Kevin Drum 🕸

The crypto community brags that there are thousands of cryptocurrencies these days. But doesn't that, almost by definition, demolish the idea that cryptocurrencies have real value? When Bitcoin was unique, that was one thing. But over the past few years it's became clear that nearly any random person can create a cryptocurrency. All it take ...continue reading "Why can anyone create a new cryptocurrency?"

Marissa Evans writes about her 70-year-old father's death in January from COVID-19: Since my father’s death, I have stared at the January 2022 calendar page attempting to trace his COVID-19 exposure and when he started coughing. I’ve tried reconstructing timelines and symptoms with dates, texts and calls to understand why my father died. But I ...continue reading "The Black death rate from COVID-19 doesn’t entirely make sense"

Based on some skeptical feedback to my post about how our global supply chains actually worked pretty well through the pandemic, I began wondering if the real issue here revolves around our definitions of "global supply chain" and "failed." For example: My view of "global supply chain" is that it specifically refers to the complex ...continue reading "OK, how good are our global supply chains, really? Let’s see the receipts."

With cases of Omicron and now BA.2 rising in Europe, it occurred to me that this might be a good time check in again on Sweden. Here it is: Back in the middle of last year, Sweden was officially a disaster area. Their light touch on COVID regulation had backfired, producing higher case counts than ...continue reading "Another update on the Swedish model for COVID response"

Here's another picture of Hilbert and Charlie taken in the wee hours using the Night Sight feature of my Pixel 6 Pro. This one really shows off the huge amount of image processing that the phone must be doing: the edges are so sharply defined that the cats almost look like they're floating a bit. ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 25 March 2022"

The latest from Ukraine: Not long after Mr. Biden arrived in Poland, the Russian military signaled that it might be reducing its war aims. After a month of a grinding war in which Russian forces have been met by unexpectedly fierce Ukrainian resistance and have failed to capture major cities across the country, Maj. Gen. ...continue reading "Russian general says Russia will focus on Donbas"

This is a seagull on the Seal Beach pier. I can't think of anything else to say about it.

Here we go again with yet another fretful look at our delicate global supply chain: "Far more vulnerable than many imagined." Indeed. Why, all it took was a deadly and unprecedented global pandemic and suddenly our supply chains developed a few minor hiccups and then were unable to fully keep up with a sharp and ...continue reading "Global supply chains handled the pandemic with flying colors"

A new Fed paper tries to estimate the difference in unemployment benefits between Black and white workers. Here's the raw data: Fewer Black workers are eligible for UI benefits compared to white workers. However, even among those eligible for UI, Black workers receive UI benefits at a much lower rate than white workers (42% vs. ...continue reading "Black workers receive unemployment benefits at systemically lower rates than white workers"

A friend sent me a link to a Catalist analysis of what happened in the Virginia governor's election last year. There are lots of takeaways, but here's one of them: Between the presidential election of 2020 and the gubernatorial election of 2021, youth turnout dropped 34 percentage points. Among boomer adults it dropped only 17 ...continue reading "In Virginia, young voters stayed home as usual"

This morning I had Rice Krispies™ for breakfast. All is well again.

As long as we're on the subject of California gasoline, here's an update on the ever-swelling difference between the price of gasoline in California vs. the Lower Atlantic: When I last checked in on this in 2019, the California premium was a little over a dollar. Three years later it's continued rising and is now ...continue reading "The California gasoline premium continues to soar"

This is the Hollywood/Highland station on the LA subway's Line B. I'm not sure what it's supposed to look like. Does anyone know?

Gasoline prices are up in California: Experts attributed the rise in local prices to recent trouble at a handful of California oil refineries. PBF Energy refineries in Torrance and Martinez as well as a Valero refinery in Benicia outside San Francisco have experienced problems in recent weeks that caused a hit to gasoline production, driving ...continue reading "Spring refinery shutdowns are back in California"

I spent the afternoon today up in LA visiting the Kaiser Permanente bone marrow transplant team to discuss getting the Carvykti CAR-T treatment for my multiple myeloma. These are the same doctors who did my stem cell transplant back in 2015, and the procedure would once again be done at City of Hope in Duarte. ...continue reading "Health Update"

This is a foggy autumn morning near Jeanerette, Louisiana. It could probably be a better picture, but I've dicked around with it enough already. I just don't feel like starting over.

Last year home prices increased about 17% according to the Case-Shiller 20-City composite. That's an increase of 12% when adjusted for inflation. After you account for the drop in 30-year fixed mortgage rates, monthly payments—which are what really matter—were up 10%. That's . . . a lot. Still, payments in 2021 remained lower than pre-housing-boom ...continue reading "Home prices are headed for a big drop in 2022"

Exciting news, word nerds! My copy editor and I got interested in the most widely used spelling of terra cotta, so I went to the Google Ngram Viewer to take a look. Here are the results: For some reason terra cotta soared in popularity, peaking in 1910, and then plummeted. Terracotta started rising in 1945 ...continue reading "The Ngram viewer gets an update!"

Over the past year I've gotten interested in the steady decline of children's mental health. I haven't looked into it in any depth, though, so I was interested in a survey of the topic by Judith Warner in the Washington Post Magazine yesterday. First off, she takes on the possibility that the crisis is an ...continue reading "Why do today’s kids have such big mental health problems?"

The redoubtable Eliot Cohen surveys the evidence that Russia is doing poorly in its war against Ukraine and then laments that too few people are willing to admit that Ukraine is winning: The West’s biggest obstacle to accepting success [] is that we have become accustomed over the past 20 years to think of our ...continue reading "No one doubts the massive global superiority of NATO and the US military"