I’ll See You Next Year

The lobby bar at the Lafayette Hotel

I’m going on vacation…to update my perspective and visit with family friends…taking the big leap over the Pacific to somewhere I’ve never been before.

I wish all my readers joy and happiness as we experience the holiday season. It’s been an “interesting” year and the future is fraught with challenges beyond anything I could have imagined.

It’s been a dozen years since I lost my voice as a result of cancer surgery. For some of that time I had a prosthetic that allowed speech, sorta. There have been challenges as a non-speaker, mostly because I run into people who assume a disability is tied to being unintelligent and/or faked.

Round two of cancer in 2020 ended even the half-assed speaking possibility; it took surgeons three tries to reconstruct my esophagus; success meant I was able to eat real food. All these experiences under the knife have changed me, for the better I hope.

Round three of the dreaded disease was supposed to kill me. Surgery was no longer an option, my future depended on a combination of radiation, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy.

Six months into treatment, a CT scan showed no malignancy.

Eighteen months later –last week– the fifth scan since that time showed… nothing to see here. It’s really cool when your oncologist visits end up being small talk...about the John Waters Christmas Tour event at Lou Lou’s in the Lafayette Hotel. (Today’s lead photo is the lobby at the Lafayette.)

I’m guessing there’s a presumption somewhere holding that it’s just a matter of time, as the word remission is not one I hear. Whatever. I intend to keep on keepin’ on for as long as I can. And I’m going to have fun while I’m doing it.

I love, love, love living in San Diego. It fits me like an old pair of loafers. Having lived in and visited many parts of the Northern hemisphere, moving back to this town sixteen years ago was almost a no-brainer.

Some of those reasons for returning have gone; we’ve an empty nest and my parents have passed on. Our cat went over the rainbow a few months back, having lived thru being an island kitty to become the boss of us.

Freed from our emotional tethers, it’s time for some new adventures.

So it’s off to Japan and Taiwan to close out the year. The many Youtube videos I’ve watched have taught me chopstick etiquette, a general idea of getting around (trains!), and prepared me to re-enter a world where actual cash still rules.

Other than those little technical details, I have no idea of what awaits me. Will a geezer like me rise to the challenge? I hope so. I want new experiences, things that build my character. I want to do better for my family and society at large. Getting out of my comfort zone is something I hope will infuse me with energy and hope.

This Substack/blog will return in early January.

America’s Online Sports Betting Crisis Is Already Here by Matt Ford at The New Republic

• Part of The Economist’s case for sports betting is a libertarian ethos that sees sports betting as a voluntary choice that only affects those who partake in it. But even people in these states who don’t participate in sports betting may be indirectly affected by legalization. “Interestingly, we find a decrease in credit card delinquencies, and more generally, we find a restriction in access to credit in the form of lower credit limits and a higher ratio of secured to unsecured loans,” the study found. “Each of these indicates that financial institutions may be reducing their risk exposure in states with legal mobile sports gambling.”

• The ideal policy outcome here may be to build a time machine and travel back to 2018, when Americans had legal access to sportsbooks so long as they traveled to Nevada to place a bet. That logistical friction deterred all but the most interested and well-funded gamblers; those that opted to press their luck anyway were surrounded by constant reminders that the odds were against them. But there was no popular or grassroots clamor for legalized sports betting before the Supreme Court’s decision in Murphy, even though there appears to be a notable amount of support for it now. In Missouri, for example, voters narrowly approved a constitutional amendment in November that would pave the way for online sports betting in that state.

• “The legalization of sports gambling is a controversial subject,” Alito dryly noted in his decision in Murphy, before making a wager of his own. “Supporters argue that legalization will produce revenue for the states and critically weaken illegal sports betting operations, which are often run by organized crime. Opponents contend that legalizing sports gambling will hook the young on gambling, encourage people of modest means to squander their savings and earnings, and corrupt professional and college sports.” So far, the opponents got it right.

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Turkey exploits post-9/11 counterterrorism model to target critics in exile by Greg Miller at The Washington Post

• In doing so, Turkey is part of a broader phenomenon. Global powers and autocratic leaders have applied the terrorist label to an expanding array of exiled groups and cast operations against them — including assassinations and abductions — as a continuation of the post-9/11 struggle.

• China has applied the term to members of the Uyghur religious minority; India to Sikh separatists; Iran to journalists and women’s rights activists; Vietnam to Christian dissidents; and Rwanda to opposition figures — to cite only some of the countries now routinely branding critics living outside their borders as terrorists.

• They have done so in part to exploit the pejorative power of a term that has no internationally agreed-upon definition, but also to justify their manipulation of a global counterterrorism apparatus that enables them to seize assets, track travel and capture supposed suspects, international monitors said.

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Crypto is for Criming by Paul Krugman at Krugman wonks out

• Presumably not everyone in crypto is participating, even unknowingly, in criminal activity. But the use of crypto for money laundering appears to be rising rapidly. And if I were running a bank, I’d be reluctant to host a bank account belonging to someone who might be involved in unsavory activities.

• You might think that this was my right. Aren’t banks private companies, who can choose which customers they want to serve? OK, we have laws against discrimination based on race or gender, but civil rights for crypto bros sounds like a stretch.

• Or maybe not. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s choice for Commerce secretary, has close ties to Tether, the company that is at the heart of the scheme the UK just uncovered and is rumored to play a large role in money laundering in general.