Kevin Drum 🕸

There are several things that are more or less undisputed about the Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers in Gaza: It happened around 11 pm. Three aid trucks were struck. All had World Central Kitchen logos on their roofs. The trucks were traveling on a coastal road approved for humanitarian missions. World Central Kitchen ...continue reading "Did Israel deliberately destroy an aid convoy?"

How many children experience a desire to be the opposite sex—a feeling known as gender dysphoria? Of those who do, how many continue to experience it as they get older? A recent paper provides answers based on a longitudinal study of 2,200 children in the Netherlands that was carried out between 2001 and 2015: As ...continue reading "Raw data: Gender dysphoria in teens"

Why do so many people still think inflation is high? It's because they don't respond to averages. They respond to outliers. The cost of groceries, for example, has risen only 1% over the past year. In February food inflation was negative. And yet, 55% of Americans still say they worry about inflation a great deal. ...continue reading "Grocery inflation is at 1%. Why don’t more people know it?"

This is the Pauma Valley on a hazy day, shot from about halfway up Palomar Mountain. I took this on a rare daytime scouting mission that led me up a progressively rockier road that, toward the end, was only barely passable. It's a good thing I hadn't tried this in my old Mazda. But it ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

New York City will soon have a new congestion pricing program. At peak hours, it will cost $15 to enter lower Manhattan by car. Naturally lots of people don't like this, so just as naturally they're suing over it. And naturally naturally, they're suing over allegedly insufficient environmental review: In court papers, they have challenged ...continue reading "New York City congestion pricing faces nearly a dozen lawsuits"

The BLS released its latest salary figures today, so I took a look because I was at loose ends. According to their data, the highest paid occupation in America is pediatric surgeon, at $449,320. In fact, physicians in general take 15 of the top 16 spots, with athletes squeezing in at #10. The lowest paid ...continue reading "Pediatric surgeons kicked ass last year"

Over at the LA Times, Lorraine Ali selflessly spent a day on Truth Social and reports back: Twenty-four hours of scrolling through posts from “Truthsayers” on the two-year-old platform explained why the site is tanking. In short, partisan echo chambers are stale, musty spaces that lack the sort of oppositional views needed to make social ...continue reading "Hardened reporter spends a day on Truth Social"

A couple of weeks ago Aileen Cannon, the judge in Donald Trump's classified documents case, asked attorneys for both sides to write hypothetical jury instructions based on two scenarios. Scenario A: the jury gets to decide if any particular document is a "personal record." Scenario B: Trump gets to decide unilaterally. This is based on ...continue reading "Trump prosecutor issues ultimatum to Florida judge"

Peak snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is typically measured on April 1, so the numbers are in for 2024: we ended up about 9% above average. The snowpack trendline is a little tricky because there are occasional super-years that make it sensitive to exactly when you start. But if you start with the earliest records, ...continue reading "Raw data: Water in California"

Next year the cannabis crowd will be celebrating their degenerate habit on April 20th. The same day as Easter! Can you believe these people? And just wait: If Joe Biden is still president, I'll bet the egg decorating contest will encourage kids to paint marijuana leaves on their eggs. This is what liberals have done ...continue reading "The war on Easter has just gotten started"

This is getting a lot of attention: Good news of the day: We can fix really hard & scary problems if we try. pic.twitter.com/cQBD0FlcNC — Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) April 2, 2024 This is not quite what's happened. The Andrew Van Dam piece referenced here is great, but you really have to read the whole thing. ...continue reading "We still have a bee problem"

This is inside the palace of Versailles: the omnipresent fleur de lis surrounded by brightly finished goldwork. Does the decorating style of the Sun King remind you of anyone?

I have an update on judge shopping. Three weeks ago the Judicial Conference of the United States cracked down on the practice, but then they caved: Following blowback from Senate Republicans and some conservative judges, judicial policymakers later clarified that the policy was discretionary, leaving it to each district court to decide how to implement ...continue reading "Judge shopping ban lasted three weeks. Now it’s gone."

We've done it. We've now measured everything worth measuring, so we're moving on: This comes from a paper about patents. The author believes he can identify "creative" patents by analyzing word pairs: if a word pair has never been used before, it's a sign that a patent is breaking new ground. However, old patents are ...continue reading "We have finally reached the end of science"

Benjamin Netanyahu on an air strike that killed seven aid workers delivering food to Gaza: Unfortunately, in the last day there was a tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip. It happens in war. Is it just me or does Netanyahu sound slightly less than grief-stricken over these deaths?

We're still increasing the number of houses we build, but nonresidential construction declined in February for the second month in a row: A couple of months isn't something to worry too much about, but it is a suggestion to keep your eyes on this. The biggest drop was in health care construction, which surprises me ...continue reading "Raw data: Commercial construction is turning down"

There's good news and bad news out of Florida today. The bad news is that the state supreme court approved a ban on abortions beyond six weeks.¹ The good news is that the court also approved a ballot measure that would legalize abortion before fetal viability, which is usually around 24 weeks. The ballot measure ...continue reading "Florida bans abortion but allows vote to make it legal again"

This is nuts. Truth Social stock plummeted 20% today: Why the big decline? The Washington Post explains: Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the company generated just over $4 million in revenue last year, including less than $1 million in the last quarter. ...continue reading "Truth Social still sucks, stock plummets"

This is a meerket peering out from its hidey hole at the LA Zoo. They're cute little things, but I suppose they'd rip your arms off if you tried to touch one, wouldn't they?

Every month I get a big pile of blood tests. Here's one of them: This result happens to be from May 26, 2020. A year later the "Non Black" designation suddenly disappeared. Why? Well, there's now a note that says "GFR estimate is by the CKD-EPI 2021 equation." I never noticed that before, but today ...continue reading "A new kidney test is still racist. It just harms a different race."