Kevin Drum 🕸

A paper released today documents one of the most impressive uses of AI language models yet. A woman with ALS who was physically unable to speak—but still had a normally functioning language center in her brain—was fitted with electrodes that fed their output into a large language model similar to ChatGPT. It was able to ...continue reading "AI allows woman with ALS to speak again"

The BLS reports today that it has revised its employment figures for the past year. Between March 2022 and March 2023 we produced 300,000 fewer jobs than we originally estimated. This is about 0.2% of all jobs, which isn't a lot. Here's what it looks like: Meh. The biggest loser was transportation and warehousing, which ...continue reading "We have (slightly) fewer jobs than we thought"

The Wall Street Journal reports that we have 97 fewer nursing homes than we did last year. What struck me about this number was how small it was. Not 97 thousand or 97 million. Just 97. That's not very much, is it? Naturally I was curious about this, but it turns out there's not much ...continue reading "Long-term care is falling way behind the growth of the elderly population"

The House Freedom Caucus has issued its demands for the upcoming FY24 budget year: We remain committed to restoring the true FY 2022 topline spending level of $1.471 trillion without the use of gimmicks or reallocated rescissions to return the bureaucracy to its pre-COVID size while allowing for adequate defense funding. Right off the top, ...continue reading "The House Freedom Caucus is eager to shut down the government"

This is a bearded iris growing in the Canadian WWII cemetery in Bény-sur-Mer. The cemetery is near Juno Beach, about ten miles north of Caen in Normandy. The stark background of the flower is not due to any kind of photoshopping. It was growing against a white gravestone, and in the sunlight it was bright ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

I don't have any special reason for posting this, but it's something I noticed a while back and felt like sharing: The thing I noticed is that even during recessions consumer spending barely changes at all. Half the time it actually goes up, and the other half of the time it declines only slightly. The ...continue reading "Raw data: Consumer spending during recessions"

For what it's worth, here's a chart showing the latest on the inverted yield curve, a condition where the yield on long-term bonds is lower than the yield on short-term bonds: As you can see, the inverted yield has a perfect track record of predicting recessions over the past 50 years. However, it takes 1-2 ...continue reading "The yield curve remains strongly inverted. This is bad news for the economy."

For some reason the BLS does an annual report about people who were born from 1957-1964. Why? It's a bit of a mystery. But since that cohort includes me, let's see what they have to say. Between the ages of 25-56, the average person in this cohort held 7.1 jobs. This makes me below average ...continue reading "Here’s how young baby boomers have been doing"

These two stories both ran on the same day. First is the Wall Street Journal: Pay for new hires is starting to shrivel after years of hefty salary bumps, requiring workers to reset what financial gains to expect from switching to a new job. Wages, especially for people who changed jobs, climbed in recent years ...continue reading "Wages for new hires are either way up or way down"

Just in case anyone could use a refresher, here are the most recent six "scandals" that have preoccupied Republicans during the last two Democratic administrations: Benghazi IRS tea party targeting Hillary's email Durham investigation Afghanistan withdrawal Hunter Biden And here's how they turned out: Benghazi (2012-14): There was no "stand down" order and no denial ...continue reading "Republican scandals: A brief refresher"

I just got back from my 6th COVID vaccination. It's all for the best, since my last one was a year ago, but that's not why I got it. I got it because it turns out the CAR-T procedure wiped out all my existing immunities. I only found this out a couple of weeks ago, ...continue reading "I have returned to infanthood"

Bags o' cotton candy for sale on the Balboa peninsula. "Please Don't Squeeze!"

There are two ways of looking at the Hunter Biden tax 'n gun case: The whistleblower view: Hunter was involved in some serious criminal acts but prosecutors let him off easy due to political pressure (i.e., the White House quietly pushing them to back off). The prosecutor view: No ordinary person would be criminally charged ...continue reading "Maybe Hunter Biden didn’t do anything wrong?"

The Wall Street Journal says auto prices are unsustainable, leading to a surge of delinquencies. I'm not so sure of that. First up, here's the average monthly payment on a new car over the past few years. This takes into account both the rising price of cars and rising interest rates: That doesn't look so ...continue reading "Auto loans aren’t looking out of control these days"

June's drop in Southwest border crossings is no more. In July we were back up to 183,000: Of these, CBP reports that 132,000 were illegal crossings and 51,000 were requests for asylum. Both are up from June.

The Washington Post reports that President Biden's response to the Maui wildfire is being "scrutinized." But why? Although it's true that Biden's public remarks have been limited, Hawaii's governor sings his praises and the response on the ground has been great: “I’ve never seen such dedication in a president, who within six hours dedicated his ...continue reading "Breaking news: Republicans criticize President Biden"

Apparently grocery stores have been jammed all day here in Southern California, with lines literally snaking out the door. It turns out that people are stocking up in order to make it through the 18 hours of rain we're expecting tomorrow. This is happening all over, including places that are in zero danger of flooding—which ...continue reading "The apocalypse is coming"

The Wall Street Journal reports that China's fertility rate dropped to 1.09 last year: Fertility is down nearly everywhere, but China is in a class by itself. For some reason, starting in 2018 Chinese families simply decided they didn't want children. Fertility has dropped by nearly half over the past five years, an unprecedented decline ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Chinese families have given up on children"

As of 2:30 pm, Hurricane Hilary is hundreds of miles away and the skies are calm here in Southern California. Sadly, my planned astrophotography mission still has to be aborted with extreme prejudice, as you can see from this up-to-the-minute picture of the sky.

I am reminded this morning of the odd contempt that conservatives have for renewable power—There's no sun at night! The wind doesn't always blow!—paired with their seemingly inexhaustible love of nuclear power, which survives even $17 billion overruns on $14 billion nuclear plants. I myself have mixed views on nuclear. On the one hand, new ...continue reading "Why do conservatives hate renewable energy?"