Kevin Drum 🕸

Since January, asylum applications at the Southwest border have been handled by an app called CBP One. The idea is to bring some order to asylum requests by requiring applicants to make an appointment via the app and then show up legally at a port of entry. For the past two months, if you cross ...continue reading "Judge tosses Biden asylum rules"

President Biden has proposed a new rule that would require all new electric water heaters to use heat pump technology by 2029.¹ The obvious reason for this is to reduce electricity consumption and thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Department of Energy estimates a reduction of 15 million tons per year, which is only about ...continue reading "President Biden wants your water heater to be powered by a heat pump"

This is not a streetlight in Paris glowing at night. It's a streetlight in Paris at dawn with the sun directly behind it. For some reason the illusion tickled me, so I snapped the shutter.

World Weather Attribution, a group that does rapid estimates of weather events, has calculated the odds that our current heat wave would have happened with and without climate change. Their final synthesis is the purple bar at the bottom. For the southwestern US, climate change has made the heat wave 3,000-11,000 times more likely, with ...continue reading "Climate change has made our heat wave 10,000 times more likely"

Here is a mystery: Attempted suicide among teens has stayed the same since 2000, but the number of successful suicides has gone up by a third. Why? Are teens getting better at committing suicide? Maybe it's a problem with the data? The numbers for attempted suicide come from a survey and they show that about ...continue reading "Teen suicide is up, but attempted suicide isn’t. Why?"

This is insane.

This almost makes me laugh more than it makes me outraged. In March Silicon Valley Bank suffered a huge run because it was in trouble and most of its deposits were uninsured. So what did the rest of the banking industry do? Reduce their level of uninsured deposits? Ha ha. Of course not. They just ...continue reading "Big banks try, but fail, to fool FDIC"

Kevin McCarthy wants to pass a couple of spending bills sometime soon, but as usual he's having trouble with the far-right wing of his party. However, Rep. Chip Roy says he thinks things can be worked out: McCarthy’s biggest hurdle in the funding debate is a bloc of House Freedom Caucus members who want even ...continue reading "Domestic spending is already going down"

This kid was having a blast bouncing around on the "Ocean Motion" ride at the Balboa Fun Zone, which is located at the far end of the Balboa Peninsula here in Orange County. The day was warm but overcast, and it even rained a little bit later on.

A new paper delivers the non-shocking news that rich kids have a way better chance of being admitted to super-elite universities than merely affluent kids even if their test scores are the same. This is due to a combination of legacy admissions, athlete preferences, and non-academic credentials, which provide elite universities with all the wiggle ...continue reading "Elite universities really love the top 1%"

The state of Florida requires instruction in African American history in all grades, and as you might expect it's pretty thin in the primary grades. But it picks up a bit in middle school, with 14 separate standards mandated for grades 6-8. One of them is this: This footnote has caused an uproar in the ...continue reading "Here’s the real problem with Florida’s school standards for slavery"

The New York Times has a long piece today about the "steep cost" of Ron DeSantis's loose COVID policies, and it's a little hard to follow. But there's a simple way to judge the results of anyone's COVID policy: excess mortality. Here it is for Florida: Florida's excess mortality during the big Delta surge of ...continue reading "Florida’s COVID performance has been mostly average"

Social Security has a modest funding shortfall. If nothing is done, benefits will have to be cut by a quarter in 2033 or thereabouts. Several Republican candidates for president think this is just fine as long as we cut only the benefits of young people. That's kind of cynical, but politics ain't beanbag. If young ...continue reading "Fixing Social Security in two easy steps"

Just sayin':

This might be Ron DeSantis's most embarrassing pander yet: We’ve kneecapped ESG in Florida. So I’m calling for an investigation into AB InBev’s actions regarding their Bud Light marketing campaign and falling stock prices. All options are on the table and woke corporations that put ideology ahead of returns should be on notice. pic.twitter.com/B3frLY4f30 — ...continue reading "Anheuser Busch is doing fine, Ron"

Here is Charlie blissing out as Hilbert licks his head. Usually this presages an attack from Hilbert, but not this time. He just felt like licking someone.

It's funny that SNAP (food stamps) and WIC (Women Infants and Children) grow and shrink differently over time. SNAP responds to the economy, growing during recessions when it's needed most and then falling when the economy improves and it's needed less. It declined during the expansion of the aughts but then increased by nearly 20% ...continue reading "The growth and decline of SNAP and WIC"

Threads may have signed up 100 million users in its first week, but that doesn't mean 100 million people are actually using it: Generally speaking, everyone seems to agree that lack of features is the main reason for the drop in engagement. It's certainly the reason I haven't signed up in the first place. Threads ...continue reading "Raw data: Threads use is plummeting"

The town of Burney in northern California has suffered a recent bout of vomiting and stomach illness due to an outbreak of e. coli in the water supply. The LA Times fills us in: Everyone is struggling to get through their days without potable water as the local water district works to treat the source ...continue reading "California’s water systems are virtually disease free"

This is downtown Los Angeles at night viewed from Angeles Crest Highway. City Hall is off to the left. There's a thin marine layer settling in south of downtown, with the lights of Long Beach behind it and then yet another marine layer over the ocean.