Kevin Drum

I have no special reason for posting this. It's just random GSS data. On the other hand, perhaps it represents my mood at the moment?

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through July 23. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Here is Hilbert in one of his new favorite spots: taking up the entire length of my new footstool so there's no room for me. But what is he looking at?

Kay Ivey is getting tough on her fellow Alabamians:

The Republican governor of Alabama has said it is “time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” for rising cases of Covid-19, amid concern that months of misinformation over the need and efficacy of vaccines is fueling a resurgence of coronavirus infections in several states.

....“Folks are supposed to have common sense,” said the Alabama governor. “But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the vaccinated folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.”

I have a confession: My immediate thought was that perhaps the Black population of Alabama was the least vaccinated, and that might be why Ivey was eager to blame them. But that was unworthy of me. It's also not true:

I dunno, maybe this is a case where we could use racial tensions to good purpose for once. "Come, my Black brothers and sisters, let's show the white devils we can kick their asses on vaccine common sense. Get the jab!"

I'm joking, of course. Sort of. Yes, I am. Maybe. But yes.

There's more controversy over California's Bullet Train to Nowhere™! The proximate issue is whether the train should be powered by overhead electric lines, like every other high-speed train in the world, or whether we should consider powering it via batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. Either of these, you see, would save money because we wouldn't have to build all the electrical lines. And that would get us ever closer to—

The bullet train project is attempting to build a 171-mile operating segment between Bakersfield and Merced for $22.8 billion, which would consume nearly all of the existing funds for the project through 2030. The project is short $80 billion to execute the original vision of a 220-mph train from Los Angeles to San Francisco, which voters approved by passing Proposition 1A in 2008.

Oh, right. This whole thing is literally a nit compared to the vast funding gap that nobody has the slightest idea how to fill. But if we all clap our hands loudly enough, somehow everything will be OK.

Noted without comment:

New Zealand suspends travel bubble with Australia

The quarantine-free travel corridor will close for eight weeks as a delta outbreak that began in Sydney imperils the nation’s earlier success in containing the pandemic.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through July 22. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Every once in a while I like to take a look back at my predictions from 2012. Here's one of them:

The fact of climate change will become undeniable. The effects of global warming, discernible today mostly in scary charts and mathematical models, will start to become obvious enough in the real world that even the rightest of right wingers will be forced to acknowledge what’s happening.

Hmmm. Not bad! The predictions were for 2024, and this year's world-gone-mad weather might well be the starting point of a change in outlook even among wingnut Republicans. We'll see.

I was slogging through some old photos last night looking for something else when I ran across a set of Milky Way pictures that I took a few years ago up in northern California. I tried stacking them at the time, but had little success.

However, I now have better stacking tools and better noise-reduction tools, and it struck me that I should give these images another try. The sky, after all, was easily the best and clearest I've ever had. So here it is. As you can see, the clear sky made far more stars visible than in other Milky Way photos I've taken, which is either good or bad depending on your personal preference. In either case, the core is very nicely rendered and the tail looks fairly good too.

I will be experimenting with a whole new region for night photography in a couple of weeks. We'll see how it works out.

This is bad:

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced new legislation today that aims to finally hold tech companies responsible for allowing misinformation about vaccines and other health issues to spread online.

The bill, called the Health Misinformation Act and co-sponsored by Sen. Ray Luján (D-NM), would create an exception to the landmark internet law Section 230, which has always shielded tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter from being sued over almost any of the content people post on their platforms.

Klobuchar’s bill would change that — but only when a social media platform’s algorithm promotes health misinformation related to an “existing public health emergency.” The legislation tasks the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to define health misinformation in these scenarios.

I'm not a fan of Facebook, but that's because of its endlessly dishonest approach to user privacy. At the same time, though, I have to admit that the American public doesn't agree with me. As near as I can tell, the vast majority of Facebook users would be willing to sell every intimate detail of their lives to Facebook in return for $1 off their next purchase from iTunes.

But content is a whole different thing. My guideline here is simple: If you're willing to allow Fox News to do something, then you should be willing to allow Facebook (or Google or Twitter) to do it. If Facebook wants to allow its users to spread vaccine disinformation, that's their right. And the rest of us have the right to fight back against that. We can pressure Facebook, we can boycott Facebook, and we can make Mark Zuckerberg persona non grata in polite company. What's more, President Biden can express any opinion he wants about Facebook. Ditto for every yahoo in Congress.

But government regulation? Forget it. And Amy Klobuchar should forget it too unless she's willing to suggest the same treatment for books, magazines, letters to the editor at the New York Times, and soapbox speeches on the Washington mall.

I have no problem with any kind of (legal) private action against Facebook. I also have no problem with things like antitrust investigations against Facebook. But can't we all agree that the government should stay very far away from any kind of content-based regulation of anyone?