Eschaton

Happy Hour

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 15 May 2026 21:00:00 +0000

Get happy.

America's Worst University

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 15 May 2026 18:30:00 +0000

Cornell University.

Cornell just released this statement from its committee of Trustees investigating the incident where the President ran over a student's foot with his car. The statement extols the President and blames the students.

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— Dan Hirschman (@asociologist.bsky.social) May 15, 2026 at 3:20 PM

The Professionals

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 15 May 2026 17:30:00 +0000

Bari's kids are continuing to do great.

After failing to secure a visa to broadcast from Beijing, Tony Dokoupil was also forced out of his backup location in Taiwan, Status has learned, adding to an embarrassing series of events for the Bari Weiss-led network.

"We"

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 15 May 2026 15:30:00 +0000

Trump complains he can't brag about the Iran War because of the "little man with the $4 gasoline": "I don't want to say we're making a fortune ... because if I say it, they're going to say, 'He forgets about the little man with the $4 gasoline.'"

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— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) May 15, 2026 at 2:46 AM

Republicans Will Do Liberal Things, But Conservatively

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 15 May 2026 14:30:00 +0000

Dem legislators have occasionally been able to (though not rreally in the age of Trump) get some Republicans to sign on to some liberalish things, though too often by making those things overly bureaucratic, privatized, punitive, and means-tested.

Still the idea that the Republican party would ever embrace these things wholeheartedly is always nonsense.

This particular one was especially ridiculous. ONCE WE OUTLAW ABORTION, WE WILL THEN BE IN FAVOR OF HELPING WITH CHILDCARE.

Centrists are always imagining that there are nonexistent deals on the table, but this one was nonsensical.

Where In The World

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 15 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Can I go to this place with no cameras?

Members of Mr. Kean’s team were seated conspicuously in the third row, watching as the Democrats took turns weighing in on their boss’s mysterious absence. Afterward, his chief of staff, Dan Scharfenberger, reiterated a now familiar explanation.
“He’s dealing with a personal health condition, and he’ll be back soon,” Mr. Scharfenberger said in an interview.
When pressed on the nature of the health condition and why Mr. Kean had not been seen in New Jersey or in Washington, Mr. Scharfenberger said, “There’s no cameras where Tom is.”

Gone for 2 months.

I don't think we need regular medical updates of every member of Congress, but missing for 2 months is an issue in itself.

Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 15 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Failson Friday.

Happy Hour

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 14 May 2026 21:00:00 +0000

Get happy

The Finest People

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:00:00 +0000

This will be a 4 minute story, because that's the world we live in now.

Mike Banks, the border patrol chief who oversaw the most aggressive militarization of the US southern border in recent history, has resigned with immediate effect.
“It’s just time,” Banks told Fox News in an interview. “I feel like I got the ship back on course from the least secure, most disastrous, most chaotic border to the most secure border this country has ever seen.”

It's just time...

The resignation comes weeks after the Washington Examiner reported that six current and former border patrol employees had accused Banks of regularly paying for sex with prostitutes during trips to Colombia and Thailand over more than a decade, and bragging about it to colleagues.
The behavior was said to have been investigated twice by CBP officials, with one inquiry reportedly ending abruptly while the former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem was in office.

My Apes Are Doing Great

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 14 May 2026 17:17:52 +0000

I have no deep thoughts here other than I have no idea how the AI-driven stock boom ends.

I registered for a road race. The customary FAQ (what time does it start, where is there water during the race, is there a bag drop, etc...) was replaced by, or at least hidden under, an "AI" chatbot.

It took about 45 seconds to answer any question and often couldn't.

There was nothing that couldn't be more easily and more accessible in a FAQ. There aren't many possible questions about a race! The set of information is very small! You don't need "AI" for it, especially slow AI that doesn't even work!

It Was Joe Biden Wot Did It

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:14:25 +0000

I know most people only see Fox News through clips (if at all), but while this sounds ridiculous, it is fits perfectly well into the Fox News Cinematic Universe.

It's always tempting to think their viewers can't possibly believe this stuff, but they've been hearing this stuff 24/7 for years. Of course they do!

And Fox is the tame right wing news source, relatively speaking, at this point.

Where It Hurts

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 14 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000

I do think it's a bit tragic that everyone learned during the post-covid era, once again, that everybody hates inflation, even though I don't think that's precisely true. I actually don't think people are impacted too much by 4% versus 2% inflation, which is really what that debate is normally about, whether the Fed needs to put the brakes on every time the rate "spikes" to 2.2%.

I mean, I don't think they'd notice too much if that 4% was pure inflation, spread perfectly evenly across all goods and services (and wages!). Only people with real money would care. But that's not what happened. The prices of very visible things spiked due to post-covid supply chain and labor issues, and we just called that "inflation." General inflation was high for a bit, but food price inflation was even higher, running above 10%. That's the kind of thing that enraged people.

And, like now, it wasn't the "inflation" of Milton Friedman's mind, happening because the Fed was printing too much money. It was cost-push inflation.

Though Biden's cost-push inflation wasn't due to his actions.

Anyway...

Driving that increase were substantial price hikes for things like fresh veggies. On an annualized basis, fresh vegetable prices are more than 44% higher today than they were three months ago.

Keeping interest rates high to "fight" cost-push inflation is only obviously correct if you think fighting inflation trumps all other concerns.

Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 14 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Thackeray Thursday.

Happy Hour

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Wed, 13 May 2026 21:00:00 +0000

get happy

Nasty Australians

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Wed, 13 May 2026 18:30:00 +0000

Very mean, low IQ people.

Plans to build Australia’s first Trump Tower have been scrapped just three months after it was announced, with the local developer saying the Trump brand has become “toxic.”

“Let’s just say that with the Iran war and everything else, the Trump brand was increasingly unpopular in Australia,” David Young, CEO of Altus Property Group, told CNN in a statement.

No Need To Be Goldfish

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Wed, 13 May 2026 17:30:00 +0000

Daniel's job is keeping track of this stuff, and he does that well, but the point his colleagues should take from his work is, "Everything Trump says is likely to be a lie and you should begin with that premise." It isn't a stretch to say that every news story about something Trump says should begin, "The president, who regularly lies, just claimed...".

Trump April 23: I contacted people "that have worked for me in the past, doing swimming pools," and one gave me a great price on the Reflecting Pool project

Trump May 4: "I have some very good contractors," asked three of them to "do me a favor fellas" and go look at the…
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 12, 2026

I shouldn't have to make this point after all of these years.

The NYT also does a full rundown. Good for what it is, but, again, TRUMP IS PROBABLY TALKING BULLSHIT should preface every claim he makes, not be addressed 6 weeks later.

Edge Cases

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Wed, 13 May 2026 15:30:00 +0000

Driving is probably the most complicated (no way to quantify that really) task any of us ever do. Humans do stupid things too, of course, but at some point we manage to figure out that we did, indeed, do a stupid thing.

Waymo is recalling its U.S. fleet of robotaxis after one of the autonomous vehicles was swept away when it drove into floodwaters in San Antonio.

The voluntary software recall stems from an incident during severe weather April 20, when a Waymo vehicle “encountered an untraversible flooded section of a roadway,” the company told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Though the vehicle detected the flooded road, it continued into floodwaters at reduced speed.

I'm not asserting that this type of thing means robotaxis are UNPOSSIBLE. They clearly work better than I had thought they would, though there is much more Mechanical Turk activity happening than they like to reveal. The point is more that this is still an incredibly complex activity which still is not close to being solved without constant active updates and intervention.

Your personal self-driving car is not much nearer than it was 5 years ago.

The Great Bed Shitting

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Wed, 13 May 2026 14:30:00 +0000

Will hit consumer prices next.

The producer price index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.4% for the month, much higher than the 0.5% Dow Jones consensus forecast and the upwardly revised 0.7% March increase, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. This was the largest monthly gain since March 2022.

On an annual basis, the index was up 6%, the biggest increase since December 2022.

Operation Pete Hegseth Has A Mighty Johnson So Stop Saying He Doesn't

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Wed, 13 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Amazing.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is considering officially renaming the war with Iran “Operation Sledgehammer” if the current ceasefire collapses and President Donald Trump decides to re-start major combat operations, according to two U.S. officials.

If you change the name, it's a new war!

Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Wed, 13 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Let's GOOOOOOO

Happy Hour

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Tue, 12 May 2026 21:00:00 +0000

Get happy.

Goldfish

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Tue, 12 May 2026 19:30:00 +0000

When someone - the president, other politicians, people in The Discourse generally - showes themselves to be a bad faith and dishonest actor, you are allowed to remember that. If you are a journalist, it should impact how you cover those people going forward. As an editor or producer, whether you go to them for quotes or appearances.

This should not be controversial.

I've written before that one problem with DC (government and government-adjacent DC, including journalism) is that almost everybody is paid to lie. Some of those lies are mostly harmless - puffing up your boss a bit, spinning something - and many of them are less harmless. If there were social and professional sanctions for people who bullshit in their bullshitting jobs, then the entire social system would collapse.

Go to a random dinner party and you're going to find people who work as lobbyists for Evil Corp, or people whose spouses and friends do.

That's the glorious "bipartisan" Washington.

If you are a journalist, you should be allowed to remember things. You certainly shouldn't be encouraged to pretend you don't.

Federal Gas Tax Cut

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Tue, 12 May 2026 18:30:00 +0000

It's always on the table when gas prices rise, which I suspect leads to people thinking that it's a significant amount when it's only 18.5 cents/gallon.

It's an action which will make people more mad, because it's inevitably swamped by the actual price increase. You promised help! You said you'd cut the tax but gas is still 5 bucks a gallon!

Not At Any Price

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Tue, 12 May 2026 17:30:00 +0000

The below is a joke, but so often that is the level of The Discourse. Anyway, fun things happen when the supply curve goes vertical, especially for a good which tends to have pretty close to just-in-time delivery AND which is an input in, well, everything through its role in transportation (including transporting itself!).

Even if there aren't lines at the gas station, $100 gas would reflect, by any colloquial understanding, a "shortage."

But of course in practice, those pumps would go dry, in places, in such a scenario.

I'm not predicting gas shortages, I'm just saying that people will have ridiculous things to say about them if ever they are looming.

Shortages

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Tue, 12 May 2026 15:30:00 +0000

Me, dumb: We could have shortages soon.

You, smart, after two Econ 101 classes: Prices adjust to equate supply and demand so shortages are impossible.