Student Loan Amnesty

I'm on a roll!

Last month, I posted a provocative argument about "Free Speech" on social media, which, instead of getting me incinerated, completely stopped all discussion. On a social media thread. In 2022.

I seem to have done it again. On the topic of student loan amnesty, I posted:

Pay back everyone who worked their way through college FIRST.

If everyone gets retroactive free college, let's start with people who didn't sign contracts promising to repay and who did more than cash an easy check.

...and, of course, I was attacked for being an elitest boomer tyrant fascist MAGA mo-fo. One onlooker stuck around after the beating to question me a bit, finally surmising that maybe I wasn't totally against making education accessible (this was infinitely kind of him; in this era, a stranger expressing a "bad" opinion is ALL BAD THINGS WITHOUT EXCEPTION. Like, don't even ever FEED him).

Here was my reply, which appears to have actually shut up yet another angry crowd:

There's vast space between desire for accessible education and retroactively paying (via taxes) for the education of people who elected to sign loan contracts. I'm in that space.

Similarly, I support accessible housing but don’t want to pay off people's mortgages because their obligation feels oppressive.

It's not entirely hypothetical. The 20-somethings screaming about student loans will eventually be 30 and 40-somethings screaming about mortgages (and, yes, I know it's not exclusively 20-somethings screaming about student loans).

Nutritious, Delicious 5 Minute Meal

This is a guaranteed "8" (out of 10 in my surprisingly non-ditzy system for rating foods and other things from 1-10).

Directions are lengthy, but execution is easily completed in less than 5 minutes.

It's remarkably healthful and nutritionally well-balanced, and beefed up to be as filling as an entree. Perfect light supper after an ambitious lunch.

Trader Joe’s BBQ & Black Pepper Toscano Chopped Salad includes chopped green and red cabbages, shredded carrots, broccoli, and kale...plus three separate packages:

• Mini cornbread croutons
• Aged black pepper Toscano cheese
• Sweet - but not quite obnoxious - BBQ sweet onion dressing

TJ's says of the dressing that "its molasses notes pair exceptionally well with the flavor of the black pepper cheese, and the rest of the dressing profile (including mustard, white wine vinegar, onion, garlic, and chili powder) provides the finishing touch for this un-shy salad." Yeah, whatever. Sure it does.

We will disrespect the intention. Creativity requires disrespect. That's why many people feel "uncreative." They've been instilled with over respect. Clast those iconos!

Throw a steamer basket in covered pot with some hot water, heat on high.

Heat small skillet on medium, with a bit of olive oil.

Shuck one fresh ear of corn, dump in steamer, steam 5 mins.

Scramble two big eggs (or 3 medium), or use whites for maximal health. Add to skillet with salt and pepper.

Dump half the salad into large bowl. Add about 1 tablespoon of salad dressing (way less than half the packet), and mix with large spoon. That quantity of dressing will essentially disappear. That's fine.

When eggs begin to set, sprinkle a teaspoon of cheese (just a touch, to prevent egg from registering as bland; also make sure the egg is well-salted), distributing evenly. Flip omelet. Doesn't need to look pretty. I like the eggs soft for this application, but you can let it brown if you'd prefer.

Remove omelet from pan and chop fast/roughly into small pieces. Add to salad bowl.

Remove corn, holding ear lengthwise in salad bowl (stick a fork in the high end to hold it from). Remove kernals with a steak knife (or serrated bread or paring knife).

Mix like crazy.

Sprinkle the mini cornbread croutons (some toasted sesame or poppy seeds, too, if handy).

Drizzle with your most characterful extra virgin olive oil.

Walla.

Stock Muttering Summation

I forgot to offer a needed summary beneath my recent "Stock Mutterings" posting. So I added it there, and will reprint it here for your convenience. For more details about the stocks mentioned, see, of course, the above-linked posting.


To review:

AAPL at $138 offers an extremely tempting opportunity for a 45% gain at absurdly low risk (by "risk", I mean the chance of losing money). That's an extraordinary proposition, and I can't understand why everyone wouldn't jump at it. The stock may dip lower before it turns around, but not even the gloomiest bear would imagine it won't eventually reach $200. It's just a matter of time (hopefully it will happen about a year from now, making it a long term capital gain!).

TXG offers a very good opportunity for a 4x gain without tons of risk...though it might take a while (remember: patience is the little guy's investment super power).

Even a smidge of moderately positive news might lift CRIS from the populous slurry of biotechs parked and awaiting grandeur. If so, a 10x gain would be pretty easy (the $7s aren’t exactly gangbuster territory). With bigger news, which I don't expect anytime soon, sky's potentially the limit.

I Don't Hate Elon Musk Enough

I’m despairing that I’ll never hate Elon Musk enough.

I feel like I’m in the ballpark re: Hitler, Putin, and Harvey Weinstein. But I still think of Elon Musk as human, and as someone who’s done some admirable things.

I don’t want to dissect him alive with a dull knife. I don’t want to see all his relatives die or his stockholders impoverished or his cars exploding just to cause him sadness.

I believe the fetid core of all this is his principled stand on free speech, which could possibly mean restoring Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. I realize that’s literally like restoring Auschwitz and hooking up the gas jets, but while I really disliked Trump’s tweeting, I’m still not feeling the proper caustic roar of abhorrence.

Is there a course I can take to get right on this? Can anyone out there Clockwork Orange me re: this abomination?

SIGA Follow-Up Thoughts

It’s beginning to look like the monkeypox outbreak may (or may not) be a limited edge-case sort of situation. If it can be quickly contained, SIGA's stock will not hold anywhere near its current $15.

It could still rise some Monday morning due to pent-up exuberance, but at some point the hammer (i.e. the big $$$) will forcefully descend, and long-suffering SIGA investors who didn't get out will find themselves once again becalmed amid single digits.

If, however, this turns out to be a new mutation, and thus an ongoing and expanding threat, then selling at this point would be a horrible move. SIGA's rise over the past few days has been enjoyable but by no means meteoric. I'd describe it as restrained. It has much higher to go if this turns out to be a serious and burgeoning outbreak.

The good news is that even if they do contain it quickly, SIGA should benefit from its greatly enhanced visibility (no one even knew there WAS a smallpox cure until this week!). But in that event, I'd still have preferred to have taken my profit and bought a bunch of AAPL, TXG, and CRIS.

If you bought SIGA eons ago, and are fed up, and it wouldn't destroy you to watch it shoot up like crazy after you've sold, here's my advice: create a limit sell order right now for $14.50 or $15. A bit lower if you're even more fed up.

Or, at very least, watch the action closely Monday morning, poised to sell. But bear in mind that even if it rockets upon market opening (I suspect it won't), the hammer might be poised to drop at any moment, and, once it does, you will be the zillionth person in line to get your sell order processed. Staying in front of things with a limit sell order (which, alas, risks losing out) is your best hope for locking in a price in the teens if this thing drops. Once fate shows its cards, it will be far too late to make a move, even if your finger's on the button.

It depends how bad you need the money. If you bought a few shares on a lark, and you're not straining to make a mortgage payment, let it ride. But don't holler at me if it quickly falls back to $7 for another bunch of years.

Stock Mutterings

Sorry for the lack of links to my previous write-ups on these topics. The Slog's search box is your friend!


I've never felt more morbidly ashamed than the last two days spent feasting my eyes on the news of an incipient monkeypox crisis. It's been, perversely, fantastic for my shares of SIGA, a company I invested in (at circa $2.50) in a previous century, which has developed, approved, and begun selling a highly-effective anti-viral (not a vaccine) for smallpox and other poxes (the EU approved it for monkeypox). My first thought is that I don't like being in a position to profit from misfortune. But my second thought is that I helped bring a drug to market that will make this impending crisis far less harmful. But I'm trying to keep my delight levels duly low.

So Apple's falling back down again. Once it bottoms out (the lower the better!), buy it. Even if you're scared it might go lower. Even if it goes lower (you needn’t nail the nadir). Even if analysts predict further drop (analysts always predict further dropping when a stock drops and further rising when it rises; that's their clever little trick). Even if the market's falling apart and you imagine no bright day will ever come. That's the suppressive perspective that keeps people irrationally unable to spot the opportunity of fantastic value at firesale prices. One day AAPL will drop and fail to ever snap back, but you will not lose all your money. Apple will not go to zero. They have enough cash on hand to stop making iPhones and iPads and Macs and just go buy Goldman Sachs and Starbucks....and still have $17B leftover in case they want to start an airline or whatever.

I bought TXG at $50, where it was severely undervalued, and it rose to $200. Now it's back to $50, and nothing fundamental has changed. This isn't some speculative play; they are doing substantial business, and are well-known as a serious player in their field. All that said, TXG is nowhere near the solidity of Apple. But Apple doesn't have the potential of quadrupling (at least not anytime soon).

Still more undervalued, and still less solid, CRIS shouldn't be priced anywhere near its current 75¢. The only explanation is "market's down and biotechs are really down". That's not a substantive rationale (note that there were some trivial testing issues which might have justified a 5-10% haircut). If you have a few bucks lying around you'd like to use to take a speculative flyer (and wouldn't mind losing all, because, again, this is NOT Apple, and it COULD go to zero), CRIS would be a fine choice. Even if its peak of $15.60 (where I should have sold) was fluffy, the stock is pretty clearly worth seven-ish, which makes it a hell of an enticing bargain here. Though I could be wrong. Like with Parker.

I'd be surprised if Parker ever revives. I can't be angry at Andrew Tobias for recomending it; he's right more often than than he's wrong. But I still haven't sold. Maybe if I finally sell my SIGA shares and need to take a loss to offset the gain for tax purposes....

To review:

AAPL at $138 offers an extremely tempting opportunity for a 45% gain at absurdly low risk (by "risk", I mean the chance of losing money). That's an extraordinary proposition, and I can't understand why everyone wouldn't jump at it. The stock may dip lower before it turns around, but not even the gloomiest bear would imagine it won't eventually reach $200. It's just a matter of time (hopefully it will happen about a year from now, making it a long term capital gain!).

TXG offers a very good opportunity for a 4x gain without tons of risk...though it might take a while (remember: patience is the little guy's investment super power).

Even a smidge of moderately positive news might elevate CRIS from the populous slurry of biotechs parked and awaiting grandeur. If so, a 10x gain would be pretty easy (the $7s aren’t exactly gangbuster territory). With bigger news, which I don't expect anytime soon, sky's potentially the limit.

Prejudice

The Mexican restaurant was deserted in the middle of the afternoon, and I sat at the bar, chatting with the waitress in Spanish, while awaiting my meal. We discussed lots of topics, and her reserve gradually evaporated as she found rapport with my intimate knowledge of her culture.

Just as my food was about to arrive, the subject of Donald Trump came up, and she let it be known, with feigned cheerfulness, that she assumed I was a supporter.

Shocked, I, asked how she could imagine such a thing. She politely explained that it was because I was white and old...without being so rude as to actually say it was because I was white and old.

"You've just been speaking to me for 20 minutes. You actually know something about me. Do I really strike you as that type of person? Do anti-immigrant racists often overflow with knowledge and appreciation for foreign cultures? Am I speaking to you (in Spanish, yet!) like I think you’re someone who floated in with a mob of rapists and murderers? Do you get the impression that I find you in any sense inferior?"

"I don't know!" she answered with an amiable shrug - her knowingly defiant half-smirk never receding. "You never know what people think!"

But she had reason! She'd had a 20 minute window into who I am and how I think! I was no blank slate to her!

And if such determinations are so fuzzy and difficult, how would that explain her snap judgement based on my age and ethnicity? If she's such a snappy Sherlock with that meager evidence, why wouldn't she be affected by substantial REAL evidence - i.e. my obvious love for the the things my skin and age told her I despised?


We still, at this late date, live in a world where snap taxonomy - first impressions and stereotypes and prejudices (all the stuff that was once associated with racism back when we still thought clearly about the subject) - reigns supreme. A world where there's literally nothing one can do to transcend preconception based on superficial, nonelective traits. If you're one of "them", I know your deal. Even if you are demonstrably the antithesis of my preconception. A generous Jew or uncorrupt Italian is just hiding their true self.

Expertise is Disrespected Because Dumb People Can't Judge it Properly

It's frequently been observed that we have less and less respect for experts.

As a related observation, consider Twitter, where at any given moment hordes of ordinary people may suddenly transform into constitutional scholars, virologists, Kremlinologists, etc etc. Every week, another wave of fresh genius. It used to be that an expert would expound on Azerbaijan or particle physics, and we'd listen humbly, because we knew nothing about those things. But now anyone can flip over to Wikipedia, read for three minutes, and claim to have researched the matter. Voila, an expert!

This explains why everyone's suddenly an expert, but not the evaporating respect for actual experts (Tom Nichols wrote a great book on the topic). But I think I've got it.

I love the observation that Donald Trump is a poor guy's idea of a rich guy. So consider a dumb guy's idea of an expert: Someone who's always right. Just like experts in the movies; like the professor in Gilligan's Island. A bona fide expert says how it will turn out...and it actually goes that way. He doesn't say "I don't know". He's certain and he's right. 

If you're uncertain or wrong - if it doesn't turn out like you say - then you're just some fancy talker. Put up or shut up! Produce!

Of course, expertise doesn't work that way. Experts aren't devoted to being accurately predictive. They're often less certain than non-experts. And they can absolutely be wrong, and aren't particularly ashamed about it. They're more occupied with deep understanding of hidden factors and mechanisms. They can explain the basis for things, but can't always place it in current context or issue incontrovertible pronouncements. That's not what expertise is.

But a dumb person can't gauge that deep understanding or parse those nuanced factors. So none of it matters. All a dumb person has to go on is your predictive value and track record. Your stats.

This explains the contempt for Dr. Fauci. Dumb people recall every little thing which failed to come to pass exactly per his prediction. Ample proof of fatal flaw! He's no expert, because expertise means being unassailably right. If I ever catch you being wrong, that makes you less expert than me!

By this standard, society is desperately parched for expertise. Doctors (unlike faith healers or TV quacks) can be uncertain, and unwilling to make solid predictions. And experts often can't even agree with each other, which means they're not expert at all! The experts who warned about high fat last year are warning about low fat this year. That's not expertise, that's flip-flopping bullshit! A real expert knows the absolute truth, and sticks with it, period. If you bounce around, that means you never really knew, and if you don't know, how can you call yourself an expert?

Of course, none of that has the slightest to do with genuine expertise. Just as genuinely wealthy people don't really shit in gold toilets.

Jim's Law of Stupid Drivers

Whenever another car cuts you off, there's a better than 50-50 chance that they will slam hard on their brakes within 15 seconds.

Now that I've told you this, you'll watch for it, and see that it's true.


Explanation:

At age five, I had a firm conviction that people who've done something stupid were stupid people who'd always do stupid things. Don't trust that person with delicate toys, or put him in charge of important tasks. Stupid people will act stupid, period.

Then I grew up a bit, and realized it's not so black and white. Hey, we're all stupid sometimes! Even me! You might have just caught this person on a bad day, making the single mistake he'd made all year.

Years later, I realized my initial conclusion had been correct. People who do something stupid are incredibly likely to do something else stupid, and soon.


Fwiw, here are all Leff's Laws

Carry a Tuba, Be a Celebrity

You can make a living as a freelance musician in NYC if, and only if, you're able to chameleon yourself into any musical context (I wrote about my crazy musical promiscuity here and here), and double or triple up your gigs. You must work like a madman, and there's often no time to take a breath and register how odd your life has become. One particularly jam-packed day - June 9, 1993 - nudged into extreme oddness.

The night before, I'd played with my raucous brass band - veteran downtown players copping funky NOLA stylings with a boisterously avante perspective well ahead of its time. And the legendary Bob Dorough had driven in from Delaware Water Gap to sing a medley of his "Schoolhouse Rock" tunes with us, a decade before those 1970s gems came to be celebrated as a cultural touchstone.

We performed to an empty house at Greenwich Village's Gulf Coast restaurant, having chased away diners with our boisterousness - manager Jacqui Perrine (a helluva hip gal and friend-of-the-band), incensed that her customers didn't love us as much as she did, summed up her feelings tersely - "Fuck 'Em!" - and spent the night sashaying around the room in what was essentially a command performance.

The gig paid primarily in food and drink, and the latter rolled on until wee hours of the morning. So when my alarm clock blared the next morning at 8:30am, I was in un-fine fettle. Having hit "snooze" a few too many times, there was no time for shower or breakfast. I had to jump on a subway and go accompany a phalanx of giant trippy puppets (someone somewhere had gotten a grant) at World Trade Center as part of a lesbian drum band. All in a day's work.

I threw on a dilapidated tank top and shorts and dashed for the subway with my gigantic hundred year old sousaphone. Alas, in my stupor, I got on the green line rather than the red, necessitating a tricky cross-town transfer. So I emerged at City Hall Station in high dander, frantically flagging down taxis directly in front of City Hall, where a bored press gaggle was waiting for something newsworthy to happen.

A cab pulled up, and I instantly realized that I was about to make a spectacle of myself by trying to wedge an enormous sousaphone into a taxicab mere feet away from a phalanx of unoccupied photographers while in an unshaven, half-naked, and horrendously hungover condition. Oops.

The smart route would have been to disassemble the tuba to fit it into the cab, but that would take time I didn't have, so I tried to nonchalantly slip the sousaphone into the taxi, self-consciously aware that every choice was making things worse. And the damned thing absolutely would...not...fit. I began to panic at the sound of advancing footsteps behind me - the press surging en mass down the steps to grab a local color shot on a slow news day. "Grungy homeless musician comically tries to fit sousaphone in cab." Ha ha ha ha ha. Funny.

Finally, I braced my arms against the cab’s frame and impelled the tuba inward with my feet - success! - jumped in, slammed the door, and commanded the driver to move! I never looked back. If they'd shot my face, I'd have been recognizable...and disgusting. Hearing the clicks of multiple shutters behind me, I felt like Lady Di hightailing it away from paparazzi.

I arrived at my gig in the nick of time, sliding suavely into the queue of musicians as we emerged behind enormous puppets in the sunny plaza between the twin towers. Video cameras from all local TV news stations were there to excerpt the event. More press, argh!

As we finished up, I was ready to get home and finish cobbling together a night's sleep. But the band's trumpeter, my frequent musical co-conspirator and fellow non-lesbian non-drummer Frank London, suddenly announced that he and his girlfriend, Tine, had decided, spur of the moment, to get married. We were, after all, close to City Hall! So...would I come serve as tubist/witness?

The press, thankfully, had deserted City Hall. We found the marriage certificate office, Frank and Tine filled out paperwork, the judge did his bit, and I boomed some schizo-Mendelson on my sousaphone until staff from surrounding offices poked their heads in to request cessation with a gentility unique to NYC bureaucrats.

One can't get married without a celebration, so the plan was to head over to Odeon Restaurant - yet another crosstown jaunt. Frank (in shabby pawnshop tie, tails, and top hat) and Tine (in an improvised lacy white Bridezilla get-up) strutted proudly downstairs and west on Chambers Street, stalkishly followed by an incongruous hirsute brute bopping funky bass lines on a 19th century tuba.

We drew attention. And while I was as underdressed for a wedding as any human being since the late Mesolithic, I'd reached a point of glazed giddiness, finally going full-metal Jacqui. Fuck it!

The strut transformed into a boogie. We shimmied and jived and moon-walked to Odeon, with pedestrians and construction workers hollering in approval, some following us for a block or two.

En route, a guy came up to us, poking a professional-quality microphone in our faces. "I'm Brrbz Brrbzn from CBS national radio! Can you tell me what's happening here?" Frank and Tine gave him a nano-interview, I churned out some soulful bluesy licks on cue, and Brrbz was off, hollering over his shoulder that this would be heard by X million people later that day. Hey, more press!

We paraded to the restaurant, necks craning to fathom what seemed like some celeb "happening". The streets throbbed with music and cheers as Frank tipped his absurd Mad Tea Party top hat toward strangers left and right (also: above, as we were waved at from office windows).

I later learned that the silly WTC gig had been reported on all the local news that night (none had shown up for our historical brass band performance the previous day), and that the radio report was heard by some huge swathe of the American public (radio was still a thing back then). But I missed every bit of it, having yet another gig to play that same night, cleaned up in suit and tie, contributing dulcet trombone tones to some classy soiree. All in a day's work.

And while it can't be the only photo from my taxi fiasco that surfaced in print, I couldn’t miss this one on the cover of the following day's NY Times Metro Section:

Photographer Steve Hart, the NY Times rookie covering City Hall back then, has gone on to become a respected fine art photographer (seriously check out his stuff, it's great), but kindly took time to dredge up the original image:

The moral of the story: If you ever want to make an enormous impact, 1. bop around Manhattan with a huge antique sousaphone, and 2. steadfastly resist attention.

Oh, and the nationally-celebrated tuba is still with me, now a still-jaunty 130 years old. At this point, he's like a family member: