Month: November 2024

Yesterday I happened to come across a tweet bemoaning the state of reading among fourth graders. Pretty standard stuff. But as things so often do, it got me curious. Here are reading proficiency scores for fourth graders over the past 50 years:

I'm showing this for white kids so it isn't affected by demographic changes over the years. The main problem is that to go back so far I had to look at the NAEP's long-term test, and the LTT doesn't use normal language like proficient or advanced to describe reading ability. It shows only bands of scores, and then describes those scores using incomprehensible gobbledegook. It's truly weird. I did my best to convert this into words that seemed like reasonable translations.

In any case, the thing to notice is that there's been hardly any change—and what there is suggests a slight improvement. Whether it's phonics or whole language; books or iPads; and through all the change from TV to texting to social media—nothing changed. On average, the kids turned out the same no matter what.

And maybe that makes sense. About 25% of kids have an IQ above 110. They're probably all pretty proficient readers. Likewise, about 25% of kids have an IQ below 90. They're probably all either very weak readers or just flatly illiterate. And then you have the 50% in between who end up at various levels of "OK."

And maybe that's that. Maybe the fads and the trends and the quality of teaching only matter at the margins. About a quarter of the population is always going to be barely functionally literate.

The results for Black kids are a little different. Black students score significantly lower than white kids overall, but their proficiency levels have improved somewhat over time. Not a lot, but enough to suggest that changes in teaching have some effect.

With that in mind I began to wonder which states do the best job of teaching Black children to read. Looking at raw scores isn't very helpful since states differ widely on poverty levels and we know that poverty affects school outcomes. But we can control a bit for that by looking at how close Black scores are to white scores in each state:

There's a huge range. Vermont's Black kids are only 9 points behind, which isn't too bad. In Washington DC they're an astonishing 54 points behind.

Even if you remove those two outliers the range is 24 points. That's a helluva lot, roughly equivalent to 2½ grade levels.

Nor does it shake out the way you might think. Plenty of Southern states do fairly well: Texas, Florida, Kentucky, and North Carolina. And plenty of northern states do poorly: Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. It's not clear what the differences are, but it's not much related to ancient patterns of slavery and racism.

Former Georgia Rep. Doug Collins is Trump's pick to head the VA. Collins is a hardline abortion opponent; opposes Obamacare; thinks climate change is a hoax; opposes gay marriage; signed onto a lawsuit contesting the 2020 election; and. . .

. . .has no experience even remotely related to the VA.

However, he has two sterling qualities: (a) he thinks the sun rises and sets in Donald Trump's ass, and (b) he's really good on his Fox News hits. He should be confirmed easily.

So it's officially RFK Jr. for Health and Human Services—which includes the CDC, NIH, FDA, the Surgeon General etc. But it could have been worse, right? Trump could have nominated Martin Shkreli. Or he could have staged a competition: whoever silences Dr. Fauci with extreme prejudice gets to be HHS secretary.¹

We're still waiting on the Treasury Department. Let's see. Trump likes people with loose ethics and good TV skills. Maybe he'll pardon Sam Bankman-Fried and nominate him. Or maybe Larry Kudlow, a Fox News mainstay. Or Maria Bartiromo. Or the reanimated corpse of Lou Dobbs.

WTFK?

¹Totally legal, in case you're wondering. Since the lucky winner is acting under presidential orders, the feds can claim jurisdiction and Trump can issue a pardon. And this is plainly within the scope of the president's constitutional duties, so the Supreme Court says Trump himself would also be immune from prosecution.

This is a Joshua tree at sunset.

Matt Gaetz is getting all the attention as the Trump appointee most likely to be turned down by the Senate, but what about Tulsi Gabbard? Fair or not, she's widely considered to be practically a Russian asset. Will the Senate seriously consider her for the nation's top intelligence job even so?

And who's next in Trump's parade of freaks and geeks? Marjorie Taylor Greene? General Mike Flynn? Kash Patel? Mike Lindell? Tucker Carlson? Alina Habba? Lee Greenwood? Laura Loomer? David Rem? Donald Jr.?

Probably none of them. I never would have guessed Hegseth, Gaetz, or Gabbard, and I imagine his upcoming appointments will be completely out of left field too.

UPDATE: Oh come on:

I didn't even mention RFK Jr. in my list because it seemed too ridiculous. More ridiculous than Mike Flynn! This is just God level trolling from Trump. I suppose he's figuring that even if they grow a spine, Senate Republicans can't vote down all his picks.

We've all been inundated lately with the news that America's teens are in terrible shape. Addicted to social media. Lonely. Depressed, anxious, and suicidal. Fragile.

But did you also know this?

Marijuana is still fairly widespread, but every other drug is down to practically nothing since 2000. Cocaine, heroin, meth, ecstasy, inhalants, sedatives—you name it and it's dropped off the map. Alcohol use is down by half and cigarette smoking is all but extinct (though vaping has replaced some of it).

Maybe the kids these days are in better shape than we give them credit for?

How's your Swedish?

Does it help if I tell you that fobi is Swedish for phobia? Not really? Fine:

Swedish tabloid Expressen revealed Wednesday that government officials have been ensuring in advance that all places frequented by Gender Equality Minister Paulina Brandberg are free of bananas — due to the minister’s strong phobia of the yellow fruit.

....“Paulina Brandberg has a strong allergy to bananas, so it would be appreciated that there are no bananas in the areas where she will be staying,” states one of the emails.... “It’s sort of an allergy, you could say,” Brandberg told Expressen on Wednesday, then added, “It’s something that I get professional help with” in a follow-up email to the news outlet.

The Swedes seem to be taking this in stride. If it were happening here Brandberg would probably be assaulted with showers of bananas by MAGA enthusiasts every time she appeared in public.

Anyway, I wonder how she handles grocery shopping? Unless you forsake all fruits and vegetables, it's a little hard to avoid the sight of bananas. I expect that eventually AI-powered virtual reality glasses will take care of this.

Over at New York, Kevin Dugan asks the question on everyone's mind: Why has DJT stock tanked over the past week? Shouldn't it have gone up after Donald Trump won? Instead it's plummeted 25% since the election:

Dugan notes that there's been some insider selling, and also that DJT might be suffering due to the frothiness of the entire market. Maybe investors are too busy buying Bitcoin, tech stocks, and S&P 500 index funds to waste time on risky little stocks, even if they're backed by the president of the United States.

These are good points, but after thinking about this for a while I've come around to a different, more prosaic view. We've all been assuming that DJT is basically a play on Trump himself, and that's probably true as far as its meme value goes. But aside from its possible usefulness as a tool of bribery, DJT is still a company that's valued by investors in the usual way based on revenue and earnings. So how will those be affected by Trump's victory? The answer is that they won't be. DJT's value depends entirely on Truth Social's user base, which is so tiny it's almost invisible. Nor is there any real sign it's about to skyrocket. Why would it? You don't have to join Truth Social to read Trump's posts, and there's certainly no other reason to join whether Trump is president or not.

Bottom line: The election didn't really matter after all. Truth Social still has no plausible growth path, and that means revenue will remain minuscule and the company will keep hemorrhaging cash. Given that, even slight selling pressure will drive it down. And it has.

POSTSCRIPT: Needless to say, as with anything Trump related, WTFK? Who the fuck knows? This will be our mantra for the next four years. Anything could happen.

US air travel has continued to grow steadily since the end of the pandemic:

Of the 87 million passengers in August, 75 million were domestic and 12 million were international.

There is still much discourse about Donald Trump bypassing the Senate confirmation process via recess appointments. And I still don't get it. Neither house can adjourn for more than three days without the consent of the other, and the Supreme Court says you need to be adjourned at least ten days for it to count as a recess. So Senate and House would both have to agree to adjourn for three weeks or so.

Or, according to the latest cockamamie theory, they could agree to disagree. Instead of agreeing to adjournment, they'll deliberately disagree and then Trump will use his Article II power to step in and adjourn Congress himself.

This is starting to sound like a conservative version of the trillion-dollar coin. If both Houses are planning to cave to Trump, why would they concoct a weird plan to disagree instead of just adjourning? That doesn't make sense.

Bottom line: This can only happen if both houses agree to adjourn for a considerable time right at the beginning of the session. What are the odds of that?

And anyway, this only matters with a nominee that the Senate doesn't want to confirm. But if they're willing to defy Trump by not confirming, why would they then cave to Trump and go into recess so he can do it himself? And if they aren't willing to do that, would the House really be willing to provoke the Senate by adjourning on its own and causing a constitutional crisis?

And would the Supreme Court allow such an obviously bogus use of the recess appointment power? Even the court's conservatives haven't been very open to that kind of thing.

Unless I hear something that makes sense—even by the loose standards of Donald Trump—I'm sticking to my guns on this. The Senate goes into session on January 3 and the first recess doesn't come until August. End of story.