Four weeks of eye adjustments are now complete and my artificial lenses have been locked in. Starting on Friday I no longer have to wear anti-UV glasses and my eyesight will have recovered from today's dilation fest. Hooray. Then it will just be a matter of waiting. I'm not very happy with how things turned ...continue reading "My eye adjustments are finished. Maybe."
I don't know what this guy was doing while I was waiting for a train at the Vermont/Sunset station on the LA Metro red line. I'm pretty sure I don't want to know.
Hmmm. Finland has officially decided to apply for membership in NATO. Russia is pissed. A lot of people under 40 or so might not understand why this is a big deal. Finland is just your standard Western democracy, after all, and has been part of the EU for decades. The only surprising thing is that ...continue reading "The end of Finlandization"
Last night someone suggested that tracking COVID-19 cases was sort of pointless these days because so many people do home testing that never shows up in national statistics. That's true, and several readers mentioned that sewage testing is the latest and greatest method for tracking COVID according to those in the know. That got me ...continue reading "How is wastewater holding up near me lately?"
It occurred to me that I haven't looked at COVID-19 lately, so I figured I should do that. Here's an old-school look at the daily rate of confirmed cases in various countries: Cases are way down all over the world. The US case rate has increased slightly since April, but it's still below 250/day compared ...continue reading "COVID-19 case rates are way down all over the world"
This is the Calvary Chapel of the Canyons located on Silverado Canyon Road. On its own it isn't an especially great looking church, and I long ago gave up on trying to take an ordinary shot of it. But then, several months ago, I happened to be out in the area when I saw the ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"
Last month, 30-year fixed mortgage rates hit 5%, up from 3% at the end of 2021. But that didn't even slow them down. Rates busted right past that 5% level and are now at 5.27%: How much is this really? Here's a chart that shows how much the rise in interest rates has affected the ...continue reading "Monthly mortgage payments have gone up 30% since the start of the year"
The CDC released drug overdose death figures for the full year 2021 today. Here they are: Fentanyl accounted for 64% of total opioid deaths in 2021. Fentanyl overdose deaths have increased from under 10,000 in 2015 to nearly 70,000 in 2021.
A few days ago I asked what was really behind the Russian army's epic incompetence in Ukraine. It's a standard war, not a counterinsurgency, so you'd think Russia could do OK. Why isn't it? A longtime reader writes in with this explanation: I do have some information as to why the Russian Army is so ...continue reading "Here’s why the Russian army sucks so badly"
Today is inflation day, and the BLS reports that the US inflation rate has finally begun to decline. The headline inflation rate fell from 8.5% in March to 8.2% in April. The core inflation rate, which excludes food and energy, fell from 6.4% to 6.1%. This means that our collective optimism about a drop in ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Inflation in April"
You guys are an optimistic bunch! Only 10% of you think that inflation will continue to rise. As it happens I agree with you: I'm guessing a decline to maybe 8.1% or so. We'll find out tomorrow if this is wishful thinking or not. As usual, though, I won't get around to posting about it ...continue reading "Inflation poll results"
This post is a shoutout to my buddy Don, who asks "How does this whole Starlink thing work anyway? What are the Ukrainians getting from us?" No problem. Each Starlink kit comes with a small dish—referred to by fans as dishy or McDishy—which connects via the Ka-Ku band to Starlink's constellation of satellites in low-Earth ...continue reading "How does Starlink work? Are the Ukrainians thrilled with it?"
This is a drone's eye view of the Port of Los Angeles (top) and the Port of Long Beach (bottom). Today marks the first meeting to discuss a new labor contract for dockworkers on the West Coast, about two-thirds of whom work at either the LA or Long Beach ports. Backlog at the two ports ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"
Let's test the economic mettle of my readers. Do you think inflation went up, down, or stayed the same last month? The BLS will report their results on Wednesday at 8:30 am Eastern time. Loading…
I mentioned in the previous post that (a) national polls about abortion are useless, and (b) attitudes toward abortion have been very stable. So here's a set of (a) three national polls (b) showing that attitudes toward abortion have become more liberal over the past couple of decades: These three polls are all reliable and ...continue reading "Abortion attitudes have become more liberal since 2000, all thanks to Democrats"
Just a quick note to anyone proposing some sort of compromise position on abortion because it polls well: Don't bother. National polls don't matter. The only thing that matters is how well your compromise fares in each state. If it's really popular in, say, Indiana, then maybe there's a chance of getting the Indiana legislature ...continue reading "Abortion is now a state issue. Deal with it."
The nation's press has finally caught on to the nation's shortage of infant formula. That's good. What's not so good is that they keep mindlessly repeating the same phrase over and over: "The out-of stock percentage has reached 40%." Or, even worse, "40% of baby formula was out of stock in more than 11,000 stores ...continue reading "The best response to the baby formula shortage is to be brand flexible"
I'm not sure what this is, but an image search suggests it might be a stonecrop of some sort. Maybe a white diamond stonecrop? For those of you who want to take a guess, it's about two feet across and was growing out of a vertical face (mostly just dirt, though, not stone).
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