Kevin Drum 🕸

Peggy Noonan has a remarkable column in the Wall Street Journal today about the COVID lab-leak theory. Before I get to that, though, let's review why we're talking about this at all. A few days ago the Journal reported that: The Department of Energy had gathered some new intelligence about the possibility of a lab ...continue reading "Peggy Noonan and the common sense of COVID"

A conversation the other day prompted me to reevaluate the way we talk about teens and social media. It's usually framed as whether social media is good or bad, and that's obviously not very useful. The internet has a tendency to bifurcate things. Most famously, I believe that the internet makes smart people smarter and ...continue reading "How to think about teens and social media"

Tyler Cowen today: Recently I discussed the connection between high neuroticism and left-wing politics. In passing I mentioned that the right-wing had its own problems, leading a few of you to ask what those were. The classic response would be to accuse (credit?) conservatives as being low in empathy. Whether or not you agree historically, ...continue reading "We have nothing to fear but (conservative) fear itself"

Over at Vox, Alissa Wilkinson peddles an increasingly stale meme: It’s important for the purposes of this article that you know my age: I am on the verge of turning 40. Having been raised in that brief interregnum between the Cold War and the war on terror, I, like many of my peers, assumed that ...continue reading "The (not kids anymore) are doing alright"

Inflation is usually blamed on higher prices for commodities, which in turn raise the prices for finished consumer goods. Add in higher labor costs and you get the dreaded spiraling inflation. But Reuters reports that European central bankers are finally waking up to something else: Huddled in a retreat in a remote Arctic village, European ...continue reading "War profiteering? How about pandemic profiteering?"

Our president today: I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule – but I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s objections – such as lowering penalties for carjackings. If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did – I’ll sign it. — President Biden (@POTUS) March 2, 2023 I ...continue reading "Home rule for me, but not for thee"

This is the Capitol Building in our nation's capital. As you are reading this, America's legislators are carrying out their solemn duty to promote the general welfare with no thought for themselves. Let us all thank them for their selfless service to our nation.

I'm just fiddling around here, but thought this was interesting: When you hear about e-commerce, it's commonly described as about 15% of all sales. Which is fair enough. But that includes things like gasoline and eating out, which can't be purchased online, plus autos, which are still mostly an in-person business. If you look at ...continue reading "How big is e-commerce? It depends."

Here's the latest from California, bellwether to the nation: Swept up in unproven voter fraud claims, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors has upended the county’s election process, canceling its contract with Dominion Voting Systems and opting this week to pursue, among other options, the possibility of counting votes by hand. Supervisor Kevin Crye, part ...continue reading "California county dumps Dominion over voting conspiracy theories"

As productivity goes, so goes the nation. Or something like that. In the fourth quarter of 2022 labor productivity increased at an annual rate of 1.7%. That's a little higher than the average of the past decade. Here is productivity since the end of the Great Recession: Productivity shot up during the first quarter of ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Productivity was up in final quarter of 2022"

Matt Yglesias writes today that certain progressive tropes produce feelings of helplessness and depression, rather than the sense of power and optimism needed for political movements to succeed. One of these is the routine assertion of "harm" or "feeling unsafe" when someone does something you find offensive or even just disagreeable: Objecting to bigoted or ...continue reading "On “feeling unsafe”"

One of the most common suggestions from police reform advocates is to stop using armed police officers for a wide range of tasks that might be better handled by trained dispute moderators and social workers. In Los Angeles, the police union said today it was willing to negotiate this: As part of its upcoming contract ...continue reading "LAPD says it’s “willing” to hand off duties it never liked in the first place"

Hot off the press from the BLS, here is the 2022 unemployment rate for each region of the US: Want to know how your state did? Just click here.

You may recall that a few weeks ago I set up my telescope in the backyard to do a little testing. I was extremely restricted in my view, and I ended up semi-randomly taking a picture of M81, aka Bode's Galaxy. It was surprisingly good. A few days later I took another picture, and although ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Ron DeSantis has written a book! Let's see what's in it: DeSantis, who this week begins a media tour to promote his new book “The Courage to Be Free,” launched a “Prescribe Freedom” campaign in January that proposes permanently limiting Covid-19 vaccination and mask requirements and giving cover to physicians whose medical views depart from ...continue reading "Ron DeSantis wants to ban masks permanently, forever, eternally, infinitely, forevermore, til death do us part"

According to a recent report from the CDC, here is the change in vaccination coverage of 2-year-olds over the past couple of years: This is the most recent data available. Every single vaccination series is up. The complete 7-vaccine childhood series is up. The number of toddlers with no vaccination coverage is down. Here is ...continue reading "Vaccination coverage of toddlers has increased over the past two years"

For what it's worth, here is the most recent set of expected inflation numbers from the Cleveland Fed: The 5-year/5-year forward inflation measure is currently at 2.2%, which closely matches the Cleveland Fed 5-year estimate. Note that all of these figures are continuing to go down even after January's re-benchmarking and the bad January inflation ...continue reading "Raw data: Expected inflation is low and getting lower"

Hey there. Have you seen a sign like this lately at a nearby fast food joint? That seems pretty excessive, doesn't it? Fast food places must be desperate for workers to offer this kind of money. But not really. First, of all, you won't see this kind of sign in Oklahoma, where they pay fast ...continue reading "20 bucks an hour for burger flippers?!?"

I think I said once that it's impossible to take an interesting picture of a cow. This is because cows are inherently boring creatures who do nothing except eat grass and stand around listlessly. I stand by this, but I think I came close on Sunday. This is a handsome looking cow doing its usual ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Last month The Nation published an article based on records from early 2020 regarding the origin of the COVID virus. The scientists involved, it turns out, were initially receptive to the idea that the virus might have been the result of a leak from a Chinese lab in Wuhan.¹ But after a week of study ...continue reading "DOE or no, the COVID lab leak hypothesis is still pretty unlikely"