A pair of researchers has published a new paper claiming that global warming is astronomically more dangerous than we've thought until now. Their thesis is simple: historical evidence shows a very strong correlation between average global temps and extreme weather events, and those extreme weather events are very costly. Interestingly, they do something I haven't ...continue reading "How dangerous is climate change?"
The job hunting market has evolved approximately like this: In the late '90s, a few bright entrepreneurs began creating online job seeking websites like Monster and Indeed. This made it easier to apply for jobs, and companies became awash in applications. To keep from going mad, HR departments started employing automated screening technology. The job ...continue reading "Let your bot do the job hunting"
Here's an interesting tidbit. Since the start of the year there have been precisely two short periods when people were interested in Joe Biden's age: The first spike came when special counsel Robert Hur made gratuitous remarks about Biden's age in his classified documents report and spurred a mountain of press coverage. The second spike ...continue reading "Raw data: Public interest in Joe Biden’s age"
The recent police shooting of Roger Fortson, a US Air Force senior airman, prompts Vox to look at the bigger picture of police killings: Black people comprised 13 percent of the US population but accounted for 27 percent of those killed by police, according to Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit tracking this information. That's one ...continue reading "Police don’t kill Black people any more than white people"
The Washington Post brings our attention today to the famous Keeling Curve, which shows the concentration of CO2 at the top of Mauna Loa. In March CO2 concentrations were 4.4 ppm higher than the year before, a new record.¹ In 2000, CO2 increased at an annual average of 1.17 ppm from the previous year. In ...continue reading "Raw data: CO2 emissions continue to accelerate"
I forgot to take a new picture of Hilbert before we left town, so instead here's a rare archival photo of Hilbert on his first day home from the shelter, September 22, 2014. Wasn't he a cutie pie?
The Biden administration is set to raise tariffs on a range of Chinese imports: Officials are particularly focused on electric vehicles, and they are expected to raise the tariff rate to roughly 100% from 25%. Well, that should do it. If GM and Ford can't compete against 100% tariffs it's time to give up the ...continue reading "Biden to China: Drop dead"
According to Morning Consult, Joe Biden is the most popular leader in the G7 group of rich countries: Among all countries surveyed, only four have leaders with approval ratings over 50%: India, Argentina, Mexico, and Switzerland.
You don't need a chart to tell you when a dependent variable goes to zero, but just for the record: COGAT's motto is, "We’ve said it the whole time — There is no limit to the amount of aid that can be facilitated into Gaza." That's obviously pretty questionable, but in any case they aren't ...continue reading "No aid trucks are getting into Gaza"
We were in Nuremberg today and I visited the famous Nazi rally grounds, home of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. However, these are not Nazi geese. Nazis have been gone for a long time. These are just ordinary, innocent, German geese out for an afternoon swim.
This is a golden breasted starling at the LA Zoo. They have a whole cage full of these things, half of them hanging upside down like bats showing off their bright yellow chests.
Quick question: at this point, does anyone truly think Donald Trump doesn't want to get jailed for contempt? He's obviously angling pretty hard for it, and he likely thinks it would be a big campaign boost. He'd be just like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr.! The MAGA base would swoon over Donald heroically ...continue reading "Does jail await Donald Trump?"
This is a little out of left field, but does anyone know why Jim Jordan is never mentioned as a possible running mate for Donald Trump? The guy is a total attack dog; he's super conservative; he's an election denier and overall Trump sycophant; he's a winner, election-wise; and he looks the part, something we ...continue reading "Is Jim Jordan on Trump’s list of VP candidates?"
Vox reports that CRISPR gene editing technology is great, but it has a problem: Most of the available reference genomes are representative of white Europeans. That’s a problem because not everybody’s DNA is identical: Recent sequencing of African genomes shows that they have 10 percent more DNA than the standard reference genome available to researchers. ...continue reading "Race is a social construct except when it’s not"
Negotiations between Israel and Hamas are going great: Netanyahu refused to send a delegation to Cairo for ceasefire talks and spent the weekend trying to ratfuck the deal, and now Israel is complaining it didn't know what was happening with said talks and spinning a story about America stabbing it in the back https://t.co/VAAtTrT0sG — ...continue reading "Benjamin Netanyahu is no ally"
This is M16, the Eagle Nebula, taken from Palomar Mountain. As usual, I wish I could pick up more colors in my astronomy photos, but the reds usually overwhelm everything else. I'd need to do multiple exposures with four different filters to really pick up all the colors, and that's both expensive and time consuming. ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"
Hamza Abdelrahman and Luiz Edgard Oliveira, the gurus of savings levels, report that excess pandemic savings are finally gone: I'm not sure how much real-world difference this makes, since excess savings have been nearly zero for awhile outside of the affluent, but it's still a milestone. From this point on, the economy is on its ...continue reading "Pandemic savings have all been spent"
The Wall Street Journal reports that consumers are fed up with rising food prices: Now, some consumers are hitting their limits. Restaurant chains and some food manufacturers are reporting sliding sales or slowing growth that they attribute to consumers’ inability—or refusal—to pay prices that are in some cases a third higher than prepandemic times. ....U.S. ...continue reading "Screwing their customers reaches a limit for food companies"
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