Month: March 2024

Sunset at the Desert Lily Sanctuary in Chuckwalla Valley. This is where I go (almost) every month to skygaze, and I have yet to see any lilies. Of course, I've never been there in daytime, and I've never walked beyond the parking area. Maybe I should leave early and check it out for real the next time I go out.

Over the past year the price of food has increased 2.2%. During the same period, average wages have increased 4.3%.

Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison today for his role in the collapse of crypto broker FTX. Here's what John Ray, the guy hired to clean up the mess after FTX declared bankruptcy, had to say about him a few days ago:

Vast sums of money were stolen by Mr. Bankman-Fried, and he was rightly convicted by a jury of his peers. That things that he stole, things he converted into other things, whether they were investments in Bahamas real estate, cryptocurrencies or speculative ventures, were successfully recovered through the enormous efforts of a dedicated group of professionals (a group unfairly maligned by Mr. Bankman-Fried and his supporters) does not mean that things were not stolen. What it means is that we got some of them back. And there are plenty of things we did not get back, like the bribes to Chinese officials or the hundreds of millions of dollars he spent to buy access to or time with celebrities or politicians or investments for which he grossly overpaid having done zero diligence. The harm was vast. The remorse is nonexistent.

I agree wholeheartedly. And yet, I think the 25-year sentence was too harsh. Why? Because I think pretty much every prison sentence handed out in the US is too harsh. If we cut every sentence served by every prisoner in half, we'd probably still be a little too harsh. But it would be a start.

That said, if there's an exception to be made, it would be for someone like Bankman-Fried. Generally speaking, long sentences ruin lives for little reason, since they don't do much to deter crime and most people don't commit violent crimes after their 30s anyway.

But a white collar criminal like Bankman-Fried? There's no aging out of crime for a guy like him. When he gets out there's a good chance that he'll get involved in some scam or another very quickly. It's what he's good at, after all.

GDP and GDI are supposed to be identical: just different ways of measuring the same thing. But a gap opened up in late 2022 and has grown ever since. GDP is now about half a trillion dollars bigger than GDI.

wtf?

Electric vehicle sales dropped to 82,000 in February, pulling down the 3-month average to 96,000. Plug-in hybrid sales rose to 28,000 units.

The BLS began collecting unemployment data by race in 1972. Since then, the lowest Black unemployment rate ever recorded was in 2023. The second lowest was in 2022.

This is a rhinoceros hornbill at the LA Zoo. I assume the name comes from its big yellow horn, which looks sort of rhinoceros-like. I wonder what its evolutionary purpose is?

Here's the latest in defamation suits against right-wing zealots who think they can say whatever shit pops into their brains. This time it's Kari Lake, who ran for governor in Arizona:

Stephen Richer, the top election official in Maricopa county, sued Lake, her campaign and an aligned Pac last year after she lost her gubernatorial bid and repeatedly lied about him. Lake, who is now running for the US Senate, falsely accused him of injecting 300,000 illegal votes into machines and intentionally misprinting ballots so they would be rejected by ballot tabulators.

Lake hasn't officially lost this defamation suit, but in a court filing she said she will no longer try to show that her claims were true. Instead, she wants to move straight to damages.

For the record, Lake is saying she concedes nothing and has "demanded" a hearing "for Stephen to prove how my words harmed him." Brave words! But I suspect it won't be too hard to show harm. She's gonna lose and the award is going to be substantial.

The full list of successful defamation suits against right-wing nutballs has been updated here.

Via Adam Ozimek, it appears that even the betting markets are starting to lose faith in Donald Trump:

Last month Trump's lead was 21%. Today it's 5%. This is probably the closest thing you can get to a pure vibes take on the election.

According to TheRighting, which tracks right-wing websites, traffic in 2024 is way down compared to the last presidential election cycle in 2020:

Traffic compared to 2023 was also mostly down:

Traffic tanked to most right wing websites for the sixth straight month. Only five right wing news websites posted gains in YOY unique visitors. For the third straight month, Newsmax registered an increase in unique visitors (+3%).

Somehow Newsmax has bucked the trend. What is its secret?