Kevin Drum 🕸

As we all know, Elon Musk went nuts a few years ago. Nobody seems to know quite why, but it seems to have been brought on by frustration with California business rules; his dealings with unions; and liberals making fun of him. Since then he's become obsessed with the "woke mind virus," childbirth rates, and.......illegal ...continue reading "Elon Musk fears for the future of the republic"

Here are two pictures of Karlskirche in Vienna. The top image is the usual panoramic view from ground level. But you're allowed to walk up and see the organ, and from there you get a different perspective, shown in the bottom photo. You can also see the illuminated glass installation hanging from the ceiling. I ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Apparently it's becoming a thing on the right to claim that North Carolina is being ignored and Biden/Harris are slow rolling federal aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. This is nuts even from a cynical political perspective, since Democrats desperately want to win NC in November and this a great opportunity to show how ...continue reading "The federal government is coming to rescue Asheville"

Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, here's a map of every county in the US that relies on federal aid for more than 25% of its income: The Journal's numbers show that over the past 20 years the number of Democratic counties feeding heavily at the federal trough has increased about 80%. The number of ...continue reading "Raw data: Feeding at the federal trough"

I don't know. Do I care about this or not? Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for “one real rough, nasty” and “violent day” of police retaliation in order to eradicate crime “immediately.” The remarks — delivered by Trump at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, just 36 days before the election — did not ...continue reading "Unleash the cops, but just for a day"

From Donald Trump: 14,000 CONVICTED thugs and slimeballs who have committed MURDER have been allowed to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, and roam free to KILL AGAIN…And they will kill again, over and over. ZOMG. The thing is, he seems to have the receipts. This number comes directly from a letter written by ...continue reading "14,000 noncitizen murderers roaming free? Um, no."

The Wall Street Journal today has yet another entry in the seemingly endless series of articles about the problems with young men in America. I've taken this on in great detail before (here and here), so I won't do it again. But I will say that at the simplest level I always come back to ...continue reading "Are young men falling even further behind?"

The last three out of four nights I've gotten about two hours of sleep. I'm tired. So, so tired. But the Evil Dex™ keeps my eyes wide open and my brain spinning. Fuck cancer? No, fuck dexamethasone.¹ But then a miracle! I was talking to my latest nurse last night and it turned out she ...continue reading "Bully for Ambien"

Here's a random thought for the weekend. Over the last decade or two there have been a lot of prominent opinion-havers moving from right to left. Here's a tiny sampling: Max Boot Bruce Bartlett John Cole Bill Kristol David Frum Jennifer Rubin Michael Steele Stuart Stevens George Conway Charlie Sykes etc. Some of this was ...continue reading "Is anyone moving right these days?"

Huh. This hadn't even occurred to me: What a creative way to bypass campaign finance limits pic.twitter.com/2PpjHRpmgy — Steve Jurvetson (@FutureJurvetson) September 27, 2024 The whole $100,000 watch scam had me puzzled. It's way too expensive for Trump's usual MAGA crowd, and it's almost laughably obvious that it's barely even a luxury watch, let alone ...continue reading "Trump’s $100,000 watch is a thinly veiled bribe"

Globally, Tesla has built about 60,000 EV charging stalls at 6,500 stations. How much did this cost? I asked seven different AI models: ChatGPT: $5 billion Perplexity: $2 billion Meta: no answer Google Gemini: "billions of dollars" Microsoft Copilot: $8 billion Claude: "in the billions of dollars range over the past decade" Grok: "likely ranging ...continue reading "How much has Tesla’s Supercharger network cost it?"

Tesla has built an impressive network of EV charging stations in the US, but marketing has made it seem bigger than it really is: Public charging ports currently outnumber Tesla ports by 6:1—though the Tesla chargers are often higher performance. But even in the high-performance realm, the times they are a' changing. Tesla has slowed ...continue reading "Raw data: The EV charging network in the US"

Here are the top 20 countries we import from: China makes up 13% of the total. Here are exports: What is the Netherlands doing at #4? What do we export to them? Nothing special, it turns out. Lubricants, machinery, chemicals, and miscellaneous manufactured articles make up 90% of it. I'm not sure why the Dutch ...continue reading "Raw data: Biggest US trading partners"

Over at Vox, Anna North has a piece about the disappearance of the school bus thanks to widespread budget cuts. However, it was all anecdotal and I got curious about whether the data backs up the story. For starters, it looks like the cost issue is very real: The cost to transport a single student ...continue reading "Are yellow school buses going extinct?"

Hi there. Did you miss me? I'm still at the hospital, but last night I had the mother of all dex crashes. I only wakened for good about half an hour ago. Also, I caught a cold. In the hospital! I feel pretty crappy. Also also, I caved in on the IV line, but with ...continue reading "In which I return to life and announce new, lower inflation rates"

Here's a closeup portrait of Charlie to go along with last week's portrait of Hilbert. This one was also taken indoors with the little flash unit, and the autoexposure ended up choosing an ISO level of 28800. This is remarkable for two reasons. First, it must mean the flash provided hardly any extra illumination. Second, ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 27 September 2024"

The Great Recession produced a sudden and permanent reduction in the growth rate of labor productivity: Productivity today is 20% lower than it would have been if it had kept growing at its rate of the previous few decades. But what was the cause of the slowdown? The recession itself? Our tepid response to it? ...continue reading "What happened to productivity after the Great Recession?"

This is a red admiral butterfly at the Schmetterling Haus in Vienna. Here is the life of a red admiral: Male red admirals are territorial and perch during the afternoon until sunset....Males patrol their territory by flying around the perimeter between 7 and 30 times per hour. On average, territory holders interact with intruders 10 ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

It turns out that the long awaited indictment against New York City mayor Eric Adams doesn't involve embezzlement or fraud or anything like that. It's just old-fashioned bribery. But very weird bribery. The Feds allege that for the past decade Adams has been accepting lavish free travel and related luxury entertainment from . . . ...continue reading "Eric Adams is corrupt. He’s also an idiot."

We are not staying at our jobs as long as we used to: The average for all workers in 2024 was 3.9 years. I chose to chart a single age group since older workers have held their jobs longer and therefore changes in age composition over the years can affect the numbers even if there's ...continue reading "Raw data: Job tenure in America"