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Megan McArdle Profile picture
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12 Aug, 4 tweets, 1 min read
IF I'm reading this map right, for the first time since the 1950 census, DC "white alone or in combination" outnumbers "black alone or in combination". Huge change that mirrors both broader urbanization trends, and entrenched economic disadvantage. census.gov/library/visual…
White population up 31% (!!!!) in 10 years.
Also these folks are not having kids: 18 & over population is 83%.

(Guilty).
Should make it clear: that's "White alone or in combo"; "white alone is up only 18%

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Megan McArdle Profile picture
12 Aug
This cannot be emphasized enough: the left spends an inordinate amount of time heaping shame and contempt upon conservatives. Shaming only works on people who conceive themselves to be in the same moral community as you. Otherwise, it's just an ideological pep rally.
Ideological pep rallies are fun! But I see a lot of people confusing this with an actually effective political tactic. Any column I write heaping insufficient opprobrium on conservatives triggers progressive screaming that I am literally endangering lives and supporting fascism.
To be clear, if you are just enjoying telling each other about how awful conservatives are, that's defensible. (Though given that they can see you, do consider the costs, backlash-wise). But understand it's a consumption good with a political effect range from nil to negative.
Read 4 tweets
Megan McArdle Profile picture
11 Aug
Visited my Dad this weekend, and we were talking about the Kidz these days, and how connected they are to their parents.

Dad once again asked me why I had not asked for help even when I needed it--like when my roommate stole all my cash & I had to stop eating for 2 weeks.
Gave him the same answer: it just never occurred to me. I had gotten myself into trouble; it wasn't their job to get me out.

Maybe this is idiosyncratic to me; I've always been stubbornly independent. But I think it's a real generational thing.
Millennials and Zoomers find it natural to appeal to authority whenever anything goes wrong. GenX assumed the adults were all in league against us (we were right). This carried into adulthood: we don't assume authority will care, or be on our side.
Read 9 tweets
Megan McArdle Profile picture
11 Aug
The war against legacy admissions in elite schools seems somewhat quixotic to me, given that the main benefit meritocratic strivers garner from such schools is less their access to professors, than being socialized and networked into an elite represented by...the legacy students.
Nota bene: I attended an Ivy League school, and was not a legacy. Since I have no children, I have no dog in this fight.
But while it's absolutely true that you could admit some number of strivers by dispensing with the legacy admits, the schools would take a pretty major endowment hit, and more importantly, the value of the package to the strivers got might well fall significantly.
Read 4 tweets
Megan McArdle Profile picture
3 Aug
To the "Why are you worried about covid if you're vaccinated" crowd, I'm glad you don't know anyone immunocompromised, or elderly with comorbid conditions, who might be at risk of breakthrough infection despite vaccination, but some of us do know such people.
This is not a dispositive argument in favor of vaccine passports or whatever, but "Stupid covidphobes freaking out" is also not a good argument against those things. There are actual reasons to worry, even if you, personally are relatively young and healthy.
I, for example, have an elderly mom who has COPD, who got vaccinated six months ago, but would probably die from a serious breakthrough infection.

Statistically, the risk may be small, but you see, I don't have enough mothers to form a statistical universe. I only have the one.
Read 6 tweets
Megan McArdle Profile picture
27 Jul
One good question for anyone who is proposing to overhaul a current social or political system: "In what ways would this work less well than the status quo?"

If they can't thoughtfully acknowledge the tradeoffs of their proposal, they aren't serious. Life is tradeoffs.
For example, I support drug legalization, even though I think this will mean drug use goes up, including some people developing substance abuse problems they would not have had under prohibition.
I favor deincarceration while knowing that on the margin, at least some criminals will thereby be freed to reoffend; I also favor increasing police presence while knowing that on the margin, this creates the opportunity for more negative interactions with the community.
Read 5 tweets
Megan McArdle Profile picture
13 Jul
I'm constantly surprised by how many women I meet had a terrible experience with the pill in ways that they *weren't* warned about--notably, a sudden & profound loss of interest in the activity that was the reason they were taking the pill. Often it persisted after they went off.
Also, most of them report their OB/GYN was dismissive when they asked whether maybe the fact that they suddenly didn't want to have sex had something to do with the new pills they were taking.
And fair enough--post hoc, ergo propter hoc is bad science. But loss of libido is a known side effect!

Also, I first got interested in this question because I was in a group of six random ladies, one of whom offhandedly mentioned it--followed by five others saying "me too!"
Read 5 tweets

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