Kevin Drum 🕸

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"

Kylie Jenner wore a faux lion head to Paris Fashion Week and got a thumbs-up from PETA: In a statement to DailyMail.com, PETA President Ingrid Newkirk praised Jenner and Shayk for possibly making a statement against trophy hunting....Newkirk also urged the fashion stars to give up using wool products, which PETA says leads to the ...continue reading "Do we need to be more sensitive toward silkworms?"

Dan McLaughlin got caught recently by a speed camera and then, a few days later, received a citation in the mail. Normally, that would just be one of those things: What is obnoxious, however, is that the pretext for this particular ticket is “speeding in a school zone” even though it was based on a ...continue reading "How come no one knows how to drive in a school zone?"

Today is astronomy week. First up is our newest comet, C/2022 E3, aka "The Green Comet." Comet photography is tricky. Normal subjects, like galaxies or a nebulas, don't move across the field of stars, so you can tell your scope to guide based on star positions and everything will be fine. But if you do ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

I don't remember who pointed me to this, but here's a short excerpt from a 2022 survey done by Populace, an education think tank, about what people expect of K-12 education: Only a third of Americans have college degrees, so I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that "prepare a meal" ranks higher than "prepare ...continue reading "What do we want from our school systems?"

Here's an incarceration chart from my buddy Rick Nevin: It looks like incarceration rates went down in both 2020 and 2021, and indeed they did. Between 2019 and 2021 the prison incarceration rate for ages 18-19 declined from 1.07% to 0.84% to 0.55%. For the entire age cohort of 18-24 year-olds, prison incarceration rates went ...continue reading "Incarceration rates for the young continue to drop hard and fast"