Kevin Drum 🕸

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"

This is apropos of nothing in particular. It's mainly just for reference: When tech companies hire people, they're hiring from the pool of STEM college graduates. So, for example, if you read that some Silicon Valley company is 20% Asian, you shouldn't compare that to Asians' 6% share of the population. You should compare it ...continue reading "Raw data: STEM degrees by race"

Every month the BLS publishes employment figures. These numbers are calculated from a survey and then adjusted based on estimated births and deaths of business enterprises. That's a little iffy, so every year the figures are re-calibrated based on state unemployment data, which is more accurate. Here's what the revisions have looked like over the ...continue reading "Bloomberg compares Republicans and Democrats"

I haven't written much about the lead-crime link lately because there hasn't been much to write about. Today there is. Beware: a righteous rant is coming. Many years ago Steven Levitt and John Donohue—Levitt is one half of the Freakonomics duo—postulated that the crime decline of the '90s was due to Roe v. Wade. "Children ...continue reading "Legalized abortion has nothing to do with crime rates"

Welp, here's something you probably didn't expect Donald Trump to say: He's lying, of course, but that's not the point. The point is that abortion bans have proven to be such a disaster for conservatives that Trump now feels the need to effectively abandon his opposition to abortion altogether. Conservative Philip Klein calls it what ...continue reading "Trump abandons the pro-lifers"

Hilbert was really into our picture taking session yesterday.

The Washington Post has news: Good. This is yet another reason to vote against Trump, as if you needed one. (I wonder what RFK Jr. got in return for his endorsement? You know there has to be something.)