Newmark's Door

Sad but true.

"San Diego’s school district tells white teachers that they are guilty of “spirit murdering” black children and should undergo 'antiracist therapy.'"

That keeps up and this will prove to be accurate: "Public Schools Are Losing Their Captive Audience of Children".

I've long thought U.S. foreign language requirements are silly. I still want back the six years of Spanish I had to take.

From last week. I don't know if it's "insane," but it is pretty . . . weird. (But then a whole lot of things Elon-related are weird.)

As one might have guessed, the demand for Signal exploded after Musk’s tweet.

And as a result, traders naturally looked to the financial markets to see if they could profit from it.

In searching for Signal, what they found was a company called “Signal Advance.”

Are they one in the same?

Not exactly.

I thought about calling this post "Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse" but decided that was a tad melodramatic.  But here are five links to some grim stuff:

"Get Ready For The Californication Of America".

"The American Elite Declares Its Independence From America".

"When ‘Dr. Death’ Came for Me: The Black Art of Political Opposition Research".

"Catastrophe Is All Around Us".

"BlackRock Is Leading A $120 Trillion Investment Boom That Is Upending Wall St.".

"Taiwan Semi with 54 percent of the [world] semiconductor foundry market share? Holy moly!"

Holy moly, indeed. 

Applied economics:

We estimate that these laws prevented only 57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980, with 90% of this decline being since 2000.

Watch out, California public employees: 

California’s public employee pension dilemma boils down to this: The California Public Employees Retirement System has scarcely two-thirds of the money it needs to pay benefits that state and local governments have promised their workers.

Interesting discussion on the ever-interesting Economics Job Market Rumors.

Because "public health experts", in their infinite wisdom, did not rely on the organizations that routinely deliver 170 million flu shots a year.

Even Liberals--here, Matthew Iglesias--can sometimes have a good idea. I like his diagnosis and I'm pretty convinced his solution is something that should at least be tried.

The United States of America has become a country with low and falling levels of social trust. This is in some ways a rational response to elite failures, in some ways an inevitable consequence of the public becoming better educated, in some ways an unavoidable side effect of better information technology, and in some ways a deplorable thing that we should try to reverse.

But something I’ve become increasingly convinced of is that policymakers need to acknowledge that it’s a real feature of the landscape and adjust their decision-making accordingly.

In particular, they need to adjust it in an appropriate way. A very large share of the people involved in politics and government are lawyers, and their lawyerly instinct about the problem seems to be that you need to layer on more layers of process. If people are worried about the discretionary use of power, you need to make sure the decision-makers go through an elaborate compliance checklist. But as Princess Leia tried to explain to Grand Moff Tarkin, “the more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

"Beware The SPAC: How They Work And Why They Are Bad".

"Investors are waiting for ‘cash on the sidelines’ to juice the stock market — this is why that idea is hogwash".

Jonathan Chait, with an exception on an issue or two, is about as Liberal as they come. But here he  fiercely defends charter schools and asks the Liberals who oppose them questions they can't answer.

It’s obvious already that, whatever else Biden may accomplish as president, he will not have the opportunity to end poverty or eradicate the root causes of inequality. Given that limitation, the choice before him on education is either to open more pathways for Black and brown urban children to enter the middle class or to close them down. The old excuse, that we don’t know if these schools help these children, is no longer plausible. The question is whether we care.

A bit of optimism:

One of the great things that happen with innovation is that goods and services only available to hyper-wealthy people are commoditized and made available to everyone. . . . 

There are two things that very wealthy people can afford today that I try to envision what they would look like if they were commoditized.

Bummer.

Follow up: "Man who lost password to $220M worth of bitcoin says he’s ‘made peace’".

By Liberal[!] Matt Taibbi. From "privileged" Helen Keller to ejaculating skyscrapers, it's all here in its depressing glory. 

"This will be the most meditative five minutes of your day".

This is amazing, but we'll see if he can keep it up:

Since the start of 2018, NFL teams were 68-356-1 after trailing by 10 points. If you fall behind by 10, you lose 94 percent of the time. Pretty simple. In the same span, Mahomes had trailed by 10 in nine different games. He was 8-1.

Interesting. Of course, now that the secret is out it shouldn't work.

Let me plug again a simply terrific movie, The Chosen. You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy it.

But it helps.

Felix Cavaliere and his bandmates: they were the Young Rascals.

While reading about Vince Guaraldi I came across this, three minutes of joy and a memory from my youth.

Another fine Vince Guaraldi production: "Cast Your Fate to the Wind".

I gotta agree with this:

But for 1966 and 1967, that period of psychedelic fluorescence, and the subsequent years of 1968, and yes, maybe even 1969……it fits.

Incense and Peppermints and The Strawberry Alarm Clock fits with the general zeitgeist of the times.

I thought eating bacon was unhealthy. Maybe I should rethink that.

Parent claims Success Academy in NYC is showing how it can be done.

Could be useful.

Maybe it's just me, but I find the defenders of the city rather . . . unconvincing.

Related: "For people who live in the Bay Area, what are the biggest changes you have noticed in your area over the last 10-15 years?"