Month: November 2023

Last month I showed some data suggesting that, sensational media reports notwithstanding, the rate of shoplifting hadn't changed much recently. Today I came across a new analysis from the Council on Criminal Justice that reports shoplifting rates from 24 big cities across the country. Here it is:

There has been a smallish spike in shoplifting this year, from around 35 incidents per 100,000 people up to 40. However, that's a minor blip in a long-term trend of lower shoplifting rates apparently spurred by the pandemic.

Generally speaking, shoplifting hit a low point in 2021 and has been slowly increasing since then, but it's still well below the rates of four years ago. Since 2019, shoplifting has increased in seven cities, including New York and Los Angeles, and is down in 17 cities, including San Francisco and Chicago. Adjusted for inflation, the average value of goods stolen has increased from $90 to $100. The share of shoplifting incidents classified as felonies doubled from 8% to 16%.

POSTSCRIPT: Obviously not all shoplifting is reported, so the raw numbers in the chart are probably low. However, there's no reason to think the reporting rate has changed much, so the chart still gives a good indication of how much shoplifting has changed over the past five years.

From the New York Times:

Today’s A.I. technology cannot destroy humanity.

Whew. Although how do they know?

Anyway, this is all in the context of CEO Sam Altman's firing from OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT among other things. It's still a mystery why he was suddenly let go on Friday, but the hot gossip at the moment is that the board of directors was worried about Altman pushing AI to the point where it would be able to destroy humanity.

You have to admit, that would be the coolest reason ever for a CEO to get fired. And the AI community is just loony enough that this is faintly plausible. However, the OpenAI board includes at least two normal people (the CEO of Quora and a RAND scientist), so I have my doubts. It's one thing for the chief scientist of OpenAI (who's also on the board) to suddenly get paranoid over the fate of humanity—anything can happen, after all—but ordinary folks are generally a little more levelheaded.

On the other hand, the company's COO did say that the firing had nothing to do with "malfeasance"; it was just a "breakdown in communication between Sam and the board." Maybe. But that would have to be a helluva breakdown to set in motion the dramatic regicide of a guy who's practically a legend in the industry.

Eventually someone is going to have to talk. This is all just too weird.

Here's the latest trend story from the New York Times. It's about—God help us—"TikTok economics":

"Look at economic data, and you’d think that young voters would be riding high right now..."

"Look at TikTok, and you get a very different impression..."

"Social media reflects — and is potentially fueling — a deep-seated angst about the economy." https://t.co/ZtC3UTxJNp

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 18, 2023

This is the most tiresome thing ever. When are newspapers going to learn the obvious: social media doesn't represent anything in the real world? I mean, how likely are you to post a TikTok about how your life is fine and everything is pretty good?

Not very. That's just the nature of H. sapiens, who love to performatively gripe and complain a lot more than we like to performatively say that things are OK. The way to account for this bias is to actually ask people how they feel. Then you'll get equal responses from everyone. Let's try it:

Compared to 2019, young people have jobs at the same rate; they're satisfied with their jobs at the same rate; they're earning a little bit more; they rate their financial situation about the same; and they're probably about as happy now that they're recovering from their pandemic blues.

The Times says: "Social media reflects — and is potentially fueling — a deep-seated angst about the economy that is showing up in surveys of younger consumers and political polls alike." But that's not true. What surveys actually show is that nothing much has changed. I understand that's not a very interesting story, but it has the crucial distinction of being true.

From the Wall Street Journal:

OpenAI is making efforts to bring back Sam Altman, the chief executive it ousted Friday, said a person familiar with the matter.

(Updates to follow as news develops)

Um, what?

This is a genuine question, not a debating point: Are the people calling for a ceasefire in Gaza asking for a unilateral ceasefire? Or are they equally insistent that both sides stand down?

Again, this is an honest question. After all, pretty much everyone would prefer a ceasefire to endless slaughter.¹ But at a minimum it would have to be genuine, right? And that would require both Israel and Hamas to agree.

Unless I'm mistaken, neither side has shown any willingness to suspend hostilities. Am I missing something here?

¹But not quite everyone, I know.

I'm perplexed by the number of Democrats who continue to urge Joe Biden to drop out of the race. I mean, he's obviously not going to. For better or worse, he's the Democratic candidate. So what's the point of publicly slagging him?

Is this just a matter of stubbornness? Or being able to say "I told you so" if he loses? What's the point?

I have a correction. A couple of days ago I posted a chart of childhood vaccination rates by state plotted against each state's vote for Donald Trump in 2020. Unfortunately, I used the wrong numbers—which by coincidence produced results similar to the correct numbers. Similar, but not the same. Here's the corrected chart:

As with the original chart, there's a slight trend toward red states having lower vaccination rates. However, the fit is still terrible, which means the trendline is basically meaningless. What's more, in the original post I said that of the bottom ten states for childhood vaccinations, eight are red. That's not true. It's actually five red and five blue.

Also, there are no outliers. This chart includes all 50 states except for Montana, which for some reason doesn't report vaccination rates to the CDC.

BOTTOM LINE: If anything, there's now even less evidence for a partisan difference in childhood vaccination rates. There's possibly a very slight correlation, but probably not even that.

This is exactly the conclusion of the original post, but that's just dumb luck.

The Border Patrol released its October numbers this week, and they're down a bit from last month's record high:

Border encounters in October were up 4% from last year and down 11% (to 240,000) compared to last month. About 50,000 of these were legal asylum requests while the rest were illegal crossings between ports of entry.

Last month CBP said it had "removed or returned" 300,000 individuals since May. This month the number is 350,000, which means they removed about 50,000 individuals in October. Probably another 30,000 or so were deported via court proceedings. This suggests that the unauthorized immigrant population in the US increased by about 160,000 in October.

Hilbert was in the hallway quietly posing for the camera yesterday when Charlie decided to check in and see what was going on. Before long Charlie was rolling around and photobombing everything in sight while Hilbert sat there scowling at him. It is, after all, Hilbert's week for catblogging.

I want to highlight this tweet from James Fallows:

Biden at last night's presser:

1) He looks, sounds, "reads as," and is ... old.

2) He also walked across an absolute minefield of issues and Qs — PRC/Taiwan, detente-but-diff w Xi, Gaza, Ukr, etc—without any missteps.

#2 is much harder than it seem. He is still doing the job.

— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) November 16, 2023

There is, obviously, not much that can be done about the fact that Biden reads as old. But having now listened to a number of Biden's recent speaking gigs, there's really no question that this is solely about his physical appearance. Cognitively, Biden is perfectly normal. The worst he ever does is the occasional verbal flub, a longtime Biden habit.

Agree with him or not, he says what he means to say and has obviously run the White House to his own specifications. He withdrew from Afghanistan despite internal qualms. He continued negotiating with Joe Manchin even though much of his staff hated the guy. He is staunchly pro-Israel in the face of a virtual staff revolt. He thinks Xi Jinping is a dictator and has repeated this through the grimaces of his Secretary of State.

Contrast that with Donald Trump, who doesn't read as old but can barely remember who the president is, who he's run against in the past, and how many world wars we've had.

We can either have the charade of an active president with a deteriorating mind behind it, or we can have an actual active president with a strong mind but physical limitations. Which would you rather have?