Kevin Drum 🕸

Today's picture is a twin of Friday's. But in this one, the alstroemeria is in focus while the cat, if you look carefully, is just a blur.

Did you know that 23,000 shipping containers have been lost at sea since 2008? That's about 1,500 per year. In 2020 there was a huge spike to 4,000 containers, which prompted the World Shipping Council to start a safety campaign. In 2022 a mere 661 containers were lost: The WSC would like you to know ...continue reading "Raw data: Containers lost at sea"

Everyone's campaign strategy against Donald Trump appears to have converged on the same tactic: trolling. It's all about deliberately hurling insults at him in the hope that he'll melt down completely and eventually lose the plot. Neither Nikki Haley nor Joe Biden are even trying to hide this. They're all but daring Trump to maintain ...continue reading "Baiting Trump"

Here is data from three different survey-based studies. First is loneliness among the elderly over the past few generations: Next is loneliness among high school students over the past three decades up to 2012: Finally, here is Gallup's survey of overall loneliness since the pandemic: Based on these numbers, the best guess is that loneliness ...continue reading "Raw data: Are we getting lonelier?"

The Washington Post writes today about 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk: His skill set is hard to see on TV, and the data collected by the computer chips in his shoulder pads doesn’t really stand out. Wait. Computer chips in his shoulder pads? Oh yes: Two chips tucked within both shoulder pads on every NFL player ...continue reading "We have taken the first step toward robot football"

Aquifers around the world are being drained at an alarming speed. Here's what that looks like in two of the biggest aquifers in the US: Red dots are bad (more than one meter per year of water loss). This is from a recent paper that examines 1,693 aquifers around the world: Rapid groundwater-level declines are ...continue reading "We are running out of water"

Terri Gerstein writes today about a couple of cases of employee misclassification in Denver: At issue is whether dishwashers and others like them, placed in their jobs by online temporary staffing agencies, are employees of the agencies or independent contractors running their own businesses. ....The cases demonstrate the spread of the exploitative gig business model ...continue reading "The gig economy is (probably) still small"

Two nights ago Microsoft gifted me with a Windows update on my Surface tablet, and now I can't read anything in the Wall Street Journal. Every story looks like this: Oddly, this is what you get if you don't have a subscription and the Journal paywalls you. But I do, I'm up to date, and ...continue reading "I am unable to read the Wall Street Journal (on my tablet)"

Immigration, man. I don't know. Right now the Senate is working on a compromise immigration bill, but as usual the immigration hawks are doing their best to sink it because they aren't getting 100% of what they want. Some of this is campaign cynicism, but not all of it. It's what they've done over and ...continue reading "How do we get control of the border?"

I'm glad you asked. Here's the latest data from the CDC: Half of us have gotten a flu jab this season but only a fifth of adults have gotten the latest COVID vaccine. How come? Dr. Danielle Ofri has asked, but she rarely gets a straight answer: When I ask my patients if they have ...continue reading "How are we doing on the latest COVID vaccine?"

Here's the line of the day: As a scholar who researches the history of Western fears about human extinction.... That's quite a specialty. This essay grabbed my attention because I've lately been on an anti-doom kick, so I was intrigued by a piece recounting our long history of always thinking we live in uniquely frightening ...continue reading "Wait. You do what?"

I got my sample ballot yesterday and it was about a hundred pages long. wtf? We're voting for a president, a senator, and a couple of other smaller offices. What's all this stuff for? It turns we have a lot of people who want to be your next president: I don't know who any of ...continue reading "California has a very long sample ballot for a very simple election"

How smart were we back in the olden days? You're probably familiar with the Flynn Effect, which suggests that people gained about 3 points of IQ per decade over a period of 50 years during the 20th century. That's about 15 points total. This suggests that before World War II we were all roaming around ...continue reading "People was dumb in olden times"

The jury in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case against Donald Trump has been kept anonymous. This is to keep Trump's vengeful MAGA hordes from terrorizing them. But now that the trial is over the jurors are free to do whatever they want. However, it's appropriate that on the 50th anniversary of Cher's "Dark Lady," ...continue reading "Judge to Trump jury: go home and hide"

I didn't quite realize this until Dean Baker pointed it out today, but US health care spending has been basically flat for over a decade: Health care spending was 17.2% of GDP in 2009 and was slightly lower in 2022, coming in at 16.9%. We are more than 3 percentage points under the old pre-2009 ...continue reading "Raw data: Health care spending in the US"

On Twitter a couple of days ago Nate Silver pointed out that confidence in the press has plummeted. This is true, but I added that confidence in everything has plummeted. The press wasn't any kind of outlier. But then I wondered if I was remembering that correctly. So I went off to the General Social ...continue reading "Has confidence in the press plummeted?"

Last year, a jury found that Donald Trump had libeled E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages. That made Trump mad, so he kept on libeling her. Today a jury ordered him to pay another $83 million—most of it just for being a malicious asshole. The Washington Post passes along ...continue reading "Trump hit with $83 million in libel damages"

It is January 26 and the Border Patrol finally released its official apprehension figures for December. This is the latest it's ever been. Is it a traditional Friday night news dump for bad news? Maybe! Because it was definitely bad news. As expected, CBP reported a whopping total of 302,000 encounters on the southern border: ...continue reading "Illegal immigration skyrockets in December"

Here's Charlie, cone free and hanging out in his favorite place now that we've let him outside. Whenever we call his name, he hops out of hiding in the bushes and races in.

I'm not sure if this is unexpected or not, but the International Court of Justice has basically ruled in Israel's favor in South Africa's genocide case against it: In a series of near-unanimous votes, the world court on Friday ordered Israel to ensure that its military not violate the Genocide Convention, and that it punish ...continue reading "Court rules Israel isn’t committing genocide. Yet."