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Author: Kevin Drum

Published on 1 Comment on Lunchtime Photo

This is the owner of one of the famous bookstalls that line the quay of the Seine in Paris. These days most of them sell tourist stuff, back issues of magazines, and copies of old prints that are the same in every stall, but a few still sell old books or, in this case, old records and other music paraphernalia.

June 5, 2022 — Paris, France

Published on 41 Comments on California sets up awesome showdown with Supreme Court

My governor has now signed two gun regulation bills that rely on citizen lawsuits for enforcement:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday that he has signed a bill allowing private citizens to sue companies including gun manufacturers for violating the state’s firearms regulations.

It is one of a pair of bills passed by the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature that use civil liability to target the gun industry. Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, has said he would sign the other proposal, which allows individuals to sue to enforce bans on certain types of weapons.

This is, of course, the tactic that Texas used against abortion back when it was still a constitutional right protected by Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court ruled that this was just hunky dory even though it was obvious from the start that it was little more than pathetically juvenile game playing from the Texas legislature.

But conservatives on the Court gave it an emergency green light anyway because they knew it wouldn't matter. No one would ever get a chance to argue against them at a full hearing since they were about to kill Roe v. Wade and make the whole thing moot.

So what will they do this time around? What California has done is plainly ridiculous, but conservatives on the Supreme Court have already ruled that it's OK. Will they stick to their guns even though the subject is now guns, which they like, instead of abortion, which they don't? Or will they stroke their chins and come up with some kind of sophistry to explain why California has done something slightly different from Texas and therefore they have to overturn our shiny new law?

I don't really care much about the laws in question, which are unlikely to have much effect. But I am absolutely mesmerized about what the Supreme Court is going to do.

Stay tuned.

Published on 44 Comments on Every month we find something new to panic about

It strikes me that we have been in an almost continuous state of panic this entire year. Some is real, some is media-driven. Here are a few examples:

  • The withdrawal from Afghanistan, even though it had major problems only on the first day and then went pretty well, considering the circumstances.
  • The Fed's panic over inflation, even though there's considerable evidence that core inflation is abating on its own and non-core inflation is outside the Fed's control to begin with.
  • Monkeypox. New York City is in an uproar over monkeypox but has mostly shrugged off the latest COVID surge. This is despite the fact that over the next month it's likely that a hundred or more people in the city will die of COVID but zero people will die of monkeypox.
  • Republicans, of course, have thrown their followers into a panic over the supposed takeover of our public school system by CRT.
  • Democrats, by contrast, are currently panicking over President Biden's response to Dobbs, even though everyone knows perfectly well that there's very little he can do about abortion laws.
  • Basically, Dems are in a perpetual panic about losing various fights—over abortion, over BBB, over cancel culture and guns and how to teach about racism—while Republicans are in a perpetual panic about whatever Fox News is outraging them about.

The really aggravating thing about this list is that almost none of this panic has any good reason. But it does accomplish one thing: it makes it a lot easier to hide the stuff we really should be panicked about, like climate change and an ex-president leading a charge to overturn democracy.

And that's not all. Constant panic and anxiety has well-known long-term effects on human beings. It causes depression. Headaches. Bad temper. Fatigue. Loss of interest in sex. Stomach distress. Insomnia. Bad judgment. Faster aging. Overuse of drugs and alcohol. Increased risk of suicide.

We are a country where half the population seems to be at risk of all this. And for very little reason since, at a concrete level, things are going pretty well. Not everything. There are always problems, both personal and political. But the past two decades really haven't been that bad compared to most decades before them.

The easiest way to ruin a life—or a country—is to constantly panic about things. That does little except lead to a constant string of bad decisions. This is bad enough when the panic is justified, but genuinely appalling when it's not.

Published on 6 Comments on NASA unveils Webb images of the Carina Nebula, Stephen’s Quintet, and the Southern Ring planetary nebula

Now we're talking.

NOTE: If you're wondering how they get colors out of all the infrared, it goes more or less like this:

In the visible spectrum, our brains convert different wavelengths into colors. Our eyes can't see into infrared, but we can pretend that the different infrared wavelengths are colors too. It's all just something our brain does to make sense of different wavelengths anyway. So we take the near-infrared signals in the Webb images and color them blue. The near part of the mid-infrared gets tagged as green, and the mid-infrared is red.

There's awesome math and computer automation that goes into making this realistic, but this is basically what they're doing. It's just a computer brain that's transforming wavelengths into colors instead of a human brain.

Published on 5 Comments on Infrared’s 15 minutes are over

Man, listening to these NASA people you'd think infrared was the greatest invention since the yellow first down line. Are they really trying to explain a chart showing a spectrograph of an exoplanet in the near infrared?

Come on. No more infrared boosterism. Let's see some images!

Published on 28 Comments on How big a disaster is the FDA’s monkeypox approval delay?

Here's the latest internet meme about monkeypox:

After seeing this, I mouthed off on Twitter about holding off on the vitriol until we got some more detailed reporting on what's really going on here. Certainly something better than clickbait from the New York Post. But I figure I should put my money where my mouth is and at least gather up what I can find out right now. Here we go:

Background:

  • Monkeypox is mostly spread by direct contact with the lesions of someone who has it. It's not clear yet if it can be spread through saliva, semen, or vaginal fluids. In any case, compared to COVID-19 it's relatively easy to avoid.
  • As I write this, the US has 865 confirmed cases of monkeypox, although the actual number is probably at least double that.
  • Monkeypox is unpleasant but almost never deadly. No one in the US has yet died from it. Worldwide, three people have died out of 9,000 cases, all in Africa.

Specifics

  • The US has 100 million doses of ACAM2000, a smallpox/monkeypox vaccine. However, it has occasional serious side effects and is not the best vaccine.
  • The best vaccine is JYNNEOS, manufactured by Bavarian Nordic. The vaccine is manufactured in a plant in Denmark, and BN has already produced 30 million doses in bulk form under a contact with the Pentagon, which helped pay for its development. We have ordered 4 million doses for delivery by the end of the year and millions more in 2023 and 2024.
  • Currently we have about 300,000 doses available in the Strategic National Reserve, some of which have already been used, with another 300,000 arriving over the next few days.
  • The vaccine was previously manufactured in a facility that was fully inspected and approved by the FDA. This is why we are continuing to get delivery of smallish numbers of doses. However, in 2020 manufacturing was moved and inspection was delayed, probably due to COVID. I imagine it was a pretty low priority for the FDA at the time. The result is that we can't yet take delivery of any vaccine doses manufactured in the new facility.
  • We have agreed to sell about 200,000 of our doses to Europe. This is why European regulators inspected the BN facility a little while back.
  • The FDA began its inspection of the BN facility this week. According to BN, this is the result of an "expedited inspection" that was originally scheduled to start on July 1. It is unclear why it was delayed ten days.
  • Why didn't the FDA simply accept the European approval and get the doses moving? As near as I can tell, the answer is that they aren't allowed to. They can change this, but there are rules for doing so. They can't just decide on their own to instantly abandon their legal responsibility.
  • Should the president have issued some kind of emergency executive order allowing the vaccine to be shipped from Denmark? I don't know. In particular, I don't know if (a) the president can legally do this, or (b) if it would even be a good idea. Something like this always seems like a great idea during a panic—until it eventually backfires, which it will eventually. Acting calmly is often the best response.
  • Has this inspection delay had any actual effect? That's unclear. Right now we still have hundreds of thousands of doses available and we haven't used them all. It's quite possible that BN will deliver more doses before we run out of what we have.
  • The first case in Europe was reported on May 6. The first vaccine delivery was on June 28. That's 53 days.
  • The first case of monkeypox in the US was reported on May 27 in Massachusetts. Health care workers who had had been in close contact with the patient received the JYNNEOS vaccine within hours. That's zero days. On June 24 it was rolled out in New York City to people at high risk of infection who had "presumed" exposures. That's 28 days. Since then distribution has been expanded and will be expanded further as we receive more supplies from BN. Counting off 53 days from May 27 gets you to July 19. We will likely receive hundreds of thousand more doses shortly after that, and millions more over the next few months.

I will change my mind if new evidence arrives, but at this point it doesn't look to me like the FDA or anybody else has done anything especially bad. Things could perhaps have happened faster, but honestly, the rollout happened pretty damn fast—especially for a disease that's not really all that dangerous.

Here's a summary of lessons:

  • Inspecting the BN factory was not a high priority in early 2022. Why would it be?
  • Monkeypox is a well known virus, but the latest outbreak came out of nowhere.
  • We have spent years helping develop a better vaccine and stockpiling doses. There is no country in the world that was better prepared than we were. We have done considerably better than anyone else, and that definitely includes Europe.
  • We went through with this preparation even though monkeypox is (a) difficult to spread, (b) not very deadly, and (c) not generally recommended as a candidate for mass vaccination.
  • The initial rollout of anything has problems. The first few weeks of the polio vaccine rollout were a mess. The vaccine rollout for the 1957 Asian flu went . . . pretty well!—largely because the vaccine could be manufactured and distributed on one man's orders with no testing. The vaccine for the 1968 Hong Kong flu was ineffective because the pandemic was over by the time the vaccine got rolled out. The 1976 swine flu vaccine rollout was a full-on disaster. And I hardly need to remind you about the endless groaning and faux expertise that overwhelmed social media during the first few weeks of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. By comparison, the monkeypox vaccine rollout is proceeding with Swiss watch efficiency.

Unless you're a true expert—i.e., someone who's very well informed about how vaccines are approved and distributed—I really don't want to hear crap like "I don't get it. Just put a few guys on planes and get over there." And while I don't blame anyone personally at risk for bitching about difficulties getting vaccinated, the rest of should recognize it for what it mostly is: just routine griping.

But as I said, if the evidence changes, I'll look at it and change my mind if it's warranted. I don't have an axe to grind here. But I recommend that for everyone else too. We are not—repeat not—all experts on pharmaceutical inspections and vaccine distribution. And most of us probably never will be.

Published on 27 Comments on Republicans are souring on Donald Trump

According to a new poll, Donald Trump is not very popular these days among Republicans:

His post-presidential quest to consolidate his support within the Republican Party has instead left him weakened, with nearly half the party’s primary voters seeking someone different for president in 2024 and a significant number vowing to abandon him if he wins the nomination.

A clear majority of primary voters under 35 years old, 64 percent, as well as 65 percent of those with at least a college degree — a leading indicator of political preferences inside the donor class — told pollsters they would vote against Mr. Trump in a presidential primary.

Hmmm. Joe Biden isn't all that popular among Democrats, either. But at least this explains why Biden is still ahead of Trump in straw polls. It's all a question of who's least popular, not most popular.

Published on 11 Comments on Does automation increase efficiency at container ports?

This tweet piqued my interest:

This is true according to the World Bank, although 2021 was sort of a special year. But even in other years the Los Angeles/Long Beach complex has ranked pretty low, and US ports in general have usually brought up the bottom of the pack.

But why? David links to a great interview with Rebecca Schlarb, an automation coordinator who works at the fully automated Long Beach Container Terminal at the Port of Long Beach. Just generally, her main criticism is that the automation is unreliable, and when it fails it slows things down more than a similar failure does at a traditional terminal. But the terminal is still fairly newish and it's probably going through the usual shakedowns. Presumably it will get more reliable with time.

The LBCT definitely runs with less labor than traditional terminals, but when you add in the failure rate is it more efficient on net? Schlarb had this to say:

Nothing moves better than actual hands-on interaction. The only positive argument for automation is it saves labor costs for shipping companies and terminal operators to rake in billions of dollars in profit that does not stay here in the United States.

Hold on. If automation allows the owners to make billions of dollars in extra profits, then it must be pretty damn efficient, right? And there's some other evidence on that front:

  • The World Bank report examines overall port operations, which are only about 15% automated at LA/LB. If the ports are ranked poorly, it's almost certainly the non-automated part that's responsible.
  • Much of the port's lack of efficiency is likely because it doesn't operate 24/7. This is due to the port's union contract, which mandates that anything beyond two shifts requires premium pay. That's why there's no third shift.
  • The LA Times reports that truck drivers hate traditional terminals for two reasons. First, they're mostly Hispanic and they claim that ILWU workers are rude to them. Second, they have to wait a lot longer at traditional terminals. The two automated terminals at LA/LB have the shortest cargo turn times at the ports, less than half those of traditional terminals.
  • The Pacific Maritime Association, which represents carriers and owners, issued a report claiming that automation improves throughput and, because this means more business, actually increases ILWU employment. They have figures to back this up, but who knows?
  • On the other hand, a McKinsey report from a few years back was bearish on automated ports:

    Our survey indicates that operating expenses at automated ports do indeed fall, but only by 15 to 35 percent. Worse, productivity actually falls, by 7 to 15 percent. An executive of a global port operator told us, for example, that at fully automated terminals, the average number of gross moves per hour for quay cranes—a key indicator of productivity—is in the low 20s. At many conventional terminals, it is in the high 30s.

    This isn't enough to justify the capital investment in automation. But there's always this:

    In the long run, these investments will lead the way toward a new paradigm—call it Port 4.0—the shift from asset operator to service orchestrator, part of a larger transition to Industry 4.0.

    I couldn't resist including this. Don't you love the smell of consultants in the morning?

Still, if everything McKinsey says is true, why are other terminals already in the process of automating? There must be something to it.

Published on 12 Comments on How much are new rents going up? Not so much!

There's an odd story in the LA Times today:

In the last eight months, the rate of change in annual rental costs for new tenants has more than doubled, reaching its highest level on record, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reviewed by The Times. The data, which are not in the public domain, show a starkly different picture for existing tenants — those who are renewing their leases instead of moving into a new apartment — suggesting that the cost of housing may continue to climb, despite some indicators to the contrary.

....The non-public data behind the topline number show a gulf between the prevailing conditions affecting those who moved residences and those who didn’t . Annual rental costs for new tenants jumped from 4.3% in July 2021 to 11.1% in March 2022.

The author points out that if you stay in an apartment, your rent rises gradually. But if you move to a new apartment, it spikes upward. This is true. So far so good.

But then there's the weird implication that the BLS is trying to hide this, despite the fact that they've calculated rent inflation the same way for decades. Before now, there's simply been no need to break out old and new rents for purposes of headline inflation calculations.

Besides which, there's nothing hidden about this anyway. The Census Bureau, not the BLS, is the main source for housing surveys, with much more complete and frequent data collection.¹ Among other things, they have an ongoing series that shows the median asking rent for vacant apartments, which is a much better look at how much new rents are increasing. Here are three ways of looking at that:

All three charts highlight a pre-pandemic figure followed by another for the first quarter of 2022. And rents have gone up. As the top chart shows, average new rents have gone up from $1,146 to $1,255 (adjusted for inflation) over the course of two years.

As a percentage of income, rents have gone up from 26% to 29%.

And then there's the annual growth rate (using inflation-adjusted rents). This was 1.3% just before the pandemic, then spiked in 2020, and came down in 2021. That's just the opposite of the Times figures, which show a low growth rate in 2020 and a big spike starting in 2021.

I usually use Census figures for rents if I can, since they're generally more reliable and up-to-date.² BLS figures, if I remember correctly, lag well behind reality due to their survey methodology. I believe that Larry Summers pointed this out once, claiming that official inflation figures for housing were likely to go up this year because they were measuring year-old rents that had already gone up. It was just taking a while for the lump to go through the python.

The odd thing is that Summers used this as a reason to be afraid of high inflation. I'd take it as just the opposite. Rent is a big part of the inflation calculation, but this year's rent inflation isn't real: it's merely telling us that rents went up last year. To me, that's a reason to discount it. It looks bad, but we should grit our teeth and resist a panicked response because we know that it's already gone away.

¹HUD also has rental figures, as well as annual projections. And of course there are private sources too. There are lots of places that can give you rent information that's sliced and diced in different ways.

²If you really want detailed data, you can use IPUMS data from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey. The problem with this is not that it's hidden from the public. It isn't. The problem is that it takes a lot of expertise to use it.

Published on 9 Comments on Lunchtime Photo

Those of you who read this blog on weekends already know about my latest night sky photography adventures. But there's more going on. For quite some time I've been mulling the idea of getting more serious about astrophotography, and lately I've been mulling it more actively.

I haven't pulled any triggers yet, but all this mulling means that I have deep sky objects on my mind. Of those, there's only one big enough to see with the naked eye: the Andromeda Galaxy.

And it occurred to me that since I photographed half the night sky during my Milky Way imaging last weekend, maybe I got a view of Andromeda in there. And I did! It's not much of one, mind you, but it's officially my first DSO.

July 5, 2022 — Desert Center, California