Category: Uncategorized

The Fed has finally acknowledged the obvious:

Federal Reserve officials left interest rates unchanged in their final policy decision of 2023 and forecast that they will cut borrowing costs three times in the coming year, a sign that the central bank is shifting toward the next phase in its fight against rapid inflation.

They ought to be cutting rates right now, but I suppose we should be grateful for small favors.

On another note, this also pushes back on the deficit hawks who have been panicked about increases in interest payments on the national debt. They've been trying to make the nonsensical case that interest rates will stay high forever and send interest costs into the stratosphere, but the Fed put the kibosh on that today. As common sense dictates, they suggested there will be rate cuts next year and in 2025, with rates returning to around 2% after that.

In the Wall Street Journal today, Greg Ip cites a poll suggesting that President Biden has a bigger problem than inflation:

Twice as many respondents named immigration as the biggest issue in next year’s election as inflation. His disapproval on the border exceeded approval by 37 percentage points, compared with 36 points for inflation.

Not that it is much comfort, but Biden has company: Surging immigration is a global phenomenon, as tight labor markets attract migrants, often helped by sophisticated smugglers. It is also a political albatross for incumbents in countries that, like the U.S., have long been major recipients of immigrants.

Regular readers know that I agree about this on both pragmatic grounds and ethical ones. Pragmatically, it's just a fact that high levels of immigration provoke opposition that leads to right-wing backlash. Ethically, it's perfectly natural for modern nation states to control their borders and limit illegal immigration.

That said, Ip includes a chart that largely throws cold water on this whole conversation:

This shows two things. First, immigration in the US has long been considerably smaller than in other countries. Second, the absolute level of immigration is not a lot higher now than it has been for the past decade, a period of little net growth in the total immigrant population.

Now, it's worth saying immediately that I have my doubts about this chart. I'm not sure where the information for the US comes from, and it's not clear if it really accounts for all illegal immigration. That said, if it was honestly done it does suggest that net immigration has not been nearly as bad as our border hysteria suggests.

But that probably doesn't matter. In 2016 the population of illegal immigrants in the US was on a long downward trend, but Donald Trump nonetheless used it as a powerful weapon in his campaign. In the face of that, as well as obviously high numbers of asylum seekers crowding the southern border, it's not likely that dry facts will have much effect. If Biden is smart, he'll accept Republican restrictions on illegal immigration in the Ukraine aid bill and then pray that they have a noticeable effect before next year's election.

A little while ago the National Academies of Science was asked to look at the effects of social media on teenagers. They reported back today, and while they recognized the frenzy around social media they simply didn't find much evidence of harm:

The committee’s review of the literature did not support the conclusion that social media causes changes in adolescent health at the population level.... Studies looking at the association between social media use and feelings of sadness over time have largely found small to no effects.

The report is careful to note that there are some documented negative effects, primarily among very heavy users of social media and among teens who are already depressed. However, those effects were quite limited, and they took care to point out that social media also has lots of benefits:

One of the most obvious potential benefits of social media is its power to connect friends and family.... Adolescents use social media to maintain friendships and explore their identity, both central developmental tasks for their age.... Social media can be valuable to adolescents who otherwise may feel excluded or lack offline support, including patients with rare diseases or disabilities, and those who struggle with obesity or mental illness, or come from marginalized groups such as LGBTQ+ young people.... Social media can help adolescents cope with grief and bereavement offering the opportunity to connect with people who have experienced a similar loss.

....Social media use predicts a greater ability for reading and navigating information online.... Social media for academic writing has been associated with less writing anxiety and a great sense of agency for the students to write about topics important to them.... Online networks for shared hobbies, interests, or identities can be also important for young people.... In qualitative studies, youth report being more aware of social and political events due to social media.

The report gives equal time to potential negative effects of social media, including those on depression, sleep, reduced attention, and body image. Overall, though, it finds that these negative effects are both small and supported by weak evidence.

This strikes me as a well-done report. It remains clear-eyed about possible problems and solutions, but pushes back against the hysteria that often surrounds discussions of social media. For that reason, I suspect it will be ignored, but you never know.

The Producer Price Index, a harbinger of things to come in the Consumer Price Index, was once again below zero in November:

Aside from a summer spike, the PPI has been negative since early this year. This is a byproduct of the fact that inflation in goods generally has been negative: that is, prices of goods are going down. Inflation in services has been more stubborn, staying elevated all year.

This isn't perfect. The cuts between stories are too quick; the writing is a little too formal; and the speech is just a bit flat.

But those are nits. Generally speaking, this is holy shit material. How long will it be before my blog is written by a computer?

See the highest quality AI footage in the world.

???? - Our generated anchors deliver stories that are informative, heartfelt and entertaining.

Watch the showcase episode of our upcoming news network now. pic.twitter.com/61TaG6Kix3

— Channel 1 (@channel1_ai) December 12, 2023

According to the ADL, antisemitism is on the rise:

There's something odd about this. After years of modest declines, there's a sudden doubling in 2016-17 and then another doubling in 2021-22. Altogether, antisemitic incidents have quadrupled over the past seven years.

Does that seem plausible? Is it an artifact due to the rise of smartphones making it easier to report incidents? Or because we've gotten more sensitive to small offenses we would have ignored in the past? Or because, as a nation, we've genuinely gotten more antisemitic? That seems unlikely, especially since antisemitic hate crimes reported by police departments have stayed absolutely steady over the past two decades.

Your guess is as good as mine here. But if, in fact, antisemitic incidents haven't truly gone up since 2015, it means the amount of overt antisemitism on university campuses has been pretty low for the past couple of decades. I would be interested in knowing if there's any source for more reliable data about this over time.

This is just a bit of trivia, but Bob Somerby mentioned something odd today about the House committee that the odious Elise Stefanik sits on. Here's what their website looks like:

All the Republicans get nice color photos. The Democrats get crammed into a tiny space with just their names.

Seriously? Unless there's some obscure explanation for this, the pettiness on display is sort of jaw dropping.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Israeli army is beginning its destruction of the Vast Labyrinth™ of tunnels underneath Gaza:

Israel’s military has begun pumping seawater into Hamas’s vast complex of tunnels in Gaza, according to U.S. officials briefed on the Israeli military’s operations, part of an intensive effort to destroy the underground infrastructure that has underpinned the group’s operations.

....Israeli officials say that Hamas’s underground system has been key to its operations on the battlefield. The tunnel system, they say, is used by Hamas to maneuver fighters across the battlefield and store the group’s rockets and munitions, and enables the group’s leaders to command and control their forces. Israel also believes some hostages are being held inside tunnels.

I have a question about this. I've seen video of the tunnels under Al-Shifa hospital, which were built by Israel itself back in the day, as well as video of smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt in the southern city of Rafah. In addition, I've seen a report or two about the discovery of a few smallish tunnels (one kilometer or less). But that's it, and I've heard nothing about finding anything aside from "several" grenades and AK-47s.

Now, I don't expect the IDF to share its intelligence with me, but if they've really found hundreds of miles of tunnels full of soldiers and materiel I'd expect to see at least a little bit of leaked reporting about it. They were certainly eager enough to share video of the tunnels under Al-Shifa.

So what am I missing here? Are there really hundreds of miles of tunnels all over Gaza? Are they really full of rockets and bombs and guns? Does Hamas really hide there? Israel says it doesn't want to send soldiers into the tunnels because it might be dangerous, but that hardly makes sense. They're searching for hostages, aren't they?

Somebody please educate me.

As you know, our little blue planet is part of the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way, in turn, is part of the Local Group, which includes two other major galaxies: Andromeda and Triangulum. A group is a collection of galaxies that are close enough to be gravitationally attracted, which means that in a few billion years we're going to collide with our partners.

What happens then? Nobody knows, really, We might merge into a single giant galaxy, or we might just pass close enough to shear off lots of stars from each other. Check back in the year 4000002023 and I'll let you know.

I mention this, of course, because I was out in the desert on Sunday night and one of my targets was the Triangulum Galaxy. I used a broadband filter for the first time, which is basically a fancy light pollution filter, and it worked pretty well. The filter improved the contrast and made the background sky darker than usual, which in turn made post-processing easier. I also tried to address the severe noise I got last month from my narrowband filter by taking some advice and dithering my images. I'll spare you the explanation, but I've tried dithering before and haven't noticed much difference, so this time I amped it up and it did cut down significantly on the noise.

Anyway, here's the Local Group. The Triangulum Galaxy is at the top. Andromeda is in the middle. The Milky Way is at the bottom.

A few days ago the International Institute for Strategic Studies released the 2023 edition of its Armed Conflict Survey:

The Armed Conflict Survey 2023 continues to capture a world dominated by increasingly intractable conflicts and armed violence amid a proliferation of actors, complex and overlapping motives, global influences and accelerating climate change.

This is not really accurate. Here's a modified version of their global map of military deployments:

I've done two things. First, I erased Africa and the Middle East. Second, I redrew the endless Kashmir standoff to represent its true size.

There's one major conflict left (Ukraine) and a few modest ones. That's it. Aside from Vladimir Putin's adventure in Ukraine, the world is basically pretty peaceful outside of Africa and the Middle East.

Needless to say, this doesn't mean that Africa and the Middle East are unimportant. It's only to state more accurately exactly where the world does and doesn't have serious conflict. The vast, vast majority of the world has very little at all.