Kevin Drum 🕸

Atrios has a question about the rich: Why do people own 7 houses? Or keep working long after they have more money than they can ever spend?...I guess, to me, money can buy a degree of freedom from hassle, yet so many people who have it choose to not use it that way. Atrios has ...continue reading "Why do people own 7 houses?"

This is a rain lily photographed a few days ago in our backyard. On the left is a chewed up pine cone courtesy of our local squirrel. On the right is a concrete bunny, courtesy of Marian.

Via Keith Humphreys, here's some good news from the Council on Criminal Justice: For violent crimes other than murder (i.e., rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) Black suspects are being arrested at a lower rate relative to their population than white suspects. I hadn't realized that. The racial disparity in new court commitments for drug and ...continue reading "Racial disparities in the criminal justice system are declining steadily"

The Washington Post writes today about a new robot that can make french fries: Restaurants have toyed with robotics for years, cropping up as early as 1983 when Two Panda Deli in Pasadena, Calif., used robots to schlep Chinese food from the kitchen to customers....But now — with restaurants facing a protracted labor shortage and ...continue reading "There’s no labor shortage at fast food restaurants"

So what happened today? The 11th Circuit Court eviscerated Aileen Cannon, the Trump lackey who serves on the federal district court of Mar-a-Lago. The attorney general of New York filed a civil suit against the entire Trump family for various acts of mopery and dopery. The Fed raised interest rates another slug in its shadow ...continue reading "News roundup for Wednesday"

This is a lovely blue and green damselfly sitting near a stream in Giverny, about a mile from Monet's cottage. I had wandered off to the southern edge of town while I waited for the entry line to dissipate, and that's when I spotted this little guy. When I went back, the line was indeed ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

I have just returned from getting my bivalent COVID-19 booster, which provides protection against the Omicron variant. This makes me quintuply vaccinated, and the folks at Kaiser even tossed in a flu shot for free. I feel like I'm now ready to face the brutal Southern California winter with full protection from all common transmissible ...continue reading "I am now fully vaccinated. Are you?"

Good news! The Department of Transportation says that transborder freight between the US, Canada, and Mexico has recovered strongly from the pandemic: That's a nice infographic, all ready for newspapers and TV news to copy and publish without thinking about it. But wait. What's that footnote in tiny type at the bottom? Let me put ...continue reading "How much has North American freight increased over the past year?"

The Wall Street Journal reports that rent and housing inflation are staying stubbornly high: Economists expect housing inflation to strengthen further before cooling off in the coming months, but are unsure of when relief will appear....Not only are shelter costs rising, they are climbing at an accelerating pace....Shelter costs—comprising mostly rents and a gauge of ...continue reading "How much are rent and housing going up?"

This is phase two of my Andromeda Galaxy imaging. My previous attempt used 10-second exposures because that was the best I could do. Now, with autoguiding working properly, I was able to do a set of 180-second exposures on Sunday night. I let the camera run for about two hours, which gave me 40 frames ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Housing permits, the earliest leading indicator of the housing construction market, were down for the fifth straight month in August. Permitting has now fallen below the pre-pandemic trendline and is headed almost straight down: In the bellwether region of Southern California, the housing market has cooled down considerably: Sales of new and existing houses, condos ...continue reading "The housing market is getting ready to tumble"

A Georgia Republican Party official named Cathy Latham, one of the "alternate" electors for Donald Trump, has testified that she had nothing to do with a bunch of tech experts hired by Big Lie lawyers who copied data from voting machines in Coffee County. Surveillance footage suggests otherwise, and new surveillance footage suggests really, really ...continue reading "Election fraud? It’s always Republicans."

I decided to make up for my sloth last week by posting gasoline prices a little early this week. Here you go: Gasoline was down nearly another nickel last week, though the price declines are starting to flatten out. You may be wondering if President Biden's executive order to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum ...continue reading "Gasoline prices just keep falling and falling"

Back in 1954, after Joe McCarthy finally crossed one too many lines during the Army-McCarthy hearings, Joseph Welch famously stood up and asked him, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" This has become almost a cliche, but I think about it a lot these ...continue reading "“Have you left no sense of decency?”"

You knew I'd get to it eventually, so why not today? This is the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, taken in panorama mode as usual for shots like this. I was happy that I happened to get a few seconds when there was no one at my end of the hall, and that's when I ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Is COVID over? The two biggest causes of death are heart disease and cancer. They're off the charts compared to all the rest, so I'm showing only #3-10. The numbers for everything except COVID-19 are from 2020. I don't imagine they've changed much since then. The number for COVID-19 is extrapolated from the current death ...continue reading "Raw data: Leading causes of death in the United States"

Over at Vox, Aja Romano tells us about the enormous backlash to the casting of non-white actors in a couple of recent high-profile productions: Detractors of Amazon’s new Lord of the Rings series, which debuted this month, claim that casting Black and Asian actors undermines the show’s faithfulness to Tolkien’s world. Meanwhile, some ostensible fans ...continue reading "Who exactly is outraged by the casting of “Rings of Power”?"

On Thursday night I finally declared victory in my long twilight struggle with my telescope. It is now 100% functional. The final hurdle was getting autoguiding to work. The telescope mount already has a motor that tracks the rotation of the earth, but it's not perfect. With just the mount tracking, I can do a ...continue reading "Victory! (Over my telescope.)"

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who sees things this way: Stubbornly high inflation has Wall Street worried that the Federal Reserve will respond by raising interest rates until the United States tumbles into recession, taking the weakening global economy with it. The Fed and other central banks are tightening credit ...continue reading "Stop killing the economy, Jerome!"

Every year the Annenberg Center conducts a survey of civics knowledge among American adults and every year we obligingly fail it miserably. This gives older Americans a chance to complain about how modern education is a shambles compared to the rigorous standards of their day¹ and it gives Annenberg a chance to moan about how ...continue reading "Annenberg’s annual civics survey is a bunch of hocus pocus"