Kevin Drum 🕸

Did I visit the Sahara Desert recently? No, just the Cadiz Dunes Wilderness near sunset, right here in Southern California. It's out in the middle of the Mojave Desert, sort of between Barstow and Needles. I was there to see if it would be a good place for astrophotography and Milky Way pictures, which it ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Here's a chart showing how many of us have either gotten COVID or been vaccinated against it: (Note that the line on the chart shows inverse seroprevalence. That is, the number of people who haven't had COVID and haven't been vaccinated. This allows me to draw a proper trendline, but you have to subtract the ...continue reading "We’ve finally reached herd immunity! But it doesn’t matter."

Over the weekend, Jack Herrera had a piece in Politico that provides an interesting perspective on the Biden administration's immigration policy. It's true that illegal border crossings soared after Biden took office, but expulsions soared too, starting from his first day: Most Americans don’t understand how many people the Biden-Harris administration has removed from the ...continue reading "Joe Biden has expelled nearly 7 million illegal immigrants"

The latest micro outrage on the right is about a performance at the Paris Olympics opening ceremonies. It involved some drag queens at a table full of people that supposedly resembled The Last Supper, and the New York Times says that organizers "have remained largely vague about the references associated with the images." Then there's ...continue reading "Dionysus inspires protests on the right"

Here are a few assorted short takes that are on my mind right now. They are worth exactly what you paid for them. Is Donald Trump losing his edge? Kamala Harris has been the Democratic nominee for a week now, and she's hardly immune from criticism. But so far Trump has called her a "bum" ...continue reading "Sunday miscellany"

Today Donald Trump promised to create a strategic bitcoin reserve if he's elected. Even for Trump, does this make any sense? Put aside the question of whether bitcoin is a real thing or just a mass delusion. Let's assume it's real. We still don't stockpile every real thing. We don't have a strategic Lego reserve ...continue reading "What’s next from Trump? A strategic golf ball reserve?"

What's up with the widespread mispronunciation of Kamala Harris's name? The origin is simple enough. In English it's most common for the stress to be put on the second-to-last syllable of a word. This means a two-syllable word most often has the stress on its first syllable. A three-syllable word most often has it on ...continue reading "It’s not hard to say Kamala Harris’s name right"

The Washington Post has a story today about the fact that medical providers are now required to make test results accessible to patients as soon as they're available (generally via phone or online portal). This is a very popular rule, but it can cause problems if the results are (or seem) scary and it takes ...continue reading "Here’s why your doctor doesn’t call you back"

From Donald Trump during a rally in Florida: I'm not Christian. I'm sure he meant to say "I'm a Christian," but his mind's not really all there these days. Alternatively, this is what's known as a Kinsley gaffe, where you accidentally tell the truth. This was all part of a passage in his speech where ...continue reading "Quote of the day: Donald Trump on religion"

Here's an intriguing little factoid: I was prompted to look this up by a Wall Street Journal article claiming that Botox was on the rise among Washington DC politicians. As usual, though, it provided no evidence for this aside from two (2) doctors who said business was good. But if ISAPS is correct, we're in ...continue reading "Botox use skyrocketed after the pandemic"

J.D. Vance has been running for vice president less than two weeks and has already racked up an impressive list of recently uncovered greatest hits: Suggested that parents should get more votes than people without children. Said Kamala Harris is part of the community of "childless cat ladies" who want to make the country as ...continue reading "J.D. Vance is . . . kind of a weird guy"

This is Hilbert on the front lawn getting ready to eat some grass. He likes grass because it clears out his digestive system, which then ends up on our floor. I wouldn't mind so much except that he always heads for a carpet instead of just barfing on the hardwood floor where it's easy to ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 26 July 2024"

The New York Times informs us today that the latest trend is not to buy stuff just because you saw it on TikTok. Brett House, an economics professor at Columbia University, says this is probably thanks to bad economic times: After years of being told what to buy, TikTok users are trying something new: buying ...continue reading "Are teenagers really buying “only what they need”?"

The Fed's preferred measure of inflation, PCE, remained very low in June: On a conventional year-over-year basis, headline PCE came in at 2.5% and core PCE was 2.6%.

A few minutes ago I ran across a chart showing that investment in factories had exploded recently and was twice as high as it had ever been in history. It was adjusted for inflation, which is great, but for something that big it struck me that it really ought to be shown as a percent ...continue reading "Raw data: The Biden factory building boom sets a new record"

From Oklahoma's state superintendent of schools: The Bible, along with the Constitution and many other documents, are foundational in education. We will not allow rogue districts and administrators to indoctrinate hatred of America by refusing to teach foundational Oklahoma standards. You cannot rewrite history. The left… pic.twitter.com/OI0OJq0G9A — Superintendent Ryan Walters (@RyanWaltersSupt) July 24, 2024 ...continue reading "Oklahoma says Bible haters won’t be tolerated"

The New York Times/Siena poll has always been very Trump friendly, but that changed almost overnight after Joe Biden dropped out. Here is today's poll compared to the previous one: Among likely voters, Kamala Harris made up five points in the national poll instantly. She's still behind, and swing states are still a problem, but ...continue reading "Harris makes up huge ground in latest NYT poll"

The current hot topic in politics-land is who Kamala Harris will choose as her VP. And that's fine. It's good, clean fun. But it's odd that the discourse is all so thoroughly conventional, focused almost entirely on demographic considerations. She needs a white man to balance the fact that she's a Black woman. She needs ...continue reading "Kamala Harris should choose a pal for vice president"

A large RCT mask study was recently conducted in Norway. It involved about 4,000 people, half of whom wore surgical masks when they were outside the house and half of whom didn't. Here are the results: The folks who wore masks got COVID at a slightly higher rate than those who didn't. On the bright ...continue reading "Norwegian study says surgical masks don’t stop COVID"

This is Gustav Klimt's Judith at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna.