Kevin Drum 🕸

And now for something completely different. In my youth I decided to try my hand at writing short stories, and my very first effort revolved around a pair of researchers from another world who spent a few thousand years guiding human cultural and scientific development. I wrote this in 1983, so I probably stole the ...continue reading "Artificial intelligence is nine years and nine months away"

Last night I learned that many K-12 teachers no longer use textbooks. In some cases this just means they've switched to e-textbooks, but often it's a more dramatic change: teachers basically assemble their own curriculum by grabbing stuff from the internet or elsewhere and rolling their own. I gather this is mostly a budget issue, ...continue reading "Are textbooks going the way of the dodo?"

I guess this is as good a theory as any: Honestly this is the first explanation that makes sense to me. Australians really hate this shit. pic.twitter.com/RuKMz44GyI — Mike Caulfield (@holden) April 26, 2023

Politico reports today that Ron DeSantis's hand-picked surgeon general decided to make a few personal edits to a study of COVID-19 vaccines: Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo personally altered a state-driven study about Covid-19 vaccines last year to suggest that some doses pose a significantly higher health risk for young men than had been established ...continue reading "The Florida surgeon general scandal explained for nerds who want to know what really happened"

According to the latest annual report from the BLS, the worst paid occupation in America is shampooer, followed closely by fast food cooks, cashiers, and dishwashers. But you'd rather know about the top paying occupations, wouldn't you, you money-grubbing fiends? Fine. It turns out that almost all the top-paying occupations are doctors of some sort, ...continue reading "Raw data: The 20 highest paying occupations"

My prime night sky target last week was the Pinwheel Galaxy, but it's not the only thing I photographed. I got to my usual site early but didn't want to start up until the sky was fully dark, so I spent the first hour on something else. This is Markarian's Chain, a group of galaxies ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

As of 10:36 am PDT I am fully infused with my brand new, genetically modified killer T-cells. Now we wait.

The following post was written entirely by ChatGPT. I ran it multiple times with different prompts, and regenerated each prompt at least once. It kept finding more stuff! Then I put it all together and added a single sentence about the recent Dominion payout. Rupert Murdoch and his media companies have paid out millions of ...continue reading "Here’s an AI view of Rupert Murdoch"

Oh come on: For nearly two years beginning in 2015, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sought a buyer for a 40-acre tract of property he co-owned in rural Granby, Colo. Nine days after he was confirmed by the Senate for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, the then-circuit court judge got one: The chief ...continue reading "Yet another Republican Supreme Court justice failed to report a property sale"

I've heard a bunch of theories about why Tucker Carlson was fired from Fox News: He was the biggest name in the Dominion lawsuit, so now he's taking the fall. Some of his text messages, which were made public during discovery, were critical of Fox. Rupert Murdoch didn't like that. Tucker had started to think ...continue reading "Why was Tucker Carlson fired?"

A day at the carwash. Or, more accurately, a day in the carwash.

In news that should surprise no one who's ever worked in an office, new research suggests that remote work is fine for experienced workers but bad for new workers. The reason is pretty obvious: Senior workers already know how to do their jobs and are slowed down by fielding annoying questions from junior workers. For ...continue reading "Remote work is bad news for junior workers, especially women"

Today Tucker Carlson got fired and tomorrow I get cured of cancer.¹ The week is shaping up nicely. What's on tap for Wednesday? ¹Sort of.

I'm not pretending to be obtuse here, but what's up with this headline in the Washington Post? I know it's traditional to assume that the president is the one "responsible" for the debt ceiling, but why? It's a problem for the country, not the presidency. The leaders of Congress are running out of time at ...continue reading "Whose debt ceiling is it, anyway?"

Today was potentially a milestone: my last chemotherapy session ever. I've now finished the three days of chemo prep required for the CAR-T procedure, which is followed by a rest day on Sunday and then a few final tests on Monday. Assuming everything checks out, Tuesday is Day 0, when the CAR-T starts. If it ...continue reading "Health update"

Today the Washington Post tells the story of Joe Moss, a Republican and conservative Christian who engineered a takeover of the Ottowa County board of commissioners in Michigan. It all started in church: They settled into the pews and listened as their pastor warned of the “many people” in the country who were “trying to ...continue reading "MAGA Republicans take over a county, and it all started with masks"

Bud Light has fired its VP of marketing. NRO's Jim Geraghty comments: When the Bud Light controversy blew up, some of us contended the company had made a serious error, that alienated and repelled a certain portion of existing customers while not attracting significant numbers of new customers. We were assured that we were old ...continue reading "Right-wing hate wins another round"

This is Hilbert licking an unfortunate lizard in our backyard. I don't know why, since neither of our cats ever shows any interest in actually eating a lizard. They just like to play with them. This one looks extremely dead, but no. After I hauled the cats indoors, he flipped over and made a getaway. ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 21 April 2023"

The deadline to raise the debt ceiling is getting closer, and investors are getting more jittery: According to the Wall Street Journal's experts, the current cost of insuring treasury debt corresponds to a belief in a 2% chance of default. There are a whole lot of caveats about this, but the conclusion nonetheless is that ...continue reading "Investors are getting nervous about the debt ceiling"

Here at City of Hope, the hospital menu is pretty extensive and caters both to healthy eaters and to us normal people. They've got burgers and tuna melts. For breakfast you might want to try the French toast. You can have your sandwiches on white bread. Mayonnaise is liberally applied all over the place. They've ...continue reading "You can only push City of Hope just so far"