Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

With President Donald Trump's unauthorized acts of war and abduction of a sovereign country's sitting president this weekend the US has completely shot its credibility on the world stage. We have zero credibility any longer to tell (other) bad-actor countries that what they're doing is wrong, and our allies now have no ability to trust us. This should be self evident from any simple, objective statement of what the president did in attacking Venezuela this weekend, but here's an elaboration in case it's not:

First, the deplorable actions we've taken in Venezuela give political cover to our geopolitical rivals. Russian President Vladimir Putin can easily justify his nearly four-years-long invasion of Ukraine by pointing to Trump's actions and saying "Ditto!" His outward justification for attacking Ukraine has always been a flimsy claim that it's for his national security? So was Trump's attack against Venezuela and his abduction of President Maduro. But everyone knows Putin really wants Ukraine for its agricultural production and rich natural resources? Well, now he can boast about that openly, as Trump has boasted openly about taking over Venezuela's oil wealth.

The one parallel thing Putin hasn't done yet is assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Oops, did I say assassinate? I meant "Send commandos to kidnap him and bring him to Moscow for trial... and during the military operation to ``exfiltrate'' him from Kiev he's accidentally killed in a gun battle." Totally accidental, of course. But clearly something that can happen when you send armed commandos to abduct a world leader from their home country.

Trump's acts also give license to China in its decades-long sovereignty claim over Taiwan. China has withheld attack for years partly because it fears ostracization by the world community if it seizes Taiwan by force. Well, let's watch how much or how little the US is punished for this stunt. Maybe China will take it by force. Or maybe they'll just abduct/assassinate its leaders.

Then there's what happens with our erstwhile allies on the world stage. Our word is shot. We cannot be trusted to honor any treaty we sign. We are oath breakers. We are a bad actor. And as it weren't obvious enough how to connect the dots already, Trump and his surrogates have gone on a tear today about how "Greenland's next".

This is like 1938 and the Munich Agreement (Wikipedia link). We are demanding a concession... but only a small part of Czechoslovakia— I mean, a mostly uninhabited part of Denmark! Will the modern equivalents of Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier appease us? I mean, the SudetenGreenland is a small price to pay to achieve Peace For Our Time! (BTW, in this analogy  Donald Trump and the United States are Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. 🤯)


Edited to add: I still cross-post to LiveJournal. Look what got through the Russian Federation's filters there....

On Sunday night at Bondi Beach near Sydney, NSW, Australia, two gunmen opened fire on a crowd of people at the beach. People were gathered after sundown to celebrate the start of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. The perpetrators murdered 15 people and injured dozens of others before being stopped by a very brave Good Samaritan and police. Example news coverage: BBC News article, 17 Dec 2025.

We marked the start of Hanukkah at our house in low-key fashion Sunday night local time. It was low key because that was our plan anyway, but also the tragedy in Australia cast a pall over what it otherwise a joyous celebration. (What is Hanukkah celebrating? I wrote a brief guide to Hanukkah a few years ago.)

One thing I remarked to friends and family on Sunday afternoon as news of the tragedy filtered in is that Australia was sure to reconsider its gun laws as a result of this tragedy. Unlike in the US, where one political party is entrenched opposition to any new gun restrictions and the current president callously responds with things like "Stuff happens" or even "Get over it!" to mass shootings, Australia treats such incidents as the largely preventable tragedies they are. Australia notably toughened its gun laws nearly 30 years ago in response to a mass-shooting tragedy and has seen markedly lower rates of gun deaths since then. Indeed, the prime minister and legislators are already evaluating what needs to be changed.

Effective yesterday morning, October 1, the federal government went into shutdown mode because Congress and the president have not been able to agree on a budget to fund it. While this situation may sound alarming— OMG, the federal government has shut down!— it's happened several times before in the current era. (See, for example, Wikipedia article Government Shutdowns in the United States.) And for a lot of people, myself included, there's little or no impact on actual daily life.

• I'm not a government employee. Non-essential government employees are furloughed, meaning they're not working during the shutdown. Though I read yesterday that some 75% of all federal employees are deemed essential. So most government workers are still at work.


• I don't live in an area where the local economy is heavily dependent on government workers, like next to a big military base or government office. Though my relatives who live near Washington, D.C., where many of their friends are neighbors rely on government salaries, reported in past shutdowns there was little impact on people's spending habits. That's because while government employees are not paid during the shutdown— even the 75% of them deemed essential who still have to work— in the past they've always been paid in arrears, in full, even if they didn't have to work. Edited to add: A bill passed by Congress in 2019, during the previous shutdown, and signed into law by President Trump (in his first term) guarantees pay for all government employees, even those furloughed.


• I don't depend directly on federal programs. I don't receive benefit checks. I don't need assistance from people whose jobs might be nonessential. It's a good thing my passport isn't up for renewal soon because, yeah, stuff like that might get delayed. Some national parks are closed... and it's hard to know until you get to the locked gate what's open or closed because them updating their websites is nonessential. And last time a shutdown dragged out for several weeks there were alleged sick-outs among essential employees such as TSA screeners. That could mean delays boarding a flight. But these are small hits that have negligible impact on my life. So far....

McDonald's announced this week that it plans to hire 375,000 people this summer. The news is being touted, politically, as evidence of President Trump's strong economy. But how significant is that figure of 375,000 in McDonald's overall picture? I mean, it sure looks like a big number, but is it, really? My conclusion after doing a bit of research is that it looks like Business As Usual that's being touted for political purposes. Here's my analysis:

The first question I considered is how many people work at McDonald's already. 375k is an increase of what percent? A quick search shows that McDonald's currently employs about 800,000 workers. In that sense, adding 375,000 new employees is a huge gain, nearly +50%. But that's not an accurate picture. 800k jobs is a corporate figure. Most McDonald's restaurants are run as franchises, and franchisees do their own hiring. McDonald's actually said in its press release that 375,000 will be hired by it and its franchisees. Added together they currently have an estimated 2 million employees today. So while 375,000 is still a big number it's less than a 20% increase.

My next question is what McDonald's turnover rate is. Hiring 20% new employees is a lot if it's all net growth, but if it's just replacing people who leave then it's nothing new. It turns out McDonald's turnover rate is pretty astonishing— it's 150% per year! That means that for every 100 jobs they have, they have to hire 150 new people every year. Even if we assume this 150% turnover figure applies to only the 1.2 million employees working at franchises, that means McDonald's has to hire at least 1.8 million people every year just to stay level. Dividing that by 4 for a very rough quarterly figure, that means 450,000 new hires every quarter, just to stay level. Viewed from that perspective this announcement of hiring 375,000 people looks like it's actually a staff reduction strategy.

So, is this supposedly positive economic news actually a stealthy way of announcing layoffs? I don't know. Technically, BTW, McDonald's wouldn't need to lay off workers as they have such a high turnover rate anyway. But the point is they could well be decreasing their staff overall.

The notion of a staff reduction makes sense if you look at what's happening at the restaurant level. In more and more places, ordering kiosks are being installed to replace human cashiers. It kind of sucks from a customer perspective, but hey, many restaurants are trying to replace people with self-service.

I've written over the past few days about the new tariff trade war. People are stocking up ahead of expected price increases and retail shortages. We're already seeing price increases and dwindling inventory in consumer electronics with clear signs it's going to get worse over the next few weeks. It would seem like this is the time to buy that new TV, computer, phone, tablet, etc.— if you haven't done so already. As I've thought about this I've decided that, thankfully, I don't need any bigger-ticket electronics right now.

• My partner and I bought new phones 6 months ago. We're extremely happy with them, and we purposefully bought near-top-of-the-line models to ensure they'd be sufficient for at least 3-4 years.


• My computer, a MacBook Air M2, is going on 3 years old. I'm not itching to replace it anytime soon, though. I'm still fully satisfied with it and can see easily getting at least 5 years good use out of it.


• Our TV is seventeen years old but we're still happy with it. And yes, that's "TV", singular. We own just one. I've idly browsed sales displays online and at Costco many times in recent years asking myself, "Is it worth replacing?" And the answer has always been No. Nothing's compelling enough about newer TVs— and some newer features, like "smart" TVs that spy on you and clutter your screen with extra ads, are negatives— that I'm happy sticking with our 2008 vintage 42" LCD until it breaks.


• I've been thinking for a while about replacing my dedicated camera, a Fujifilm X-T3. It's several years old now. Like with the TV question, though, I'm not sure newer cameras offer anything compelling enough— especially not to justify spending $1,500, $2,000, or more when I have a camera that still works really well.

The X factor in all of these equations, of course, is "What if it breaks tomorrow?" If my phone, computer, or TV breaks I'll want to replace them, and I guess I'll have to pay whatever the new price is.

That 17yo TV is the only thing I think might go any day. I mean, it's still working perfectly, but who knows what'll happen tomorrow. Unlike older analog tech where many failure modes manifested over time, like an old picture-tube TV "going on the fritz" for a year or two before dying, with modern electronics a chip goes from working fine to shorting out and it's— BAM! buy a whole new TV, because there's no cost-effective way to repair it. Either way, 17 years is already way longer that we expected that TV to last. Its predecessor, which I shopped carefully for, only lasted 11 years.

If my Fuji camera dies next week, I'm not sure what I'll do. I might buy a newer camera— or I might decide to wait several months. In the interim I can continue using the built-in cameras on my iPhone. As I've noted many times, they've gotten way better over the past several generations. My 16 Pro is now able to do more things adequately well that I used to have to use a good dedicated camera for. Yes, there are still things the iPhone camera does not do well that I care about— like waterfalls photography— but for 6 months? If the market goes haywire? I could probably limp along without a dedicated camera.

With the new US tariff regime looming people have been rushing out to buy things ahead of anticipated price increases and empty shelves. While some of my friends rushed to stock up on food several weeks ago I held off. It didn't make sense to me to buy 6 month supplies of beans, rice, and fresh fruits (to freeze).

For one, food is a small part of my budget, so if prices go up 25%, it'll be annoying but not a crisis problem. Two, food is demand inelastic so I don't anticipate major market disruptions like supermarket shelves going bare for 3 months because producers exited the market en masse. Three, I don't even have a place to store 6-month supplies, especially frozen stuff. To make it meaningful to buy a 50-pound box of avocados, like one of my friends suggested, I'd also have to buy an extra freezer to store them in. Plus a larger house to store the extra freezer! 😱 And four, I don't enjoy 6-month-old frozen food as much. I'd rather swallow the price increase than swallow bland, dried out food.

Now the tariffs are on pause, so there's more time to plan. ...Well, most of the tariffs are on pause. Trump has singled out China for punitive tariffs. I don't see that having a huge impact on food, though. Tariffs on Mexico will hit food broadly, because we do get a lot of food imports from Mexico, especially fruits and vegetables. For importing such things from Asia, the economics don't pencil out. Thus there are only a few, narrow categories of fresh food we import from China. There are more processed foods. Oh, and garlic. At least buying a 6-month supply of garlic is more reasonable than 6 months of avocados.

There's a grass-roots "economic blackout" that's brewed up for today, February 28. The idea of this one-day, buy-nothing day is to protest major corporations renouncing their DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—initiatives after Trump's election. That's how promoters of the event describe it, anyway. I'm not going to participate.

Understand that my objection here is not to the goals of this protest. I am sickened by MAGA politics and its destructive tactics, as well as by the widespread capitulation of American businesses and business leaders to its racist, sexist, and antidemocratic goals. It's terrible what that side is doing. But this protest won't change any of that. Here are Five Things why:

1. "Buy nothing this one day" protests have almost zero economic impact because consumers just shift their buying to the days before and after the protest. I've seen a few protests like this in past years against Big Oil. Organizers rallied people not to buy gas for their cars on one specific day. Well, people just filled up their cars the day before or the day after. Economic activity across the span of a week was virtually unchanged.


2. Within the context of which businesses might be hurt by one day of reduced business, even if balanced on either side by other days of increased business, a lot of what's impacted are small, local businesses. Many of those stores with big brand names on the sign are franchised. They're owned and operated by a small, local or regional business, not the national/global megacorp that owns the brand name. So a lot of who you're hurting is a small businessperson in your community, not the decision-makers in the corporate boardroom.


3. If you want to demonstrate to big corporations "the power of the purse" you need to make an enduring change to your buying habits. Anti-DEI leaders understood this when they organized a boycott against Bud Light in 2023 over its sponsorship of a single trans person among many other influencers it sponsored. Protesters didn't just stage a "Buy no Bud Light for a day" boycott. They stopped buying Bud Light indefinitely. Bud Light sales dropped around 20% after a month, the brand lost its #1 spot in the market, and maker Anheuser Busch lost shelf space to competitors as a result. Companies are capitulating to anti-DEI because they see proven ability to cause long-term harm to their businesses.


4. Successful boycotts don't just make businesses pay attention; they make politicians pay attention. But the MAGA politicians have already made clear that they don't care. MAGA leaders have inoculated themselves by admitting there will be "pain" as their changes are implemented. And this week we see MAGA Congresspeople canceling town halls rather than face angry constituents. They don't yet care their voters are unhappy; they're still more afraid of crossing Donald Trump.


5. We're going to have to win this fight at the ballot box, not the cash register. And it's going to take a while. ...Not only because the next federal election isn't for another 20 months but because we have to get the MAGA politicians to pay attention to voters. Right now they don't care that voters are unhappy; they're still more afraid of Donald Trump organizing far-right challengers against them in the next primary. We've got to build and sustain popular pressure against these politicians. We've got to make them more afraid of losing a general election to the center-left than losing a primary to the far right.

As a postscript, I see some people saying that the real value of this one-day boycott is not the ineffectual economic impact but showing people there is power in unity. I understand that point. I'd like to believe it's true. I'd like to believe because there's also an argument that it could go the other way. What if in addition to accomplishing zero, economically, it gives its participants a false sense of accomplishment? That would frankly make it worse than useless as those people whose efforts could otherwise be harnessed for something actually useful will proudly string up their "Mission Accomplished" banners, pat themselves on the back for having Done Something, and return to the status quo.

In the news yesterday was announced a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The deal, brokered by the US, Qatar, and Egypt, would see Israeli hostages held in Gaza returned and a number of Palestinian prisoners in Israel released in the first of three phases. The first phase would also involve Israel withdrawing its troops from most of Gaza and allowing humanitarian aid to flood in. Example news coverage: CNN.com article, 15 Jan 2025.

One might wonder while hearing this objectively good news, Why now? What took so long? This war, now in its 16th month, was instigated by Hamas's surprise October 7 attack on Israel killing 1,400 people and taking as hostages over 100 people, most of whom were civilians. One ceasefire was attempted over a year ago; it lasted less than a week. And the framework agreed to yesterday is one US negotiators in the Biden administration first proposed last May. They've been working on getting acceptance for 8 months.

So why now? Why after 16 months of grinding war and significant humanitarian crisis, and after 8 months of negotiation on the same framework? Well, first, such negotiations are never fast. The sides have got to fight it out until their positions, and future possibilities, become clear enough. Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously said, with slight paraphrasing, "War is diplomacy by other means." But still, why now? What changed recently to get the parties to shift their form of diplomacy from guns and bombs to words and handshakes? To me it's three things:

1. Hamas's military support has been significantly degraded. Destroying Hamas's own means of making war and launching terrorist attacks has a constant in the conflict since its start. Even six months ago a lot of it had been destroyed... and what was left was very well hidden. But what's really changed in the past few months is that Hamas's allies have suffered major losses. Hezbollah lost hundreds of its leaders in a carefully orchestrated, intelligence-driven attack by Israel a few months ago. You may remember that as the one with the exploding pagers. And walkie-talkies. Then last month rebels swiftly ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad, who fled to Russia. The common denominator behind all three of these— Hamas, Hezbollah, Assad— is that they've been propped up by Iran. Iran has lost significant resources and international standing as its clients have been beaten. Plus, tough international sanctions against Iran have continued to bite. The bottom line of Iran having fewer proxies and less money to throw at them is that Hamas military leaders now no longer see themselves being as capable of achieving anything, even their leaders' personal survival, through continued war.

2. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is in a stronger position domestically. It's been charged many times over the past umpteen months that one reason Israel reached a ceasefire agreement is because it doesn't want one. While that statement on its face may seem like a tautology, what it's pointing to is Netanyahu's precarious position in Israeli politics. He's been clinging onto power by a small margin and will face prosecution on corruption charges once he's no longer in power. Thus he's kept the country in a state of war, many allege, because the active war blunts his opponents' push to remove him. And he's held onto a slim governing majority that includes far-right parties that are war-mongers. With recent successes such as that exploding-pager victory over Hezbollah, and Assad's fall in Syria, Netanyahu is enjoying broader support at him. He finally has enough political margin to risk crossing his far-right coalition members.

3. The President Trump Wildcard. One thing I wondered right away when I heard news of the ceasefire agreement yesterday morning was why this thing negotiated by President Biden's envoys was coming to fruition only in the last few days of his administration. Was "Get it done before Trump comes in" a factor? Indeed, president-elect Trump claimed credit for the agreement on his Truth Social media platform even before President Biden announced it officially in a news conference. But did Trump really do anything? I'd say yes and no. No, he didn't participate in the negotiations directly. His people were involved at the very end, as part of the Biden team's commitment to a smooth handover— something, I'll note, Trump and his team absolutely did not do in January 2020— but they certainly weren't involved in the 8 months of negotiating it took to get to yesterday's agreement. And Trump's personal contribution was his fear factor. As he's signaled unconditional support for Israel throughout his campaign, called for even tougher actions against Hamas, and rejected all concerns about humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Hamas's leadership had to realize that making a deal under Biden was their last, best chance.

Update: Even as I posted this journal entry, the ceasefire deal was already getting wobbly with threatened resignations from Netanyahu's coalition and ongoing attacks.

If you haven't been paying much attention to international news you might not have noticed that civil war in Syria took a sudden turn over the past 2 weeks. The conflict, which launched as part of the Arab Spring protests in 2011, had been at a stalemate for years. Syrian dictator Bashar Assad quickly regained control of most of his country with the help of allies Russia and Iran. Assad was utterly brutal in his punishment of those who defied him, killing more than half a million including with banned weapons such as poison gas and displacing millions of residents who fled to other countries as refugees. But in the past 10 days a new rebel alliance began capturing cities one by one across the country. This weekend rebels entered Damascus seemingly unopposed. Assad had already fled to Russia.

The rebels' timing was shrewd... or incredibly lucky. Russia, which had provided military troops, equipment, and funding to prop up Assad in years past, is stretched thin by its incredibly costly invasion of Ukraine. Iran is stretched thin by fighting Israel through its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah.

Who are the victorious rebels? The alliance seems to consist of Islamic Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and various Kurdish rebel groups that held parts of the country in the 13 year long stalemate. HTS is led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who was previously an al Qaeda leader. He says they're more inclusive now. We'll see what happens next. Sadly it's not high bar for the next Syrian government to be better than the last.

Hurricane Helene struck the United States last week, causing widespread damage across multiple states in the Southeast. Recent reports have the death toll at 162 with hundreds of people still unaccounted for. Helene is now the second deadliest hurricane to hit the US in the past 50 years.

When we think of deaths and property damage caused by hurricanes we traditionally picture images of gale-force winds pounding homes on the coast in Florida, where hurricanes most frequently make landfall, or approach nearest to it, in the continental US. Once a hurricane crosses over land its winds lose strength. Typically this is thought of as the end of the worst; that the danger has passed. But what Helene has showed us, along with the path of devastation wrought by other hurricanes in the past few years, is that some of the worst damage is now caused by huge amounts of rain, and the impact of this can extend 100s of miles in from the coast.

Consider the breakdown by state of the figure of 162 storm-related deaths given by this CBS News article updated a few hours ago (1 Oct 2024, 8:42pm EDT): 77 in North Carolina, 36 in South Carolina, 25 in Georgia, 14 in Florida, 8 in Tennessee, and 2 in Virginia. The deadliest place was North Carolina. And BTW those deaths are not in coastal North Carolina, where hurricanes sometimes do make landfall, but in far western NC, up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in towns like Asheville and Boone. These towns are not only hundreds of miles from the coast but also at elevations from 2,000' to 3,500'.

Part of this is the changing profile of hurricanes driven by climate change. As average temperatures warm, especially as average sea water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea warm, hurricanes forming in the region absorb more water into the air. This means when they lash rains out across the land, there's heavier rainfall. Western North Carolina, for example, got more than 12 inches of rain in one day. Rain at that level far from the coast is disastrous, and the infrastructure and the land itself cannot handle it. Rivers flood, overtopping their banks flooding entire towns. Bridges and roads are destroyed. Lakes flood and destroy nearby homes. Reservoirs become dangerously overfull and dam breaks become a real risk.

It's not just parts of the country hundreds of miles from the coast facing new risks from torrential hurricane-fueled rains. Houston in the last several years has experienced multiple hurricanes that caused widespread flooding. From 2017 record-breaking Hurricane Harvey to Hurricane Beryl just a week ago, the biggest source of damage has not been gale force winds; in fact, these hurricanes have been relatively mild in the wind department. What's caused so much devastation has been how much rain they've dropped. Harvey dropped 50 inches of rain on Houston over the course of several days.

This is the new face of hurricane damage nowadays. It's no longer the classic image of a ramshackle cottage next to the coast being blown down by strong winds but a city, possibly hundreds of miles inland, seeing its streets and neighborhoods flood from rain waters, highways and bridges collapsed from underneath, and public services such as electricity and phone lines cut off. All due to simply to overwhelming amounts of rain.