My old phone spontaneously disintegrated a couple of weeks ago, so I got a new Pixel 6 Pro. I didn't get it for the camera, but it does turn out to have a great camera. This picture of Charlie and Hilbert isn't as sharp as I get with my regular camera, and the resolution isn't ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 11 March 2022"
Good news! Thanks to Obamacare, medical debt is way down. But not everywhere: This is from a study published in JAMA a few months ago. In states that expanded Medicaid, serious medical debt (i.e. debt in collections) has been cut in half. In states that didn't, medical debt has stayed about the same. And needless ...continue reading "Medical debt is way down thanks to Obamacare"
Yesterday's post about college grads pulling in starting salaries of $100,000 has prompted me to produce a chart showing the equivalent of $100,000 over the past century or so. Here it is: If you made $18,000 in 1970, that's the equivalent of making $100,000 today.
It's fine to be anti-Russia right now. Hell, it's hard not to be. It's OK to express this by writing about it; boycotting Russian products; supporting sanctions against Russia; hoping Vladimir Putin gets frogmarched to The Hague; and so forth. But in the spirit of avoiding another Freedom Fries folly, there are some things that ...continue reading "Maybe we should rein in the anti-Russia stuff a tiny bit"
I just picked up some prescription eyedrops from the pharmacy. I don't have any vision insurance, so this was an all-cash transaction. The clerk at Walgreens told me it would cost $365. Hoo boy. But if I joined their club it would only cost $104 plus $20 for the first year's fee. Great! Sign me ...continue reading "The penalty for not having health insurance is too damn high"
This is a grape juice lupine in a picture taken last year. It's one of the last wildflowers in my queue, but wildflower season is coming up soon so I should have a whole new set of pictures before long.
The Census Bureau released its analysis of the 2020 census today. Here is their estimate of overcounts and undercounts of the four largest demographic groups: White and Asian people were overcounted more than in 2010, while Black and Hispanic people were undercounted more than in 2010. For researchers, this stuff gets weighted and corrected, but ...continue reading "Black and Hispanic residents were way undercounted in the 2020 census"
A reader emails with a question: Could (would) you prepare a chart of gasoline prices (adjusted for inflation) say from 1950 to the present? I think it would be very informative. Yes indeed! I'd be delighted. Here it is: Data through 2021 is annual. Data for 2022 is the latest and greatest for this week. ...continue reading "Raw data: Gasoline price, 1950-2022"
The Wall Street Journal reports that raw recruits at big tech, finance, and consulting firms are being offered six-figure starting salaries. This is making their less lucky colleagues who graduated a few years ago unhappy: As wage inflation hits campuses during a roaring economic recovery and tight labor market, the next cohort of frosh workers ...continue reading "Back in the day, I had to live on less than $100,000"
For at least another month you'll need to mask up on planes, trains, and buses: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is developing guidance that will ease the nationwide mask mandate on airplanes, buses and other mass transit next month, according to a U.S. official, but in the meantime the existing face covering requirement ...continue reading "Mask mandate on planes extended another month"
Today is inflation day, and the BLS reports that the US inflation rate rose in lockstep with the European rate announced a few days ago. The headline inflation rate went up from 7.1% in January to 7.9% in February: Average weekly earnings, adjusted for inflation, declined 0.8% from January to February. That's an annualized rate ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Inflation is up yet again"
A couple of months ago I replaced my Surface Pro 7 with a Surface Pro 8. Hope springs eternal, after all. But it's turned out to be a waste of money: As near as I can tell, performance is about the same as the 7. The bezel-less screen probably seemed like a good idea to ...continue reading "A progress report on the Surface Pro 8 tablet"
Matt Grawitch brings to our attention a new study on alcohol consumption: Just Half A Beer Per Day Shrinks Your Brain, Suggests Study Bad news for casual drinkers — just one to two alcohol units a day results in lower brain volume, only getting worse as consumption increases, a new study suggests. The study continues ...continue reading "Go ahead and have a beer today"
That was quick: Don't get too comfy, though. Tomorrow some reporter will yell a question at MBS about Saudi oil production and he'll just flash them an enigmatic smile and then walk away. Within an hour oil will be selling for a thousand dollars a barrel or something.
Here is average household spending on gasoline: The figures through 2020 come from the Consumer Expenditure Survey. The extrapolation for 2021 is based on retail sales of gasoline, which increased 36% compared to 2020. The extrapolation for 2022 is based on the price of oil, which has increased 70% since the beginning of the year ...continue reading "Raw data: US spending on gasoline"
Is this cheating? Am I getting a bonus catblogging day by putting up a picture of a random cat that I took a picture of last week? Probably. This particular cat was up on a roof in a section of town called Orange Park Acres, a little chunk of unincorporated land surrounded by the city ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"
This won't come as big news to readers of this blog, but it's worth posting just for the headline alone: A new study calculates that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from more than 170 million Americans alive today, about half the population of the ...continue reading "Raw data: We’ve lost 824 million IQ points!"
In the 2002 presidential election in France, Jacques Chirac ended up in a runoff with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the odious founder of the racist National Front party. Many French voters found themselves in a tough position: not really liking Chirac, but knowing that they couldn't support the loathsome Le Pen. The French electorate did the ...continue reading "Maybe Democrats should ask Republicans only for the “loan” of their vote"
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