Author Archives: Aaron Duff

We’ll Have Self-Driving Cars By 2025

Mother Jones

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Atrios takes to the podium once again to insist that self-driving cars are just a pipe dream of nerdy cultists:

If the driver has to pay attention it isn’t a self-driving car. And the self-driving cars are never going to happen (in my lifetime, yes, yes, one day our descendants might upload their brains into self-driving car bodies). Things which are a bit more self-driving but are really just cruise control plus will become more widespread and the technology will improve. They still won’t be self-driving cars….Maybe you’ll like your new toys, but they won’t be self-driving cars.

After reading several dozen similar posts over the past couple of years, I guess I’m curious: why is he so convinced that self-driving cars are impossible in our lifetime? I happen to be on the other side of this question, and since neither one of us is an expert in artificial intelligence I’ll offer up three non-expert reasons to think that self-driving cars will become a reality in the next decade or so:

Computing power, and AI in general, continues to improve rapidly. The progress in self-driving cars has been eye-popping over the past ten years. Why should the next ten years be any different?
And it’s not just AI. Enabling technologies—mapping, radar, machine vision, etc.—is getting better rapidly too. Keep in mind that cars aren’t limited to either the senses that humans use to drive a car or to the cognitive algorithms we use. They have additional technology that humans can’t make use of.
Lots of companies are spending a ton of money on this. If it were just Google, that would be one thing. But can a dozen auto manufacturers, mostly run by distinctly non-nerdy bean counters, all be so bedazzled by the technology that they’re wasting millions of dollars year after year chasing after a chimera?

If you want to say that five or ten years is too optimistic, fine. Maybe it’s more like 15 years. Or even 20. But 50? What’s the argument for thinking the technology is that far away?

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We’ll Have Self-Driving Cars By 2025

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Chart of the Day: The Economy Continues to Plod Along

Mother Jones

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GDP was up in the second quarter, but our economy is still not exactly a house afire. Preliminary results indicate an increase of 2.3 percent:

The BEA explains where last quarter’s growth came from:

The acceleration in real GDP growth in the second quarter reflected an upturn in exports, an acceleration in PCE, a deceleration in imports, and an upturn in state and local government spending that were partly offset by downturns in private inventory investment, in nonresidential fixed investment, and in federal government spending and a deceleration in residential fixed investment….Real personal consumption expenditures increased 2.9 percent in the second quarter, compared with an increase of 1.8 percent in the first.

Really, the chart tells the whole story. As you can see, 2.3 percent growth is about….average since the recession ended. Not great, not horrible. Every time we manage to get into third gear for a little while, we hit a bump and end up back in second. It’s now been eight years since the economy imploded, and we’re still just muddling along. It’s not clear what it will take to improve things.

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Chart of the Day: The Economy Continues to Plod Along

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Millennials and Comic Books: Chill Out, Haters

Mother Jones

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Saul DeGrew surveys the various complaints people have about the Millennial generation. Here’s one:

Another part of the Millennial complaint brigade is complaining about how they are still into videogames, comic books, and other activities from their childhood….I admit that I find this aspect of the Millennials staying Kids debate to be a bit troublesome but that is probably my own snobbery and cultural elitism coming in more than anything else. I don’t quite understand how explosion and bang wow movies are still big among a good chunk of the over-30 set.

Forget videogames: that’s a huge industry that spans all generations these days. Their popularity says nothing about arrested adulthood. But I was curious: just how many Millennials are still reading comic books? Not just “interested” in comics or willing to see the latest X-Men movie. DeGrew may not like “bang wow” movies, but they’ve been a pretty standard part of Hollywood’s product mix forever, and the current fad for superhero bang wow movies doesn’t say much of anything about Millennial culture in particular.

So: how many actual readers of comic books are there among Millennials? I don’t know, but here’s a guess:

  1. Diamond Comic Distributors sold about 84 million comics in 2013. Diamond is damn near a monopoly, but it’s not a total monopoly, and that number is only for the top 300 titles anyway. So let’s round up to 100 million.
  2. That’s about 8 million per month. Some comic fans buy two or three titles a month, others buy 20 or 30. A horseback guess suggests that the average fan buys 5-10 per month.
  3. That’s maybe 1.5 million regular fans, give or take. If we figure that two-thirds are Millennials, that’s a million readers.
  4. The total size of the Millennial generation is 70 million. But let’s be generous and assume that no one cares if teenagers and college kids are still reading comics. Counting only those over 22, the adult Millennial population is about 48 million.
  5. So that means about 2 percent of adult Millennials are regular comic book readers. (If you just browse through your roomie’s stash sporadically without actually buying comics, you don’t count.)

I dunno. I’d say that 2 percent really isn’t much. Sure, superheroes pervade popular culture in a way they haven’t before, though they’ve always been popular. Adults watched Superman on TV in the 50s, Batman on TV in 60s, and Superman again on the big screen in the 80s. But the rise of superhero movies in the 90s and aughts has as much to do with the evolution of special effects as with superheroes themselves. Older productions couldn’t help but look cheesy. Modern movies actually make superheroes look believable. Science fiction movies have benefited in the same way.

In any case, superheroes may be a cultural phenomenon of the moment—just ask anyone who tries to brave the San Diego Comic-Con these days—but even if you accept the argument that reading comics is ipso facto a marker of delayed adulthood1, the actual number of Millennials who do this is pretty small. So chill out on the comics, Millennial haters.

1I don’t. I’m just saying that even if you do, there aren’t really a huge number of Millennial-aged comic fans anyway.

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Millennials and Comic Books: Chill Out, Haters

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One Man Should Not Dictate Immigration Policy

Mother Jones

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You know, the more I mull over the Republican complaint about how immigration reform is being implemented, the more I sympathize with them. Public policy, especially on big, hot button issues like immigration, shouldn’t be made by one person. One person doesn’t represent the will of the people, no matter what position he holds. Congress does, and the will of Congress should be paramount in policymaking.

Now don’t get me wrong. I haven’t changed my mind about the legality of all this. The Constitution is clear that each house of Congress makes its own rules. The rules of the House of Representatives are clear and well-established. And past speakers of the House have all used their legislative authority to prevent votes on bills they don’t wish to consider. Both the law and past precedent are clear: John Boehner is well within his legal rights to refuse to allow the House to vote on the immigration bill passed by the Senate in 2013.

Still, his expansion of that authority makes me uneasy. After all, this is a case where poll after poll shows that large majorities of the country favor comprehensive immigration reform. The Senate passed a bipartisan bill over a year ago by a wide margin. And there’s little question that the Senate bill has majority support in the House too. So not only is the will of Congress clear, but the president has also made it clear that he’d sign the bill if Congress passed it. The only thing stopping it is one man.

That should make us all a bit troubled. John Boehner may be acting legally. But is he acting properly?

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One Man Should Not Dictate Immigration Policy

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Brazil’s Dietary Guidelines Are So Much Better Than the USDA’s

Mother Jones

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As anyone who has read Marion Nestle’s Food Politics or Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food knows, the US Department of Agriculture’s attempts to issue dietary advice have always been haunted by industry influence and a reductionist vision of nutrition science. The department finally ditched its silly pyramids a few years ago, but its guidelines remain vague and arbitrary (for example, how does dairy merit inclusion as one of five food groups?).

In Brazil, a hotbed of sound progressive nutritional thinking, the Ministry of Health has proven that governmental dietary advice need not be delivered in timid, industry-palatable bureaucratese. Check out its plain-spoken, unimpeachable, and down-right industry-hostile new guidelines (hat tip Marion Nestle):

1. Make natural or minimally processed foods the basis of your diet
2. Use oils, fats, salt, and sugar in small amounts when seasoning and cooking natural or minimally processed foods and to create culinary preparations
3. Limit consumption of processed foods
4. Avoid consumption of ultra-processed products
5. Eat regularly and carefully in appropriate environments and, whenever possible, in company
6. Shop in places that offer a variety of natural or minimally processed foods
7. Develop, exercise and share culinary skills
8. Plan your time to make food and eating important in your life
9. Out of home, prefer places that serve freshly made meals
10. Be wary of food advertising and marketing

Meanwhile, over on Civil Eats, the dissident nutritionist Andy Bellatti places Brazil’s new approach on a fascinating list of five food-policy ideas the US could learn from Latin American nations.

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Brazil’s Dietary Guidelines Are So Much Better Than the USDA’s

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Only Republicans Believe Obamacare Is Doomed

Mother Jones

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Greg Sargent points us this morning to the latest CNN poll on Obamacare, and it shows that despite all the rollout problems, attitudes toward the law haven’t changed an awful lot:

There are some additional crosstabs at the link, and Sargent points out that they paint a cautiously positive picture:

The poll also finds 54 percent believe current problems facing the law will eventually be solved, versus 45 percent who don’t. Again, that latter sentiment is driven by Republicans: Independents think they will be solved by 50-48; moderates by 55-43. By contrast, Republicans overwhelmingly believe they won’t be solved by 72-27.

Crucially, young Americans — who are important to the law’s success – overwhelmingly believe the problems will be solved (71 percent). Part of the campaign by Republicans to persuade Americans that the law’s doom is inevitable is about dissuading people from enrolling, to turn that into a self fulfilling prophesy.

Republicans are convinced the law is already a failure. And why wouldn’t they? The Fox News bubble has been telling them that for months. But the rest of the country is willing to give it a chance and thinks its problems will probably be solved. When they are, support will go up even higher.

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Only Republicans Believe Obamacare Is Doomed

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The County Council Election That Could Make or Break Big Coal

Mother Jones

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Last week, the Whatcom County Council in northwestern Washington voted to buy six new SUVs for the local Sheriff’s Department and introduced its annual road construction plan. These were significant developments in this sleepy rural enclave of scarcely 200,000 people, but nothing compared to what’s on the horizon: A proposal to build the largest coal export terminal on the West Coast, capable of annually shipping a whopping 48 million tons of Montana and Wyoming coal to Asia.

Its role in deciding the fate of Peabody Coal’s proposed $700-million Gateway Pacific Terminal has thrust the unassuming Whatcom County Council into the national political spotlight. The coal industry sees the export terminal as a lifeline from sinking domestic sales. Environmental groups view it as the worst climate threat since the Keystone XL pipeline. Each side is backing its own Whatcom County Council candidates in a November 5th election that has become an expensive proxy fight in the global war over the future of coal.

The money pouring into four council seat races dwarfs anything ever seen in this county of lumberjacks, farmers, and banana slugs. Compared to fundraising during the last county election in 2011, money raised by council candidates and their allies has increased more than seven-fold, to roughly $1 million. Much of it comes from fossil fuel interests such as Cloud Peak Energy and Global Coal Sales, and, on the other side, from A-list environmentalists such as California billionaire Tom Steyer.

Backers of the Gateway Pacific Terminal claim it will create 4,400 construction-related jobs and 125,000 permanent positions at the docks and in associated professions—no small thing in a county where the unemployment rate is nearly twice what it was six years ago. Yet environmental groups warn of endless pollution-spewing coal trains passing in the vicinity of Bellingham, the liberal college town near where Peabody wants to load cargo ships with coal bound for China. The council will likely vote to approve or deny the coal terminal sometime in the next two years.

As it stands, four or five of the seven council members are believed to support the terminal. So environmental groups want to flip one or two of the seats and coal companies want to stop them. But here’s where things get weird, explains Brian Rosenthal of the Seattle Times:

The word “believed” is necessary because of one more quirk in this unusual election: In largely rural Whatcom County, council members have quasi-judicial duties and are supposed to remain impartial about matters that might come before them in the future.

So the candidates have avoided giving specific opinions about the coal terminal, instead offering code words like “proven environmental values” and “committed to creating jobs.”

If that approach sounds familiar, it’s probably because state and national politicians often do the same thing—though, admittedly, not often during an extended meet-and-greet with a handful of passerby in a small-town Indian casino, flanked by poker tables and slot machines.

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The County Council Election That Could Make or Break Big Coal

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16 Ways Default Will Totally Screw Americans

Mother Jones

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Perhaps you’ve heard that if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling by October 17, the United States will face an unprecedented financial default. The way some Republicans talk about the consequences of passing that threshold, you might think that hitting that limit might not be all that bad (Florida’s Ted Yoho, in fact, thinks it would be beneficial). But sober-minded economists are describing the ramifications of a default with terms usually reserved Roland Emmerich flicks—terms like “apocalypse.” The full economic consequences of defaulting are unknown. “It’s a little like asking how many people will be killed if there’s another terrorist attack,” says Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution. But we do know, as early as October 22, the US government will run out of money to pay its bills and federal spending will have to be cut by about 32 percent, according to estimates made by the Bipartisan Policy Center. That’s when Americans of all stripes would start feeling the pain in many different ways. Here are 16 of them:

1. Social security checks will be delayed, possibly cut. According to President Obama, in the event of a default the US government will have no choice but to delay social security checks. Here’s why: The US government owes $12 billion in social security payments on October 23 and an additional $25 billion on November 1. At some point between October 22 and November 1, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) predicts that the US government will have exhausted its borrowing power and will either have to start severely delaying its bills or sort through the millions of different payments it owes each month—on everything from national parks to the FBI—to figure out which ones to stop making. That’s when social security could see sustained cuts.

2. Federal employees will be screwed…even more. If the shutdown had never happened, the US government would have owed $3 billion in federal employee salaries on October 28. That number could now be lower or higher, depending on whether Congress approves back pay for furloughed employees before then. As Shai Akabas, a senior policy analyst at BPC, explains, if the shutdown ends before the debt ceiling date, employees will likely see their back pay. If it doesn’t, their pay will continue to be delayed or cut, depending on how the government decides to pay its bills. And at this point, we really have no idea which federal employees will continue to get paid after a default.

3. Pay and benefits for military service members and veterans will be delayed, possibly cut. The US government owes $12 billion in pay to active and retired military service members on November 1. Those payments will be delayed if the government runs out of money before then, and potentially cut, depending on which bills the US decides to pay.

4. Medicare and Medicaid checks will be delayed, possibly cut. The US government owes $2 billion in Medicaid payments on October 30 and $18 billion in Medicare payments on November 1. Same deal: If the government runs out of money before then, payments will be delayed, or put on the chopping block with everything else.

5. College kids will lose their loans, and have (even more) trouble getting jobs. The Treasury Department has warned that after a default, interest rates will skyrocket. Nick Schwellenbach, a fiscal policy analyst for the Center for Effective Government, says “federally subsidized loans would likely be buffered, but education grants funded by discretionary spending would likely stop during a default. Additionally, increased costs of borrowing would impact students who rely on credit cards and private loans to make ends meet. After graduation, economic downturn and uncertainty could once again increase unemployment rates for recent graduates.”

6. Say goodbye to your retirement savings. After the US government defaults, stock and bond prices will likely fall dramatically, affecting the value of retirement accounts. A default could also trigger a financial crash that could match or surpass the 2008 crash (And in 2008, Americans about to retire lost 25 percent of their assets, a retirement expert at the New School told The New York Times. So Americans near retirement age will likely have to continue working longer before moving to the beach.

7. Good luck buying a home. As the Treasury Department points out, a default would cause mortgage interest rates to skyrocket and banks to tighten their already super-tight lending standards, by, among other things, requiring higher down payments. It may not even take an actual default to affect mortgage rates. During 2011’s debt ceiling debacle, mortgage interest rates jumped higher and stayed that way for months: Specifically, an American taking out a mortgage of $235,000 saw an increase in monthly payments of about $100.

8. Or a car. See above.

9. Or getting a credit card. Ditto.

10. And forget that foreign vacation. A default is widely expected to tank the value of the US dollar. That could be good for US manufacturers, but bad if you’re planning a trip abroad where the buying power of the dollar will be diminished. And the recent political turmoil is already hurting American currency: As the government shutdown began, the dollar “sank to its lowest against the Euro in more than seven months and its weakest level versus the UK pound since January,” The Wall Street Journal reports. Say goodbye to Christmas in Paris.

11. That’s probably for the best since your company might not be able to pay you. Commercial paper, or short term corporate debt, is issued by many large companies to meet payroll and accounts receivable. A default would cause commercial paper rates spike, explains Cornelius Hurley, a professor in Boston University’s School of Law and a former counsel to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, which means that corporations that don’t have a lot of cash socked away “may be unable to meet payroll obligations.”

12. Also, you might lose your job. According to Hurley, post-default “unemployment will spike immediately as firms suspend new and replacement hiring and comb their work forces for cuts.”

13. And you might not be able to get a new one. According to the Treasury Department, “many private-sector analysts believe that a default would lead to events of the magnitude of late 2008 or worse, and the result then was a recession more severe than any seen since the Great Depression.”

14. Small businesses will be hit especially hard. Entrepreneurs don’t want to take out loans when there’s high uncertainty about borrowing costs, and banks don’t want to lend to businesses that don’t have an established history of success. As the Center for Effective Government’s Schwellenbach explains, “In the wake of the 2008 crash, the credit freeze disproportionately affected small businesses. After June of 2008, lending to small firms decreased almost 18 percent.”

15. So will local governments. Schwellenbach says, “Instability in the stock market and higher borrowing costs could decrease confidence in municipal bonds, which are used to finance local schools and infrastructure projects. Unlike the federal government, many states and local governments are unable to borrow to avoid budget cuts, if the budget doesn’t balance. Additionally, a downturn in small business investment, potential decreases in employment, and a depressed housing market could all deprive local governments of revenue and strain resources.”

16. And, after all is said and done, the US deficit will increase. “When there’s a threat of default not to say an actual default, which is much worse you see interest rates go up on treasuries, so you have to have more government spending to pay back the interest,” says Harry Stein, the associate director of fiscal policy for the Center for American Progress. “So then you end up increasing the deficit. If that’s really all you care about, then you’ll see that playing with the default isn’t even productive. So why are we talking about this?”

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16 Ways Default Will Totally Screw Americans

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British Security Authorities Detain Glenn Greenwald’s Partner for 9 Hours at Heathrow Airport

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Earlier today British security officials at Heathrow Airport detained Glenn Greenwald’s partner, a Brazilian citizen, under the authority of schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000. David Miranda was transiting through Heathrow on his way home after a trip to Berlin, where he had visited Laura Poitras, Greenwald’s partner in exposing the NSA’s surveillance programs. British authorities ended up holding Miranda for nine hours, the maximum allowed, and then confiscated his cell phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs, and game console before finally releasing him.

This is more than just shocking. It’s stupid. Criminally, insanely stupid. I can hardly think of a better way of convincing skeptics that security authorities can’t be trusted with the power we’ve given them.

British citizens want to know if any government ministers were involved in this. As an American citizen, I’d like to know if any American officials were involved in this.

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British Security Authorities Detain Glenn Greenwald’s Partner for 9 Hours at Heathrow Airport

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Baby Boomers vs. Millennials: How Internet-Obsessed Are You? (Infographic)

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Baby Boomers vs. Millennials: How Internet-Obsessed Are You? (Infographic)

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