Kevin Drum 🕸

We have a new AI champion: 深度求索. Yes, it's a Chinese AI with the English name DeepSeek. And it's sort of the new champion, but it gets complicated. Overall, their R1 model, released yesterday, appears to be about as good as the latest GPT-4 model, or maybe a hair worse. But it's got a lot ...continue reading "China has a groundbreaking new AI. Just don’t ask it about Tiananmen Square."

Stephen Miller has been thinking for a while about how to bring back Title 42 expulsions along the border, which were imposed during the COVID epidemic and then lifted when the emergency was declared over. But no matter how hard Miller looked, there were no suitable diseases around. So apparently he just gave up: President ...continue reading "Trump shuts the border on the pretense of disease"

This is the famous blue tower in Durnstein, Austria, as seen from our Danube cruise ship. But why is it famous just for sporting some blue trim? That's a mystery.

Donald Trump says that if Russia doesn't settle its war with Ukraine he will put "high levels" of tariffs on Russian goods. Apparently no one has told him that we only imported $3 billion worth of stuff from Russia in 2024. Even for Russia that's only 0.1% of GDP. This is about like Belgium threatening ...continue reading "Trump reveals plan to end Ukraine war"

Wages went up at a very healthy rate in the final quarter of 2024: 2.8% for men and 2.1% for women. As usual, this is good news and bad news. It's good news for workers but bad news for the Fed, which will take this as a sign of inflation and keep interest rates high.

I must say, there are Easter eggs scattered all through Donald Trump's blizzard of executive orders. I imagine we'll be uncovering them for a long time. For example: you remember Elon Musk's promise to use DOGE to cut $2 trillion from federal spending? It's true that no one ever seriously thought he could do that. ...continue reading "Elon’s big task is . . . interoperability?"

Now this is what I'm talking about: Teachers, interested in using real economic data with your students? Our free professional development webinar on Jan. 28 will introduce you to FRED—our signature economic data tool. You’ll leave with resources for bringing FRED into your classroom: https://t.co/Z4l6iuLqcE pic.twitter.com/37uZ2zMZ7D — St. Louis Fed (@stlouisfed) January 21, 2025 Oh ...continue reading "Donald Trump has not banned FRED yet"

It's not just the J6ers who got pardons from Trump: Ulbricht is the founder of Silk Road, an online platform for large-scale transactions by drug traffickers and other criminals with a need for secrecy. Now, maybe you think that's OK because drugs shouldn't be illegal in the first place. Mileage will vary. But Ulbricht was ...continue reading "Trump pardons would-be murderer as reward for campaign support"

Huh: Sec. 7. Terminating the Green New Deal. (a) All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58), including but not limited to funds for electric vehicle charging stations made available through the National ...continue reading "Trump is kinda sorta trying to unilaterally kill IRA and the infrastructure act"

This sounds great: “It usually takes an average of five to 10 years [to discover] one drug. And maybe we could accelerate that 10 times, which would be an incredible revolution in human health" https://t.co/Vl2vdygUPo — James Pethokoukis ⏩️⤴️ (@JimPethokoukis) January 21, 2025 But you know what will be even better? Sometime in the medium ...continue reading "AI will soon design *and* test drugs for us"

Revenge, revenge, revenge: Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, a known target of Iranian assassins, confirms President Trump has ordered his USSS protection withdrawn. [image or embed] — Steve Herman 📡 (@newsguy.bsky.social) January 21, 2025 at 12:38 PM For all I know, Bolton doesn't need Secret Service protection anymore. But that hardly matters. It's obvious ...continue reading "The Trump revenge train keeps chugging along"

I have a bonus cat for you this week. This one is from Les Andelys in France, one of the stops on our Seine cruise. He was only slightly sociable and walked with a limp, but his fur was shiny and his eyes were clear. He obviously got along OK one way or another.

OK, folks, here's my first embed of a Bluesky post: I think what’s going on here that these people are trying to find some true binary relating to biological sex. Genital morphology won’t do it. Sex chromosomes don’t do it. So they’ve retreated to gamete size. I think the use of large and small cell ...continue reading "Gender is not the same thing as biological sex"

Israel may have reduced much of Gaza to rubble, but Hamas is still up and running: Under the cease-fire agreement struck last week, police overseen by Hamas will assume responsibility for managing law and order among Palestinians generally.... The police officers can carry weapons only when necessary and would be monitored by teams of Egyptian ...continue reading "Hamas is still running things in Gaza"

Yesterday Donald Trump issued a pair of executive orders that were generally described as ending the "weaponization of government" and stopping "censorship." That seemed largely symbolic and they were mostly ignored. So imagine my surprise when I actually read them. They're far from symbolic and have nothing to do with ending anything. They're both full-on ...continue reading "Trump has given his revenge fantasies free rein"

A friend sent me a copy of the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer and it's a great example of the liberal fixation on doomsaying. The entire report is about a "generation of institutional failures" that has produced plummeting trust and a surge in grievance even though the report's own data says exactly the opposite. On page ...continue reading "Trust in institutions has been getting better and better lately"

For all the Republicans who kvetched constantly over the past four years about Joe Biden's "unlawful" behavior, I'd like to remind you that in one day Donald Trump has: Pardoned hundreds of violent criminals solely because they're MAGA supporters. Explicitly declared that he wouldn't enforce a law he's legally required to enforce. Redefined birthright citizenship ...continue reading "Trump and the law: A relationship from hell"

I've seen an outpouring of outrage today about pardons. In particular, Joe Biden pardoned several family members and a bunch of Democratic politicians. Sacré bleu! What kind of a precedent does this set for Donald Trump? I get this—but only up to a point. Does anyone even remember Trump's pardon record from four years ago? ...continue reading "Let’s not forget Donald Trump’s clemency record from 2020"

Donald Trump has promised a blizzard of executive orders on Day 1. Some he's already signed while others are still waiting. Here's a list of the most important ones, along with my best read of how much impact they'll have. Executive Order Likely Outcome End birthright citizenship Dead in the water. Both the 14th Amendment ...continue reading "A brief look at Donald Trump’s Day 1 executive orders"

Twitter world sucks. For all its faults, at least it was a place where everyone hung out. But now half the liberal community has decamped to Bluesky and I don't see their tweets anymore. What to do? I could join the crowd and switch to Bluesky, but that would mean losing access to a lot ...continue reading "Twitter or Bluesky? Twitter or Bluesky?"