Kevin Drum 🕸

Productivity growth sucked in Q1. It was up 0.3% from the previous quarter, an annualized rate of only 1.2%

This is an Nvidia NVL72 Blackwell compute node: Give or take a bit, it has the compute power of a human brain and is likely to be priced at about $200,000. Seven years ago I thought it would take until 2040 to have something like this for a few thousand dollars. It's obvious now that ...continue reading "Nvidia will sell you a human brain for $200,000"

Here's an update on aid shipments into Gaza: COGAT hasn't been super reliable about providing daily updates, so it's hard to compare the UN numbers with Israeli numbers. On average, though, the Israeli figures are about 20% higher than the UN figures. The number of aid trucks getting through is up by about a fifth ...continue reading "Raw data: Aid shipments into Gaza are increasing modestly"

Santa Catalina island from the air.

Chris Hayes has a question: I feel like I'm losing my mind a little: people understand that "occupying buildings on campus" is, like, one of the most common forms of student protest for decades and not some devious new ploy devised by professional anarchist plotters, right? — Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 1, 2024 Point taken, ...continue reading "When you occupy university buildings, cops are called"

JOLTS data came out today, and as usual I try to show something different about it each month. Here are hires vs. job openings since the end of the Great Recession: In the past, there were more hires than job openings. Presumably this means that companies filled lots of jobs from personal recommendations without ever ...continue reading "Raw data: Hires vs. job openings"

It's remarkable how the Gaza demonstrations on college campuses have become almost an exact mirror of the events they're protesting. One side spent a long time provoking, finally went a step too far, and the other, more powerful side, then massively overreacted. Art imitates life, or something like that.

Data for both "felonious killings" and the total number of sworn police officers comes from the FBI. It does not include deaths from illness or accidental deaths.

Here's the definition of fascism, very slightly altered, given by Wikipedia. There's no firm consensus about what makes a regime fascist, but this is as good as any: Fascism is an authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, ...continue reading "What’s the most fascist country in the world?"

It feels like old times again. Donald Trump gave a long interview to Time magazine and it's a bottomless morass of lies, personal grievances, evasions, and word salad. Is it even worth commenting on? Half the country has seen this before and already understands Trump is a sociopathic buffoon. The other half simply doesn't care, ...continue reading "Crime is down but Donald Trump isn’t buying it"

Yesterday Hunter Biden threatened to sue Fox News for publishing sexually explicit photos and claiming that he took bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. Much of his letter focused on a six-part fictional series called “The Trial of Hunter Biden”: “While using certain true information, the series intentionally manipulates the facts, distorts the truth, narrates happenings ...continue reading "Fox News caves to Hunter Biden threat"

This is a Grevy's zebra at the Los Angeles Zoo. It's the largest of the three species of zebra.

Shocking news in the LA Times today: A monthly payment of $750 to $1,000 would allow thousands of the city’s homeless people to find informal housing, living in boarding homes, in shared apartments and with family and friends, according to a policy brief by four prominent Los Angeles academics. No kidding. In the policy brief ...continue reading "Giving poor people money helps them find homes"

Democrats in the House have decided that chaos is worse than Mike Johnson. They say that if Marjorie Taylor-Greene tries to oust Johnson as Speaker, they'll vote to rescue him: “At this moment, upon completion of our national security work, the time has come to turn the page on this chapter of Pro-Putin Republican obstruction. ...continue reading "Democrats say they will rescue Mike Johnson"

Alex Tabarrok has a problem with AI: Recently, I have seen two innovations in retail, AI cashiers and human cashiers but working remotely from another country such as the Philippines and making much lower wages than domestic workers (examples are below). I fear that the AI cashiers will outcompete the Philippine cashiers leading to the ...continue reading "AI is going to replace low-wage workers"

The Employment Cost Index is one of the most conservative measures of wage growth. Adjusted for inflation, it rose at an annual rate of 0.6% in the first quarter of 2024: The good news is that wages are rising. The other good news is that they're rising slowly, which means the Fed shouldn't be worried ...continue reading "Employment costs rise slowly in Q1"

CNN reports that 92% of Republicans say Donald Trump's time in office was a success. Some of that is just MAGA cultists, but before you roll your eyes, take a look at Trump's term through even a normie conservative lens: Banned travel from various, mostly Muslim, countries. Killed Obama's Iran nuclear treaty. Pulled out of ...continue reading "Take a look at Donald Trump through conservative eyes"

Having just warned you about issues with polling, here's a snippet from the Harvard Youth Poll about which issues are most important to young people. The pollster has a pretty good way of measuring this that involves asking people to choose among pairs of topics. The pairs are rotated randomly and then added up. Here's ...continue reading "Here are the issues most important to young people"

There's a reason not to put too much faith in polls. Here's an example from the Harvard Youth Poll, which surveys only people age 18-29: In the first question, 4% of the respondents say they are transgender or non-binary. In the very next question, a tenth of those who said they are, now say they ...continue reading "Beware of polls, young people edition"

This is the main altar at the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur in Paris. The top photo is a panorama that shows everything from side to side. The bottom photo looks up into the dome.