As always, I offer answers to your most pressing questions, such as "where do those flowers come from?" bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… Image
While Colombia and Ecuador dominate U.S. flower imports, they still trail the Netherlands in global exports bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… Image
It used to be that most cut flowers in the U.S. came from greenhouses near big cities, with New York and Pennsylvania the top two producers lib-usda-05.serverfarm.cornell.edu/usda/AgCensusI… Image
But over time California, Florida and (weirdly) Colorado built up big flower industries that shipped to other states. Colorado specialized in carnations. downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/fil… Image
Colorado growers funded research at Colorado State University into how to gain an edge on rival California. They got a surprising answer (from a great 1996 article in @DenverWestword) westword.com/news/growing-g… Image
It took some time, plus the enactment of the Andean Trade Preference Act of 1991, but by the mid-1990s Colombian carnations had supplanted Colorado's and the U.S. was importing most of its cut flowers bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… Image
Which flowers do we import from Colombia and neighboring Ecuador? Mainly roses, carnations and chrysanthemums (pompons are a kind of chrysanthemum) bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… Image
Meanwhile, tulips, lilies, daisies and gladioli are more likely to be home-grown bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… Image
Anyway, this is what happens when @jkarl26 says: "Hey, Mother's Day is coming up. Want to write something about flowers?" bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Finally, here's my favorite new data series, in which the @USDA tells us how many flowers of which kind from which country land at Miami airport every weekday. These are from last Thursday usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/public… Image

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More from @foxjust

6 May
So there's this weird thing that happens when housing prices go up in cheap places and down in expensive ones bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Yes, rents are still a lot lower in Florida than California. But when compared to local wages, they stop looking so cheap bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… Image
Go through all metro areas for which @ApartmentList has rent estimates and @BLS_gov has median wage data, and the least-affordable list is admittedly still quite California-heavy bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… Image
Read 5 tweets
9 Apr
Yes, the story is a *lot* different if you go back farther than 2010, but for the past 1/5/10 years the part of the U.S. wealth distribution with the fastest-growing net worth is the bottom half bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
The Great Recession and its immediate aftermath were disastrous for the less-affluent half of America, but the past decade has been tons better bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
The bottom half's comeback doesn't look as nearly impressive when expressed as a percentage of total U.S. household wealth, but it's still been a sustained recovery bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Read 10 tweets
3 Nov 20
I finally read the article this is based on and … it says that it's not at all clear yet how many of the excess deaths not attributed to Covid-19 are Covid deaths that were misattributed or really the result of other causes
"Deaths from circulatory diseases, Alzheimer disease and dementia, and respiratory diseases have increased in 2020 relative to past years, and it is unclear to what extent these represent misclassified COVID-19 deaths or deaths indirectly related to the pandemic"
Scott Atlas: He can read an X-ray, but apparently not a scientific-journal article
Read 5 tweets
13 Oct 20
Re today's Supreme Court decision to let the Census Bureau stop counting: the only states where it hasn't yet enumerated 99.9% or more of housing units are Louisiana (98.3%), Mississippi (99.4%) and South Dakota (99.8%) 2020census.gov/en/response-ra…
Also big shout-out to Minnesota for having the highest self-response rate Image
A little background: the original deadline was July 31, and in April for obvious reasons the Census Bureau announced that it was extending it to Oct. 31 census.gov/newsroom/press…
Read 6 tweets
13 Oct 20
I have inspired a pro-iceberg rant from @davidchang. My work for the year is complete
To be sure, my column did mention the possibility that the long iceberg decline was ending, with this 2018 @hels manifesto as the turning point newyorker.com/culture/kitche…
But I really wouldn't that to stand in the way of content like this Image
Read 4 tweets
13 Oct 20
Wrote a column on what may turn out to be the biggest news of 2020, the possible eclipse of head lettuce (iceberg, mainly) by leaf lettuce. With appearances by @hels, Nora Ephron, @AliceWaters, John Waters, @amandamull and (uncredited) @JamesSurowiecki bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Here's the money chart Image
But that's not all the leafy green data available from @USDA_ERS! Here, for example, is what's been happening with spinach Image
Read 11 tweets

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