The Population of Young Men Is Down, and So Is Crime
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. In the Daily Beast, criminologist Barry Latzer writes that murder is down in New York and is likely to stay down. Why? Because young men are responsible for most murders (true) and the population of young men has declined since the baby boom years (also…
Rising Opioid Deaths: Is the Cause Economic Despair Or Skyrocketing Supply?
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. How much has the opioid epidemic been a response to poor economic conditions? Eric Levitz points us today to a new paper from Christopher Ruhm of the University of Virginia. He examined changes in economic conditions at the county level to see how much this…
Scientists Are Learning Exciting New Things From Shitholes
Mother Jones illustration Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Science may have dealt with a ton of BS last year, but the field also overflows with bowel-related breakthroughs thanks to the wealth of knowledge hidden in human and animal poop. “There’s nothing to be shy about with feces,” says Faith Walker, a genetics research professor at…
Black Lives Movement Pioneer Has a Story to Tell
Patrisse Kahn-CullorsAmy Harris/AP Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. For most of us, the Black Lives Matter movement began in 2015, after the death of Michael Brown Jr. at the hands of a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer. But for Patrisse Khan-Cullors, one of three black women credited with launching the hashtag…
Lopez-Claros Replies to Charges of Gaming World Bank Rankings
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Yesterday I linked to a Wall Street Journal article which reported that the World Bank had gamed its “Doing Business” rankings to make Chile look worse during the years it was governed by a socialist president. Paul Romer, the chief economist of the Bank, promised…
Bitcoin Makes Tulips Look Cheap
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. For all you bitcoin skeptics out there, here’s a lovely chart from Jeremy Grantham that compares bitcoin to other famous bubbles in history: In other bitcoin news, I’ve wondered aloud several times about how many bitcoin trades involve real money vs. other cryptocurrencies (tether, ethereum,…