Does a billionaire business owner need a huge personal yacht as business asset for the business to serve the public?

Mark Zuckerberg's 300 million dollar yacht is an example of wealth that I think should be taxed more. I can see a billionaire business owner needs to keep the wealth that runs the business, like server farms for instance, but a huge yacht for personal private use? Maybe he needs it to entertain for recruiting top talent to the company? That's all I can think of for it's possible justification. Somewhere, a line does need to be drawn.

The science behind an eclipse of the moon is simpler and less nuaunced than the science behind climate change.

I hear people ask why folks don't question the science behind an eclipse of the sun, or moon, yet they question climate change science. I guess eclipses are much more simple and obvious while other some sciences are more nuauanced and complex.

There was a time when people feared eclipses thinking God might be mad.

The science behind a lunar eclipse is quite simple to figure out. Climate change is also real, but more nuanced as to how fast it's happening, how it effects each region and what the best strategy is for dealing with it, while juggling economics and other human demands.

I've been doing some AI research about the neighborhood I grew up in.

Picture my brother Bill took during my grade school years from the end of our driveway. Streit-Perham (back then) a new dorm complex at the the east border of our neighborhood.

When Washington State College (now WSU in Pullman) rapidly expanded after WWII to accommodate the influx of G.I. Bill students, the university desperately needed to attract and house top-tier researchers and professors. The Turner-Wexler Addition was platted on the northeast edges of College Hill to create a quiet, prestigious residential enclave tailored specifically for WSU faculty families.

Now, in my own words. 3 dead end streets constituted the addition. It is a small piece of private land, wedged between what eventually became two large dormitory projects.

While I'm normally not a fan of dead end streets, the little streets in that neighborhood had no place go, by car at least. They led to the property line of big dorms.

Through traffic continued, around a bend and into the university, farther to the east.

Pedestrians could take an easy walk from that neighborhood to the campus. Dad often walked over the hill and through the dorm complex at the end of our street on his way to work.

At the south border, Regent's Hill dining complex and dorms with other university buildings beyond. My photo.

The neighborhood was originally part of a farm that was later subdivided into both university and private properties. There was an apple orchard, among other things on that farm.

A little stream ran through the farm which was covered over by placing it into a large culvert. When the university built dorms, parking lots and playfields, the land was reshaped.

It wasn't until I got to Bellingham that I made a connection in my mind. One day, while I was sweeping stairs at my custodial job, my mind made a connection between two streams in childhood memories. One was out by the university golf course and the other was through the back yards of folks on my paper route. Those are the same creek separated by the large underground culvert.

My old picture.

Willow trees, but actually the branches of one willow tree. Buried under regrading to build the culvert and the dorms. Branches pointing toward a common trunk.

This little grove is now gone as yet another new dorm has been built.

The original Wexler farmhouse is still in that area. It's life story used to interest me, during childhood. It went from being out on a farm to being in an urban setting, surrounded by other homes and large buildings.

Google Streetview image.

Today, the houses in that neighborhood, are mostly student rentals as faculty tend to live in other parts of town these days.

During my childhood, most of the houses were occupied by faculty families with some rental apartments for students in a few homes.

At one end of our street was a small house rented to a grad student. This many years later, I met someone at a discussion group here in Bellingham who lived in that small house. I met her here in Bellingham, where I now live; some 400 road miles from Pullman. Another one of those small world experiences.

Regents hill at the other end of our dead end streets. This photo I took in 2022 after most of the apple trees were gone.

Regents Hill is university property, but basically it was our neighborhood park. We had Fourth of July picnics there. It served as an ampatheater for folks watching kids set off little fire works. I remembr many neighbohood kid slumber parties, in sleeping bags, up on that hill.

The interplay of grounds and buildings of Regent's Hill. My picture.

Picture my brother Bill took in the 1960s out over the neighborhood from a balcony of Striet Perham Dorms.

Redefining progress and the American Dream.

Hearing a radio interview about career opportunities for today's young people brings me back to my first years out of college as if nothing ever changes.

It's said that this generation may be the first to have lower standards of living and smaller homes than their parents. I heard that before and I keep thinking, smaller homes, but maybe better social lives?

Since my college days, I've been thinking that we are running out of room on planet Earth. If not actually running out of room, at least economic development has been constrained by more and more regulations. These regulations are attempting to protect the environment, such as farmland preservation, wetland rules, zoning and so forth.

If not actual limits to growth, we have imposed red tape limits which is basically what people, on the right, keep harping on. I still think most of these limits are there for good reasons. Yes, we do need to protect the environment. Still, this does have an effect on the ease of attaining economic growth and prosperity.

For years, I've kept thinking it's a tradeoff. We can live better without necessarily consuming more space on the planet.

Examples of this come from social progress in personal fulfilment and community life. Progress in gay rights is one example. More use of public transit, versus the space hogging private automobile, is another example.

For the entirety of my adult life, at least, cities, such as Seattle, have delt with traffic congestion. I keep thinking we could solve that, but people have just acquiesced to it instead; for the most part.

Back in my days right out of college, the big issue was lack of job creation. Industry faced red tape limits. Mining was going overseas and so forth. We faced the energy crisis with gas rationing during my college years. Since then, new technologies have brought more fossil fuel energy from fracking and so forth. Innovation and substitution has brought new wealth around the limits. We've had the tech boom.

Lack of affordable housing is a big issue now, whereas back in my past, it was more the lack of jobs. Today, there are more jobs, but they don't pay enough to afford the same space in housing.

Somehow, I still keep thinking we need to make fundamental changes in the way we define as the American Dream. I still think life can be better now than in (for instance) the 1950s. "Better" can be defined in different ways. Information and personal choices can be seen as wealth. Free time can be seen as wealth.

We need to think differently about the definition of the American Dream. Just taxing the super wealthy isn't going to solve this problem. Yes, I'm for taxing the rich, but even just taxing the super rich still has consequences for all consumers. Today, people are worried about Washington State's wealth tax chasing away the super rich and businesses with them. Will this impoverish our state?

We may need to learn to redefine what wealth means. Can one have a happy life while not necessarily living in a bigger house than their grandparents lived in?

An energy saving air conditioning trick.

Today was a lovely warm day. I thought I might try out my new air conditioner, but it wasn't really that warm. I do like retrofitting things so I decided to try just putting a small fan, that I have, in the air tube that the conditioner uses with the window. Just that works well for bringing cool evening air into my apartment without even using the air conditioner itself.

My apartment doesn't have a cross breeze as both windows are on one side, yet it stays fairly cool being on the north side of the building. This little hose fan setup gives the airflow a boost.

My power bill is covered by my rent, but it is good to think about energy saving solutions anyway.

Maybe no motor vehicle signs should be updated to say no fossil fuel vehicles.

On trails, there is often a sign that says, "no motor vehicles." Now with the advent of electric bikes, skateboards and even wheelchairs, the sign should say, "no fossil fuel vehicles." Electric motors tend to be quiet and okay; especially if the vehicles are not going too far over 15mph. It would be hard to ban motors these days. I'm glad to see them as more people are discovering bicycling.