Kevin Drum 🕸

Cows!

Yesterday the Biden administration issued "a landmark Executive Order to ensure that America leads the way in seizing the promise and managing the risks of artificial intelligence (AI)." As best I can tell, it includes basically one item of any importance: NIST will develop standards for red-team testing of AI software that affects "critical infrastructure, ...continue reading "Biden’s new AI executive order is lots of talk, not much action"

Tommy Tuberville, the moron senator from Alabama, has been holding up hundreds of military promotions for months. This weekend the commandant of the Marine Corps collapsed after suffering a heart attack, which leaves the Corps leaderless since Tuberville has blocked the confirmation of Lt. Gen. Christopher Mahoney as assistant commandant. So now we have this: ...continue reading "Tommy Tuberville suddenly wants to confirm a general"

Every newspaper I read has suddenly started running gigantic banner ads. It's pretty annoying since they occupy about half the screen until you scroll past them. What's going on?

Home prices are high but they keep on rising anyway. In August they increased at an annualized rate of 3.3%: We're still not quite back up to the 2022 peak, but we're getting there. Here's a longer term look: Prices have been above the peak of the early aughts housing boom for the past three ...continue reading "Housing prices rise 3.3% in August"

The wokest parts of higher education are the various ______ studies departments. You know, gender studies, Black studies, women's studies, and so forth. These are the disciplines that get the most criticism for being ultra-left, ultra-identity-oriented, and a disgrace to university standards in general. They also get pranked a lot. That's not entirely without cause, ...continue reading "Raw data: Ethnic, gender, and cultural studies at the university level"

Since 2016 the number of threats against members of Congress has increased nearly 1,000%. However, it declined last year: Threat levels are still historically high but are down 22% from their peak in 2021. Is this good news? Maybe the lunatic fringe is finally calming down slightly?

Ramesh Ponnuru says that discontent over the economy can probably be explained fairly simply. It's all about declining income: Average wages are down in real terms — adjusted, that is, for inflation — since President Biden took office. They are roughly 3 percent lower than their peak in April 2020....Even when you compare wages today ...continue reading "No, wages aren’t down recently"

The start of Saturday's Cal-USC football game was delayed by a sit-down protest from a dozen or so Cal students. The announcers didn't know what the protest was about, and I just assumed it had something to do with Israel and never bothered to check it out. But no! It turns out the students were ...continue reading "The strange case of professor Ivonne del Valle"

Here is Mike Johnson's first substantive action as Speaker of the House: NEWS w @bresreports -- HOUSE REPUBLICANS' Israel aid bill is out. It offsets $14.3 billion in Israel aid with $14.3 bllion in cuts to IRS from the Inflation Reduction Act. This offset will NEVER, EVER fly. Dems will reject it out of hand. ...continue reading "Republicans have a condition on aid to Israel"

Skyscrapers at La Défense in Paris.

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX and bankrupt hedge fund Alameda Research, is back on the stand in his fraud trial today. This time, though, he's being questioned by prosecutors. Things started slowly, so after lunch prosecutors tried to liven up the proceedings with questions about SBF's hair (really) and his use of ...continue reading "SBF trial continues with questions about his hair"

Ukraine is using ultra-cheap "First Person View" drones to destroy Russian tanks: A typical FPV weighs up to one kilogram, has four small engines, a battery, a frame and a camera connected wirelessly to goggles worn by a pilot operating it remotely. It can carry up to 2.5 kilograms of explosives and strike a target ...continue reading "Ukraine is providing an early peek at the future of warfare"

Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean argue in New York today that lockdowns were probably a miserable failure in the fight against COVID-19.¹ But they also say this in passing: As the United States gains more and more distance from the COVID pandemic, the perspective on what worked, and what did not, becomes not only more ...continue reading "Just how remarkable was Operation Warp Speed?"

If you're interested in details of the UAW's new contract with Ford, here's their highlight page: The two-tier pay system, where new hires are paid half the rate of veteran workers, has been all but eliminated, and will be gone completely in three years: Overall wages will increase more than the 25% initially reported, although ...continue reading "Autoworkers ended up with a 33% pay increase from Ford"

Nick Kristof believes Israel is justified in going after Hamas remorselessly: Israel has the right to defend itself and strike military targets in Gaza, and there should be strong international pressure on Hamas to release its hostages. My reporting in Gaza over the years convinces me that Gazans themselves would be much better off if ...continue reading "What does decency require in Gaza?"

Sales of both new and existing homes have fallen over the past year, but that doesn't capture the magnitude of the impact on the mortgage industry. Many of the houses still on the market are being sold for cash, and even refis are scarce because so many existing mortgages were refinanced years ago at ultra-low ...continue reading "The mortgage industry is in disastrous shape"

The Redding Rancheria, a group of three California Indian tribes, operates a casino on Highway 273 near Redding. They want to relocate and build a bigger casino a few miles south along Interstate 5, a project they've been working on for nearly 20 years: But the proposal has been buffeted by influential opponents, including the ...continue reading "“Hallowed ground” pops up to halt another development"

Conor Sen suggests that lots of people view the economy poorly because interest rates have gone up for things like credit card debt and car payments: Food and energy as a % of disposable personal income is around where it was in the mid-2010’s. Personal interest payments as a % of income are skyrocketing: pic.twitter.com/LpVZMMUTIg ...continue reading "Are Americans unhappy with the economy because of high interest rates?"

I caught some of Bill Maher's show last night, and midway through he began a rant about bureaucrats making it harder and harder to build anything. These "petty tyrants," he said, are constantly coming up with new rules that force you to jump through ever more hoops to get anything done. Maher is wrong to ...continue reading "Raw data: Construction over the past 50+ years"