Kevin Drum 🕸

Yesterday was a fine day with some Santa Ana winds blowing, which had the cats acting kind of squirrelly. Hilbert went out to the front yard and took possession of the sunny rock—his by right as king of the garden—and then Charlie decided to check out the rock too. Naturally he did this by sticking ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 27 January 2023"

For the sake of completeness, here's the consumer spending data from today's PCE report: Spending was down 3.4% compared to November (note that this is seasonally adjusted, so it accounts for higher average holiday spending). Is this a sign of economic slowdown? Maybe. On the other hand, spending is still above the pre-pandemic trendline, and ...continue reading "Consumer spending was down slightly in December"

Elon Musk was in Washington DC last night to— Well, it's not clear exactly what he was there to do. The Washington Post explains: “Just met with Speaker McCarthy & Rep Jeffries to discuss ensuring that this platform is fair to both parties,” Musk tweeted Thursday evening. ....It remains unclear whether the main purpose of ...continue reading "Elon Musk goes to Capitol to kowtow to Republicans"

Today the BEA released inflation figures for December, and there was both good news and bad news: Headline PCE inflation dropped nearly to zero in December. That's the good news. However, core PCE inflation ticked up a bit to 3.5%. That's not terrible, but it does indicate that core inflation is dropping at a pretty ...continue reading "PCE inflation drops to 0.6% in December"

Today's big New York Times piece about the Durham investigation is chock full of goodies about how Donald Trump and his lackeys desperately tried to prove that the FBI had illegally opened an investigation of Trump for no good reason. Attorney General Bill Barr and his special counsel, John Durham, were obsessed about this and ...continue reading "The Durham investigation has been a fiasco from start to finish"

Astronomy week sputters to a close today. My weekend trip to the desert yielded three images (the comet, the Orion Nebula, and a star trails picture), so I don't have anything for today. My only choice is to use an older astronomy photo, but I don't have any of those in the queue either. What ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

I got some pushback on Twitter about my comment yesterday that ChatGPT would replace most lawyers in a few years time. My reply: "I wonder how long it will be until a computer is able to pass the bar exam?" Today I sort of get an answer: How well can AI models write law school ...continue reading "ChatGPT goes to law school"

Elon Musk took out $13 billion in bridge loans when he bought Twitter—and bridge loans are just that: a short-term bridge until you get permanent financing. Bridge loans are also expensive, so Musk is highly motivated to replace his with lower-cost financing. The Wall Street Journal says he's trying hard to do that: The state ...continue reading "Does Elon Musk really think Twitter is still worth $54 per share?"

Today was GDP day, and it turns out that GDP growth in the last quarter of 2022 was just like the wee bear's porridge: not too hot and not too cold: There are no surprises in the details. Personal expenditures were up, private investment was up (except for houses), and government expenditures were up. Growth ...continue reading "Chart of the day: GDP growth in Q4 of 2022"

One of the rotating quotes at the top of the blog is, "Republicans are evil; Democrats are idiots." The Washington Post presents the latest evidence: President Biden is facing blowback from some members of his own party over his mishandling of sensitive documents as his allies express growing concern that the case could get in ...continue reading "New report: Democrats are still idiots"

You may be familiar with something called the Flynn Effect. It's named after James Flynn, a researcher who discovered that IQs had been rising about three points per decade for most of the 20th century. The evidence for this has been replicated numerous times and is now accepted as pretty rock solid. I've always had ...continue reading "Are we getting dumber?"

The Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor issued a report yesterday about the cost of child care. It uses data from their newly launched National Database of Childcare Prices, and I was interested to discover that the most expensive place in the country for child care is California: The main takeaway from the report ...continue reading "Child care prices: High, but rising only slowly"

Yet more astronomy today! I'm a believer in multitasking, so when I go out to the desert I bring both my telescope and my camera. While the telescope is doing its thing, the camera might as well be doing something too. Lately I've been playing with star trails, figuring out the best settings and exposure ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

I don't subscribe to Bloomberg so I can't read all of Tyler Cowen's column this week about artificial intelligence. But here's an excerpt from his blog. The topic is ChatGPT, an example of a Large Language Model: I’ve started dividing the people I know into three camps: those who are not yet aware of LLMs; ...continue reading "AI is still not here. But it’s getting damn close."

Partly this is because we all get fooled by the Mercator projection used on most maps, which stretches the northern parts of Canada into something about the size of Russia. But it's also because nearly all of Canada is completely empty. About 99% of the population lives in the narrow red strip on the map ...continue reading "Raw data: Canada is smaller than you think"

The Wall Street Journal reports on the status of remote work these days: Remote jobs made up 13.2% of postings advertised on LinkedIn last month—down from 20.6% in March. Other job sites such as Indeed.com and ZipRecruiter also report declines in remote listings. ....Companies such as Walt Disney Co. and Starbucks Corp., meanwhile, are stepping ...continue reading "Remote work continues to shrink"

Astronomy week continues! I've developed something like a schedule for my astrophotography: Once a month, when the moon starts to cooperate, I head out to Palomar Mountain to do some test runs that give me an idea of which settings (mainly exposure time) work best on my chosen target. Then, a week later, I head ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

According to the ever-watchful BLS, here are the states that made the biggest improvements in unemployment over the course of 2022: Only four states had higher unemployment at the end of 2022 compared to the end of 2021: Arkansas, Nebraska, Indiana, and Oklahoma.

Yesterday the marketing department at Mars Inc. discontinued the use of their animated M&Ms characters because, um, Tucker Carlson said they were fat lesbians now? Or something. It's not really explainable without sounding like an idiot yourself. But now there's this: Fox News is MAD that "woke" Xbox is changing its power saving mode Earhardt: ...continue reading "Xbox has been ruined by woke liberal fanatics"

Now it's Mike Pence's turn in the barrel: A lawyer for former vice president Mike Pence, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, found what they called “a small number” of documents bearing classified markings during a search of Pence’s Indiana home, according to letters to the National Archives. Search Obama's house! Do it now! I'll bet ...continue reading "Yet more classified documents seized . . . from Mike Pence"