Kevin Drum 🕸

A couple of days ago Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter to Republicans saying that health officials had pressured Meta to remove COVID misinformation while the vaccine was being rolled out. He now regrets this, though he didn't really say why. Then there's this: The Zuckerberg letter didn’t stop with details of the well-known crackdown on ...continue reading "Please note: There was no Biden administration in 2020"

This is the famous wheel at the Prater amusement park in Vienna. If you've ever seen The Third Man, you'll recognize it.

According to the International Monetary Fund, per capita GDP in the US is currently $85,000. This figure is adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity, so it takes into account differences in living standards throughout the world. Here's how everyone else is doing: The US is the richest large region in the world and the fastest growing ...continue reading "Raw data: Per capita GDP around the world"

This feels like about the millionth time we've seen this recently: A federal judge in Texas has.... Does it even matter what this judge did? He overturned a Biden program, of course, and in this case it happens to be one that provides a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are married to US ...continue reading "Texas judge once again does what Texas judges do"

The new school year has started, and that means it's time for an evergreen story about teachers being burnt out and quitting in record numbers: Teacher exit rates reached new highs in the past two years, according to data from several states. In Texas, thousands more teachers left the classroom in 2022 and 2023 compared ...continue reading "We have a record number of teachers this year"

Pew has a new report out today about the values and policy opinions of Trump and Harris voters. As you'd expect, they disagree widely on everything. Except for Social Security: Nobody—not Democrats, not Republicans, not independents—wants Social Security touched even slightly. It's still the third rail of American politics.

From Axios: House Republicans are furious about being forced into a last-minute Biden impeachment vote — which they say could hurt their campaigns, top GOP sources tell Axios. Even leadership doesn't want it. But just one member can force a vote.... With Congress stuck in D.C. next month to hammer out a short-term funding deal, ...continue reading "It’s finally time to impeach Joe Biden"

This is from a research letter in JAMA today: Average temperatures in the US have gone up 2°F since 2000. That might not seem like much, but when the average increases a little the tail of the bell curve increases a lot. In the past decade, that small increase in average temps has caused the ...continue reading "Raw data: Heat-related deaths in the US"

From the Wall Street Journal today: Why Philadelphia Is Bucking a Nationwide Surge in Evictions In a nutshell, Philadelphia's success is chalked up to its mandatory eviction diversion program: "After a trial period [starting in 2020], the city in June made it a permanent requirement for landlords to go through out-of-court negotiations with tenants before ...continue reading "How’s the eviction crisis coming along?"

This is the shoe fence near Rice, California. It was initially a shoe tree of obscure origin, where travelers would hang pairs of shoes, but the tree burned down in 2003 and was replaced by a "shoe garden." It's a garden only in the loosest sense of the word: a bare patch of ground about ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Yesterday I happened to come across a tweet about how we were all so crushed by work these days that we had no time to cook meals etc. Is this true? Here's some data on how many hours employed people work each day: Over the past two decades, the number of people holding down multiple ...continue reading "Raw data: Hours of work in America"

This is pretty damn impressive: A 5-year observational study of ~12,000 individuals with obesity taking GLP-1 drugs (without diabetes) with propensity matched controls A significant reduction of all-cause mortality (HR 0.23, 95% CI 0.15, 0.34)https://t.co/mbYzzdtOEP pic.twitter.com/4hLCYbm0TS — Eric Topol (@EricTopol) August 25, 2024 Over the course of five years, obese people in the control group ...continue reading "Ozempic-like drugs will cure what ails you"

The Wall Street Journal says today that plug-in hybrids are finally getting popular. Let's check on that: If you stop right at March and squint a bit, as the Journal does, it might look like plug-in hybrids are doing a little better than EVs. But why cherry pick? We have figures through last month, and ...continue reading "No, plug-in hybrids are not finally taking off"

If you're interested in such things, novelist Curtis Suttenfeld wrote a few days ago in the New York Times about a writing competition with ChatGPT. Based on reader input, he chose a few themes (lust, regret, kissing) and details (middle-aged protagonist, flip-flops) and then set out to write a short story. A Times editor worked ...continue reading "Can AI write a good novel?"

Here's an interesting tidbit you might not know: who is the least warlike recent US president? In the following list you get one point added for each war you started and one point subtracted for ending someone else's war. I've included only sizeable wars that featured either American boots on the ground or substantial air ...continue reading "Raw data: Who’s the most militaristic president? Who’s the least?"

Be careful with these micro-summaries that are ubiquitous on Twitter: Welker: Do you acknowledge that consumers will ultimately pay more if there are more tariffs. Do you acknowledge that? Vance: No, I don’t. Economists disagree about the effects of tariffs.. pic.twitter.com/iORjF3nP1W — Acyn (@Acyn) August 25, 2024 In fact, Vance explicitly agreed that tariffs can ...continue reading "What J.D. Vance really said about tariffs"

This is maybe not the smoothest translation ever, but apparently Israel has launched a massive preemptive attack on Hezbollah along Lebanon's southern border: Presumably the planned Hezbollah operation was the long-awaited Iranian retribution for Israel's recent assassinations. Hezbollah has well over 100,000 rockets in its arsenal, so this could end up as a very long, ...continue reading "Israel launches preemptive attack on Hezbollah"

Let us investigate the vast history of lying by Gov. Tim Walz as alleged by the Trump campaign: Retired from the National Guard as a command sergeant major. He did rise to the rank of command sergeant major, but upon retirement his rank reverted to master sergeant. Had children via IVF. Walz almost always refers ...continue reading "Is Tim Walz a big fat liar?"

Here's something I never expected to see: Katy Y.Y. Tam, a postdoctoral psychology researcher and boredom expert.... Huh. And ironically, I imagine that studying boredom is pretty fascinating. Anyway, this is from a story about mindless switching between TikTok videos. Tam says this is an attempt to relieve boredom that backfires: the more you do ...continue reading "Boredom on the internet"

How do wars end? Lots of different ways. One of the most common is also the simplest: the losing side surrenders and sues for terms. Needless to say, these terms are often harsh. Wars can also end via negotiated settlements, usually mediated by a third party. In these cases the losing side often avoids the ...continue reading "Here’s how war in the Middle East ends"