Kevin Drum 🕸

It's triptych time again. Here are three shots of John Isner on the practice court at this year's French Open. From top, he's serving, hitting a forehand, and twirling his racket.

Here's your good news for the end of the year: The price of gasoline at the pump continues to decline. For the full year, it went from $3.28 to $3.09, with a temporary peak in summer thanks to the Ukraine war. And in case you're interested, here is the price of gasoline since the end ...continue reading "For New Year’s, the price of gasoline dropped yet again"

This is the USS Enterprise (CVN 65), the first nuclear aircraft carrier ever built. Its keel was laid just a few weeks before I was born and she was decommissioned half a century later. The Enterprise's inactivation was completed several years ago and it's now being stored at Hampton Roads, Virginia, where I shot this ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

The previous post reminded me of something that a few of you might find useful: a way of remembering certain facts and figures that are often hard to keep in mind. I first starting using this years ago to convert temperatures from Celsius to Fahrenheit. The problem is that most metric conversions have fairly easy ...continue reading "News you can use: How to handle numbers like a true nerd"

The Wall Street Journal has a longish piece today on what it's like to retire on $1 million in these parlous times. "Once a symbol of extravagant wealth," the authors say, "$1 million is now the retirement-savings goal for millions of Americans." True enough. And since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's what ...continue reading "What’s it like to have $1 million, Dr. Evil?"

Why did China suddenly loosen its notoriously strict COVID-19 rules a few weeks ago? Was it because of that rioting in Shanghai and elsewhere protesting the lockdowns? Spare me. That might have helped a bit, but China under Xi Jinping has shown no great patience with citizens who don't behave. Just ask the residents of ...continue reading "What’s behind China’s about-face on COVID?"

After the Andromeda Galaxy, my next astrophotography project was the Iris Nebula. I didn't have any particular reason. It's pretty and a little less well known than some of the other, bigger nebulas. But there's a sad story behind this. As usual, I did some test runs to figure out what settings I wanted and ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

I keep reading people—progressives, of course—asking "What do they mean by woke, anyway?" Well, I'm here to help. There is, naturally, an original meaning of the word from progressives themselves. It's an old metaphor that was re-popularized by Black Lives Matter after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. It meant, roughly, being perceptive of ...continue reading "“What does woke mean, anyway?”"

Hey, do you remember that one of the world's largest and most trusted crypto firms crashed earlier this year, prompting plenty of assertions that crypto was ruined for good? It did and it did. But a mere four months later, when FTX went belly-up due to very similar business practices (i.e., embezzlement and fraud¹) it ...continue reading "FTX wasn’t the first big crypto implosion this year"

Let me get this straight. It turns out that most of the groups dedicated to helping migrants don't actually object to red state governors busing them to other states. They don't even really object all that much to migrants being dropped off in freezing weather in Washington DC. They won't be there for long anyway. ...continue reading "The real cruelty of migrant busing is right on the surface"

This comes via Neville Medhora and shows what we've been searching for on Google during 2022: NFTs got a fair amount of sustained attention, but I'm heartened to see that the biggest and longest attention-grabber was Wordle. This is not because I care about Wordle one way or the other, but it seems nice and ...continue reading "Google search trends for 2022"

Who loves Christmas more than cats? From top: Charlie investigating a new cat toy from Aunt Gin; Hilbert seemingly aware that this box has some new pillows; Hilbert getting ready to play amidst the wrapping with Charlie; Charlie peeking out from behind a mountain of tissue paper.

The Wall Street Journal says that Santa has delivered a wonderful gift this year. For the first time since the pandemic started, our supply chains are finally in great shape: Gone are the weekslong backlogs of cargo ships at large ports. Ocean shipping rates have plunged below prepandemic levels....In the U.S., retailers have ample inventory. ...continue reading "Global supply chains have recovered for the holidays"

I was mulling over Wednesday's post about whether we should call ourselves Americans—which is allegedly offensive to other residents of the Americas—and came up with this: If not American, what do we put in the blank line at the bottom? "A US resident"? That's pretty awkward, no? We are not the only country with this ...continue reading "If I am not an American, what am I?"

The federal budget passed today. It's cold back East. There's nothing new on the SBF or Twitter fronts. Donald Trump remains guilty of inciting an insurrection to keep himself in power even though he lost the 2020 election. Meh. So here's a couple of additional charts that show consumer spending through November. First up is ...continue reading "Consumer spending has been pretty steady all year"

Here is Charlie walking down our fence using his magnetic boots, which are cleverly made to resemble his natural paws. He's a pretty clever cat.

I've mentioned several times that the Fed's aggressive interest rate hikes haven't yet had an effect on inflation, which has been declining on its own. The reason is that it takes time for the impulse of an interest rate hike to work its way into the economy and produce an impulse in the inflation rate. ...continue reading "How long does it take interest rates to affect inflation? About a year or so."

Here is PCE inflation for November. It's close to zero: As usual, this is month-over-month inflation adjusted to an annual rate. The core rate, which the Fed considers the key inflation figure to follow, is down to 2%, which is their official target. The headline rate is even lower at 1.3%. (If you insist on ...continue reading "Inflation has practically disappeared"