URLs du Jour

2022-09-27

  • I have an observation about this Tweet from Ryan Marino:

    And that observation is: you can tell an "Independent Thinker" because:

    1. He specified Halloween candy.
    2. He correctly put an apostrophe in "kid's". (But what if there's more than one kid, IT?)
    3. Four dots to finish off the tweet instead of two.

    Clearly a human being.


  • I'd probably start repaying, but that's me. Bryan Caplan explains Why Student Loan Repayments Will Barely Resume.

    As reasonable folk denounce student loan forgiveness with one voice, it’s easy to forget that the issue may already be… academic. Almost 99% stopped making payments on student loan debt when Covid started. The government has repeatedly delayed the resumption of payments. The latest story is that obligations resume on January 1, 2023. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that this really is absolutely positively definitely the ultimate final last extension. We still face a massive question:

    How many students will actually start repaying their loans again?

    Sure, a few debtors will follow the revised rules to the letter. We saw this during Covid: Some people sharply change their behavior when the rules change because they respect official rules. Many other debtors, however, will try to figure out whether they really have to pay. During Covid, we saw this too: Instead of just following the posted rules, people look around to see whether other people are compliant. If other people aren’t following the rules, why should I?

    The logic is clear: There’s safety in numbers. If hardly anyone else is wearing a mask, the odds you’ll get punished for failing to wear yours is trivial. In a like manner, if hardly anyone else is making their student loan payments, the odds you’ll get punished for failing to make yours is trivial.

    I'd prefer income tax evasion, myself. By the time the IRS noticed an issue with me, I'd have successfully faked my own death and become an RV nomad. Paying for everything in cash. Or maybe pre-1964 dimes and quarters.


  • Well, that's not good. It shouldn't be doing that. Jim Geraghty notes that while Democrats keep screeching about abortion 24x7, The Economy Is Starting to Buckle. After noting some big companies doing some big belt-tightening:

    Last week, President Biden attended a Democratic National Committee event held at National Education Association headquarters — yet another sign of how those two organizations are now so symbiotic that they’re becoming indistinguishable — and took a victory lap about how well the economy is doing:

    We passed the American Rescue Plan, which lifted this nation from economic crisis to economic recovery. And every single Republican voted for it. [Note: Biden meant every single Republican voted against it.] Nearly 10 million more jobs have been created since I’ve been President — the highest number of jobs in that period of time of any President of the United States of America. We have a 3.7 percent unemployment rate, the lowest in 50 — more than 50 years; a record number of new — record number of new small businesses created; and over 668,000 new manufacturing jobs in America.

    The same day, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre offered this remark:

    This is one of the strongest job markets that we have seen on record. And, and so, what we are seeing – and I’ve said this before; you’ve heard this from Brian Deese — is a transition to a more steady and stable growth. And that’s what we’re currently seeing and in the process of moving the economy into.

    That “steady and stable growth” she’s referring to is two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. The White House message is, “You’ve never had it so good.”

    I'm not a fan of the current crop of Republican candidates, but (geez) I sure hope Democrats lose big. If that means a lot of GOP assholes get in, I can live with that. For a while.


  • I was not a "Never Trump" guy, but … Nick Catoggio notes the continuing attempt of the Donald to drive away his remaining sane supporters: Q-ing Up. His appeal to the QAnon lunatics is getting more blatant. Why?

    Here's the least "sinister" possibility:

    He’s trolling.

    We shouldn’t underestimate the willingness of the world’s biggest troll to do something that damages himself and his party purely for the lulz of seeing normies sputter over it. “He’s said that he thinks some of [QAnon’s] memes and images are ‘funny,’” one person close to Trump told Rolling Stone. “He also sometimes mentions that it’s hilarious to make people like you [in the media] so mad when you see him touch the Q sh-t.” But would a former president really do something so cruel and reckless as to promote an honest-to-goodness cult, one with a growing body count, for the simple spiteful pleasure of pwning CNN?

    Well, yes, he would. Undoubtedly.

    The flaw in the theory that Trump is trolling isn’t that he’s too responsible a citizen to egg on bloodthirsty conspiracy theorists, God knows. The flaw is the timing. Trolling doesn’t explain why he would lean harder into QAnon at this moment. The only logical possibility would be that he’s bored. I don’t think he’s bored.

    All Catoggio's other possibilities are worse.


  • Hey! That hurt! space.com tells us what's up:

    NASA's DART mission has successfully slammed into Dimorphos, obliterating the spacecraft and giving the asteroid an almighty whack that scientists hope has altered its orbit around its larger companion and proven that we have the ability to deflect incoming hazardous asteroids.

    Mission over? Not by a long shot! 

    Now that DART has done its job and crashed into its asteroid target, astronomers hope to understand how much the impact deflected Dimorphos by, as well as learning more about Dimorphos' interior structure and composition to give a complete picture of what it takes to move an asteroid.

    Back in my physics days, we called this an "inelastic collision". I assume some instructors have already composed the corresponding homework assignment.