Cats, charts, and politics
Based on recent Supreme Court rulings, it's not quite right anymore to say that we have a liberal bloc and a conservative bloc. We now have three blocs:
The liberal and ultra-conservative wings are almost always on opposite sides in hot button cases. The entire power of the court rests now on the vibes of the three conservatives.
Here's the drop in murder rates in the largest US cities. Most of the data is through the end of March. The data from Boston comes from a New York Times story this morning.
Homicide is down almost everywhere, and in Boston it's down a phenomenal 78%.
400 terrorist illegal immigrants have been allowed into the US!
Sigh. Debate moderators are suckers for breaking news, so I suppose we'll have to waste time on this tomorrow night. The story comes from NBC News, which says this:
Bottom line: There are about 50 migrants from Central Asia roaming around the country, none of whom pose a threat. That's it.
The median price of a new house fell again last month:
The price of a new house is now below its pre-pandemic trendline and heading toward its 2020 level. It may or may not get there, depending on how the economy does, but it'll be close. When the Fed finally gets around to lowering interest rates, the real cost of buying a home will be back to normal. Gen Z take note: The housing market may seem grim now, but it won't be forever.
TIL that there's a distinction between bribes and gratuities. A bribe is something given before the fact: Here's $13,000 if you'll buy our garbage trucks. A gratuity happens after the fact: Thanks for buying our garbage trucks! Here's $13,000.
I didn't choose that example lightly. It's the background in Snyder v. United States, a case decided today by the Supreme Court. The conservative majority ruled that since a garbage truck payoff had been made after the fact, it didn't constitute corruption under federal law.
Maybe so. As they say, the law is an ass. But the Court's reasoning doesn't fill me with confidence. Brett Kavanaugh argued that federal law was too vague about what exactly was allowed and what was prohibited:
“Could students take their college professor out to Chipotle for an end-of-term celebration?” he wrote. “And if so, would it somehow become criminal to take the professor for a steak dinner? Or to treat her to a Hoosiers game?”
While “American law generally treats bribes as inherently corrupt and unlawful,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote, gratuities are another matter. Some can be “problematic,” while others can be “commonplace and might be innocuous.”
He listed examples. A family tipping their mail carrier. Parents sending a gift basket to thank their child’s teacher at the end of the school year. A college dean giving a sweatshirt to a city council member who speaks at an event.
Hmmm. Let's review:
One of these things is not like the other. Can you figure out which one?
Look, sometimes the law is weird and produces strange results. I get it. But surely the Court could draw some distinction about what's allowed that would be well north of sweatshirts and gift baskets. It's a matter of puzzlement to me that the Supreme Court's conservative wing keeps doing this, tightening the law over and over to make it all but impossible to convict politicians of corruption. Jokes aside, this isn't some partisan thing, after all. Republicans and Democrats both engage in plenty of corruption. So why are conservatives so eager to dismiss it?
Republicans in Congress have passed an appropriations bill that slashes funding for the Department of Justice because they're mad about its prosecution of Donald Trump. Seriously. They've also shoveled in a truckload of other ridiculous culture war proposals that won't pass but can be bragged about on Fox News. Whatevs. But I want to know what's up with this:
Republicans plan to force votes on proposals including reducing to $1 the salaries of Lloyd Austin, the secretary of defense, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, and cut off pay entirely for Antony Blinken, the secretary of state.
I know this is all for show, but why do Austin and Mayorkas get $1 and Blinken gets nothing? I thought they hated Mayorkas with the white heat of a giant sun? But he gets more lenient treatment.
What's up?
This is a blue fiesta flower happily blooming at one of our local nature preserves. I took this picture of it five years ago and it's been waiting ever since for its moment in the spotlight. It just goes to show that good things come to those who wait.
According to TheRighting, here's the year-over-year change in traffic at the top conservative news sites:
The Dallas Fed reports today that AI has so far had "minimal" effects on employment in Texas firms. Maybe. But first, take a look at their chart:
Among firms that use AI, that's a net of 8% of firms saying it's decreased their need for workers. That doesn't seem so minimal to me—especially for a technology that was effectively introduced only in late 2022. I wonder how many actual employees this represents?
It's also instructive to listen to the anecdotal evidence:
Most companies using AI report it has not affected their need for workers. A financial services firm noted, “AI is helpful in offloading workload and increasing productivity, but we are not at the point where AI is going to replace workers.”
Ten percent of companies using AI say it reduced their need for employees; these firms were largely using AI for customer service and process automation. A manufacturer noted, “There is strong potential for AI to automate or eliminate many clerical jobs in our business that will save our team time and money.” Workforce reductions from AI use are notably more common among large firms than small ones.
If AI is offloading workload, then it's going to replace workers pretty shortly. And if there's "strong potential" to eliminate clerical jobs, then those jobs are going away.
About 20% of all firms surveyed say they use generative AI (Copilot, GPT-4, Claude, etc.). That's a helluva lot for a technology that's only been around in usable form for two years. And the firms using it sure seem happy with the results:
I'll concede that findings like this aren't always reliable. Whoever fills out the survey is guessing at this stuff and might not be guessing correctly. Still, even if some of the AI use is sketchy (Copilot to help write emails, for example), it sure seems to have gained adoption remarkably quickly.
The Denver Basic Income Project is a program that gave no-strings money to homeless people in Denver. It ran through most of 2023 and included three randomly chosen groups. Group A got $1,000 per month for 12 months. Group B we don't care about. Group C got $50 per month. Here's how they did on housing after ten months:
This is the damnedest thing I've ever seen. One way of describing it is to say that the treatment group ($1,000 per month) did barely any better than the control group ($50 per month). So it turns out that giving people money has no effect.
And that's true. But the more important finding, I think, is that giving people $50 per month had a huge impact. How is that possible? This is nowhere near enough money to help someone rent an apartment, and yet rentals went up from 12% to 43%.
In another part of the study, the researchers try to calculate how much the city saved in social services due to the homeless being better off. These exercises are frequently fantasies, but let's take a look anyway:
Again, there are two ways of looking at this. One is that the total savings (about $500,000) are nowhere near what the project cost (about $5 million). The other is that giving people $50 per month had a huge impact. But how?
Another oddity is that about a third of the participants dropped out before the project ended. I get that these are homeless people, not all of whom routinely make great life decisions. Still, in Group A it's a no-strings monthly handout of $1,000! But a third of the participants dropped out partway through.
There are other bizarre findings. For example, although the money seems to have had a big impact on housing, it had almost no impact on food security. And mental health deteriorated a bit for all groups.
I don't know what to think. My main interest is that giving people $50 per month seems to have made a substantial difference on some metrics. That can't possibly be because of the money, which is too small to have an impact. Was it simply the effect of being in the project at all? That homeless people who feel cared about are more likely to get off the street?
This really demands some answers. If it holds up, it would be a cheap way of making a huge difference in homelessness, and it would pay for itself. Needless to say, I'm skeptical. But it needs to be followed up.