Kevin Drum 🕸

The New York Times reports today on a pair of studies that conclude with high certainty that the COVID-19 virus originated at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, not at the nearby Wuhan virology lab. Here's an annotated map that provides a simple look at how the virus initially spread: I think it's possible that ...continue reading "New studies confirm that COVID-19 virus occurred naturally"

In the New York Times, Chris Miller says there's a reason that Vladimir Putin keeps winning wars: For the past decade, Americans have come to believe that Russia’s strength lies in hybrid tactics — cyberwarfare, misinformation campaigns, covert operations — and its ability to meddle in other countries’ domestic politics. Yet as we have searched ...continue reading "Why Putin wins: Obvious answers to obvious questions edition"

AFPAC is for conservatives who think CPAC has sold out to the woke liberals. In other words, their applause for Joe Arpaio last night was not just a misunderstanding: Joe Arpaio tells the crowd at AFPAC that he has been named the biggest racist in the country. The crowd erupts in applause. "What are you ...continue reading "AFPAC: We love us some good ol’ school racism"

I was roaming around in the vicinity of John Wayne Airport earlier today and decided to take a bunch of pictures of planes taking off. My goal was to find the best spot and then decide if it was good enough to merit coming back when the light was better. In a nutshell, it wasn't. ...continue reading "Can you identify these airplanes?"

In the New York Times today, Jamelle Bouie fires away at moderate Democrats who, he says, derailed President Biden's agenda and are now trying to blame progressives for their own failure. I don't understand this. It's true, as Bouie says, that over the summer there was disagreement about whether to link the infrastructure bill and ...continue reading "Are Democratic moderates responsible for the party’s downfall?"

It's been a while since I took a look at the latest COVID-19 numbers, so let's do that. The powers that be have decided that the best metric is no longer cases or deaths, but hospitalizations, so here are hospitalization rates in the US plus the five biggest Western European countries: Everybody is way down ...continue reading "Raw data: The latest on the Omicron surge"

Charlie, like most cats, adores it when we change the bedsheets. He zooms around as we wave the sheets over his head and attacks anything that comes his way. In this photo he is just about to pounce on something, but I don't know what. Apparently I stopped taking pictures before he made his move.

After a dip in December, consumer spending is now back on track: There's nothing much to say about this. It just adds to the mountain of evidence that the US economy has recovered from the pandemic and is now back on its pre-pandemic growth path. This is all thanks to the massive amounts of stimulus ...continue reading "Consumer spending is totally normal"

After years of saying that someday I should go up to LA and check out their new subway, I finally did it this week. It's not so new anymore, but better late than never, amirite? I was mainly interested in taking pictures of the various pieces of artwork that adorn some of the stations, and ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Quick note: I'm sure I'll have occasional comments on Russia's invasion of Ukraine over the next few days and weeks, but only if I have something interesting to say. Beyond that, I'm no Ukraine expert and won't be writing about it more generally. You can get that from dozens of regular news sources. My basic ...continue reading "Vladimir Putin is (still) a thug"

A new poll from CBS News shows that "book banning" is pretty unpopular: a whopping 85% of the country thinks it's wrong to ban books for ideological or racial reasons—though I note that the pollsters didn't bother to ask about banning books due to sexual content or adult language. Liberals are touting this as evidence ...continue reading "New poll says a third of Americans believe racism has never been a big problem"

I don't know what kind of tree this is, but the red leaves were pretty so I took a picture of them. Anybody want to help ID this bit of Louisiana swamp flora?

Houston, we have a problem: Disneyland’s Electrical Parade is ditching its patriotic float. Why that’s a good thing The most notable change appears to be happening with the Main Street Electrical Parade, which is doing away with an America-first finale that had survived a number of decades and featured a closing stars-and-stripes float of the ...continue reading "BREAKING NEWS: Disney hates real America"

Tyler Cowen pointed today to a recent paper that says the US redistributes more to low income groups than any European country. But here's a chart from the paper: We're close to the bottom! So what's up? The answer is taxes: According to the authors, our tax system is more progressive than those in Europe. ...continue reading "Let’s compare the bottom 50% in the US vs. Europe"

This is a busker on the Seal Beach pier with Long Beach harbor in the background. As it happens, though, she wasn't actually busking. She played her violin for a few minutes just to attract attention, and then put it away. Her real business was selling small paintings: portraits, elaborate letterforms, mythical animals, and so ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Here are the headlines today about Ukraine: LAT: Russia orders troops into eastern Ukraine as fear of war grows NYT: Putin’s Order Sending Forces to Separatist Enclaves Is Condemned at U.N. WaPo: Putin orders troops to eastern Ukraine WSJ: Putin Orders Deployment of Troops to Breakaway Regions in Ukraine Guardian: Russia strongly condemned at UN ...continue reading "Russia invades Ukraine"

This is Silverado Creek at the southernmost point of Silverado Road where it leads into Silverado Canyon. I think there's a movie called Silverado, isn't there? It should have been filmed here.

Is our electricity distribution system getting less reliable? Yes and no: If you look just at day-to-day operations, nothing much has changed. Power outages are slightly worse, but only by a little bit. But when you count "major events," the duration of power outages has nearly doubled over the past decade or so. Why? Is ...continue reading "Raw data: Reliability of the US electricity distribution system"

For some reason a chart of pedestrian deaths has been making the rounds in my Twitter feed: I replotted the chart to show pedestrian deaths per capita, which looks like this: This is very peculiar. Whether you look at the raw data or whether you adjust for population or vehicle miles driven you get the ...continue reading "Why did pedestrian deaths suddenly turn upward in 2009?"

As I semi-promised earlier today, here's a chart showing the housing situation in each state: States like Maine and Vermont have loads of housing, while the entire West Coast is at the very bottom. Oddly, Texas is well below the average. I would have expected them to have loads of housing. And with that I'm ...continue reading "Yet more about housing in the United States"