The Curious Engineer

Kevin Drum

2023

1,792 posts

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2023 1,792

December 2023

  1. Top 10 extinction level natural disasters for 2024
  2. Top 10 predictions for 2024
  3. Top 20 charts of 2023
  4. Top ten photos of 2023
  5. How woke is Harvard?
  6. NBA star speaks the truth only Stephen King has spoken before
  7. Joe Biden has crushed the working class by raising the price of au pairs
  8. Right-on-red works fine. There’s no need to ban it.
  9. Friday Cat Blogging – 29 December 2023
  10. Why does everyone have a passport these days?
  11. Trump is now 2-2 in the Insurrection Bowl
  12. Raw data: How Americans die overseas
  13. Did Nikki Haley insult Republican voters?
  14. Lunchtime Photo
  15. Nikki Haley fumbles the ball on slavery
  16. Here are the current trench lines in the Ukraine war
  17. Training an AI is much harder than you think
  18. The New York Times has sued OpenAI for copyright infringement. They should lose.
  19. Let us complain today about modern corporate suckitude
  20. It’s just endless lying from the Hunter Biden fanatics
  21. Lunchtime Photo
  22. Donald Trump, the revenge president
  23. Holiday sales were flat this year
  24. Most “plagiarism” is a nothingburger
  25. The US education system is one of the best in the world. And one of the worst.
  26. Food delivery in NYC is expensive
  27. Economists might have been wrong about a recession. So far.
  28. Lunchtime Photo
  29. Factoid of the day: Body temperature is going down
  30. BREAKING: Child briefly sent to wrong city
  31. NYPD spent $155 million on transit overtime and got nothing
  32. Merry Christmas
  33. Here’s the legal issue at stake in the Wisconsin redistricting decision
  34. Yep, Team Transitory was right all along
  35. After Brexit, immigration to Britain is up
  36. Antisemitism at universities: A response
  37. Border encounters stay high in November
  38. New York governor foolishly allows noncompetes to continue
  39. Friday AI Cat Blogging – 22 December 2023
  40. How much antisemitism is there on university campuses?
  41. PCE inflation goes negative in November
  42. Today’s Supreme Court is the most partisan in modern history
  43. Does Joe Biden really want lots of illegal immigrants?
  44. Sometimes a few felonies just make you more popular
  45. Lots of clinical trials are just faked
  46. Lunchtime Photo
  47. WaPo says little evidence of Hamas activity at Al-Shifa hospital
  48. Why do we need higher tariffs on Chinese EVs when no Chinese EVs are sold in America?
  49. Judge to Rudy: Pay up. Now.
  50. Arlington’s Confederate memorial removed in a few hours
  51. Lunchtime Photo
  52. Convict Trump first, then bar him from office
  53. Inflation in goods and services
  54. Raw data: Crime is way down this year
  55. Lunchtime Photo
  56. Quick quiz: Where have housing prices gone up the most? LA or Dallas?
  57. Blood and muscle in the Middle East
  58. Young voters and student loans
  59. The endless supply of gifts to Clarence Thomas finally comes into sharper focus
  60. Bloodlust on the right
  61. The Fed did not cleverly find a way out of recession
  62. Lunchtime Photo
  63. Raw data: The death toll in Gaza
  64. No more Apple watches for Christmas
  65. Fake news is now an AI specialty
  66. Parole is the main hurdle in border security talks
  67. Time to kill off the IMF and the World Bank?
  68. Republicans angry about removing huge Confederate memorial
  69. Are progressives really turning to the right?
  70. We have always been idiots
  71. Food inflation is gone, but food prices are still high
  72. Giuliani ordered to pay damages of $148 million in defamation case
  73. Friday Cat Blogging – 15 December 2023
  74. Factlet of the day: US military aid to Israel
  75. YouTube remains the national champion of teen social media sites
  76. Fact of the day: Most family farms make no money
  77. Raw data: Congressional retirements in 2024
  78. Republicans to Trump: We’re not pulling out of NATO
  79. The racial impact of the marriage penalty
  80. How great is online dating?
  81. Biden now trailing Obama/Trump approval levels
  82. Gasoline prices are back down to normal
  83. Lunchtime Photo
  84. FDA: Applesauce was deliberately tainted with lead
  85. Victory over inflation!
  86. How expensive is your state?
  87. Republicans just can’t bring themselves to acknowledge good economic news
  88. Answered: Where are all the tunnels?
  89. Retail spending remains steady in November
  90. Household balance sheets are doing pretty well these days
  91. Managers have taken a big earnings hit over the past three years
  92. Lunchtime Photo
  93. Fed says it will start cutting rates next year
  94. Here’s the weird paradox of illegal immigration
  95. Comprehensive report suggests little danger to teens from social media
  96. Yet more good inflation news
  97. And now the news . . .
  98. Antisemitism at universities is up a lot lately. Or is it?
  99. A House committee displays its partisan pettiness for all the world to see
  100. Where are all the tunnels?
  101. Lunchtime Photo
  102. Most of the world is pretty peaceful
  103. Time for a deal on the border?
  104. Hourly earnings increased nicely in November
  105. CPI remains low in November
  106. Who’s the real dictator here?
  107. Lunchtime Photo
  108. Are pedestrians at fault for increasing pedestrian deaths?
  109. Twitter seems just fine these days
  110. A brief history of modern Palestine
  111. Whatever shall the Fed do???
  112. Seeing Israel through young eyes
  113. There is no sudden crisis among boys
  114. Why are Black homeownership rates so low?
  115. Ron stands by blankly as Casey DeSantis endorses Iowa election fraud
  116. The Republican worldview in one chart
  117. James Comer is an idiot
  118. Semi-raw data: Job creation under recent presidents
  119. Harvard’s president apologizes for being right
  120. Friday Cat Blogging – 8 December 2023
  121. How many Kevin Drums are there, anyway?
  122. Holiday hiring is down from pre-pandemic levels
  123. Chart of the day: Net new jobs in November
  124. Tell me 15 fun facts about Kevin Drum
  125. Nate Silver and I disagree about the origins of COVID
  126. Raw data: The source of the federal deficit
  127. I have a question about our looming debt storm
  128. Lunchtime Photo
  129. AI is coming soon. Blame humans.
  130. Retail federation admits its shoplifting number was ridiculous
  131. I tuned into a debate but got a stupid insult fest instead
  132. Hooray for Taylor Swift’s boss
  133. Lunchtime Photo
  134. Economic growth last quarter was probably a fairly ordinary 3% or so
  135. Here’s the definitive short answer about why we’re unhappy with the economy
  136. Noted without comment
  137. Do we have a growing problem of drug shortages?
  138. Is calling for genocide protected speech?
  139. Feds send good money after bad: $3 billion more in California HSR funding
  140. Raw data: Improper payments by the US government
  141. Republicans still think Democrats stole the 2020 election
  142. Lunchtime Photo
  143. Mike Johnson: We need to blur January 6 video to keep rioters from getting in trouble
  144. Tuberville cries uncle
  145. US does surprisingly well on COVID-era declines in latest PISA math test
  146. Hiring continues to trend downward
  147. Inflation is all Joe Biden’s fault
  148. James Comer lies his ass off yet again
  149. Republicans clear things up: No aid for Ukraine
  150. Lunchtime Photo
  151. Democrats say Ukraine deal currently has “no path” forward
  152. In California’s worst schools, phonics works
  153. A blog traffic update
  154. Killer robots on Mars
  155. I don’t think the Amish are the future of America
  156. Lindsey Graham wants more civilian casualties in Gaza
  157. Do Yale students congregate in easy majors?
  158. Ron DeSantis doesn’t own a Bible
  159. Keeping up with COVID
  160. BREAKING: Congress funds the military every single year
  161. Israel and its enemies
  162. Friday Cat Blogging – 1 December 2023
  163. Who did COVID better, California or Florida?
  164. Santos expelled
  165. Raw data: Taxes in California and Florida
  166. Why was Mehdi Hasan canceled?

November 2023

  1. Republicans apparently think Republicans can never be subpoenaed
  2. Lunchtime Photo
  3. Trump knifed Kevin McCarthy over obsession with expungement
  4. Inflation cools to near zero in October
  5. Quote of the day: Twitter and its sponsors
  6. New study suggests no effect of the Internet on mental health
  7. CBS News recycles crude Republican propaganda
  8. Freedom Caucus caves in on spending
  9. Lunchtime Photo
  10. Raw data: How much your state profits from Ukraine aid
  11. Egg fried rice can be a dangerous dish
  12. Can we solve climate change by burying plant waste?
  13. Raw data: The cost of Obamacare is going down
  14. Nobody cares very much what presidential candidates say
  15. Lunchtime Photo
  16. Sigh. Workers are about as happy as they’ve ever been
  17. Republicans turn down Hunter Biden’s offer of public testimony
  18. Louisiana governor wants to prosecute women who seek abortions
  19. Is the Fed finally about to lower interest rates?
  20. Here is the new dictionary definition of woke
  21. Lunchtime Photo
  22. Detox from social media sounds great!
  23. It isn’t true that “we” have lost confidence in science
  24. Raw data: It’s not just COVID shots that Republicans don’t trust
  25. Young men are doing fine. Really.
  26. Raw data: The cost to charge an EV
  27. BREAKING: Sometimes things on the internet are misleading
  28. Nikki Haley is still losing ground to Trump
  29. Israelis and Arabs have both acted abominably over the years
  30. A question for the hive mind about garage doors
  31. Voice recognition still needs some work
  32. Raw data: The death toll in Gaza
  33. Raw data: Capital spending after passage of the infrastructure bill
  34. Is the world moving in a right-wing direction?
  35. Return-to-work has stalled out in 2023
  36. Friday Cat Blogging – 24 November 2023
  37. We know why (some) people think the economy is terrible
  38. MAGA school board leaves the boss a thoughtful gift on its way out
  39. Dutch election analysis: Maybe nothing will happen at all
  40. Lunchtime Photo
  41. Did Sam Altman keep the OpenAI board in the dark about progress on super AI?
  42. Do abortion bans result in more births? The answer may shock you!
  43. Lunchtime Photo
  44. Donald Trump is “slipping cognitively”
  45. Why do biopics lie?
  46. Sam is back
  47. Free speech and the state of Texas
  48. I am still mourning the failure of the Camp David Summit
  49. Raw data: Joe Biden’s approval level before and after the Israel-Gaza war
  50. Lunchtime Photo
  51. Yet another crypto exchange goes down
  52. Existing home sales continue to drop
  53. Raw data: Total factor productivity sucked in 2022
  54. The New York Times fails a safety test
  55. Should we increase Social Security benefits?
  56. Yeah, AI is going to be (very, very) big business
  57. Lunchtime Photo
  58. Chart of the day: The most outdoorsy state is . . .
  59. FLASH: Conservative judges rule against NAACP
  60. OpenAI workers threaten to quit en masse
  61. Money and happiness
  62. OpenAI hires interim CEO to replace Sam Altman
  63. Argentina elects its own Donald Trump
  64. Answered! What is an “EZ pass for whales”?
  65. Circular A-4 is the most important rule you’ve never heard of
  66. Junk fees probably aren’t going away anytime soon
  67. Raw data: E-commerce in the US
  68. I am undone by coelution
  69. Raw data: Shoplifting in big American cities
  70. Quote of the day: We’re safe, for now
  71. Gen Z is fine and productive and happy
  72. Sam is gone, Sam is back?
  73. Is a Gaza ceasefire for both sides?
  74. Why are so many Democrats slagging Joe Biden?
  75. CORRECTION: Childhood vaccination rates
  76. Border encounters decline 11% in October
  77. Friday Cat Blogging – 17 November 2023
  78. Choose: A real president or a high-octane fake?
  79. Antisemitism is going mainstream on the right
  80. It’s good to be rich
  81. Too good to check
  82. We are now taking revenge on salt mine inspectors
  83. Lunchtime Photo
  84. No, paychecks are not falling ever shorter these days
  85. Prosecutor expected to be “sharply critical” of Biden’s classified documents
  86. War in the Middle East? Really?
  87. So how are things going in LA?
  88. Al-Shifa hospital has a few guns, but no Hamas command center
  89. Raw data: Richest and poorest cities in the US
  90. Childhood vaccination rates have remained low this year
  91. Raw data: Urban traffic pre- and post-COVID
  92. Please leave a tip if you read this blog post
  93. Lunchtime Photo
  94. Republicans still unable to pass anything
  95. What’s the deal with Tether?
  96. America is the envy of the world
  97. Retail sales were down slightly in October
  98. PPI eases substantially in October
  99. It’s not the inflation, it’s the prices?
  100. Here’s why we hate each other
  101. Government shutdown avoided yet again
  102. Democrats sympathize more with Israel than with Palestinians
  103. Lunchtime Photo
  104. Raw data: Deaths in Gaza
  105. Republicans fail yet again to pass spending bills
  106. Inflation slows significantly in October
  107. Raw data: Absenteeism in DC public schools
  108. Why are people starting so many new businesses?
  109. Is America losing its standing in the world?
  110. Supreme Court adopts weak new code of ethics
  111. Lunchtime Photo
  112. Delta Airlines credit cards are now half its business
  113. Progress is good
  114. Holiday hiring, spending projected to be low this year
  115. Raw data: Non-religion by educational level
  116. What do we really know about Gaza?
  117. Donald Trump and the “threat from within”
  118. The Fed and the economy
  119. The man who wrecked the Middle East
  120. Is Donald Trump in default on 40 Wall Street?
  121. Louisiana ordered to redraw racist congressional map
  122. Raw data: Inflation since 2000
  123. Crypto is about to go mainstream by no longer being crypto
  124. Friday Cat Blogging – 10 November 2023
  125. Raw data: House-to-house fighting in Gaza
  126. The UAW won pay hikes for everyone in the auto industry
  127. No, Hamas should not be part of the Palestinian government
  128. No more mail for Tesla in Sweden
  129. Donald Trump is exempt from all federal campaign finance rules
  130. Raw data: Electric vehicle sales in the US
  131. It’s not social media that has polarized us
  132. Lunchtime Photo
  133. We are once again a week away from a government shutdown
  134. All the Hollywood strikes are over
  135. Debate roundup: Trophies for all!
  136. Moms for Liberty had a bad night on Tuesday
  137. Citibank hates Armenians?
  138. Lunchtime Photo
  139. Effectively banning abortion just isn’t popular, even in red states
  140. Workplace injuries up by 100,000 in 2022
  141. New cars will soon have technology to prevent drunk driving
  142. Democrats sweep the election
  143. Chart of the day: The great education divide
  144. Election results looking favorable for Democrats
  145. New paper suggests online services are worth $5,000 to the average American
  146. Lunchtime Photo
  147. A brief comparison of Donald Trump’s America vs. Joe Biden’s
  148. Supreme Court looks ready to ban guns from domestic abusers
  149. Is it time to put “To Kill a Mockingbird” out to pasture?
  150. The tale of the dog park and the bike path
  151. Vote yes on Ohio’s Issue 1
  152. Political parties always get at least eight years in the White House
  153. Lunchtime Photo
  154. Working from home might increase mental health problems, but probably not
  155. Has the Great Resignation turned into the Great Pause?
  156. Raw data: Commuting in America
  157. Trump explodes on the stand in his civil fraud trial
  158. Waymo’s driverless cars are really safe
  159. Suspicious activity in America has skyrocketed
  160. What the United States needs is more revenge
  161. Raw data: Federal government workers
  162. Egypt and the Gaza Strip
  163. Do you know what time it is?
  164. Right-wing catastrophism is now an intellectual movement too
  165. Raise taxes or cut Social Security and Medicare? Those are your choices.
  166. National Review: Biden is a clandestine agent of China
  167. President Biden is not especially unpopular, part 1 million
  168. Friday Cat Blogging – 3 November 2023
  169. The end of work is coming. Deal with it.
  170. Is a recession getting close?
  171. Chart of the day: Net new jobs through October
  172. Reining in illegal immigration doesn’t have to be either punitive or difficult
  173. Destroying Hamas is fine, but the demands of basic human decency haven’t suddenly been repealed
  174. SBF is guilty
  175. A Beginner’s Guide to the creation of Israel
  176. Lunchtime Photo
  177. Mike Johnson has another brainstorm
  178. Are people suing employers to keep working at home?
  179. Survey results: Should bicyclists get out of the way of right-turners?
  180. Productivity up 4.7% in Q3
  181. The economic impact of the Gaza war is probably tiny
  182. Survey: What should bicyclists at red lights do?
  183. Why are Republicans supporting Tommy Tuberville?
  184. Quote of the day: It was the CIA that defeated Trump
  185. No, Democrats are not wiping out an entire Republican caucus
  186. Lunchtime Photo
  187. Wisconsin governor sues own legislature
  188. Economic gloom is all about Republicans
  189. The 2020 murder spike was probably due to the murder of George Floyd
  190. Why can’t we pass a budget the old fashioned way?

October 2023

  1. The tale of the abortion trafficking case that isn’t, really
  2. Is the new UAW contract really that great?
  3. Lunchtime Photo
  4. Biden’s new AI executive order is lots of talk, not much action
  5. Tommy Tuberville suddenly wants to confirm a general
  6. Why have ads suddenly gotten huge?
  7. Housing prices rise 3.3% in August
  8. Raw data: Ethnic, gender, and cultural studies at the university level
  9. Raw data: Threats against Congress
  10. No, wages aren’t down recently
  11. The strange case of professor Ivonne del Valle
  12. Republicans have a condition on aid to Israel
  13. Lunchtime Photo
  14. SBF trial continues with questions about his hair
  15. Ukraine is providing an early peek at the future of warfare
  16. Just how remarkable was Operation Warp Speed?
  17. Autoworkers ended up with a 33% pay increase from Ford
  18. What does decency require in Gaza?
  19. The mortgage industry is in disastrous shape
  20. “Hallowed ground” pops up to halt another development
  21. Are Americans unhappy with the economy because of high interest rates?
  22. Raw data: Construction over the past 50+ years
  23. Raw data: Quality of children’s teeth by state
  24. What happened to all the mailboxes?
  25. What was Jamaal Bowman thinking?
  26. Raw data: Core services inflation
  27. Friday Cat Blogging – 27 October 2023
  28. Biden loses support among Democrats in October
  29. Core PCE inflation spiked to 3.6% in September
  30. The war crimes of Hamas
  31. SBF is having a tough time on the witness stand
  32. Always adjust for inflation, stock market edition
  33. Lunchtime Photo
  34. PCE inflation will probably come in low tomorrow
  35. GDP rises a whopping 4.9% in Q3
  36. Who has the best forecast of Q3 GDP?
  37. Ford agrees to 25% wage increase in new UAW deal
  38. Clarence Thomas never paid for his luxury motor home
  39. Trump fined yet again for violating gag order
  40. Lunchtime Photo
  41. Mike Johnson is right-wing, but not as extreme as Jim Jordan
  42. New home sales just keep on rising
  43. Mike Johnson is Speaker of the House
  44. Meta sued by 41 states for turning kids into addicts
  45. Emmer is out
  46. Iran proxies have entered the Mideast war
  47. Lunchtime Photo
  48. Raw data: The number of abortions in the US
  49. Whose turn is it next to be Speaker nominee?
  50. Another lawyer pleads guilty in Georgia case
  51. Rich kids get way higher SAT scores than poor kids
  52. Border encounters reach record high in September
  53. Who is the greatest economist of all time?
  54. Lunchtime Photo
  55. Chart of the day: Tech is the sick man of Europe
  56. The winner is . . . Twitter
  57. Like it or not, we must now take another crack at free will
  58. Did the 2017 tax cut increase business investment?
  59. Take my X/Twitter survey!
  60. Antisemitic attacks have skyrocketed over the past two weeks
  61. Adolf Hitler was born in Austria
  62. It was a Hamas rocket that exploded at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza
  63. Taylor Swift and post-Obama mind control
  64. Does Hamas want a ceasefire?
  65. How many H-bombs does it take to pop a sun-sized bowl of popcorn? One? A thousand?
  66. Biden crime family clown show still screening in a tweet near you
  67. Trump voters and what they believe
  68. Calling all linguists
  69. The life and times of my grandfather
  70. Friday Dog Blogging – 20 October 2023
  71. House rebels say, “Punish us.”
  72. FBI says murder was down 7% in 2022
  73. Another Georgia defendant goes down
  74. Jim Jordan loses yet again.
  75. Apple cancels Jon Stewart over China
  76. Public service announcement: Phenylephrine nasal sprays work fine
  77. Raw data: Women’s earnings compared to men
  78. Lunchtime Photo
  79. Democrats are not the ones preventing a deal to elect a Speaker
  80. Home sales drop to lowest rate in over a decade
  81. Sidney “Release the Kraken” Powell pleads guilty to election conspiracy
  82. Jim Jordan is out
  83. Student loan resumption will only barely affect the economy
  84. Homes have gotten pretty expensive these days
  85. Surprise! Jim Jordan is not a fiscal conservative.
  86. Lunchtime Photo
  87. Why did CPI and PCE inflation diverge during the pandemic?
  88. Can the economy continue to shrug off high interest rates?
  89. Medical advice of the day: Get a cat
  90. RFK Jr. takes more votes from Trump than Biden
  91. The long-term bond market has crashed
  92. Jim Jordan loses yet again
  93. Donald Trump is showing strong signs of dementia
  94. The US is not in decline
  95. Chart of the day: Lots of journal articles are being retracted these days
  96. Lunchtime Photo
  97. Free will is mankind’s biggest myth
  98. Jim Jordan losing vote for Speaker of the House
  99. Retail sales were flat in September
  100. Pax Americana isn’t declining. It never existed.
  101. In Poland, authoritarianism loses yet another battle
  102. We’re stuck with race as a description of different human groups
  103. Forest in Arizona is burning
  104. Can Jim Jordan win?
  105. Lunchtime Photo
  106. Trump gagged again
  107. It turns out merchants don’t care much about swipe fees after all
  108. Does free play among kids lead to happier adults?
  109. Friday Cat Blogging – 13 October 2023
  110. It’s time for Republicans to ask for Democratic help
  111. Lunchtime Photo
  112. CPI settles down in September
  113. “Despair” doesn’t seem to have increased this century
  114. Lunchtime Photo
  115. Public service announcement
  116. Will Trump blame his lawyers for advising him to overturn the 2020 election?
  117. Are “deaths of despair” really just about deaths from Oxy?
  118. Third quarter GDP remains a very big mystery
  119. Lunchtime Photo
  120. Get vaccinated! Again.
  121. Retail shoplifting is up slightly over the past decade
  122. Raw data: Public school staffing
  123. Lunchtime Photo
  124. Raw data: UAW pay over the past century
  125. The War on Cars™ is going very badly indeed
  126. The latest Palestinian war will end the same way as all the others
  127. Gaza
  128. I am now forbidden from taking sleep meds
  129. Friday Cat Blogging – 6 October 2023
  130. Fire alarm update
  131. Economic reporting is not biased against liberals
  132. What happened in Artsakh?
  133. Despite job growth, wages remain flat in 2023
  134. Chart of the day: Net new jobs through September
  135. How much is an F worth?
  136. Average mortgages are actually down a bit lately
  137. Stagnant life expectancies for the poor probably aren’t related to health care
  138. Lunchtime Photo
  139. Falling life expectancies aren’t about jobs or pay
  140. Russia moves naval fleet out of Sevastopol
  141. The minority should stick to tradition and shut up during elections for Speaker
  142. Charts of the day: Wages have beaten inflation over the past year
  143. Chart of the day: Support for Ukraine has ebbed among Republicans
  144. Noted without comment
  145. Lunchtime Photo
  146. McCarthy betrayed Democrats over and over. It’s absurd to think they should have bailed him out.
  147. The CFPB appears safe for now
  148. No, Democrats shouldn’t have helped Kevin McCarthy
  149. McCarthy vacated
  150. Lunchtime Photo
  151. Thousands of Asian slaves are behind a popular online scam
  152. Why is inflation such a big issue?
  153. Net hiring stays low but steady in August
  154. Hunter Biden has no offshore accounts. Neither does Joe.
  155. Why have so many Republicans become Ukraine skeptics?
  156. Matt Gaetz files motion to oust Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House
  157. Quote of the day: “God help us”
  158. Do universities police their own researchers well enough?
  159. The unauthorized immigrant population in the US has been flat for 15 years
  160. Lunchtime Photo
  161. Donald Trump’s fraud trial is proceeding apace
  162. No book has been banned in the United States for more than half a century
  163. Are Americans splurging more? I doubt it.
  164. Sam Bankman-Fried: “Plain old embezzlement”
  165. What’s the real rate of illegal immigration?
  166. Rep. Bowman is innocent
  167. Raw data: Inflation hasn’t hurt most people
  168. I am old
  169. Gaetz says he’s going to oust McCarthy as Speaker
  170. A quick weekend primer on Podiumgate

September 2023

  1. Will interest rates stay high forever?
  2. Government shutdown averted as McCarthy caves
  3. Raw data: Gasoline during my lifetime
  4. New York is the third “Thousand-Year” flood in 2023 (so far)
  5. In Georgia, one down and 18 to go
  6. Joe Biden sounded fine during his speech yesterday
  7. Friday Cat Blogging – 29 September 2023
  8. Trump shills should be forced to defend Trump
  9. Sexually explicit YA books lead to . . . less teen sex?
  10. Consumer spending up slightly in August
  11. Core PCE inflation dropped below 2% in August
  12. Lead and crime in Washington DC
  13. Rising mortality is mostly limited to white high school dropouts
  14. Appeals court tells Trump to buzz off
  15. Lunchtime Photo
  16. Rare earths aren’t rare
  17. Republican impeachment inquiry not going well
  18. You gotta wear a tie in the Senate
  19. Has the economy really grown 5% in the third quarter?
  20. Tonight’s Republican debate was a shitshow
  21. Raw data: Crime is back to pre-COVID levels
  22. College tuition is about the same as 30 years ago
  23. Lunchtime Photo
  24. Republicans can’t afford to attack Robert Menendez
  25. Joe Biden is as popular as any former president
  26. ChatGPT is no longer stuck in the past
  27. The cost of college has barely changed in the past 30 years
  28. Trump & Sons guilty of fraudulently inflating property values
  29. “Americans” don’t think the economy is bad. Republicans do.
  30. Lunchtime Photo
  31. Here’s what Donald Trump is doing in Detroit
  32. What will Kevin McCarthy do?
  33. San Francisco Fed says pandemic savings are all gone
  34. Raw data: Economic growth of big countries
  35. Supreme Court tells Alabama Republicans to stand down
  36. Consumers are not loading up their credit cards
  37. Superbugs are gaining ground via economics, not evolution
  38. It’s all about policy
  39. Lunchtime Photo
  40. Florida kids are allowed to feel guilt over slavery
  41. Trump now wants to destroy NBC News
  42. “Mass dysfunction” in Congress is all due to Kevin McCarthy
  43. Republicans are determined to protect their web of lies
  44. Health update — not so good this time
  45. Half of all Republicans think COVID vaccine is unsafe
  46. Note to Russia: You are still in a war against Ukraine
  47. Fantastic Health Update
  48. Southwest border encounters were up a lot in August
  49. Marriage has declined for exactly the reason you think
  50. Unions provide great job benefits
  51. Friday Cat Blogging – 22 September 2023
  52. Clarence Thomas has done fundraising for the Koch Network
  53. There are only two ways to rein in federal deficits
  54. Are lots of people really quitting because they have to return to the office?
  55. Traffic deaths aren’t up because of George Floyd
  56. Lunchtime Photo
  57. Pharmaceuticals are very, very profitable
  58. TIL why I’m getting so many mosquito bites
  59. Raw data: Single-family home sales through history
  60. Biden grants semi-amnesty to half a million Venezuelans
  61. NFTs are officially bullshit
  62. Republicans are squabbling over a 1.9% difference in the federal budget
  63. Lunchtime Photo
  64. Productivity in the auto sector is fine
  65. Once again, Republicans aren’t serious about border security
  66. Tim Scott: “You strike, you’re fired”
  67. That weird Freedom Caucus spending number explained (maybe)
  68. Lunchtime Photo
  69. Housing construction in August remained way above trend
  70. Why is housing so damn expensive?
  71. Electricity prices are up in Toledo. That’s bad news for Joe Biden
  72. Raw data: Workers on strike
  73. Lunchtime Photo
  74. Donald Trump wants to soften Republican opposition to abortion
  75. Public sector jobs are lagging way behind the private sector
  76. ChatGPT is not AI
  77. Impeach Biden? Sure, the SOB deserves it.
  78. House lunatics want to cut everyone’s budget 8% for one month
  79. Neanderthals in the news again
  80. California joins the oil company lawsuit parade
  81. Paxton survives impeachment
  82. Texas Senate voting now on Ken Paxton impeachment
  83. Prosecutor asks for Trump gag order
  84. Raw data: Hourly pay in the auto industry
  85. Friday Cat Blogging – 15 September 2023
  86. Can Joe Biden really do anything about the auto strike?
  87. Were collapsing earnings responsible for the breakup of the Black family?
  88. DOJ caves in to Republican backlash over Hunter Biden
  89. Average earnings today are about the same as just before the pandemic
  90. Lunchtime Photo
  91. Democrats have gotten a lot more liberal recently
  92. Raw data: Young adult aren’t especially unhappy these days
  93. Quote of the day: The speaker strikes back
  94. Oil prices are up, but not yet “soaring”
  95. Labor productivity is very high these days
  96. A tidbit of good news about inflation
  97. Lunchtime Photo
  98. High crimes and misdemeanors
  99. Earnings decline in August
  100. CPI shoots up in August
  101. Are most young women “overwhelmed” by stress? I’m skeptical.
  102. Apple announces connector change
  103. Scott Perry explains impeachment
  104. Measured correctly, poverty was up 60% in 2022
  105. Lunchtime Photo
  106. As expected, Republicans open pointless impeachment inquiry
  107. Did the oxy crackdown lead to the fentanyl crisis?
  108. Chart of the day: Employee compensation declined 2.7% in Q2
  109. Raw data: Inflation since 2021
  110. Worst. Campaign. Strategy. Ever.
  111. Lunchtime Photo
  112. California fast food workers are finally making $15 per hour*
  113. Our withdrawal from Afghanistan was a success
  114. Chart of the day: Songs in a minor key
  115. For the last time: Joe Biden is not unpopular
  116. Even in blue California, most oppose cash reparations to Black residents
  117. How to handle a COVID surge
  118. Who are the traitors defending Joe Biden?
  119. DeSantis & Co. aren’t happy with newest COVID vaccine
  120. Appeals court upholds tiny part of “mass censorship” ruling
  121. What Republicans believe, 2023 edition
  122. States cannot remove Donald Trump from the ballot for engaging in insurrection
  123. Most popular nasal decongestants don’t work
  124. Friday Cat Blogging – 8 September 2023
  125. Did Dobbs really prompt a backlash against abortion restrictions?
  126. Ron DeSantis is right about excessive 1/6 sentences, but for the wrong reason
  127. Did Elon Musk deactivate Starlink coverage around Crimea?
  128. Here’s what Florida really means by “Stop WOKE”
  129. Lunchtime Photo
  130. COVID tracking in wastewater has quadrupled since June
  131. Polling about Hunter Biden is off-the-charts insane
  132. Tucker Carlson has gone nuts
  133. Raw data: Incarceration of 1st generation Latino immigrants
  134. Just stop it: Health insurance costs are rising moderately *if you adjust for inflation*
  135. Raw data: We’re using way less paper these days
  136. Replicating a study is very, very hard
  137. Lunchtime Photo
  138. What teacher shortage?
  139. Banks are in danger of a commercial real estate “doom loop”
  140. Please bullshit me
  141. The COVID stimulus was probably too big. But not the stimulus you’re thinking of.
  142. Cancer deaths in the young are down by a quarter since 1990
  143. Pickleball is overrunning us
  144. Lunchtime Photo
  145. Raw data: Vouchers account for 0.6% of all school enrollment
  146. Federal court strikes down Alabama’s racist gerrymandering for a second time
  147. Health care inflation has been low for more than 20 years
  148. We are getting ever happier with our jobs
  149. Caste bigotry is alive and well in Silicon Valley
  150. Lunchtime Photo
  151. Yes, the deficit really did double in 2023, but . . .
  152. Republicans refuse to believe the economy has improved
  153. Raw data for Labor Day: Union wages are way down over the past two years
  154. Pay is up $32 for the very poorest
  155. Will Joe Biden be impeached?
  156. ChatGPT can help find the racy passages in popular fiction
  157. Friday Cat Blogging – 1 September 2023
  158. We can fix all our problems for 2.7% of GDP
  159. Abortion is legal in California. Texas zealots need to get over it.
  160. Weekly earnings rose 4.3% in August
  161. High interest rates are about to hit the economy
  162. Chart of the day: Net new jobs through August
  163. Raw data: Joe Biden’s job approval at the end of August
  164. Child care is no longer an emergency

August 2023

  1. Everyone is getting less religious in America
  2. Lunchtime Photo
  3. Get real, conservatives: Joe Biden is perfectly productive and energetic
  4. Consumer spending highlights: Eggs are back!
  5. ChatGPT can train itself on your book. Deal with it.
  6. Ukraine is allowed to fight back against Russia
  7. Consumer spending stays strong in July
  8. PCE inflation stays below 3% in July
  9. Lunchtime Photo
  10. Wisconsin GOP threatens to use its gerrymander to keep its gerrymander
  11. Judge finally loses patience with Rudy Giuliani
  12. Corporate profits remained elevated in Q2
  13. We still don’t know how to stop a pandemic
  14. Lunchtime Photo
  15. Quote of the day: “Either the press is losing its mind or I am.”
  16. Medicare chooses $50 billion worth of prescription drugs to start negotiating over
  17. Multiple myeloma growing in popularity
  18. Job openings and hires were down yet again in July
  19. Raw data: Retirement pensions among the rich and poor
  20. The mystery of gravity and inertia
  21. When will Donald Trump go to trial?
  22. Lunchtime Photo
  23. How are we doing on retirement these days?
  24. Here’s why we have more earthquakes
  25. Raw data: Anti-Black hate crime
  26. Climate change is producing a more disastrous world
  27. Raw data: The minimum wage in California and the nation
  28. Alabama bans gender-affirming care up to age 19
  29. My blog is finally an adult
  30. Raw data: Test scores were about the same in states that kept schools open and closed during COVID
  31. Friday Cat Blogging – 25 August 2023
  32. How many religions do you not believe in?
  33. Donald Trump was not the winner on Wednesday
  34. Note to Jerome Powell: Inflation has been dropping for 12 months
  35. How far should activists go?
  36. Judge tosses Republican whining about Google spam filters
  37. Picture of the day: Do you believe in climate change?
  38. How did Vivek Ramaswamy become a billionaire at age 38?
  39. Lunchtime Photo
  40. US fossil fuel production has skyrocketed over the past 20 years
  41. Raw data: Top 20 counties for wage growth in Q1
  42. Republican debate roundup: It was a shitshow
  43. Raw data: Gender surgeries in the US
  44. Lunchtime Photo
  45. FISA reform now a hostage of right-wing conspiracy theories
  46. Head of Russian private military force killed in plane crash
  47. Why does the government’s fiscal year begin on October 1st?
  48. AI allows woman with ALS to speak again
  49. We have (slightly) fewer jobs than we thought
  50. Long-term care is falling way behind the growth of the elderly population
  51. The House Freedom Caucus is eager to shut down the government
  52. Lunchtime Photo
  53. Raw data: Consumer spending during recessions
  54. The yield curve remains strongly inverted. This is bad news for the economy.
  55. Here’s how young baby boomers have been doing
  56. Wages for new hires are either way up or way down
  57. Republican scandals: A brief refresher
  58. I have returned to infanthood
  59. Lunchtime Photo
  60. Maybe Hunter Biden didn’t do anything wrong?
  61. Auto loans aren’t looking out of control these days
  62. Raw data: Illegal immigration spiked back up in July
  63. Breaking news: Republicans criticize President Biden
  64. The apocalypse is coming
  65. Chart of the day: Chinese families have given up on children
  66. No stars tonight in Southern California
  67. Why do conservatives hate renewable energy?
  68. Gen Z is in love with iPhones
  69. Republican justice unhappy at taking what she used to dish out
  70. Friday Cat Blogging – 18 August 2023
  71. A hurricane in Southern California?
  72. The country is pretty normal these days
  73. Health update
  74. Gen X student debt is mostly about highly paid graduate professionals
  75. Lunchtime Photo
  76. Quote of the day: No boring policy blather for Ron DeSantis
  77. Who controls your media consumption?
  78. The cost of preschool has dropped 3% since 2019
  79. Lunchtime Photo
  80. Economic growth forecasts are wildly out of sync with each other
  81. Here’s a refrigerator list for the economy
  82. Money is getting more expensive
  83. The rich live a lot longer than the poor
  84. China is fucked
  85. Home Depot says inflation is now “negligible”
  86. Lunchtime Photo
  87. Elon Musk takes aim once again at anyone who annoys him
  88. Russia and China are reinvigorating global democracy
  89. Hunter Biden lawyer steps down so he can be a witness
  90. Auto sales up in July, but still well below pre-pandemic level
  91. Retail sales increase slightly in July
  92. Trump indicted in Georgia
  93. Americans have been getting nicer over the past decade
  94. Lunchtime Photo
  95. Is Joe Biden bullying us to buy electric cars?
  96. Even a home security guy thinks we’ve gone cuckoo over security
  97. European sunscreen makes its annual media appearance
  98. Here’s why scientists concluded a COVID lab leak was implausible
  99. Millennials are doing fine, part XXXVII
  100. Lower courts are the most reliably partisan in the country
  101. Spam, glorious Spam
  102. Friday Cat Blogging – 11 August 2023
  103. Why did David Weiss suddenly rejuvenate the Hunter Biden investigation?
  104. Producer price index up 3.6% in July
  105. Driverless cars are here
  106. Lunchtime Photo
  107. Some American slaves really did earn money from skills they developed
  108. ProPublica: Clarence Thomas accepted yet more millions from billionaires
  109. Weekly earnings remain flat in July
  110. Inflation stays at 2% in July
  111. In 2018, the Wall Street Journal insisted that abortion rights would never be overturned
  112. A brief timeline of the Twitter contempt fiasco
  113. Lunchtime Photo
  114. Raw data: Unauthorized farmworkers in the US
  115. Twitter fined $350,000 because it was three days late
  116. Ohio rejects right-wing attempt to rig referendums
  117. Hunter Biden was not only sleazy, he was inept
  118. Republicans are set to blow yet another winnable election
  119. Consumer spending on goods is still very high
  120. Lunchtime Photo
  121. The kids are finally having sex again!
  122. The genius of the Wall Street Journal editorial page isn’t in what it says
  123. New study says air pollution causes most antibiotic resistance. Maybe…
  124. Republicans and Democrats agree: The other party is horrible
  125. A very brief guide to Tuesday’s election in Ohio
  126. Lunchtime Photo
  127. Imports from China plummeted in the second half of 2022
  128. Update: Sulphur limits still aren’t responsible for the unprecedented heat this year
  129. Anti-woke is fading, but immigration is forever
  130. Raw data: Consumer confidence is still really low
  131. What goes up must come down: Interest on the national debt edition
  132. Trump threatens enemies 24 hours after being warned not to
  133. New shipping rules aren’t responsible for our scorching summer
  134. Today brings word of yet more borrowed money for Clarence Thomas
  135. Net hiring has been declining for the past two years
  136. Friday Cat Blogging – 4 August 2023
  137. In new study, AI finds 20% more breast cancers than human radiologists
  138. Appeals court rules it’s unconstitutional to strip felons of the right to vote
  139. “Fascist” needs to be retired. Say what you really mean instead.
  140. Chart of the day: Net new jobs through July
  141. Raw data: US suicide rates since 1900
  142. Three important myths about the latest Trump indictment
  143. Lunchtime Photo
  144. Bud Light just keeps on losing customers
  145. Inflation in goods will keep on declining
  146. LA developer is finding ways to build high-density housing that residents hate
  147. Raw data: Asylum requests granted
  148. Lunchtime Photo
  149. Here’s the latest version of “Kids these days have lousy work skills”
  150. It wasn’t just Trump who wanted a coup
  151. Today’s mystery: Rental vacancies and rent are both up in Q2
  152. How rugged is your state?
  153. A new meta-review confirms the link between lead and crime
  154. Trump now up to three indictments with fourth looming
  155. Why has trust in the military dropped recently?
  156. Lunchtime Photo
  157. Construction spending was flat in June
  158. Hiring drops to lowest level since 2021
  159. Yet more evidence that home workers goof off a lot
  160. The equity premium has disappeared

July 2023

  1. Did I receive CAR-T treatment because of white privilege?
  2. Here’s why a lab leak of COVID seemed unlikely even in 2020
  3. Lunchtime Photo
  4. DeSantis promises to get tough on China. Zzzzz.
  5. Raw data: 2022 was a weak year for solar energy growth
  6. LA is finding it hard to keep the newly housed in their housing
  7. DeSantis trails Trump by 37% in latest poll
  8. Raw data: Public belief in the COVID-19 lab leak theory
  9. COVID in wastewater has doubled since June
  10. Robots are taking jobs from workers who aren’t working anymore
  11. Trump is spending $1.5 million per week in legal fees
  12. I read the entire Slack archive about the origin of SARS-CoV-2. There is no evidence of improper behavior.
  13. Economy watch: Hires are down, fires are up
  14. Raw data: Consumer spending since 2002
  15. Friday Cat Blogging – 28 July 2023
  16. Facebook says it was under “pressure” over lab leak posts
  17. Wages are up, but still below their pre-pandemic level
  18. Consumer spending up in June, but growing slowly
  19. Inflation drops to 2%, hitting Fed goal
  20. Why does Facebook want you to be on their algorithmic feed?
  21. Italy’s problem with migrants is everybody’s problem
  22. Conventional wisdom finally agrees we’re going to have a soft landing. That’s why you should remain doubtful.
  23. Lunchtime Photo
  24. Raw data: Manufacturing construction since 1960
  25. Do AIs use too much of your personal data?
  26. Personal income up a measly 1.0% in Q2
  27. GDP up 2.4% in Q2
  28. Raw data: Joe Biden has all but ended US drone warfare
  29. One out of six Republicans think the government is run by pedophiles
  30. Prices and profits keep going up, up, up
  31. Ron DeSantis dives head first into RFK Jr. cesspool
  32. I’m now the million-dollar man
  33. Lunchtime Photo
  34. Raw data: Youth unemployment in China
  35. Americans mostly hate Republican cultural beliefs
  36. About that crisis among young men . . .
  37. Judge tosses Biden asylum rules
  38. President Biden wants your water heater to be powered by a heat pump
  39. Lunchtime Photo
  40. Climate change has made our heat wave 10,000 times more likely
  41. Teen suicide is up, but attempted suicide isn’t. Why?
  42. Raw data: Sea ice and ocean temps in 2023
  43. Big banks try, but fail, to fool FDIC
  44. Domestic spending is already going down
  45. Lunchtime Photo
  46. Elite universities really love the top 1%
  47. Here’s the real problem with Florida’s school standards for slavery
  48. Florida’s COVID performance has been mostly average
  49. Fixing Social Security in two easy steps
  50. My crystal ball takes a look at the Q4 employment level
  51. Anheuser Busch is doing fine, Ron
  52. Friday Cat Blogging – 21 July 2023
  53. The growth and decline of SNAP and WIC
  54. Raw data: Threads use is plummeting
  55. California’s water systems are virtually disease free
  56. Lunchtime Photo
  57. Another look at interest rates and recession
  58. Temecula school board goes insane over Harvey Milk
  59. Raw data: Homelessness is down everywhere except California
  60. Shield laws allow blue states to ship abortion pills to red states
  61. I wouldn’t count on a soft landing, folks
  62. Lunchtime Photo
  63. China is not quite the technology powerhouse it seems to be
  64. Race switchers could tip the 2024 election
  65. Why do Republicans support Trump?
  66. Raw data: Illegal immigration is down in June
  67. Black parents preferred school closures during the pandemic. White parents didn’t.
  68. Lunchtime Photo
  69. Georgia court tells Trump to fuck off
  70. Rich and poor kids during the pandemic
  71. Our big heat wave is all about global warming
  72. No, Europe hasn’t been pauperized
  73. The real story behind Operation Warp Speed
  74. Health update
  75. Lunchtime Photo
  76. Business formation is up, up, up
  77. Here’s why California’s terrible environmental law is less terrible than you think
  78. Raw data: Child care during the pandemic
  79. How many people really attend church?
  80. Raw data: Auto travel per person
  81. DeSantis’s personal guard: Fewer hurricanes, more immigration stunts
  82. What’s the real story with Sweden and COVID-19?
  83. Washington Post pretends routine feud is about being gay. Why?
  84. The Republican apocalypse
  85. Chart of the day: Teen mental health has plummeted
  86. Fed hikes haven’t slowed the economy—yet
  87. Mississippi revisited: The Mississippi reading miracle looks to be real after all
  88. A different look at the amazing bull market
  89. Lunatic judge in censorship case is sent packing
  90. Conservatives and school boards: We’ve seen this movie before
  91. Friday Cat Blogging – 14 July 2023
  92. Imports are getting cheaper and cheaper
  93. Team Transitory has been right all along—but way too optimistic
  94. Raw data: What the Army looks like these days
  95. Twitter pays Andrew Tate for his keen social insights
  96. Net zero by 2050?
  97. I guess Sweden didn’t kill everyone after all
  98. DeSantis targets—and hits—voter registration drives
  99. Bob Iger is in it to win it
  100. Lunchtime Photo
  101. The truth about student loans
  102. OTC contraceptives are finally here
  103. Wholesale prices in June show almost no inflation
  104. Is the ERA already the law of the land?
  105. Why is inflation down?
  106. Rupert Murdoch hates incompetent bigotry
  107. Chart of the day: Headlines are getting more pessimistic
  108. News you can use, earbud edition
  109. Lunchtime Photo
  110. Unanimous consent is a cancer in the Senate
  111. Why did Black men suddenly abandon the labor force in April?
  112. Clarence Thomas: It’s Christmas, so pay up
  113. Worker earnings were up modestly in June
  114. Inflation plummets near zero in June
  115. Inflation is over — if you calculate it the way Europe does
  116. Some AI experts are really rattled by the whole extinction thing
  117. Need to improve your racial profiling image? Just issue a bunch of fake tickets to white people.
  118. Lunchtime Photo
  119. Los Angeles probably doesn’t need a public bank
  120. COVID really did a number on America’s kids
  121. Turkey gets its reward: Sweden for F-16s
  122. Do vaccines slow the transmission of COVID-19?
  123. Sweden will join NATO
  124. Lunchtime Photo
  125. Please God, no more about the Luddites
  126. Rent in California is high, but income after rent is about the same as a decade ago
  127. English test set to get more rigorous in citizenship test update
  128. Sea water near Tampa hits record-setting 90ºF
  129. Air pollution doesn’t affect the birth weight of babies
  130. Atlanta victorious in dueling GDP forecasts
  131. Nonwhite workers are powering the economy back to work
  132. Robocall fundraising sure is inefficient
  133. Fed poised to make bank runs easier than ever
  134. Raw data: US greenhouse gas emissions
  135. Does M2 still matter?
  136. Raw data: Biden vs. Trump vs. Obama
  137. Food prices have dropped since the start of the year
  138. The book of who?
  139. Greedflation is real, but it’s not the main inflation story
  140. A wee mystery about Medicare
  141. Climate change is all about fossil fuels, period
  142. Raw data: Opioid deaths in America
  143. Remember NATO Article 5?
  144. Friday Cat Blogging – 7 July 2023
  145. Threads needs a little time before it descends into bedlam
  146. Two-thirds of all doctors have received vicious harassment over COVID-19
  147. Journalism is doomed! Journalism is better than ever!
  148. Chart of the day: Net new jobs in June
  149. Democrats and the non-South
  150. Are we in a tight labor market? Have we ever been?
  151. Lunchtime Photo
  152. Inflation for services is (probably) coming down
  153. JOLTS data shows softening economy
  154. Vaccination rates are going up despite everything
  155. Judge Doughty has driven off the State Department. Who’s next?
  156. The real problem with Twitter
  157. News of the weird, Wisconsin line-item veto edition
  158. Raw data: New solar capacity by state
  159. Lunchtime Photo
  160. Can a shop owner be compelled to celebrate same-sex marriage?
  161. Why can the Supreme Court overturn the student loan forgiveness program?
  162. How to build a monopoly in less than a year
  163. Republicans desperately want to impeach Biden, but for what?
  164. The Supreme Court didn’t do too badly in its flurry of late decisions
  165. Right wing paranoia takes over the judiciary
  166. Another Trump judge, another ridiculous national injunction
  167. Home workers spend a ton of time goofing off
  168. Lunchtime Photo
  169. Are students required to pay back loans in the first place?
  170. That Ron DeSantis video is far more lunatic than I imagined
  171. Consumers have no idea how high inflation is
  172. Raw data: Eggs
  173. Lunchtime Photo
  174. Stop the silly season before it gets started
  175. Are wedding websites protected speech? Or protected conduct?
  176. Raw data: Construction spending in May
  177. Southern California’s natural gas shock lasted two months
  178. HBO sure does like whorehouses
  179. 2020 was a very odd year
  180. Mass transit deaths have skyrocketed since the pandemic
  181. Building homeless shelters in LA is all but impossible
  182. Trump pressured Arizona governor to overturn election
  183. The real life impact of affirmative action is modest

June 2023

  1. Moms for Liberty is no grassroots firestorm
  2. Friday Cat Blogging – 30 June 2023
  3. Raw data: Productivity growth in American industry
  4. Supreme Court kills off student loan forgiveness
  5. Inflation ticks down yet again in May
  6. Raw data: The homeless in Los Angeles
  7. America finally loves Obamacare
  8. Lunchtime Photo
  9. Economic growth is better than you think
  10. Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action for good
  11. Health update
  12. Raw data: Abortion has dropped 3% since Dobbs
  13. Supreme Court tells Texas to pound sand over immigration
  14. Ron DeSantis wants to dismantle the US nuclear weapon program
  15. Lunchtime Photo
  16. Inflation around the world
  17. Have Fed hikes already brought down inflation all they can?
  18. UPDATE: Mississippi reading isn’t so miraculous after all
  19. Democrats need to deliver. But what?
  20. Lunchtime Photo
  21. Raw data: Home sales in the United States
  22. Supreme Court strikes down chaos in election rules
  23. Let’s impeach everyone!
  24. Lunchtime Photo
  25. Living on a single income in modern America
  26. Why is Joe Manchin so mad at Joe Biden?
  27. Are we heading into a bull market?
  28. Restaurants are too stingy to get all the workers they want
  29. Raw data: Emigration of remote workers from large cities
  30. Here’s a little more about miraculous Mississippi
  31. How miraculous is Mississippi?
  32. Wagner Group throws in the towel
  33. The Wagner Group seems to be advancing on Moscow at light speed
  34. The lab leak hypothesis continues to look pretty far-fetched
  35. Are the rich feeling precarious these days?
  36. Holy smoke! How many people work from home?
  37. Friday Cat Blogging – 23 June 2023
  38. The 2022 time use survey is out. Here’s some new data about work and church.
  39. Raw data: Retirements during the pandemic
  40. Why do so many tech bros support RFK Jr.?
  41. Supreme Court rules yet again in Biden’s favor
  42. Forget overcrowding. California now wants to get rid of prisons.
  43. Lunchtime Photo
  44. Updated: Household spending on all food through 2022
  45. Raw data: Shale production in the United States
  46. Raw data: Spending on food eaten at home
  47. Amazon is being sued for making it ridiculously hard to cancel a Prime subscription
  48. The Alito private jet story is pretty weak tea
  49. Lunchtime Photo
  50. Latest NAEP long-term test shows disastrous results during the pandemic
  51. We already (sorta) know how to have less crime
  52. Writing is over! (Someday)
  53. Raw data: Southwest border encounters through May
  54. A very short review of the question, “Is social media bad for teens?”
  55. Lunchtime Photo
  56. Hunter Biden is guilty!!!
  57. Businesses are still shutting down at pandemic rates [UPDATE: OR ARE THEY?]
  58. Raw data: Housing starts boomed in May
  59. Health update
  60. Corporate bureaucracy is the worst bureaucracy
  61. Lunchtime Photo
  62. Ha ha. Obama’s book was better than DeSantis’s.
  63. More Americans suddenly disapprove of gay and lesbian relations
  64. Raw data: The cost of an IRS audit
  65. Let’s not forget the history behind the Mueller investigation
  66. Friday Cat Blogging – 16 June 2023
  67. Total worker comp in Q1 is highest in San Francisco, lowest in Miami
  68. CEO pay has doubled in the past decade
  69. Lunchtime Photo
  70. ChatGPT helps doctors talk better
  71. Retail sales increase slightly in May
  72. Rich and poor countries are opposites in how they respond to global warming
  73. The Bud Light boycott has been stunningly effective
  74. Lunchtime Photo
  75. Fed finally backs away from yet another rate increase
  76. Is Oak Flat sacred?
  77. TV may be better than ever, but TV watching is down
  78. PPI drops to -3.7% in May
  79. The FBI abused its surveillance of Americans 278,000 times in 18 months
  80. AP estimates fraud and mistakes in pandemic programs cost $300-400 billion
  81. The Department of Justice went easy on Trump
  82. The CIA warned Ukraine not to bomb the Nord Stream pipeline
  83. Lunchtime Photo
  84. Can stick shifts make a comeback?
  85. Chart of the day: Peak oil is coming in 2029
  86. Blue-collar earnings rose 4% in May
  87. CPI down in May . . . sort of
  88. Why is office occupancy down so much?
  89. Intelligence agencies can track your every move—and they can do it without a warrant
  90. Lunchtime Photo
  91. Was affirmative action doomed from the start?
  92. Raw data: Credit card spending since the pandemic
  93. Companies are finally getting fed up with remote work
  94. Novak Djokovic is the best men’s tennis player of all time
  95. Rising wages have only a tiny impact on inflation
  96. They won’t have George Soros to kick around anymore
  97. Trump steals Matt Damon’s voice for campaign video
  98. Raw data: Wealth around the world
  99. Raw data: Herd immunity from COVID-19
  100. Donald Trump and his obsession with “my boxes”
  101. True autonomous highway driving is (sort of) here
  102. The Republican defenses of Donald Trump
  103. Belief in moral decline is widespread, popular—and wrong
  104. Unsealed indictment charges Trump with 37 counts of illegal behavior
  105. Here’s what Trump was talking about in that taped conversation
  106. Friday Cat Blogging – 9 June 2023
  107. Yet more evidence for the growing conservatism of Gen Z
  108. Raw data: venture funding has plunged over the past year
  109. Trump admits he can’t declassify secret documents
  110. DeSantis attacks Trump with fake AI images
  111. Trump indicted in classified documents case
  112. Rent inflation is down to zero
  113. Conservatism jumped in 2022—and then even more in 2023
  114. Lunchtime Photo
  115. Raw data: Europe is officially in recession
  116. Health update
  117. Supreme Court rules Alabama redistricting is racially prohibited
  118. Two questions about Ron DeSantis’s migrant abduction stunt
  119. $1 trillion in Treasury borrowing is not a big deal
  120. Instagram has a pedophile problem
  121. Charter schools work—but only for Black and Hispanic students
  122. Lunchtime Photo
  123. Yes, young men are becoming more right-wing
  124. Is inflation already down to 3%?
  125. Unruly airline passengers remain a plague even with the pandemic over
  126. Quote of the day: A golden age of bullshit
  127. Republicans have now introduced over 500 anti-trans bills
  128. For Republicans, it’s conspiracies all the way down
  129. Federal judge puts Florida anti-trans law on hold
  130. World Bank says Fed hikes will slow growth to 1% this year
  131. Lunchtime Photo
  132. Quote of the day: “He jerked them around for a year and a half.”
  133. Ukraine was behind the Nord Stream bombing all along
  134. Missouri leads the nation in dog attacks on mail carriers
  135. Sea temperatures are at a massive record high
  136. The debt ceiling crisis probably cost less than half a billion dollars
  137. SEC sues world’s biggest crypto firm over commingling and diversion of customer funds
  138. A quarter of young people support surveillance cameras in every house
  139. Lunchtime Photo
  140. Raw data: Orders for consumer goods fell again in April
  141. More money won’t help LA’s homeless
  142. House and Senate races have increasingly become national contests
  143. The far right is responsible for half of all terrorist killings
  144. Little-known facts about California goat herders
  145. Biden’s job approval is kind of average
  146. Raw data: Construction spending in the US
  147. US warships cost at least twice as much as they should
  148. Employment is up, but hours worked are down. Why?
  149. The beginning of the end of work
  150. US adds consul to remote Norwegian town
  151. Raw data: Interest on the national debt
  152. COVID deaths are at their lowest rate ever
  153. Friday Cat Blogging – 2 June 2023
  154. Quote of the day: Linear algebra and the debt deal
  155. Chart of the day: Net new jobs in May
  156. Are Millennials happy?
  157. When AI goes rogue
  158. Lunchtime Photo
  159. Health update
  160. The 2020 crime wave is steadily receding
  161. Raw data: Productivity and compensation
  162. How much of you is your genes?

May 2023

  1. What are the best innovation policies?
  2. Republicans were never a mob of idiot hostage takers
  3. Lunchtime Photo
  4. The job market looks weaker and weaker these days
  5. Republicans forget which secret rules they agreed to
  6. Corporate price markups surged during the pandemic
  7. CBO says debt ceiling deal could cut domestic spending 8-13%
  8. Companies are raising prices because consumers are letting them
  9. Lunchtime Photo
  10. Abortion bans aren’t popular—even in red states
  11. Life is very, very good in Las Vegas right now
  12. Lunchtime Photo
  13. Grocery prices are going down
  14. We haven’t always had a debt ceiling
  15. Conservatives actively want to believe only lies
  16. Raw data: profit vs. personal income in the United States, 1980-2022
  17. What’s the deal with Ken Paxton?
  18. Debt ceiling deal cuts domestic spending about 5%
  19. Commuters are back on the commute
  20. The debt ceiling fiasco is Joe Manchin’s fault
  21. Health update
  22. Friday Cat Blogging – 26 May 2023
  23. Women around the world aren’t paid nearly enough
  24. Inflation holds steady in April
  25. Ron DeSantis really wants your money
  26. Supreme Court blows off Congress in wetlands case
  27. Lunchtime Photo
  28. Raw data: LGBT households
  29. The US economy is a riddle wrapped in an enigma
  30. Earnings are not up
  31. Book banning is a very, very niche activity
  32. Lunchtime Photo
  33. Who gets paid if the US defaults on its debt?
  34. M-Protein update
  35. Health update
  36. Lunchtime Photo
  37. Should AI be regulated?
  38. I’m OK, you’re not
  39. Lunchtime Photo
  40. Austerity budgeting? Really?
  41. Challenging the debt ceiling
  42. What’s up with the debt ceiling?
  43. Health update
  44. Friday Cat Blogging – 19 May 2023
  45. Health update
  46. Lunchtime Photo
  47. Lunchtime Photo
  48. Is the world really going nuts?
  49. Lunchtime Photo
  50. Health Update
  51. Lunchtime Photo
  52. Health update
  53. Friday Cat Blogging – 12 May 2023
  54. Lunchtime Photo
  55. CPI moves sideways in April
  56. Lunchtime Photo
  57. Lunchtime Photo
  58. Lunchtime Photo
  59. Health update
  60. Health update
  61. Friday Cat Blogging – 5 May 2023
  62. Lunchtime Photo
  63. Yet more on Clarence Thomas
  64. Yet more Clarence Thomas corruption this morning
  65. Health update
  66. Lunchtime Photo
  67. Health update
  68. Lunchtime Photo
  69. A quick primer on how LLMs work
  70. Sam Alito is a hack
  71. Lunchtime Photo
  72. Health update

April 2023

  1. Raw data: Who cuts spending more, Democrats or Republicans?
  2. Two takeaways from an interview with Dr. Fauci
  3. Mental health update
  4. Weren’t redcoats the bad guys?
  5. Health care pros prefer AI to human doctors
  6. Federal Reserve fires a blank at Silicon Valley Bank
  7. Friday Cat Blogging – 28 April 2023
  8. Total compensation rose slightly in the first quarter
  9. PCE inflation drops sharply in March
  10. Has the Fed affected inflation yet?
  11. Lunchtime Photo
  12. Placeholder inflation forecasting post
  13. First quarter GDP grew at an anemic rate
  14. Health update
  15. A deep dive into the 2024 election
  16. Lunchtime Photo
  17. Finally, Disney sues DeSantis
  18. San Francisco is full of driverless cars that are working fine
  19. Artificial intelligence is nine years and nine months away
  20. Are textbooks going the way of the dodo?
  21. Yet another guess about why Rupert fired Tucker
  22. The Florida surgeon general scandal explained for nerds who want to know what really happened
  23. Raw data: The 20 highest paying occupations
  24. Lunchtime Photo
  25. Health update
  26. Here’s an AI view of Rupert Murdoch
  27. Yet another Republican Supreme Court justice failed to report a property sale
  28. Why was Tucker Carlson fired?
  29. Lunchtime Photo
  30. Remote work is bad news for junior workers, especially women
  31. Tucker is out at Fox News
  32. Whose debt ceiling is it, anyway?
  33. Health update
  34. MAGA Republicans take over a county, and it all started with masks
  35. Right-wing hate wins another round
  36. Friday Cat Blogging – 21 April 2023
  37. Investors are getting nervous about the debt ceiling
  38. You can only push City of Hope just so far
  39. The case for America
  40. Lunchtime Photo
  41. Why are we still so afraid of a knock at the door?
  42. Lunchtime Photo
  43. Ron DeSantis is losing his chance at the presidency
  44. India is now the biggest country on earth
  45. CoH Update
  46. Der Tag
  47. Fox News settles with Dominion
  48. Lunchtime Photo
  49. Chart of the day: Black turnout in midterm elections
  50. Remember the good old days when the sheriff “would take a damn Black guy and whoop their ass and throw him in the cell?”
  51. Weekly earnings were flat in the first quarter
  52. Bud Light sales dropped only about 5% in first week of boycott
  53. Lunchtime Photo
  54. What is the difference between outlays and expenditures?
  55. Republicans remain determined to destroy the economy
  56. A quick look at the Washington Post’s editorial judgment
  57. Did COVID rescue funding push up inflation? Yes, but . . .
  58. Friday Cat Blogging – 14 April 2023
  59. Raw data: Consumer inflation expectations are completely useless
  60. Retail sales fall 1.2% in March
  61. What demographic groups should Bud Light be sure to avoid in the future?
  62. Has Clarence Thomas broken the law?
  63. Mifepristone was not given special treatment by the FDA
  64. Lunchtime Photo
  65. How did the Ukraine document leaker do it?
  66. Producer inflation is below zero now
  67. Fed gives up on soft landing fantasy
  68. Raw data: New business formation before and after the pandemic
  69. Lunchtime Photo
  70. Judge rules that Fox News is a lying sack of shit*
  71. Why does inflation still seem so high? It’s all about food.
  72. Supercore CPI clocked in at 3.1% in March
  73. Inflation ticks down in March
  74. Raw data: Violent crime rates in a selection of states
  75. Republicans are playing games with blue slips yet again
  76. Lunchtime Photo
  77. Which states recovered fastest from COVID learning losses?
  78. Always be sure to get mad at the right people
  79. Raw data: Education outcomes in Southern states
  80. Federal spending is back down to normal
  81. Lunchtime Photo
  82. Pro-life group shows that mifepristone is safe
  83. Texas governor says he will pardon murderer
  84. How much is a dollar worth to you?
  85. Even blue states may be in danger of losing access to mifepristone
  86. Republicans plotting further revenge on Tennessee reps they expelled
  87. Who takes the law more seriously? A natural experiment can tell us.
  88. Abortion pill banned, then unbanned hours later
  89. Friday Cat Blogging – 7 April 2023
  90. Raw data: NYPD pay under their new contract
  91. Prime age labor participation is back to its pre-pandemic peak
  92. Chart of the day: Net new jobs in March
  93. Clarence Thomas has been covering up his vacations for 20 years
  94. What’s going on with the water in Troy?
  95. Republicans don’t care about Clarence Thomas’s lavish vacations
  96. The Republican week in review
  97. Lunchtime Photo
  98. How popular would a nationwide 15-week rule for abortion be?
  99. Lunchtime Photo
  100. Raw data: Race, gender, and ethnicity among US inventors
  101. New study of COVID origins adds nothing to the raccoon dog hypothesis
  102. Wisconsin votes to remain in the 21st century
  103. Classical music cuts crime 20% on the LA metro
  104. How the Chinese are really using TikTok to destroy us
  105. Lunchtime Photo
  106. Trump update
  107. Human voice is the hot new texting technology
  108. US economy continues to fade
  109. Culture war, culture battle, culture skirmish, culture fuss, culture stir. What’s the next level below that?
  110. Lunchtime Photo
  111. Crime and the (Republican) fear of crime
  112. Raw data: The price of oil
  113. The Mar-a-Lago documents case is all about obstruction of justice
  114. Raw data: Life expectancy in the 50 states
  115. What’s the problem with TikTok?
  116. That’s a lot of co-authors
  117. A brief timeline of recent presidential criming
  118. GPT-4 is not AI. Stop calling it that.

March 2023

  1. Judge rules that Fox News lied*
  2. No, it’s not hard to imagine at all
  3. Raw data: Household financial assets
  4. Friday Cat Blogging – 31 March 2023
  5. Audrey Hale might not be transgender at all
  6. PCE inflation fell in February
  7. How the deep state controls social media and censors conservatives
  8. Raw data: What Democrats and Republicans think of federal agencies
  9. Lunchtime Photo
  10. Ron DeSantis is not a smart man
  11. A conversation about the debt ceiling with my GPT twin
  12. Tucker Carlson descends ever further into the muck
  13. Obamacare hating judge rules yet again against Obamacare
  14. GPT-4 will (almost) be your next doctor
  15. Lunchtime Photo
  16. Fox News CEO: Stop with the fact checks. Our viewers hate them.
  17. Americans are pretty satisfied with federal spending priorities
  18. Yesterday we got a little more detail about the Fed’s supervision of SVB
  19. Mammoth meatballs—no, wait—meatballs *from* mammoths, are on the menu
  20. Lunchtime Photo
  21. Raw data: Americans are losing pride in their country
  22. Joe Biden orders IRS to jerk Matt Taibbi’s chain. Maybe. Just asking questions here, folks.
  23. Why did the tech community panic over Silicon Valley Bank?
  24. Jail deaths have dropped by a third in Los Angeles
  25. Calvinball needs to stop
  26. Financial anxiety got you down? It’s probably more to do with savings than inflation.
  27. Lunchtime Photo
  28. Raw data: Suicide rate among teen girls
  29. Yes, of course big deficits are due to tax cuts
  30. China almost has the key to great social media apps
  31. Raw data: Top states for working from home
  32. Friday Cat Blogging – 24 March 2023
  33. BREAKING: Unbelievably trivial story somehow becomes national news
  34. Total factor productivity dropped 1.2% last year
  35. Raw data: Bank borrowing from the Federal Reserve
  36. Contrary to popular opinion, my brain is just fine
  37. How satisfied are trans people after their transition?
  38. How about if we indict Donald Trump for something serious?
  39. Lunchtime Photo
  40. A second look at neocons and the Iraq War
  41. When will GPT be able to match Brad DeLong’s brain?
  42. Working from home is quietly falling out of favor
  43. Quick and easy minimum wage proposal
  44. Science proves that even after two decades of blogging I still have a brain
  45. Lunchtime Photo
  46. Morons at Fed raise interest rates yet again
  47. Still no answer to the fentanyl crisis
  48. Rainbow!
  49. Raw data: Murders are down 10% so far in 2023
  50. There’s a 50-50 chance of a Fed rate hike tomorrow
  51. Lunchtime Photo
  52. Narratives of doom get set in stone almost instantly these days. Why?
  53. CDC critics should turn their bazookas on Donald Trump instead
  54. House prices stabilized in February
  55. Education, not cities, is the key to productivity growth
  56. Here’s a list of jobs that are safe from the ChatGPT revolution
  57. First Republic was a strong bank, but not strong enough during a panic
  58. Lunchtime Photo
  59. Why I supported the Iraq War . . . for a while
  60. IPCC6: We are fucked (but don’t say that)
  61. The Fed fights back . . . with leaks
  62. Exponential growth is messing with our minds
  63. Emergency medicine is in the SOAP
  64. SVB didn’t collapse because of unhedged interest rate bets
  65. More on Ronald Reagan and the hostages
  66. Reagan team tried to sabotage hostage talks before the 1980 election
  67. The real danger of artificial intelligence is natural intelligence
  68. Excess savings are all used up. Or are they?
  69. The MAGA mob goes after a Florida hospital
  70. Investors remain happy, happy, happy
  71. Friday Cat Blogging – 17 March 2023
  72. Were FHLB loans a missed red flag before Silicon Valley Bank collapsed?
  73. Raw data: How much it costs to employ you
  74. Health update
  75. The future of Israel gets dimmer every day
  76. New DNA analysis adds strong evidence for natural origin of COVID-19 virus
  77. Teens are depressed because they spent their childhood in a bubble, not because of smartphones
  78. Yet more poetry from GPT-4
  79. Marketing in the era of GPT-4 is a doomed profession
  80. Lunchtime Photo
  81. Working from home? How about a round of 3 pm golf?
  82. Maternal mortality exploded in 2021
  83. Texas judge is close to banning medication-induced abortion
  84. A look at services inflation in February
  85. Silicon Valley Bank was fine. It’s Silicon Valley that’s broken.
  86. Lunchtime Photo
  87. GPT-4 is a little too good at rhyming
  88. What is woke?
  89. It was necessary to destroy the bank in order to save the bank
  90. Today’s economic news in two handy charts
  91. Beware
  92. Silicon Valley Bank would have passed every test for liquidity
  93. Lunchtime Photo
  94. America’s banks are suddenly OK again
  95. CPI in February ticks up, but supercore is still in good shape
  96. What’s the point of artificial intelligence?
  97. Here’s what everyone thought about Silicon Valley Bank on Tuesday, March 7
  98. SVB and the 2018 bank deregulation: An answer, sort of
  99. A quick question about the 2018 deregulation bill
  100. Lunchtime Photo
  101. Fed and Treasury announce a plan to save SVB’s depositors
  102. Raw data: Violent victimization by sexual orientation and gender identity
  103. The chaos agent behind the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is . . . Slack?
  104. FFS, calm down about Silicon Valley Bank
  105. Why did China broker the new agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia?
  106. Was SVB management incompetent or just unlucky?
  107. Slack now officially the worst app ever
  108. Friday Cat Blogging – 10 March 2023
  109. Cochrane: We didn’t even study whether masks work
  110. Second-biggest US bank failure in history hits Silicon Valley
  111. Pantry porn is the story of America
  112. Norway suggests slowing down on gender affirming care for teens
  113. Chart of the day: Net new jobs in February
  114. Saudi Arabia asks us to please bribe them
  115. What we learned from the pandemic
  116. Helping the poor has been one of the great triumphs of the progressive movement
  117. Lunchtime Photo
  118. Three reasons to believe that COVID evolved naturally, not in a lab
  119. USA autocracy score doubles over past decade
  120. The descendants of ChatGPT will eventually be smarter than us
  121. Lunchtime Photo
  122. What did Rupert Murdoch know and when did he know it?
  123. No, women aren’t returning to the workforce at an unusual rate
  124. What should we do differently in the next pandemic?
  125. Today’s interesting COVID factlet
  126. Quote of the day: Bomb Mexico
  127. Lunchtime Photo
  128. The Nord Stream pipelines were destroyed by six unknown people of unknown nationality
  129. COVID update: US deaths are low, but everyone else is lower
  130. How things work on the Wall Street Journal editorial page
  131. Our national shame — Q3 of 2022 edition
  132. The tragedy of Flint is not what most people think it is
  133. Stop bragging about being bad at math
  134. Health update
  135. Lunchtime Photo
  136. We can’t put off a recession forever
  137. Bonus weekend astrophotography
  138. The French public is woker than you think
  139. MRI machines can now (sort of) read your mind
  140. Friday Cat Blogging – 3 March 2023
  141. Peggy Noonan and the common sense of COVID
  142. How to think about teens and social media
  143. We have nothing to fear but (conservative) fear itself
  144. The (not kids anymore) are doing alright
  145. War profiteering? How about pandemic profiteering?
  146. Home rule for me, but not for thee
  147. Lunchtime Photo
  148. How big is e-commerce? It depends.
  149. California county dumps Dominion over voting conspiracy theories
  150. Chart of the day: Productivity was up in final quarter of 2022
  151. On “feeling unsafe”
  152. LAPD says it’s “willing” to hand off duties it never liked in the first place
  153. Raw data: Unemployment rates in nine regions of the US
  154. Lunchtime Photo
  155. Ron DeSantis wants to ban masks permanently, forever, eternally, infinitely, forevermore, til death do us part
  156. Vaccination coverage of toddlers has increased over the past two years
  157. Raw data: Expected inflation is low and getting lower
  158. 20 bucks an hour for burger flippers?!?

February 2023

  1. Lunchtime Photo
  2. DOE or no, the COVID lab leak hypothesis is still pretty unlikely
  3. Supreme Court seems likely to rule against student loan forgiveness
  4. How science works: A very, very brief primer
  5. Abortion support skyrockets in 2023
  6. Murdoch admits that Fox News hosts touted voting conspiracy theories
  7. Does Stanford under-enroll white students?
  8. Lunchtime Photo
  9. Ron DeSantis reverses epic tax screwup in signing ceremony today
  10. COVID lab-leak followup: Nobody else buys the new DOE intelligence
  11. Raw data: Rents are shrinking, but still have a ways to go
  12. Another look at the green comet
  13. Energy Department says COVID was probably a lab leak
  14. No, part-time work is not suddenly booming
  15. How hot is the American economy?
  16. Friday Cat Blogging – 24 February 2023
  17. Forget malaise. It’s baseless fear that engulfs society these days.
  18. Far UV is a promising technology to kill COVID viruses
  19. Inflation surged back to life in January
  20. Why does it cost so much to erect a skyscraper?
  21. Lunchtime Photo
  22. Raw data: The life of modern teens
  23. US ramps up troop presence in Taiwan
  24. Raw data: Asylum seeking in the United States
  25. Lunchtime Photo
  26. Are masks useless?
  27. Chatbots are taking over (a part of) the world
  28. What are the choke points of the modern economy?
  29. Hannity breaks new ground in voter suppression: Now it’s for white people too
  30. Nikki Haley: I’m the candidate who wants old people to go away
  31. McKevin turns over congressional video trove to . . . Tucker Carlson. That is not a typo.
  32. Lunchtime Photo
  33. Leave Section 230 alone
  34. Hooray for the four-day workweek
  35. Oh, go ahead and revise Roald Dahl’s books for modern children
  36. Lunchtime Photo
  37. The progressive trans war is reaching a fever pitch
  38. ChatGPT is going to get very good very fast
  39. Here’s a clearer take on whether Florida affected the African American Studies AP test
  40. Yet another look at social media and teen depression
  41. Friday Cat Blogging – 17 February 2023
  42. Raw data: Total outstanding credit card balance
  43. Joe Biden’s Social Security trap is now complete
  44. How are our 40-year-olds doing?
  45. Fox News can’t handle the truth. Literally.
  46. Let’s declare an end to the Reading Wars
  47. Another look at the epidemic of depression among teen girls
  48. Lunchtime Photo
  49. Why has teen mental health fallen off a cliff recently?
  50. Lunchtime Photo
  51. Health update
  52. Ron DeSantis vs. the College Board
  53. Biden hits the 100 judge mark
  54. Lunchtime Photo
  55. In which I give Ron DeSantis a break
  56. Inflation jumps higher in January
  57. Aliens
  58. Lunchtime Photo
  59. Health update
  60. Core CPI gets a facelift for the new year
  61. A quick look back at the 1970s
  62. Friday Cat Blogging – 10 February 2023
  63. DeSantis continues using state power to conduct a personal vendetta
  64. Germans and their vehicles
  65. Oh no, it’s the ’70s all over again!!!
  66. Lunchtime Photo
  67. Everyone agrees: No recession this year!
  68. Please don’t mention the plight of nonbelievers to Republicans
  69. Chart of the day: The worst podcasts are also the most popular
  70. Why was there so little reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the election?
  71. Lunchtime Photo
  72. Apparently the Twitter Files missed a few things
  73. A very, very brief review of tonight’s State of the Union speech
  74. Murder vs. violent crime: Which is more reliable?
  75. Lunchtime Photo
  76. Fixing Social Security forever requires only 1.5% of GDP
  77. Today I was startled to learn about endorsement deals for high school athletes
  78. The Pentagon needs to put up or shut up about the balloon(s)
  79. Lunchtime Photo
  80. Quote of the day: Solar energy vs. bighorn sheep
  81. In the US, both crime and incarceration are too high
  82. Democrats, Republicans continue to disagree about Biden
  83. Retirement in Florida is not for the weak of heart
  84. Retailers are starting to push vendors for price decreases
  85. Raw data: GDP growth since the start of the pandemic
  86. Three things you desperately wanted to know about the spy balloon
  87. Ron DeSantis had nothing to do with changes to the AP African American Studies test
  88. Some questions about the spy balloon
  89. Greatest graf of all time: Chinese spy balloon edition
  90. Friday Cat Blogging – 3 February 2023
  91. Against all odds, wage growth slowed in January
  92. Chart of the day: Employment in the US
  93. Please, let’s not pretend to be surprised about Tucker Carlson’s vast influence
  94. Lunchtime Photo
  95. Lead water pipes should get a little less attention
  96. Labor productivity increased 3% last quarter
  97. Computer security for people who don’t know computers
  98. Health update
  99. DeSantis announces program to indoctrinate college students
  100. Lunchtime Photo
  101. Florida teachers are finally getting some guidance about forbidden books
  102. JOLTS report: The economy is doing OK, but not great
  103. Here’s why natural gas prices are so high in California
  104. A recession is coming our way

January 2023

  1. Lunchtime Photo
  2. Raw data: The US economy over the past six months
  3. The cost of employment rose less than 1% last quarter
  4. Police shootings by race and age are . . . a little weird
  5. The American people want immigration reform. They don’t want abortion restrictions.
  6. Raw (?) data: International obesity rates
  7. Lunchtime Photo
  8. Amazon has a junk problem. And a search problem.
  9. Consumers aren’t freaking out. But maybe they should be.
  10. Defund the police? Hardly.
  11. France’s retirement system is unfair. So is everyone else’s.
  12. Republicans want to cut assistance to poor people. Any other questions?
  13. Ronna McDaniel wins fourth term as RNC chair. Will she also get another raise?
  14. Friday Cat Blogging – 27 January 2023
  15. Consumer spending was down slightly in December
  16. Elon Musk goes to Capitol to kowtow to Republicans
  17. PCE inflation drops to 0.6% in December
  18. The Durham investigation has been a fiasco from start to finish
  19. Lunchtime Photo
  20. ChatGPT goes to law school
  21. Does Elon Musk really think Twitter is still worth $54 per share?
  22. Chart of the day: GDP growth in Q4 of 2022
  23. New report: Democrats are still idiots
  24. Are we getting dumber?
  25. Child care prices: High, but rising only slowly
  26. Lunchtime Photo
  27. AI is still not here. But it’s getting damn close.
  28. Raw data: Canada is smaller than you think
  29. Remote work continues to shrink
  30. Lunchtime Photo
  31. Chart of the day: Unemployment went down (almost) everywhere in 2022
  32. Xbox has been ruined by woke liberal fanatics
  33. Yet more classified documents seized . . . from Mike Pence
  34. Do we need to be more sensitive toward silkworms?
  35. How come no one knows how to drive in a school zone?
  36. Lunchtime Photo
  37. What do we want from our school systems?
  38. Incarceration rates for the young continue to drop hard and fast
  39. Raw data: The AP African American Studies test
  40. BREAKING: Tories slashed spending on NHS and service cratered
  41. Raw data: SAT scores over time
  42. Comments can now be edited
  43. Friday Cat Blogging – 20 January 2023
  44. Iowa Republicans working hard to make poor people even more miserable
  45. Raw data: Jobs and layoffs over the past year
  46. Donald Trump ordered to pay Hillary Clinton $172,000
  47. Lunchtime Photo
  48. Quote of the day: Putting your fingers on the keyboard
  49. I would like to never hear the word “polycrisis” again
  50. Raw data: Union membership continues to fall
  51. Today brings yet more evidence that inflation is falling
  52. Lunchtime Photo
  53. China’s demographic plunge started in 1990, but crashed starting in 2018
  54. The Evil Dex is . . . Not so Evil?
  55. George Bush Has Been Tossed on the Ash Heap of History
  56. TSA Gun Seizures Set a Quasi-Record in 2022
  57. Lunchtime Photo
  58. In unsurprising news, it turns out social media platforms lean conservative
  59. New study says pandemic preparedness is mostly futile
  60. Why are online apologies never accepted?
  61. Here’s how inflation is like gravity
  62. The “rebellion” against inflation is about more than just inflation
  63. Lunchtime Photo
  64. Annual fund returns can look great if you don’t count inflation
  65. How to honor Martin Luther King Jr. online
  66. Raw data: Earnings of full-time workers
  67. Health and astronomy update
  68. About that nothingburger . . .
  69. Social media can be pretty effective in political contests
  70. Republicans are developing a clever plan to shoot themselves in the foot
  71. Pittsburgh police tell city council to pound sand
  72. Friday Cat Blogging – 13 January 2023
  73. There are two kinds of people in the world
  74. Let’s balance the budget
  75. BREAKING: Stunning Republican budget plan revealed!
  76. What do the words “labor” and “field” have in common? Nope, try again . . .
  77. Quote of the day: Fabricating your resume is no big deal
  78. Lunchtime Photo
  79. We are all waiting restlessly for artificial intelligence
  80. Weekly wages were down 18 cents in December
  81. Inflation went negative in December
  82. Joe Biden did not obstruct the return of classified documents
  83. We are still a few months away from the Fed having any effect on inflation
  84. Lunchtime Photo
  85. Putin fires another general
  86. What’s the deal with conservatives and carbon-free energy?
  87. How to handle the coming debt ceiling standoff
  88. Do family leave acts kill progress on the gender wage gap?
  89. American conservatives are the least silenced people on the planet
  90. Lunchtime Photo
  91. The Biden document story is a nothingburger
  92. Katie Porter is running for the Senate
  93. My crystal ball says . . . 1% inflation by the end of the year
  94. “Nothingburger” wins landslide approval
  95. A quick nothingburger quiz
  96. The Wall Street Journal has a problem with the truth
  97. First Republican act of the new Congress is to blow up the deficit
  98. Was Russian influence on the 2016 election just a big nothingburger?
  99. Top Republican priority in 2023: Tax cuts for the rich, of course
  100. Lunchtime Photo
  101. How fast should doctors provide test results?
  102. Intelligence and energy are all we need
  103. Reparations hit a road bump in Southern California
  104. Brazilian assholes celebrate anniversary of 1/6 by storming Congress
  105. An economist tells us to listen up: inflation is now low
  106. A look back at my predictions for 2022
  107. Kevin McCarthy finally wins his dream job
  108. Raw data: Federal spending
  109. Health Update
  110. McCarthy is getting ever so close
  111. Friday Cat Blogging – 6 January 2023
  112. Natural gas prices skyrocketed this month in Southern California
  113. Chart of the day: Net new jobs in December
  114. A third huge crypto firm is about to croak
  115. A wee warning about ChatGPT
  116. 10th vote, same as the 9th
  117. 9th vote not the charm
  118. Lunchtime Photo
  119. 8th vote, still 201 votes for McCarthy
  120. My story about the California Middle Class Tax Refund
  121. Three miscellaneous charts
  122. It’s time for our 7th vote
  123. Chart of the day: Imports and exports keep on falling
  124. “1899” has been canceled, but there’s a way to breathe life back into it
  125. Inflation is hydraulic, not something you change by clapping your hands
  126. Raw data: Auto sales in 2022
  127. Do doctors believe Black people suffer less pain? A review of one influential study.
  128. Six votes and counting for Kevin McCarthy
  129. Lunchtime Photo
  130. McCarthy loses for a fifth time
  131. McCarthy loses for a fourth time
  132. Health Update
  133. Hires are down. Quits are up.
  134. Raw data: Crime in America
  135. Kevin McCarthy fails a third time
  136. Lunchtime Photo
  137. Kevin McCarthy loses again
  138. McCarthy fails . . . so far
  139. It is time to root for Kevin McCarthy’s utter humiliation
  140. Emmy Noether and the conservation of momentum
  141. White people in Richmond refused state jobs to demolish Confederate statues
  142. Lunchtime Photo
  143. Yet more on lead, crime, and Tyler Cowen
  144. What’s up with momentum?
  145. Top ten ways the world could end

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