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Kevin Drum 🕸

Lunchtime Photo

2 years 1 month ago
I think of this as the Parisian mod squad. I took this picture while I was randomly clicking away at lunch at the Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad. After lunch we grabbed a couple of eclairs from a local bakery and then got ourselves tested for COVID-19. Busy day.
Kevin Drum

Charting the pandemic

2 years 1 month ago
Why, a reader wonders, did my Friday chart about job gains have a big chunk of it blanked out? That's easy to explain with a quick comparison of three different ways of presenting the data. Here is Chart #1, which is what you'd think of as the default presentation. Just set the y-axis to fit ...continue reading "Charting the pandemic"
Kevin Drum

Yet more prices are already dropping

2 years 1 month ago
Yesterday it was shipping and mortgage rates. Today it's semiconductors: The average contract prices for the two major types of memory, called DRAM and NAND flash, dropped by 15% and 28% respectively from the prior quarter during the July-to-September period, according to TrendForce, a Taiwan-based market researcher. Prices for both types of memory chips are ...continue reading "Yet more prices are already dropping"
Kevin Drum

The coming end times explain (some of) Donald Trump’s popularity

2 years 1 month ago
Over at Slate, Molly Olmsted writes about the apocalypse. That is, the real apocalypse: If you peruse the list of recent releases in Christian publishing, you’ll get the sense that “the end times” are upon us. This summer saw the release of survival guides, books about current events, and prayer manuals all oriented around a ...continue reading "The coming end times explain (some of) Donald Trump’s popularity"
Kevin Drum

J.K. Rowling not arrested by Surrey police

2 years 1 month ago
This cracks me up: Anti-trans activist Caroline Farrow portrayed her arrest as an aggressive response to "some insulting messages on the internet” She failed to mention she was arrested for doxing trans woman @flyinglawyer73 who this week received an arson threat...https://t.co/ilHYx9Bbls — David Gilbert (@daithaigilbert) October 6, 2022 Based on the gigantic picture, you'd think ...continue reading "J.K. Rowling not arrested by Surrey police"
Kevin Drum

Lunchtime Photo

2 years 1 month ago
This is a Cistus ladanifer in Monet's garden in Giverny. At least, that's what I think it is based on an extensive one-minute use of Google's image search engine. Good enough for blogging!
Kevin Drum

Lunchtime Photo

2 years 1 month ago
This is another picture from my astronomy session on Sunday night—but it's not a photo of the sky. Since everything was going well, I let the telescope camera run for as long as I could and ended up staying until about 6 am. That made it a very long night, but it also meant that ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"
Kevin Drum

Black students do a lot worse in STEM programs than white students

2 years 1 month ago
Three researchers recently decided to take a look at how different kinds of students do in STEM courses at the university level. So they gathered up more than 100,000 records and then controlled for high school prep and desire to attain a STEM degree. Given that, how did different students respond to modest setbacks? Here's ...continue reading "Black students do a lot worse in STEM programs than white students"
Kevin Drum

Lunchtime Photo

2 years 1 month ago
This is phase 3 of my Andromeda Galaxy imaging. I took this near the top of Palomar Mountain, which isn't as dark as the desert but makes up for it with 5,000 feet of elevation. Although my imaging session started out poorly, it ended up going very well. The sky was dark and clear; focus ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"
Kevin Drum

70% of Republicans blame inflation on Joe Biden

2 years 1 month ago
This is from the 2022 American Family Survey: I wonder what Republicans really think about this? If they're serious about the cause not being spending bills passed by Congress (stimulus, CHIPS Act, infrastructure, the Inflation Reduction Act), what exactly is left to blame on "Biden administration policies"? It is a mystery.
Kevin Drum