Month: June 2022

CNN may be abandoning its BREAKING NEWS heritage, but this blog isn't. On Sunday I didn't have any plans and Marian was off doing some stuff I wasn't interested in, so I went out and puttered around semi-aimlessly.

But after only five minutes, I reached Madeleine and discovered that thousands of runners had invaded my neighborhood for the Paris 10K. Naturally I dropped everything and took pictures. Lots of them. Here's a runner rounding the corner at the north end of L'eglise de la Madeleine. At this point he's got one kilometer to go:

Now they've made the loop around the church and are headed for the finish line at Place de la Concorde:

Almost there!

Bravo! They've crossed the finish line. Bananas for everyone!

And medals too. Starters got handsome blue tee-shirts while finishers all got medals sponsored by Adidas:

Check out all these happy medal winners:

And there was more good news: Parisians were all so busy running that they weren't jamming up the Orangerie, even though it was the first Sunday in June and entrance was free. That meant Marian was able to stroll around in peace while I continued my puttering around the rest of the city.

SCENE 1

ACTING UNDER AN ONEROUS TESTING MANDATE FROM THEIR TYRANNICAL LEFT-WING GOVERNMENT, KEVIN AND MARIAN ENTER PHARMACIE 217 IN THE 18TH ARRONDISSEMENT OF PARIS. ALL DIALOG IS BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS.

CLERK: Bonjour.

KEVIN: Bonjour! Do you offer rapid COVID-19 tests for travel?

CLERK: Yes indeed. Just scan this QCR code with your phone and then follow the links and answer all the questions.

TEN MINUTES LATER

KEVIN: Whew. I think I got all that right.

CLERK: Fine. Now step into this room. The pharmacist will perform the test.

SCENE 2

KEVIN: Wow, you sure jammed that swab pretty far into my brain.

PHARMACIST: Ha ha. I did, didn't I? Anyway, your results will be emailed to you in 30 minutes.

KEVIN: Can I get a printed copy instead?

PHARMACIST: No, that's no longer allowed. But don't worry. The email will have a link that you follow, and then you just scan a QCR code, answer some questions, follow a few more links, and everything will turn out fine. It's all in French, but you should have no trouble with it.

KEVIN: Um...

PHARMACIST: Don't you trust me?

KEVIN: Oh, I trust you, I just don't trust cell phones.

SCENE 3 — 30 MINUTES LATER

KEVIN: We're back for our COVID results.

PHARMACIST. Good, good. Now click here...

PHARMACIST TAKES CELL PHONE AND BEGINS TAPPING AWAY WITH INCREASING FRUSTRATION.

PHARMACIST: There seems to be an error. This happens sometimes with countries that are far away, like America.

KEVIN: Oh.

PHARMACIST: Don't worry. Everything will be fine. I'll print out forms for both of you.

TEN MINUTES AND MANY QUESTIONS LATER EMANATING FROM A BACK ROOM:

PHARMACIST: Is that January 10th or October 1st?

MARIAN: January 10th.

PHARMACIST: All set! Here are your test certificates.

KEVIN: Merci.

END

A bipartisan group of senators is currently negotiating a possible response to the Uvalde massacre that would include:

• A slight enhancement of the federal instant background check to include juvenile records.
• "A system of incentives, grants and federal standards for states that create their own red-flag laws."

Do you see why I'm so skeptical about addressing gun regulation in any serious way? The impact of these two things would be close to zero even if they passed, and the likelihood of them getting ten Republican votes to break a filibuster is probably also close to zero. In a nutshell, let's just say that I don't put any stock into Sen. Chris Murphy's optimism:

"I’ve never been part of conversations that are this serious and this thoughtful before, and I know all the Republicans and Democrats who are at the table are there with total sincerity to get an agreement."

Sure. I await with bated breath the alleged seriousness of Republican negotiators. Prove me wrong, Chris.

I have been diligently looking for cats in Paris but with no success. I haven't spotted even a cat in a window.

But! This morning, while we were waiting for one of those one-hour Seine boat tours, I was watching a couple of dogs play with each other in the Square du Vert-Galant. The little bulldog, in particular, wanted to roll and roll and roll and then play with the other dog and then roll some more. He acted just like a cat, so I decided he deserved honorary feline-hood.

Next week will feature the long-awaited return of actual biological cats Hilbert and Charlie.

I understand if you're a little jaded about the January 6 insurrection. I mean, we've already seen more than enough evidence that Republicans were initially appalled by the whole thing and only later decided to pretend it was a big nothingburger that Democrats were ginning up for partisan reasons.

But CNN has gotten hold of a couple thousand text messages sent to Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff at the time, and they make for some dispiriting reading:

"He's got to condem (sic) this shit. Asap," Donald Trump Jr. texted at 2:53 p.m.

"POTUS needs to calm this shit down," GOP Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina wrote at 3:04 p.m.

"TELL THEM TO GO HOME !!!" former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus messaged at 3:09 p.m.

"POTUS should go on air and defuse this. Extremely important," Tom Price, former Trump health and human services secretary and a former GOP representative from Georgia, texted at 3:13 p.m.

"Fix this now," wrote GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas at 3:15 p.m.

There's much more at the link, including the fact that nearly everyone who texted Meadows (a) thinks Trump could have stopped the rioters, and (b) stands by what they said in real time. The whole piece is worth a read, even if it's just for the entertainment value because you've already heard enough about what happened that day.

After spending literally decades trying to get access to Alaskan wilderness areas, it turns out that oil companies don't really want it after all. This is from the Anchorage Daily News on Thursday:

Another oil company backs out of leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

.
The only oil company that bought a single lease in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge early last year has canceled its lease, according to the U.S. Interior Department.

The move by Regenerate Alaska is the latest example of the industry stepping away from possible oil and gas development in the 19-million-acre refuge. Hilcorp and Chevron have also canceled their interest in separate, older leases, on a small tract of Alaska Native corporation-owned land within the refuge’s boundaries.

Regenerate Alaska was the only company to bid on ANWR leases in the waning days of the Trump administration. None of the majors showed any interest, and now, even the companies that already have leases are getting out. This is partly because the Biden administration hasn't been friendly toward ANWR leasing, but it's also because ANWR was never a huge pot of gold in the first place.

This has long been my main gripe about ANWR: Both sides have invested way more into the fight than they can justify. On the one hand, ANWR doesn't really have all that much oil,¹ and it's expensive to get out. On the other hand, a pipeline wouldn't do all that much damage to the caribou.² I'd just as soon not drill in ANWR, partly because we need to stop opening new oil fields regardless, but it's just not a big deal either way.

¹EIA estimates that over the period 2031-2050, ANWR would increase US production about 4% and world production by about 0.2%.

²You'll have to check this out for yourself. There are hundreds of assessments, almost all of them coming from organizations with an axe to grind, and my meta-sense is that taken together they suggest only moderate effects. But reasonable people can differ about this.

I've seen a lot of stuff like this since yesterday:

I am a bit stunned that more journalists aren't outraged and stunned by the Heard/Depp verdict.

In addition to being a disaster for domestic abuse survivors, it is a disaster for a publication's ability to tell truth to power.

— Adam Davidson (@adamdavidson) June 2, 2022

I have no independent opinion about this since I didn't follow the trial and know almost nothing about what kind of evidence each side produced. But there are a few things I do know:

• Plenty of seemingly rational observers believe that Amber Heard presented a lousy case with virtually no good witnesses and no good documentary evidence.
• This was strictly a defamation case between Depp and Heard. It was based largely on an op-ed published in the Washington Post, but it didn't involve the Post or any other news outlet.
• Seven jurors who did hear the entire case voted unanimously in Depp's favor on the main defamation charges.

The fact that one woman lost one defamation case doesn't mean the end of #MeToo. Nor does it mean that Heard was railroaded. Nor does it have anything to with whether Johnny Depp is, in general, a good human being. It just means that in one particular case, involving one particular charge, a woman was unable to convince a jury that she could back up defamatory things she had said in public.

I dunno. As I said, I'm, no expert on this case. But we can't go all to pieces every time a woman loses a defamation or sexual assault case. That happens sometimes. Sometimes women exaggerate. Sometimes they lie. Sometimes they just present a lousy case. Taking women seriously doesn't mean they automatically win every time they go to court.

The American economy gained 390,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 300,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate remained absolutely flat at 3.62%.

As usual these days, nearly all of the job gains were in the service sector. The service sector accounted for 70% of all new jobs in May, about the same as it's been all year.¹

Weekly earnings of blue-collar workers were up at an annualized rate of 6.9% over April, which is nearly a 3% rise after adjusting for the recent inflation rate.² For the year, wages were up 5.8%, which is a 2.4% decline after adjusting for annual inflation.

So how are workers doing? One thing for certain is that they mostly have jobs if they want them. In May the labor force participation rate ticked up yet again from 62.2% to 62.3%, just as it's been doing for the past year.

Wages are a more complicated story. They've been falling for a while after adjusting for inflation, which means there's no sign of a wage-price spiral. That's good for inflationary expectations but not so good for workers. In the past month or two, however, real wages have been going up. Needless to say, this is good for workers but bad for inflationary expectations.

In other words, who knows? The past couple of months might be a fluke, or it could be that employers are only now finally responding to high inflation with high wage hikes. Stay tuned.

¹This should come as no surprise since the private service sector accounts for about 70% of all American jobs.

²The annualized inflation rate from March to April was only 4.2%.

Our apartment is right near Église Saint-Augustin de Paris, but like many large churches its rose window is partly covered by its organ. However, this was no problem: The window is symmetrical, so I cut out a pie-shaped piece from the top, inverted it, and plopped it into the space blocked by the organ at the bottom.

Is this cheating? Sure! But at least we all get to see what the full rose window probably looks like if we were able to climb up behind the organ and take a look.

I managed to make it two weeks in good health, but today my lucky streak ended. I woke up with a cold and a terrible sore throat and stayed in most of the day.

In other news, my cell phone got pickpocketed on the metro. I'm mad about this less because the phone itself was so valuable and more because I'm an idiot who failed to take even the most obvious precautions against theft.

And how are my eyes doing? I'm glad you asked. They definitely aren't getting better. In fact, they may even be getting worse, especially when I'm reading at night and they're tired.

Based on all this, you might think I'm having a lousy time. Not so! Colds are a routine hazard of travel, here today and gone tomorrow. This is why I planned a three-week trip, after all, so that a day or two with a cold wouldn't have a big impact. As for the phone, I miss having Google Maps while I'm roaming around, but I'm so old I still know how to read paper maps. Nor was there was anything sensitive on the phone—though I called T-Mobile anyway and had them brick it for me. And the state of my eyes is nothing surprising. I hoped for—but didn't really expect—improvement.

In fact, we're having a great time. Our apartment in the Madeleine neighborhood is great. The weather is spectacular. We've visited everything we wanted so far with no long lines and no problems. I've taken so many pictures I had to make room for them by clearing out space on my 500 GB tablet. Best vacation ever!