Innocent Bystanders

Describing Acting ==> Which Knight Did It Better? April 15, 2023

Sir Ian:

Sir Ben:

I’m gonna call it a tie.

Inflation Still a Nasty B**** April 13, 2023

Headlines were celebrating the BLS’s latest inflation release, saying that inflation was slowing down. Headlines like:

• US inflation falls to lowest level since May 2021 (CNN)
• U.S. Inflation Eased to 5% in March (WSJ)
• US inflation at 5%, the lowest it has been since 2021 (The Grauniad)

The slightly less optimistic takes all said, “But prices remain stubbornly high.”

No, they’re not “remaining stubbornly high.” They’re freaking increasing!

As always, I like looking at the basic CPI, rather than month-over-month or year-over-year numbers. Here’s the CPI since Trump took office (once again, the chart was taken from the St Louis Fed):

Are you feeling like inflation is easing up? I’m certainly not. It’s not increasing as badly as it was a year ago, but it’s still far higher than during the Trump years.

And far higher than is comfortable for consumers.

Simple Math for the Trans Community April 11, 2023

• More Swish ≠ More Femininity
• Transvestites + Clown Car =  Drag Queens
• Drag Queens ⋂ Mrs. Doubtfire/Tootsie = 0 (I.e., there is no intersection between the set consisting of drag queens and the set consisting of the types of “men dressing as women” scenarios that have been considered acceptable in cinema. Conflating them, as trans supporters are trying to do, is dishonest.)

As to the first point, I offer you the following supporting graph:

The graph shows that conservative women achieve full femininity with very little reliance on swish. Liberal women take swish to a point, and then continue to full femininity without swish. Dylan Mulvaney types become a little more feminine with a little swish, but then it’s all swish.

I remember when AoSHQ posted a video of Mulvaney going out into a field, where he said “I love it” to every aspect of nature that he found. Then a bug came after him and he fled, quickly collapsing in a hysterical heap. I thought he was acting out a parody, and that it was an obvious but mildly amusing joke.

Wondering if the money made him start taking it seriously, and now he’s trapped in a culture he meant to mock.

Manufacturing Jobs Fizzle Fo’ Shizzle* April 8, 2023

An article at Breitbart pointed out that all is not well on the manufacturing front:

U.S. manufacturing activity fell to a three-year low, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said. This was the fifth month in a row of contraction in manufacturing.

The manufacturing sector is considered a bellwether for the broader economy. ISM said the March reading was low enough to suggest a contraction in the overall economy, the fourth month of contraction. The data comes from a survey of purchasing managers and executives at manufacturing businesses that are thought to have broad insights into business conditions.

ISM said its Purchasing Manager Index (PMI) score fell to 46.3 percent, 1.4 percentage points lower than the 47.7 percent recorded in February. This is the lowest level since May 2020, when it registered 43.5 percent.

I think you can see that contraction reflected in the employment data, which shows manufacturing jobs flatlining over the past 10 months.

Doesn’t look like Biden’s “manufacturing boom” is very boomy.

*I actually never knew what that meant until I looked it up for this post. I’d heard the entire phrase before (Fo’ shizzle my n*****), but thankfully never used it due to my ignorance. Unlike that Fox News anchor who was fired a couple of weeks ago.

Unhappy Implications of Employment Situation Report April 8, 2023

[Just looked this over again in the light of day, and I think it’s nonsense ==> see my comment.]

Potentially unhappy, since this is my speculation.

Unemployment report came out yesterday, with the typical “glass half full/empty” cognitive dissonance from the media:

• The Hill: “Unemployment declines to 3.5 percent as labor market shows strength“
• Wall Street Journal: “March Jobs Report Shows Hiring Gradually Cooling“

What to believe?

Well, I like the Household Survey (where they poll households across America) more that the Establishment Survey (where they poll businesses) because the HS distinguishes between full- and part-time status. That information has been really helpful (to me, at least) in understanding what’s happening with the job market.

It’s especially helpful this time around, where the 236K jobs added per the ES have had some experts nodding in satisfaction that the market is stable and acting as predicted.

But is it?

Per the Household Survey, 577K jobs were added, 35K of which were part-time for economic reasons. Looking at the part-time for non-economic reasons data, however, we find that it shrank by 423K.

What that suggests to me is that people who were formerly working part-time because they could, have now been driven to full-time employment. That’s a good thing, in the sense of GDP and productivity, but maybe not so good when you wonder why they had to make the change.

My take is that inflation is encroaching on people’s budgets, so where previously they didn’t have to work full-time, now they do. That suggests an unhealthy level of stress on families and their cash flow. Not good.

If you look at the net new full-time jobs (HS), we have 577K – 35K – 423K = 119K. That’s the number of full-time jobs that were added without poaching from the part-timers.

Not all that impressive, given that we added 480K people to the labor force in March.