Kevin Drum 🕸

A sailboat off Corona Del Mar catches the late afternoon sun.

I don't normally bother posting the producer price index, but since inflation is on everyone's mind these days let's take a look at the latest numbers: Not good! The PPI for goods was up 11.2% from last year and the monthly increase from February came to 17.8% on an annualized basis. In both cases they ...continue reading "Chart of the day: The Producer Price Index vs. the Consumer Price Index in March"

You've been waiting all night on the edge of your beds for this, so here are the results of yesterday's toilet poll: This is my closest poll ever! Given the margin of error, it's a dead heat. Perhaps this now demands a bit of actual research to come up with an answer.

I met a friend for lunch this afternoon and called his attention to the design of this toilet: The handle and the seat work together to force (men) to lower the seat in order to flush the toilet. I think this is deliberate design (it's an all-gender restroom). My friend thinks it's just an unplanned ...continue reading "A toilet poll"

Tim Cook says that disaster will befall us if Apple is forced to allow users to download apps that aren't sold through Apple's official App Store: “Taking away a more secure option will leave users with less choice—not more,” Mr. Cook said Tuesday during a speech at the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ summit in ...continue reading "Apple has your best interests at heart when they restrict access to the iPhone"

The Washington Post has a piece today about the return of young children to school after a year and a half at home due to the pandemic. Mostly it's about socialization, with teachers saying that kids are more fidgety, more likely to get into minor scuffles on the playground, and less able to make connections ...continue reading "A pandemic puzzler: Kids can no longer tie their shoes"

I went to a wedding this weekend! Here's an artsy shot. Oh, and my old friends at Mother Jones are having a fundraiser. Go give them some money! They deserve it. And be sure to read Monika Bauerlein's letter about why the fundraiser is a little late this year. I confess that I was never ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

The LA Times writes today about the vast army of Twitter bots that fly into action whenever Tesla has some bad news and could use a little PR help. They've been doing this for the past decade: Over that period, Tesla lost an accumulated $5.7 billion, even as its stock soared and Musk became one ...continue reading "How much is Tesla overvalued?"

Here's an interesting thing. I was looking at Joe Biden's approval level trying to figure out what events plausibly produced especially big drops when I happened upon YouGov's tracking poll. Most polls consist of responses from all adults, but the YouGov poll is limited to registered voters. This makes a difference: Gallup's poll, like most ...continue reading "Raw data: Joe Biden’s approval among registered voters"

People like me talk frequently about the fact that folks who are modestly right of center are obviously scared by a lot of the Democratic stands on culture war issues these days. Perhaps we should dial down the way we talk—or maybe even what we genuinely believe—about these things? People to my left demand particulars. ...continue reading "Should Democrats change their tune on a few culture war topics?"

Today is inflation day, and the BLS reports that the US inflation rate rose considerably less than than the European rate jump announced a few days ago. But it still went up a lot. The headline inflation rate increased from 7.9% in February to 8.5% in March: (Note that this chart shows headline CPI, which ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Inflation in March"

In a few hours the Commerce Department will release inflation figures for March, something that we're all waiting for with bated breath. While we await this momentous event, here's an inflation chart inspired by Brad Polumbo. However, unlike his, which shows year-over-year inflation, mine is based on the inflation rate from month to month. Why? ...continue reading "How much is ARP spending responsible for high inflation?"

Voting rights are in the news again thanks to Andy Kroll's semi-tick-tock in Rolling Stone about the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, both of which failed to pass earlier this year because Republicans filibustered them. The whole story is strange. Everyone agrees that there was never any chance of ...continue reading "The defeat of voting rights is not hard to understand"

This boat did not do well during Hurricane Ida. I took this picture on Highway 315 somewhere south of Houma, which was piled high with trash and ruined furniture that still hadn't been picked up. I suppose somebody will come along eventually for it.

I'm at the infusion center to begin a new chemo regimen. This is my fourth, and I'll be getting it until the CAR-T folks open up a slot for me. I got here at 9:30 am after taking some Pepcid with breakfast along with 40 mg of dex. This compares to the 2 mg I'm ...continue reading "Health Update"

A week ago, Elon Musk announced that he owned 9.2% of Twitter and would be joining the board of directors. Twitter stock rose. By Thursday, everyone was already tired of his bullshit and Twitter stock began to drop. Over the weekend Musk withdrew from the board and on Monday Twitter stock opened higher. Lesson: Elon ...continue reading "Elon Musk is a bad idea"

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here are the items that have gone up in price the most over the past year: This is why voters are so upset over an inflation rate of 7%. That may be the overall inflation rate, but for some of the things that are most visible to them ...continue reading "Here are the top 20 items most affected by inflation"

What's the best measure of the spread of COVID-19? That's a hard question to answer these days, but I think that hospitalizations have emerged as everyone's go-to metric. So here it is: The good news is that just about everyone has peaked and is starting to come down. The only exception is France, which is ...continue reading "Raw data: COVID-19 hospitalizations"

Here is Hilbert looking magnificently toward the future, which he envisions as a chicken in every pot and a thousand cans of cat food in every garage.

Yesterday I casually mentioned that I didn't think the overproduction of PhDs was a big problem. This produced some pushback, including the familiar complaint that it dooms lots of PhD-havers to a life of penury as members of the huge pool of adjunct professors desperately hoping they'll eventually land a full-time tenure-track job. It's true ...continue reading "There is no glut of PhDs"