Kevin Drum 🕸

LA Times culture critic Mary McNamara is oddly angry about the fact that Ozempic can sometimes make women more fertile. I say "oddly" because this is just one of the hundreds of side effects of popular drugs and no one even knows if it's very common. Most of the evidence so far is from TikTok, ...continue reading "Do women get the short end of the health care stick?"

Opinion about the Gaza protests at college campuses obviously differs between Muslims and Jews and between Republicans and Democrats. But the key difference is this one: The experience of older Americans was shaped by an era in which Israel was repeatedly attacked by Arab states (and nonstates) and was forced to defend itself against relentless ...continue reading "Israel through young and old eyes"

Charlie has been under the weather a bit, so we finally took him to the vet and shot him up with antibiotics. He perked up immediately and, as you can see, is looking fine now. However, the whole affair was traumatic for Hilbert. As soon as he saw us put Charlie in the cat carrier ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 3 May 2024"

The American economy gained 175,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 85,000 jobs. Yuck. The headline unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9%. Average weekly earnings dropped 1.1% in April on an annualized basis. Adjusted for inflation, that's ...continue reading "Job growth slows in April"

Things that are fake according to Donald Trump: Crime statistics from the FBI. Job figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2020 election results from half a dozen different state officials. Reports that he continually falls asleep during his hush money trial, confirmed by numerous eyewitnesses. The trial itself, being conducted by the state of ...continue reading "Everything is fake, according to Donald Trump"

This is a California bush sunflower nestled in a sea of green provided by our recent rainshowers.

The Washington Post has a story about yet another school that uses Yondr pouches to prevent cell phone use during the day: Administrators said some of the changes among students have surprised them. Group vaping sessions where students would coordinate to meet in restrooms to smoke prohibited electronic cigarettes? Finished. Using AirDrop to share inappropriate ...continue reading "Banning cell phones in school is a no-brainer"

Productivity growth sucked in Q1. It was up 0.3% from the previous quarter, an annualized rate of only 1.2%

This is an Nvidia NVL72 Blackwell compute node: Give or take a bit, it has the compute power of a human brain and is likely to be priced at about $200,000. Seven years ago I thought it would take until 2040 to have something like this for a few thousand dollars. It's obvious now that ...continue reading "Nvidia will sell you a human brain for $200,000"

Here's an update on aid shipments into Gaza: COGAT hasn't been super reliable about providing daily updates, so it's hard to compare the UN numbers with Israeli numbers. On average, though, the Israeli figures are about 20% higher than the UN figures. The number of aid trucks getting through is up by about a fifth ...continue reading "Raw data: Aid shipments into Gaza are increasing modestly"

Santa Catalina island from the air.

Chris Hayes has a question: I feel like I'm losing my mind a little: people understand that "occupying buildings on campus" is, like, one of the most common forms of student protest for decades and not some devious new ploy devised by professional anarchist plotters, right? — Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 1, 2024 Point taken, ...continue reading "When you occupy university buildings, cops are called"

JOLTS data came out today, and as usual I try to show something different about it each month. Here are hires vs. job openings since the end of the Great Recession: In the past, there were more hires than job openings. Presumably this means that companies filled lots of jobs from personal recommendations without ever ...continue reading "Raw data: Hires vs. job openings"

It's remarkable how the Gaza demonstrations on college campuses have become almost an exact mirror of the events they're protesting. One side spent a long time provoking, finally went a step too far, and the other, more powerful side, then massively overreacted. Art imitates life, or something like that.

Data for both "felonious killings" and the total number of sworn police officers comes from the FBI. It does not include deaths from illness or accidental deaths.

Here's the definition of fascism, very slightly altered, given by Wikipedia. There's no firm consensus about what makes a regime fascist, but this is as good as any: Fascism is an authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, ...continue reading "What’s the most fascist country in the world?"

It feels like old times again. Donald Trump gave a long interview to Time magazine and it's a bottomless morass of lies, personal grievances, evasions, and word salad. Is it even worth commenting on? Half the country has seen this before and already understands Trump is a sociopathic buffoon. The other half simply doesn't care, ...continue reading "Crime is down but Donald Trump isn’t buying it"

Yesterday Hunter Biden threatened to sue Fox News for publishing sexually explicit photos and claiming that he took bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. Much of his letter focused on a six-part fictional series called “The Trial of Hunter Biden”: “While using certain true information, the series intentionally manipulates the facts, distorts the truth, narrates happenings ...continue reading "Fox News caves to Hunter Biden threat"

This is a Grevy's zebra at the Los Angeles Zoo. It's the largest of the three species of zebra.

Shocking news in the LA Times today: A monthly payment of $750 to $1,000 would allow thousands of the city’s homeless people to find informal housing, living in boarding homes, in shared apartments and with family and friends, according to a policy brief by four prominent Los Angeles academics. No kidding. In the policy brief ...continue reading "Giving poor people money helps them find homes"