Tag Archives: Hot Topics

by Steve Hutkins Save the Post Office AB: I have been involved in multiple, many, etc. systems implementations over the years. They need careful upfront planning with users to understand what may work best and have a foundation in mind before you move forward with an implementation. PG Louis DeJoy has never worked in a post office and lacks a foundation to support his belief the plan “he” is implementing will work. Furthermore, he has not...

Kevin Drum has a timely post on grocery inflation. Overall, it’s at 1% now.“Why do so many people still think inflation is high? It’s because they don’t respond to averages. They respond to outliers.”*snip*“Frozen juice is up 27%. Baby food is up 9%. Ground beef is up 6%. When you shop for groceries, these things are going to stand out.“Now, it’s also true that eggs are down 17%. Apples are down 10%. Fruits, vegetables, chicken, and dozens of other...

There has always been a lot of misinformation and frank dishonesty surrounding Social Security. Here are three things that Social Security isn’t:1. A retirement investment. Social Security is insurance. It is not meant to be your sole source of income after retirement (although for many Americans, it basically is). Social Security is not a substitute for a pension or 401k, or for personal savings. But if some calamity befalls you and you lose your...

When I was in college, I took up pipe smoking. I particularly enjoyed Turkish Latakia tobacco, smoked through a long-stemmed church warden clay pipe. But shortly after I got married, my wife told me to stop.Smoking is a particularly dangerous nicotine delivery system. Nowadays, there is vaping, which some see as safer. It may well be, but “safer” isn’t the same as “safe.”“People who self-reported ever having used electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes)...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog The JOLTS report for February showed stabilization or slight improvement to all but one of its components, generally suggesting, well, stabilization in the overall jobs market. Starting with the monthly changes, job openings (blue in the graph below), a soft statistic that is polluted by imaginary, permanent, and trolling listings, increased 8,000 from a sharply downwardly revised January number to...

I grew up in the American South as the end of apartheid. I remember the first Black kid who showed up in my 3rd grade and how the teacher prepared us for his arrival the day before. I remember the race riots of the ‘60s and I remember where I was when I learned MLK had been assassinated at the other end of the state.Yes, we’ve now had a two-term Black president (although his legitimacy was questioned by many, including the current GOP candidate for...

When I think of the places on the planet that seem optimized for solar and wind power generation, I think of deserts like the Sahara and the desert Southwest in the US. And yet Germany is generating a growing share of its electricity through these renewables:“Preliminary data by energy market research group AG Energiebilanzen (AGEB) showed that onshore wind turbines produced a record 114.2 terawatt hours (TWh) in Germany in 2023, while solar PV...

It’s hard to keep generating fresh content every day for your edification and entertainment here at Angry Bear. The temptation is to use Chat GPT to do the heavy lifting, but so far, we’ve foresworn AI to rely on our own in-house I. If you begin to suspect that we’ve betrayed our readers, here are the ten most overused words by ChatGPT*1. Explore2. Captivate3. Tapestry4. Leverage5. Embrace6. Resonate7. Dynamic8. Testament9. Delve10. ElevateWhen these...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog Personal income and spending has become one of the two most important monthly reports I follow, because it nets out the impacts of higher interest rates and abating inflation due to the unlinking of the supply chain. To repeat, the big question this year is whether the contractionary effects of Fed tightening have just been delayed until this year. Or whether the fact that there have been no rate hikes...

New drugs go through clinical trials before they can be marketed. Phase I trials are for safety. Phase II/III trials are for efficacy. If a drug fails these trials, it can’t be sold.One challenge to drug testing is trial enrollment. Ideally, the subjects should be demographically representative. The problem is that there can be significant variation among trial participants that is not reflected in sex, age or ethnicity.Drugs have a half-life in the...