Kevin Drum 🕸

Over at National Review, Jeffrey Blehar tells us that Nikki Haley's real gaffe last night wasn't racism or something racism adjacent. Oh no: The real gaffe Haley committed on Wednesday was that, when she froze up under an unpredicted question and defaulted to her factory settings in answering, those answers demonstrated such contempt for the ...continue reading "Did Nikki Haley insult Republican voters?"

A coyote at the Orange County zoo.

Last night Nikki Haley was asked about the cause of the Civil War. Oh, it was this and that, she said, freedoms and the role of the government, that sort of thing. How about slavery? “What do you want me to say about slavery?” Haley asked. As near as I can tell, this is the ...continue reading "Nikki Haley fumbles the ball on slavery"

Apropos of nothing in particular, I thought it might be a good time to take a fresh look at Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine these days: The southern portion of the Russian territory is east of the Dnieper river and is all but impossible to attack successfully. The Dnieper is a big river. Further north, the ...continue reading "Here are the current trench lines in the Ukraine war"

My previous post was about a New York Times lawsuit accusing Microsoft and OpenAI of copyright infringement for training their AI models on Times data. This prompts me to remind everyone of what "training" really means. Most people have a vague idea that AI models just trawl the internet and ingest whatever they find, which ...continue reading "Training an AI is much harder than you think"

The New York Times is suing Microsoft and OpenAI for training their AI software on Times stories: In a complaint filed Wednesday, the Times said the technology companies exploited its content without permission to create their AI products, including OpenAI’s humanlike chatbot ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot. The tools were trained on millions of pieces of ...continue reading "The New York Times has sued OpenAI for copyright infringement. They should lose."

Film critic Richard Zoglin takes to the Washington Post today to echo one of my pet peeves. It happened on an outing to see Napoleon: I counted a dozen commercials, for everything from Hyundai to M&M’s, before the Regal voice of God told us to silence our cellphones and “enjoy the show” — after which ...continue reading "Let us complain today about modern corporate suckitude"

Rep. James Comer and the rest of the idiots on the House Oversight Committee are continuing their jihad against Hunter Biden apace. I know that's not news. But today Politico reports this: House GOP investigators said they were given no heads up that Hunter Biden would not attend their deposition — though his attorney, in ...continue reading "It’s just endless lying from the Hunter Biden fanatics"

This is a picture of turtles and.......fish? ready to spout at the Latona Fountain in the gardens of Versailles. No, wait: turtles and lizards, to celebrate the myth of Latona, who got pissed off at the Lycians and had them turned into frogs and lizards. Frogs? So why does the fountain have turtles and lizards? ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

The Daily Mail recently conducted a poll asking people what they thought of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They made a word cloud of the most popular responses, and Trump was so proud of his that he posted it on Truth Social: Apparently Trump loves the idea that people associate him with power, revenge, dictatorship, ...continue reading "Donald Trump, the revenge president"

Oh come on: As 2023 comes to a close, holiday shoppers offered yet another sign that the U.S. economy will roar into the new year. On Tuesday, fresh retail sales data from Mastercard showed that consumers spent big on gifts, meals and apparel in November and December.... U.S. retail sales between Nov. 1 and Dec. ...continue reading "Holiday sales were flat this year"

Every year or two there's a plagiarism scandal that makes the front page. The latest one concerns some stuff written a long time ago by Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University. I am, as usual, unimpressed. With only occasional exceptions, these things are always the same: the culprit has been caught taking a sentence here ...continue reading "Most “plagiarism” is a nothingburger"

Here's a typical paean to the school system in Finland written in 2018: 10 reasons why Finland's education system is the best in the world No amount of pontificating will change what we already know. The American education system needs to be completely revamped — from the first grade to the Ph.D. ....Finland is the ...continue reading "The US education system is one of the best in the world. And one of the worst."

From a Vox piece about food delivery companies: Last month, a New York judge ruled against the delivery companies as they tried to fight against a $19.96-per-hour minimum wage for delivery workers.... Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Workers Justice Project, the advocacy organization behind Los Deliveristas Unidos, a union for delivery workers, told me ...continue reading "Food delivery in NYC is expensive"

Tyler Cowen asks: How Were So Many Economists So Wrong About the Recession? Maybe they were wrong. Maybe the fabled soft landing will happen. Maybe it will turn out that high interest rates don't always slow down the economy. But I would still counsel patience. Economists have been wrong so far, but that doesn't mean ...continue reading "Economists might have been wrong about a recession. So far."

Happy Boxing Day! I have no pictures of boxes, but to make up for it here's a picture of the box-like Segerstrom Hall, crown jewel of the Orange County Center for the Performing Arts. A nighttime picture is here.

Did you know that the average body temperature has been steadily dropping since the early 1800s? It has: In 1800 the average body temperature was about 99°F. Today it's about 98°F. How about that? And why has body temp declined? Basically, better health: Change in the population-level of inflammation seems the most plausible explanation for ...continue reading "Factoid of the day: Body temperature is going down"

Can someone explain to me why this is national news? This was a minor incident. The kid was never lost, was always under supervision, and was quickly reunited with his family. It produced some understandable, short-lived panic in the boy's family, but why was it even a local news story, let alone a national one? ...continue reading "BREAKING: Child briefly sent to wrong city"

Atrios notes today that New York City spent $155 million on police overtime this year in the subway and got little in return except lots of arrests and citations of fare dodgers. But it's actually even worse than that. Transit crime so far this year is down 2.3%. Overall serious crime excluding auto theft, which ...continue reading "NYPD spent $155 million on transit overtime and got nothing"