Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I had to go to the DMV today. Y'know, the Department of Motor Vehicles. The government agency that is the butt of just about every joke about waiting in long lines for a basic government service to be provided by dispirited and demotivated government employees.

I don't think I've set foot in an actual DMV office in over 20 years. I had to do it this time to renew my license. In the past I've been able to renew by mail or online, or at worst at a AAA office as a AAA member, where lines are much shorter. This time I was required to appear in person at the actual DMV office because a vision test was required and because I want / effectively must have a RealID card to function as a full adult in 2025 USA. I made an appointment online a few weeks ago and took the earliest available day for my appointment— 3 weeks away.

• Before I even entered the DMV office I knew there would be delays. Just parking was hard. The lot was nearly full, and I got one of the last 2 spaces before having to vulture.


• Next, as I walked up to the building, I was surprised at the number of people milling around outside. I was surprised because seeing people loitering outside a building is rare nowadays... at least in the US... at least in the places I usually travel. Except for, like, an inter-city bus terminal.


• Once inside I was among a sea of humanity. People of all shapes and ages, many speaking foreign languages. It was like being in a busy inter-city bus terminal.


• I joined the queue for people with appointments. There were just two couples ahead of me, and one employee serving our line. It should have gone fast. The conversation for each person with an appointment should have been, "Hi, what's your name or, better yet, appointment confirmation number? And just to confirm, you're here for...? Okay, here's your service number; wait until it's called." In and done in 30 seconds. Except both of the couples in front of me had So. Many. Questions. The lines for walk-ups were moving twice as fast.


• I got my service number, F107, quickly once I reached the first desk. The agent seemed to give me side-eye about being early for my appointment. I entered the line at 2:50 for a 3:10 appointment and got the to front at 3:00. It's good I got my number for the next queue at 3:00 because it took them until almost 3:30 to call F107.


• At the next station, after 30 minutes of waiting to be called, the agent reviewed my paperwork and documents, collected a thumbprint, and administered a very brief eye exam. After I read the laughably easy identically-sized lines she pointed to on the eye chart, I added, "And the blue and white sign on the far wall, approximately 100' away, says 'Do not place children on this counter.' And the poster next to it says in its headline, '¡Es contra la ley!', which is Spanish for 'It's against the law!'"


• I then queued up for a third station. The only purpose there was to make a new photo. Fortunately that line was only a couple minutes long. The photo examiner murmured pleasantries the whole time. "Oh, great smile." "Perfect." "That looks fantastic." At first I thought she was genuinely complimenting me. Then I realized she's probably murmuring because she says the same things, on repeat, 200 times a day.

After that I was done. Total time at the DMV: nearly an hour, all but 5 minutes of it waiting in lines.

Like a lot of people in the US I got an email message recently from the Social Security Administration (SSA) that their login process has changed and I would need to set up my new credentials. BTW, it's not a scam or phishing attempt; it's a real thing. And yes, I have an online Social Security account.

...No, I'm not earning Social Security. I'm still probably umpteen years from filing for benefits. But I created an account on their website many years ago because I'm curious about the money I've been paying in to the system since my first paycheck job at age 15.

The need to set up new login credentials for SSA was my prompt to visit the site to figure out the answer to a question I've been wondering about for some time now. What would my SS payments look like at regular retirement age if I retired early vs. worked several more years? I thought I'd have to poke around the site to and do a lot of numerical modeling on my own to answer that. To my pleasant surprise SSA now has a retirement calculator right there on the main page after logging in that can answer that question.



This chart shows the SS payments I'd earn, estimated, umpteen years from now if I stopped working— i.e., stopped paying in to the system— today. Actually, it's an estimate if I stopped paying in as of 12/31/2023, so I'm already a bit ahead of these forecasts with work and payments in 2024. The key is that value shown in blue in the middle drop-down box above the graph. I put in zero as my future annual salary. Already I've got a decent estimate benefit coming my way in the future.

To model out the difference between retiring early (in my early 50s) and continuing to work several more years I also put a larger number in that middle drop-down box. The difference if I work another several years, maxing out my SS benefit, is... not huge. I mean, it's also not trivial. I'm not including the second chart here, but the difference was about $300 a month if I file at first eligibility at age 62 and $500 a month if I want until the Full Retirement Age of 67. An extra few hundred a month is nothing to sneeze at... but it's also not a game-changer relative to the size of the benefit I've already earned.

What this exercise tells me is that even if I choose to stop working soon, in my early 50s, I've got a decent social security benefit waiting for me years down the road, thanks to what I've already paid into the system.

The House of Representatives voted today to ban TikTok in the US— unless its Chinese owner, ByteDance, sells it to a company not based in China. After advancing on an unusually unanimous vote in committee the bill won wide bipartisan support from the full House. It was approved 352-65. To become law the bill needs approval by the Senate and then a signature from President Biden— who said today he will sign it.

I'm not sure how I feel about this "ban" on TikTok. (I quote "ban" because it does provide the alternative for ByteDance to sell it to a company not based in China... but that's essentially still a ban IMO.) As much as it's popular in some corners of the Internet to sneer at TikTok, the app does have 170 million users in the US. That's literally half the country. And it's actually more than 50% of the addressable market as the population figure of 340 million counts people of all ages. As much as the service is maligned for being popular with kids, including kids who arguably are too young to participate in social media, you've got to figure there really aren't that many kids under, say, age 6 on the app.

I'm not sure how I feel about this bill because I see arguments both pro and con. That said, I think there are way more cons than pros on this legislation.

The first con against the bill is that 170 million figure. It's frankly hard to believe that Congress would vote so overwhelming against something that's clearly so popular in the US.

The second con is the sense that there's a cultural, generational, and possibly even ethnic divide here. TikTok's most active users skew young. Congress skews old. This smacks very much of a "Darn kids these days!" argument from the dinosaurs stumbling around the edge of the tar pit in Congress. And it seems very much a reactionary, anti-modern culture thing that would come from Republicans... especially as TikTok's biggest users are also less white in addition to being less old than the general population. Yet Democrats also widely supported the bill— 50 Dems and 15 Republicans voted against it— and President Biden said he'll sign it. Also, Trump was for it until he was against it. Though his argument now is that a ban will benefit Facebook, which he's labeled an Enemy of the People... even more so than the free press, apparently.

The one argument on the pro side is that because ByteDance is a Chinese company the Chinese government can compel them to give it any of the very rich data it collects on its users and their browsing habits. That argument does kind of smack of Sinophobia— another con— except that it's literally true. And except that the degree of data they can collect is literally the same as every other social media platform can collect. (The EFF, for example, says Congress should ban every company from doing that much data collection, not just one company in China.) So even this one pro argument is a very weak one.

Finally there's the con argument that this law is unlikely to survive court challenge. A US court struck down a similar state law in Montana late last year. That case is still being appealed, but the ban seems unlikely to win given the higher courts have never let stand a sweeping ban on digital communications.

On Friday the US Congress voted to expel representative George Santos. The Congressman's constant and outrageous lies, about everything from his family history and educational achievements, to how he spent campaign contributions on personal clearly expenses, were ultimately too much even for his fellow Republicans in the House. The vote passed 311 to 114, with 105 Republicans voting in favor of expulsion. Example news coverage: CNN live news, 1 Dec 2023.



Friday's vote was not Congress's first attempt to oust Santos. Congress voted, and failed, to expel him a month ago. That motion, which was also introduced by fellow Republican members, didn't even gain a majority vote. The constitution specifies a two-thirds majority is required to expel someone from Congress.

So, what's the difference between a month ago and Friday? What moved an additional 81 Republicans— though none of the top four GOP leaders— to vote to boot Santos?


The one thing that's changed is the House ethics committee completed its report. Recall they created a distraction during the previous expulsion vote by promising they'd release "something" (yes, they literally promised something) in a few weeks. Well, that report came out (CNN article 16 Nov 2023), and while it was quite damning it was also nothing new. It was merely a summary of evidence already available in the public record. The committee made no formal finding of guilt, nor did it even recommend expulsion. It merely recommended the DOJ prosecute Santos... which is a farce because the DOJ already started prosecuting him several months earlier.

While the ethics report was essentially a nothingburger... or at least a nothing-new burger... it did make it harder for Republican members of Congress to keep countenancing Santos's behavior. It was surprising to me that almost half of them gave up their previous "No expulsion until a member is convicted of crimes" position and voted to expel Santos now.

I suppose if nothing else his ongoing and ridiculously transparent lies were making it hard for them to sell to the American public their false, evidence-free narrative that Democrats are actually the party constantly telling lies. I mean, all George Santos needed to do, probably, was just shut up and let better liars tell lies. But he couldn't stop.

BTW, I paused to consider whether to include the second political cartoon above. Some would argue that depicting Santos in a dress is a jab at LGBTQIA people— a group that includes Santos, who is openly gay and has admitted he enjoys cross-dressing. I would argue that it's actually a further jab at the hypocrisy of his GOP colleagues, many of whom routinely rail against LGBTQIA people and want to erase them from public life by force of law— for example, House Speaker Mike Johnson has introduced multiple pieces of legislation to criminalize LGBTQIA people and has spoken countless times about how LGBTQIA people are attempting to destroy America by being who they are— yet continued defending Santos because he was a vote in their column.

It has now been 3 weeks since Rep. Matt Gaetz made a "Motion to Vacate" Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy from office. With help from a small band of hardliner Republicans, Gaetz's motion passed. With no Speaker, the House was plunged into chaos, unable by its rules to work on any official business except holding votes to elect a new speaker. As that chaos now enters its 4th week we are... apparently not any closer to getting a new speaker.

News today was that the Republican conference chose Tom Emmer, its party whip and thus its #3 leader in the House, to be its nominee and go to a full vote on the floor. Accounts of this secret nomination meeting say it was raucous. Representatives shouted at each other, they traded f-bombs, one openly threatened physical violence on another, and that person's target begged him to come over and try it. Yes, these people carrying on like adolescent schoolyard bullies are our elected leaders. And at the end of the day, after putting forth Emmer as the nominee, he... withdrew.

Emmer withdrew because Donald Trump worked behind the scenes to torpedo his nomination. "He's done," Trump bragged to an ally. "It's over. I killed him."

This shows, BTW, that Trump is very much calling the shots in leading the Republican party. Ironically Trump's boast about killing Emmer came after his spokespeople insisted to the news media today that he has no opinion on this matter and is not at all getting involved.

And Emmer's trouble with Trump? He wasn't sufficiently loyal. Apparently 10 years ago he supported something Trump doesn't like today because it would hurt his chances of winning an election today.

Emmer was no Trump hater, though, even though Trump derided him as a "Never Trumper" in social media. Emmer, in fact, was one of the 120+ sitting Congresspeople to vote to reject the results of the Electoral College on January 6. At least unlike the previous Speaker nominee, Jim Jordan, Emmer didn't participate in plotting the attempts to overturn the will of the people on January 6.

Also, unlike Jordan, Emmer had the good sense to withdraw when he saw he wasn't going to get enough votes. Jordan failed 3 times and kept pushing until his nomination was terminated by the conference over members' objections to his strong-arm tactics— which included his political supporters making credible violent threats against fellow Republican representatives and their families.

It's interesting (and by "interesting" I mean sad) that a pattern is emerging among Speaker nominees. We have the reasonable people vs. the unreasonable ones ...Actually they're all unreasonable ones, having voted on January 6 to overturn the will of the people. So really it's the extremists-who-can-be-reasoned-with-a-little versus the complete braying jackasses. The slightly-reasonable extremists like Scalise (another recent nominee who withdrew) and Emmer can at least see the reality of what's coming and step aside before being embarrassed. The braying jackasses like Jordan will stand there loudly hee-hawing until dragged away. Sadly that means the braying jackasses are running the show.

After House Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House last week Tuesday, Congress has been plunged into chaos. By its own rules the House of Representatives is literally not able to act on anything without a Speaker. (There is an Interim Speaker, but the only one thing that person is allowed to do is preside over the process of electing a speaker.) What does that jeopardize? Well, aside from all the business of the US Congress coming to a standstill a few big-ticket items that could reach crisis stage soon are:

• Funding for the federal government. Two weeks ago the House passed short-term funding measures to keep the government operating for just another 45 days. Those expire in mid November. Congress needs to be working on proper, long term spending agreements now to avoid another crisis and potential government shutdown next month. Ironically, of course, it was specifically because of McCarthy's bipartisan deal to pass those 45-day temporary measures that he was sacked.


• Military aid to Ukraine. This was clipped out of the temporary funding bill to appease right wing hardliners. Without more support we could soon see this democratic country fall to Russian invasion.


• Military aid to Israel. The terrorist group Hamas launched attacks of breathtaking scale on Israel Saturday. Israel has declared war. The US, Israel's biggest supporter in the world, is limited in ability to support its ally without a functioning Congress.

While Congress remains on leave most of this week, and was on leave last week after the surprise ouster, two representatives have announced bids for the speakership. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio have thrown their hats in the ring. And even McCarthy, just today, has proposed that he could be selected speaker again. What an awful choice those three make.

While Kevin McCarthy was bad enough, with his post-facto support for subverting the will of the people on January 6 and his support for evidence-free investigations of President Biden's son, Hunter, and the president himself, the other two are even worse. Scalise is even more of the same, and Jordan is not just a supporter of lies but an active planner of them. Jordan leads the committee that has pursued investigations of the Bidens despite no evidence of wrong-doing. Even when witnesses blow up in his face and say there's no evidence, he's kept going. Former Congresswoman Lynn Cheney has said in speeches that the January 6 committee she sat on found evidence that Jordan was a co-conspirator with former president Trump in the days before January 6 on exactly how to do it. We're clearly headed toward even worse chaos when the people who subverted the Constitution for partisan gain are now positioning to gain control of the Constitution's levers of power.

Last week I complained that it's not really clear what's going on with Covid right now. Well, while meaningful, comprehensive measures of disease activity and risk are still unavailable ("unavailable" meaning deliberately defunded, removed, and/or barred by government hijacked by disinformation peddlers and conspiracy theorists at multiple levels) we at least now have clarity on who should get another shot of the Covid vaccine and when it will be available.

The FDA on Monday approved the boosters formulated for the XBB.1.5 subvariant. Example news coverage: NBC News article, 11 Sep 2023. There's a two-step dance between the FDA and the CDC in the US. The FDA determines it's safe, then the CDC issues recommendations or guidelines on who should get it. The UK's NHS recently issued very narrow guidelines, recommending the shot only for persons aged 65+ or working in high-risk environments or with severe illness. Thus it was a bit surprising when the CDC came out on Tuesday with a broad recommendation that everyone over 6 months old get the booster. Example news coverage: Washington Post article, 12 Sep 2023.

Furthermore, to the question of when is it available, the answer is almost immediately. CVS Pharmacy evidently had good contingency plans for this positive decision and announced it would have shots available at 1000s of its pharmacies this week. Other pharmacy chains should follow soon. I will likely get the shot in October and pair it with a flu shot.

Yesterday, August 1, a rule banning the sale of incandescent light bulbs went into effect. The rule was a long time coming as it was originally issued in 2007— by the Department of Energy in the George W. Bush administration. It was rolled back in 2019 by the Trump administration, then reinstated with updates last year under Joe Biden. Example news coverage: CNN Business article, 1 Aug 2023.

The light bulb "ban" has gotten tangled up in culture war politics. Even the notion that it's a light bulb ban is part of the culture way. Here are Five Things about what's actually happening:

1. No, you don't have to throw away your old light bulbs. It's a ban on selling them, not a ban on using the ones you already own. Though there are economic reasons why you'd want to replace your old-tech incandescent bulbs with modern LEDs; see below.


2. Incandescent bulbs are low-tech and inefficient. The technology for these bulbs has been a standard since Thomas Edison patented it in 1880. About 90% of the energy they consume is wasted as heat. That's why the Easy-Bake Oven you had as a kid used light bulbs as its heating element!


3. The rule mandates an efficiency standard, not specific products. A lot of people understand this as, "Government bureaucrats just outlawed light bulbs." It's worth noting that the rule doesn't mandate any particular type of light bulb you have to buy; it merely sets a minimum standard for their efficiency. This one of the changes the Biden administration made last year, and it's is good policy design. Rather than legislate what the technology is, legislate what it has to do. For those interested in the fine print, the rule is that light bulbs must emit a minimum of 45 lumens per watt. A lumen is an actual measure of light; a watt is a measure of energy. Typical incandescent bulbs produce around 700 lumens of light while consuming 60 watts of power. That's an output of 11.7 lumens/watt, well below the new standard of 45.


4. LED bulbs are way more efficient— and last longer, too. Modern light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs are 6x to 8x more efficient than incandescent bulbs. That efficiency means you consume— and pay for— less power. Several years ago I did the math on switching to LED bulbs. My conclusion was, don't run out and replace all your bulbs now, but it's a no-brainer to buy the more efficient replacements when the old ones wear out.


5. The law exempts a number of specialty bulbs, including those designed for appliances (think the bulbs in your fridge and oven) and automobiles. And your treasured childhood Easy-Bake Oven? It was actually redesigned in 2011, after 48 years on the market, not to use an incandescent bulb anymore.

Today is Day 2 of my week of jury duty, and today I'm actually in court! Yesterday I was on standby, checking a web page twice a day to see if I needed to appear. At 5pm I got the signal to be present today.

At the moment it's not quite yet 8:30am but already here are 5 Things about this day:

• My day started getting up before my 6am alarm. I scheduled a 6:30am business call this morning to discuss critical information with colleagues who may have to do a presentation for me on Thursday morning. Like I quipped yesterday, just because I'm excused from work (with pay) for jury service doesn't mean work stops while I'm out.


• Driving to the court house in downtown San Jose reminded me of commuting. My company's office is/was in downtown San Jose, so this morning's drive was similar to my last commute. Except I haven't commuted in 4 years. Doing the drive this morning reminded me of how much commuting between home and office a) creates a clear division between "at work" and "not at work", and b) is a complete fucking waste of productivity.


• The county government complex is actually a mile north of the downtown core. It's in a drab area where there's pretty much nothing else... including food choices. Lunch might be a matter of deciding whether stuff in the vending machine looks more appetizing than the protein bar I tucked in my bag.


• The county government complex provides one example after another of "Great idea, poor execution". From the parking garage there's a pedestrian bridge across the street... but it doesn't connect to the buildings. Along the 3rd floor bridge are kiosks for paying for parking... except they're all broken and covered with signs to go down to the 1st floor and pay the attendant. At the juror check-in area there are 3 kiosks for self check-in... and they, too, are all broken. There's just one staffer checking people in manually like it's still the 20th century. At 8:05 when I arrived (service starts at 8:30) there's already a long line. I wonder how bad it will be at 8:29.


• If today is anything like my last jury service 10 years ago— and all the inoperative digital systems suggest little has changed in at least that long— I'll spend most of the day sitting and waiting, then go home having done nothing. Yay, civic duty!

Update: What came next

I'm starting to give up on masking against the Coronavirus. I won't say "I am giving up" because I'm not totally giving up on masking— or other health precautions. I'm still wearing a mask in highest risk situations such as aboard airplanes and in airports. But I've basically given up masking in stores and restaurants.

I remained one of the last holdouts in masking. Even in the otherwise health-conscious area of Silicon Valley I live in I've noticed that voluntary masking in stores is down to about 5% now. Ditto at SJC airport, even.

The government has long since thrown in the towel. President Biden essentially announced the end of treating Covid like an emergency a year ago. Two weeks ago he signed a bipartisan congressional resolution (example coverage: NPR article, 14 Apr 2023) abruptly ending the official emergency just four weeks before it was set to expire already on May 11. And California state government, which was a leader nationally in having a well articulated, evidence based policy, dropped even its requirement for wearing masks in hospitals and clinics, leaving it up to individual hospitals to defend on their own.

In addition to having been one of the last mask-wearing holdouts I remain one of the last never-had-Covid holdouts among people I know. Many people I know have had it twice now.

Catching Covid has become accepted as the new normal. Early on in the Coronavirus pandemic, deniers scoffed, untruthfully, that "Covid is just like the flu". In terms of impact it's not. It's 4-5x more deadly. But it has become like the flu in the sense that getting sick with it has become normalized. The public considers it one of those things that just happens; nothing to be done about it other than seek care & tough it out when you get it. (Nevermind that the chance of getting the flu can also be greatly reduced by annual vaccination... which also most people don't bother to get....)

It's in this context that I'm dropping my mask in more places. There remains little value in trying so hard when virtually nobody else does.