EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: House Rich, Cash Poor: America’s New Retirement Trap. “Wells Fargo warned on Oct. 26 in an economics research note that if interest rates remain higher for longer, it will discourage prospective sellers with low-rate mortgages from putting their homes on the market even amid a shortage of inventory and even though they need the cash. At a hair under 7.8% as of Oct. 26, the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is more than double its level since the Federal Reserve began the first of 11 rate hikes in March 2022, according to Freddie Mac.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
November 3, 2023
BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY ARE: Biden & Harris Playing Footsie with Hamas to Protect His Lead in This State.
DECOUPLING CUTS BOTH WAYS: Apple revenue drops for the fourth straight quarter in what the company’s longest slump in 22 years. “The results suggest that Apple is facing a bigger deceleration in China than feared. The government there has imposed iPhone bans in some workplaces, and a new phone from Huawei Technologies Co. is providing fresh competition. Revenue from that region amounted to $15.1 billion last quarter, well short of the $17 billion analysts had predicted.”
Just because decoupling isn’t easy doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Flailing Democrats Hit Comical New Low Over Speaker Mike Johnson. “As has been mentioned here in the Briefing, the worst things that the Democrats have been able to come up with when whining about Johnson is that he likes Donald Trump, and he loves Jesus, neither of whom is popular with the Left.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: A commercial spaceplane capable of orbital flight is ready for NASA testing.
NASA will soon start testing what is dubbed as the world’s first commercial spaceplane capable of orbital flight, which will eventually be used to resupply the International Space Station. The agency is set to take delivery of Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser, which should provide an alternative to SpaceX spacecraft for trips to the ISS.
In the coming weeks, the spaceplane (which is currently at Sierra Space’s facility in Colorado) will make its way to a NASA test site in Ohio. The agency will put the vehicle, which has been named Tenacity, through its paces for between one and three months. According to Ars Technica, NASA will conduct vibration, acoustic and temperature tests to ensure Tenacity can survive the rigors of a rocket launch. NASA engineers, along with government and contractor teams, are running tests to make sure it’s safe for Tenacity to approach the ISS.
All going well, Tenacity is scheduled to make its first trip to space in April on the second flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket. The rocket has yet to make its own first test flight, which is currently expected to happen in December. However, given how things tend to go with spaceflight, delays are always a possibility on both fronts.
Reliance on Vulcan — which itself relies on Blue Origin’s oft-delayed BE-4 engines — is a real problem: After Vulcan slips, Space Force ends up awarding more missions to SpaceX. “It is imperative to rapidly deliver critical space capabilities to the Joint Warfighter as soon as they are ready to be launched—we cannot leave capability sitting on the ground.”
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Some of the Dystopian Tyranny You Can Expect if the Marxists Win. “We already know the federal government colluded with Big Tech to censor Americans who dared question the origins of COVID and the efficacy of the clot-shot and even shut down the New York Post for breaking the Hunter Biden laptop story. We’ve seen pro-lifers have their doors kicked in by FBI SWAT teams. This will get even worse if We the People don’t raise our voices.”
NOT EXACTLY HAL 9000: Microsoft Shamelessly Pumping Internet Full of Garbage AI-Generated ‘News’ Articles.
We’ve known that Microsoft’s MSN news portal has been pumping out a garbled, AI-generated firehose for well over a year now.
The company has been using the website to distribute misleading and oftentimes incomprehensible garbage to hundreds of millions of readers per month.
As CNN now reports, that’s likely in large part due to MSN’s decision to lay off most of the human editors at MSN over the years. In the wake of that culling, the company has redirected its efforts toward AI, culminating in a $10 billion stake in ChatGPT maker OpenAI earlier this year.
And if MSN presents a vision of how the tech industry’s obsession with AI is going to play out in the information ecosystem, we’re in for a rough ride.
Beyond republishing stories by small, unknown publishers — like the one that infamously called former NBA player Brandon Hunter, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of 42 in September, “useless” in its headline — Microsoft using a variety of tactics to shoehorn AI into its MSN.
Sometimes it’s even generating AI content itself, like when it published and then deleted a bizarre travel guide to Ottawa, Canada that recommended visiting a food bank “on an empty stomach.”
I had to stop using DuckDuckGo for research because it generates so many results from Microsoft’s Bing, whose results are weighted towards MSN’s craptaculent AI-generated “news.”
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Demonetized, Angry, and Ready to Tell Big Brother to Get Stuffed.
November 2, 2023
DON’T GET MAD, GET EVEN: Demonetized, Angry, and Ready to Tell Big Brother to Get Stuffed.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: Did the Navy Finally Find a Mission for Its ‘Little Crappy Ships?’ “Pity the Navy’s LCS surface combatants — derided everywhere as “Little Crappy Ships” — but do not pity the Navy for commissioning vessels that are unreliable, overpriced, and under-armed. On the other hand, maybe give the Navy a single cheer for almost-kinda-sorta-maybe finding a mission they can perform.”
THEY KEEP TELLING ME THE ECONOMY IS DOING GREAT BUT I KEEP READING STORIES LIKE THIS ONE: Target seeing customers pulling back even on groceries – CEO tells CNBC. “Target (TGT.N) is seeing shoppers trim spending even on groceries as household budgets are stretched due to higher prices and borrowing costs, the U.S. big-box retailer’s CEO Brian Cornell said in an interview aired on CNBC on Thursday.”
WELL, YOU CAN ASK…: CDC Says Infant Mortality Rate Increased in 2022. Will We Be Allowed To Ask Why?
WASHINGTON SHOULD TRY THIS: Suze Orman Suggests Setting a Holiday Spending Plan To Prevent ‘Emotional and Rash Overspending.’
BY TAKING THE GAG LITERALLY, UNFORTUNATELY: The Biden Regime Is Now Setting Policy By Old Norm Macdonald Tweets.
IT’S NICE TO KNOW THAT BLM IS THE SAME WHEREVER YOU GO: BLM activist jailed for blowing €36,000 in donations intended for youth charity on Uber Eats and clothes.
FOR ONCE IT WAS A RELIEF TO CLICK: ‘No Jews’ Trends on Twitter But Not for the Reason You Think.
TO BE FAIR, THAT’S THE BEST THEY HAD: Democrats Send A Corrupt, Inexperienced Hyperpartisan Iran-Booster To ‘Help’ Israel.
BETTER STICK WITH THE REAL STUFF, JUST TO BE SAFE: Non-alcoholic beer ‘breeding ground for bacteria.’
DISPATCHES FROM THE RED ZONES? Radicals Seek to Enshrine No-Exception Abortion in OH Constitution—and They May Very Well Win.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Interestingly, Trump is staking out the middle ground here.
The largest cost identified by the report was that on buyers of gas cars.
The argument made was that as car manufacturers incur costs in order to meet federal and state mandates to make more electric cars than they would otherwise, they pass those costs on to buyers of their gas cars.
According to the paper, around 16 states have ‘zero emission vehicle’ (ZEV) mandates whereby the state sets a number or percentage of new vehicles sold that must be zero-emission.
‘Of course, the cost to meet these mandates is not limited to the states that impose them but spread out over the entire fleet of each automaker trying to meet them,’ read the paper.
On top of that, federal regulations impose similar obligations on automakers that incentivize them to make more electric vehicles.
‘The largest source of financial support for EVs comes not from direct subsidies but from hidden costs driven by federal regulations,’ read the paper.
‘These regulatory standards are applied on a fleetwide basis and allow for the trading of regulatory credits, the costs of which are passed on to buyers of gasoline and diesel vehicles.’
The Texas Public Policy Foundation paper estimated the value of those credits was around $27,881 per vehicle.
Median-income earners can no longer afford a new median-priced gas car but above-average earners enjoy subsidies on their EVs.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Hamas Keeps Making a Clear Case for Destroying Hamas. “Those of us who harshly criticize Islamic terrorist groups are reflexively called ‘Islamophobic’ by leftists who inhabit an alt-reality where suicide bombers are simply misunderstood and the people they blow up probably had it coming to them.”
THE FRUITS OF THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS:
Dr. Ali Al Nuaimi, Chairman of the Defense Committee of UAE 🇦🇪: “We want everyone to acknowledge and accept that Israel 🇮🇱 is here to exist and that the roots of Jews and Christians are not in New York or Paris but here in our region. They are part of our history and our future.” pic.twitter.com/DCmAkRngCT
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) October 31, 2023
A public statement like that one was virtually impossible before Arab nations started signing bilateral peace agreements under the Trump/Pompeo/Kushner Abraham Accord — since dismissed as “tactics of the prior administration” by the Biden White House.
We’ve tasted the bitter fruits of their tactics these last few weeks.
THE GHOST OF WALTER DURANTY SMILES: The New York Times Asks Why ‘Fiery’ Iran Hasn’t Killed All the Jews Yet.
ABOUT TIME: FAA wraps up safety review of SpaceX’s huge Starship rocket.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced today (Oct. 31) that it has wrapped up its Starship safety review, which assesses the risks that a launch might pose to public health and property.
However, there’s still another regulatory box to check before SpaceX can get a license for the next Starship liftoff.
“The FAA is continuing to work on the environmental review,” the agency wrote today in an emailed statement. “As part of its environmental review, the FAA is consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) on an updated Biological Assessment under the Endangered Species Act. The FAA and the USFWS must complete this consultation before the environmental review portion of the license evaluation is completed.”
…
The ongoing review apparently centers on the potential impacts of a water deluge system, which SpaceX installed beneath Starbase’s orbital launch mount after the April test flight.
This sure looks like footdragging designed to hurt a free-speech-loving political rival — and the national interest in Starship be damned.