Kevin Drum 🕸

I've seen a lot of stuff like this since yesterday: I am a bit stunned that more journalists aren't outraged and stunned by the Heard/Depp verdict. In addition to being a disaster for domestic abuse survivors, it is a disaster for a publication's ability to tell truth to power. — Adam Davidson (@adamdavidson) June 2, ...continue reading "Does the Johnny Depp victory spell the end of #MeToo?"

The American economy gained 390,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 300,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate remained absolutely flat at 3.62%. As usual these days, nearly all of the job gains were in the service sector. ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Net new jobs in May"

Our apartment is right near Église Saint-Augustin de Paris, but like many large churches its rose window is partly covered by its organ. However, this was no problem: The window is symmetrical, so I cut out a pie-shaped piece from the top, inverted it, and plopped it into the space blocked by the organ at ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

I managed to make it two weeks in good health, but today my lucky streak ended. I woke up with a cold and a terrible sore throat and stayed in most of the day. In other news, my cell phone got pickpocketed on the metro. I'm mad about this less because the phone itself was ...continue reading "So how’s the vacation going?"

Just another street scene in Paris.

Did I wake up on Mars today? Last September Texas passed a law that allowed the government to enforce speech codes on private companies like Facebook and Twitter. These companies would be required to host speech they didn't want, a bit of state coercion so wildly unconstitutional it was a wonder the ghost of James ...continue reading "The Supreme Court’s conservatives take a dive on the First Amendment"

America's latest independent prosecutor fiasco continues to roll along.¹ Trump fans are desperately hoping that US Attorney John Durham will prove that Russiagate was a Democratic ratfuck from the start, but Durham has now failed to prove even the trivial nano-charge that he finally brought against a guy nobody's heard of. That guy is Michael ...continue reading "John Durham got what he deserved yesterday"

President Biden has approved a program of student loan cancellation up to $10,000. Matt Yglesias isn't happy about it: The student loan cancelation issue is white collar nonprofit workers making the transition from class-in-itself to class-for-itself. — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 28, 2022 I get Matt's irritation about this. It really is a triumph of ...continue reading "It’s time to hold states accountable for student debt"

Let's get back to some straight-up tourist stuff, shall we? This, of course, is Notre Dame cathedral photographed late in the afternoon, and from the front it looks like it's never been damaged at all. But perspective isn't everything: I photoshopped out both a big, ugly crane and a big, ugly fence that runs along ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

I am one of those terrible liberals who has long-since given up on gun control and mass shootings. The pro-gun sentiment in America—even if it's not a majority—is far too strong to permit any meaningful firearm legislation. Combine that with a pro-gun Supreme Court and I'm unable to see even the slim possibility of any ...continue reading "Why I’ve given up on gun regulation"

On the flight over we passed near a thunderstorm that was pretty spectacular. I figure it to have been somewhere in the very northern reaches of the Great Plains, maybe even a little way into Canada. As usual with things like this, I never quite caught an image of the very best lightning bursts, but ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

I am thousands of miles away from the land of mass shootings, about to head out with Marian and a picnic lunch for a beautiful afternoon walking along the Coulee Verte, an elevated park similar but larger than New York's Highline Park. But don't think I'm not thinking of you. I've been collecting Republican proposals ...continue reading "Republicans have ideas about our mass shooting problem"

Ha ha ha: At least 25 companies that merged with special-purpose acquisition companies between 2020 and 2021 have issued so-called going-concern warnings in recent months, according to research firm Audit Analytics. ....The companies with warnings amount to more than 10% of the 232 companies that listed through SPACs in that period....That percentage is roughly double ...continue reading "Time to sack the SPACs?"

Atrios has a question for me: How's your self-driving car, Kevin? Yeah, yeah. I'm not giving up on self-driving cars, but it's true that things haven't been going as swimmingly as I'd thought they might. It turns out to be a hard problem! Then again, my old friend Atrios is stuck in Philadelphia. I'm in ...continue reading "OK, sure, but . . ."

These are the first two cats we came across in France. They were roaming around in a field in the town of La Roche-Guyon and they appeared to be housemates. The black cat was a little shy, but the Siamese was friendly enough, though pretty occupied with hunting-related program activities while I was busy taking ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 27 May 2022"

The latest housing forecast from Fannie Mae takes note of the tremendous jump in average monthly payments for homebuyers in 2022: As a result, their forecast for mortgage originations has declined: That totals $2.7 trillion for 2022, and Fannie now projects that 2023 will see only $2.25 trillion in mortgage originations.

This is (duh) the Cluny La Sorbonne metro station in the Latin Quarter. The photo features a homeless man sleeping on a bench side by side with a student reveling to his earbuds. These are probably the two most common sights in the Latin Quarter.

A couple of months ago I mentioned "Far UV" as a possible solution to COVID-19, so I was interested to see it mentioned prominently in a recent tweet thread from an expert. In general, the thread was about which engineering (not social) measures are worthwhile and which aren't. To summarize super briefly, his advice is: ...continue reading "Civil engineering—both high and low tech—can help fight COVID-19"

This is some  French countryside a few hours before sunset. It's mainly notable because I took it through the window of a bus. The combination of a polarizing filter to remove reflections and Photoshop to restore white balance makes the window disappear completely. Pretty cool clouds, eh?

FiveThirtyEight recently asked a panel of 2,000 Americans what issues worried them the most. The answer was inflation, which is pretty predictable these days. But I'm more interested in how much Republicans and Democrats disagree about things. In the case of inflation, 42% of Democrats thought it was a top worry while 65% of Republicans ...continue reading "What do Americans disagree about the most?"