John Pfaff

Oh man, even Duo Lingo is woke now.

11h

I’m sorta subtweeting someone on here I respect a ton, but just want to point out that it doesn’t violate Bluesky’s terms of service to go to bed on the night of Nov 3 without posting about—or even watching!—the news, and then wake up and find out what happened.

11h

Also—and here I’m not subtweeting but … supertweeting? the whole media—I’d like those who are commenting for the networks to remember that once the polls close no candidate “gains” or “loses” ground. The moment the polls close someone won. We just have to count it. But I know:

11h

But for those doing the horse race “gap closing!” nonsense, please remember you‘re a big reason why “voter fraud!” claims stick, and know that state GOP have changed counting rules for mail-in votes to explicitly capitalize on your terrible coverage. They’ve used you. And you keep doing it.

A good example of why talking about national trends is always risky in a country as large and federalized as ours. The standard narrative about crime is "violent crime started to fall in 1991." Which is true ... for a lot of places. Esp w big pops. But not everywhere.

16h

Another take. Previous maps were for the entire run of easily-accessible FBI crime data, 1978-2025. But crime peaked in 1991. So what are the trends for 1991-2025? More green, and darker, for states that saw drops post-1991, but not enough to offset the 1978-1991 rise. A more national story here.

16h

But graphs that started this thread still make it clear that states experienced different types of paths post-1991, even amidst a general decline.

This is definitely not a random distribution of crime rates since 1979. The upper midwest is really struggling, and not just ND and its fracking problems. The biggest states saw big drops (esp NY, FL, IL). The rest of the center of the US just did ... okay (but also started from lower baseline).

16h

Or with a bit more nuance. Tho given the general "crime is down in the US" narrative I was pushing back against, not actually sure which version actually tells that story more clearly (esp given that most are in the 25%+ increase range).

Pop quiz. On this graph of violent crime rates in North Dakota, can you identify ~2006 on the x-axis, which is the year that the fracking boom began in the state, bringing all sorts of young men to work the oil fields, make money, and have little to do in their free time?

I’d love to get back to a timeline where elections were about “I think Joe has better policy ideas than Bob,” rather than our current “THE FATE OF DEMOCRACY IF NOT LIFE ITSELF REQUIRES BOB TO LOSE MY GOD WHY ARE MORE BILLIONAIRES FUNDING BOB?!” elections of today.

Jacob T. Levy@jacobtlevy.bsky.social

If you had told me at any point in Lula's 1st or 2nd term not only that I would be rooting for him in the future ... but also that I'd be rooting for his *4th* term, when he's *80*, after multiple corruption convictions... and that I would think it was of *urgent global importance* for him to win...

Omg. Early Application applications are done. Seven EAs completed. Yes, not much time before we have to turn to the regular decision apps, but this still feels like a real win. Esp a week early! I had multiple trips to Buffalo‘s lone 24-hr post office to get mine post-marked at the last minute.

Once, literally: post mark hit the envelope at ~11:58. There was a line, and I was getting stressed. Think it was Chicago, bc of course I’d cut it the closest with my first choice. But my oldest is far more self-organized than I was at his age.

washingtonpost.comTrump’s DOJ told a judge how to rule. Then it pulled her from court.Karen Donoso Stevens offers a rare firsthand look at the administration’s campaign to rewrite the rules of the immigration court system.

One of the greatest scams in the immigration system has been calling these people "judges." They are at-will employees of the President. They have never had a shred of "judicial" independence, and they are not actually judges in any real sense. Sure, they preside over hearings ... for their boss!

Frank Amari @frankamari.bsky.social

Trump’s DOJ told a judge how to rule. Then it pulled her from court. Karen Donoso Stevens offers a rare firsthand look at the administration's campaign to transform the immigration court system. www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/...

If we stopped calling them "judges," maybe ppl would better appreciate that these are not judicial hearings in any real sense of the word, and that the sort of independence we expect from judges is completely and totally absent here. And maybe we could demand a system that DOES have ACTUAL judges.

I'd really like words to keep their meanings. Calling the at-will employees of the executive "judges" is linguistic torture.

People can never do this math. I remember the intro to the 2012 Dredd movie (the good one), the opening voice-over, trying to make MegaCityOne look violent, talks abt how many crimes happened in the past year. But MC1 has ~1B ppl. If you did the math, it was safer per cap than, like, Sweden.

Charles Ghoul-ba 🎃 ✡️@charlesgaba.com

3 out of 300 polled for a Michigan statewide race would be a poll of 100,000 people.

I love how the Common App was supposed to streamline things, but now I have, like, six logins just for common application stuff (Common App, FAFSA, Stars, Overgrad, and surely some others), and then will end up with logins for each school too. This seems ... harder than the ink-and-typewriter days?

It's fine, though. Because once we submit for Early Action 1.4 and then Early Action Six, we just have to complete Regular Decisions Alpha through Epsilon and then Super Regular Early Late Decision 4. It's ... fine. All fine.

Orphaned musicians Have gas and some cigarettes. No mall can stop them.

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youtube.comEagleman (The Original)YouTube video by sibe74

This is what hatches from the egg when Eagleman Insurance from Chicago has a child with Liberty Mutual. Who is Eagleman, you ask? Why, one of Chicagoland's greatest early-1990s mascots. Does he lay eggs, tho? Just watch! Why does EagleMAN lay eggs? Shush. Just watch.

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youtube.comMoo & Oink Classic CommercialYouTube video by Moo & Oink

This wasn't the most scarring late-night commercial of my college years. That belongs to Moo and Oink, where a cow and pig try to sell you beef and pork. Don't think about that for even a second. "M-m-m-moo and oink" has lived rent-free in my head for ~25 yrs.

The 90s?! I remember boring some family friends with a blow-by-blow recounting of how I made it to Oregon even tho one of my oxen broke its leg in Kansas like it would go down as one of my top life achievements, and that was in, like, 1983.

Archangel Softworks - Highway Noir out now!@archangelsoftworks.co.uk

Americans who went to school in the 90s: did you play Oregon Trail? Did EVERYONE play Oregon Trail? I keep seeing it come up and wonder if it was truly that prevalent

John Pfaff reposted

Replying to @johnpfaff.bsky.social

Looking at these, you'd think a "crime is down, so prisons are down, so if crime is perm down, prisons will be too" story roughly fits the data. But here are the states that saw admits grow over 2010s. If it's all mechanistic, they should see rising crime. Tellingly, many have FALLING crime.

John Pfaff reposted

Been thinking a lot about the recent papers arguing that demographic trends in criminal behavior mean that we are likely entering a period of sustained prison pop declines. I think we may be heading for that too. But I think it is vital to note the role of politics here as well.

The decline in crime is real; the stunning drop in homicides post-Covid has gotten 0.1% the attention it deserves, and neither has the magnitude of the property crime decline we've seen over decades, or the violent crime drops. These drops create real POLITICAL opportunity, and we should seize it.

John Pfaff@johnpfaff.bsky.social

I feel like I should consolidate my concerns with the Gladwell policing piece into one place, after scattering them all over this site last night. So, first: Crime has fallen dramatically, to historic or near-historic lows, at current (and sometimes falling) policing. What ELSE has driven that?

But the drops alone are not enough, as a lot of states showed us over the 2010s. And as the 1990s and 2000s showed, we are more than willing to stay harsh as crime drops sharply. There are a lot of political actors. Politics played a big role in prison declines, and will in protecting those drops.

And while the "it's people serving decades in prison!" narrative is oversold, it is correct when it comes to distinctly serious violence, in particular homicide and attempted homicide (and some serious assaults and rape). And homicide and rape were 26% of all ppl in prison in 2019, ~30% in 2020.

But we already know that in a country with as many guns as ours, homicide can spike quickly (and decline quickly too). And the FEAR of homicide can spike even more quickly. NONE of which is to say that we should be pessimistic. But ALL of which is to say: this isn't mechanistic.

After all, violent crime has been falling since 1993 and prop crime for well before that, but prison rose for 15 years of that decline. The arg is that that decline reflected two things: people w longer initial records cycling through, and long-serving serious violence.

blogs.lse.ac.ukAmerican Prisons are not a Revolving Door: Most Released Offenders Never Return | LSE United States Politics and PolicyThe dominant narrative around recidivism in America is that most released offenders go on to reoffend and return to prison. In new research, William Rhodes argues that this impression is wrong and tha...

And ... yes. Those matter. But it's also the case that over the 2000s, at least, the median person who went to prison had, as far as our messy data can tell, one spell there. So a lot of churn is still possible absent political changes, even w falling crime rates.

In other words, in many of these states, rising incarceration is a policy choice, not just the mechanistic outcome of falling crime. Yes, if crime falls ENOUGH, it will be genuinely hard to keep sending people to prison. But the previous graph shows admits can rise even as crime falls.

We don't do a good job separating out felony and non-felony arrests in the data (for good and not-so-good reasons), but in 2008 we made 14M arrests, surely several million that were prison eligible. Even today, we still make over 10M arrests--we can still keep prisons full if we want.

But here's a clearer example. Between 2009 (pris peak), and 2019, the last yr before Covid, 28 states saw declines in annual admits, but 22 saw increases. Here are the trends in those that saw decreases: admits, vs. trends in index viol and property crimes. It looks ~mechanistic!

In other words, even if we are seeing a generational shift in criminal behavior, that is not a sufficient condition to end mass incarceration, tho it may be a necessary one. Here's one number to keep in mind: At prisons' peak in 2008, we admitted ~750K. We arrested 600K for index violence alone.

Does anyone know why state government revenue seems so much more sensitive to big economic shocks in the 2000s and beyond than before? Like 2001 and 2008 were bad, but bad things happened before that too. A change in the source of tax rev? Also interesting that locals are more robust.

Also was surprised at how negligible Covid's hit to govt revenue was. And how striking the post-Covid infusion of cash was. Also, to address the most likely explanation, I don't think the levelness of the local rev is driven all that much by counter-cyclical state IG transfers.

Looking at this ad, I have to ask: not just what IS "the 1980s font" (and you know which font I mean), but WHY was that The Font for so much advertising in the 1980s? It's strange for a FONT to make me feel like a kid again, but that one does it every time.

Discontinued FoOoOods! 👻🎃@discontinuedfoods.bsky.social

Touch of Butter (circa 1984-circa 2000): A vegetable oil spread from Kraft, made with "just a touch of real butter". The brand name and product were bought, sold, and re-tooled by several companies, through a series of acquisitions over the years before finally biting the dust around the millennium

John Pfaff reposted