich buy elections (via Citizen’s United) isn’t really the root cause.  It’s just another manifestation of the power of our domestic oligarchs.

Conclusion

People get it wrong, mostly, when they brand Trump a fascist.  Not that his well-documented admiration for Hitler doesn’t put him in that class.  And sure, attacking the news media, promoting a rabidly racist world-view, antisemitism, blaming all our problems on “the enemy within”, those are all straight out of the Mein Kampf playbook.

Hitlererian strategy, minus the Lebensraum.  That pretty much sums up what’s left of the Republican party, at the national level.

But he, like his idol Putin, is an oligarch.  One of a set of super-rich people who want to run the show.  The trappings of fascism are just there to attract the votes, mostly, I think.  Though the racism seems bred to the bone.

And, one way or the other, he has the cooperation of most all the other oligarchs.  Those that aren’t completely on board, he seems to be able to co-opt, or threaten into submission.  And so, because journalism is a charity these days, and the Post exists at the whim of its oligarch-patron, if that patron bends the knee in order not to have its lucrative government space contract threatened, then so does the now-all-but-irrelevant Washington Post.  Because, at root, oligarchs wouldn’t have become oligarchs if they hadn’t had the same central preoccupation — having as much wealth as they possibly can.  So, effectively, once they’ve divided up the pie, they’re all on the same side.

And so, America is in transition to becoming one of the best countries that highly-concentrated-wealth can buy.

I still wonder about how those West Virginia coal miners feel about all the help that Trump never gave them.  I’d bet they’re still going to vote for him.  And that’s about all you need to know, about what kind of a country we’re about to become.

In a world where Rule #4 applies — Yes, they can be that dumb — we simply lack the resiliency to adapt our Democracy to the internet.  Let alone AI.

Our ultra-rich — with the help of the Supreme Court — have now taken advantage of the inability (or maybe unwillingness) of our populace to sort fact from fiction.

Think of it as evolution in action.  We’ve created a world filled with spam, scams, and carefully-crafted lies.  Our population isn’t up to the task of sorting that out.  Even if it wanted to,

So we get the government we deserve.

(N.B., the title is from Oath of Fealty, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.  You might recall Niven from the Ringworld series, if you’re an aging sci-fi fan.)

Post 2028: Shortages in the rear-view mirror.

 

This is a list of prior posts relevant to the current spot shortages of toilet paper.  Just the stuff that seemed on-topic to me.

The first post predates the arrival of coronavirus here and starts with the first pre-pandemic whiff of panic buying (masks, Home Depot).  Most of the rest deal directly or tangentially with pandemic-related shortages.

I toss in a few other shortages, and end wit a post about bank runs.  Because everybody likes a good bank run.  Now and then.  But I have omitted any mention of the great canning lid shortage, which surely deserves a separate list for length considerations alone.

Each image should be a link.

 

Post #535: Answer: Milk, white bread, and kitty litter

Post #543: Genteel panic buying

 

Post #560: Real backpackers don’t use toilet paper: The arithmetic of panic shopping

This next one is the exposition of the economic theory, such as it is.  Call today’s TP shortage just another example of a self-reinforcing irrationality, a.k.a. “Who’s laughing now?”.

The argument is this:  If I’m rational and know where TP comes from, I see no need to stock up.  But thinking ahead, this means that if I do legitimately need to purchase TP in the short term, the stores may be out.  And guess who has toilet paper, in that situation?  (Answer:  All the dummies that panicked.  They have TP and I don’t.  Who’s laughing now, eh?  Rationally, then, I should participate in what I know to be irrational behavior.  Elbow-to-elbow with my fellow shoppers.

 

Post #563: We need a TP FDIC, or, hoarding is a self-fulfilling prophecy

Post #1719: A brief note on the 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis, or why sometimes It’s (not) a Wonderful Life.

Post #1720: The Systemic Risk Clause and the FDIC

Back to the pandemic.

Post #568: A wrap-up on grocery shopping, revised

Post #576: Shopping report CORRECTED

Post #724: Coin shortage

I had forgotten how badly the Trump administration fumbled the response to the pandemic.  Kind of glad now that I blogged about it at the time.

Post #816: We actually did have a rational, national plan for mask use?

Post #865: Getting ready for a hard winter, 5: Grocery story deja vu

Post #1568: COVID-19 trend to 8/10/2022, now 33 new cases per 100K per day