Megan McArdleVerified account

@asymmetricinfo

Columnist at the Washington Post. Opinions my own. Email me: Megan.McArdle -at- Buy my book, The Up Side of Down

Washington, DC
Joined September 2008

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  1. Retweeted

    I know you're all searching for administration officials who have used the word "lodestar." But I think you're overlooking the real clue, which was when the writer called Trump "our Smurfity Smurf in chief."

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  2. Maternal mortality plummeted in the mid-20th c because of blood transfusions and antibiotics. These things also made abortions much safer.

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  3. To be clear, back-alley abortions, performed in highly non-optimal circumstances, were more risky than getting a D&C in a hospital of the era. But a substantial portion of the deaths were the result of inability to treat infection.

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  4. It's true that there used to be high numbers of people dying from abortion complications--1,000 or so a year. Those figures date from the era before the invention of antibiotics, when any sort of surgery carried a high risk of dying from concomitant infection.

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  5. She accidentally confused the annual number of abortions and the number of people who died from complications. Actual number of people estimated to have died of abortion complications in 1970: ca 40. Unlikely that 50's & 60's annual numbers were orders of magnitude larger.

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  6. Interesting question, since it's hard to imagine that other people who talk to the Times wouldn't treat this as an institutional decision to burn a source. Which is apt to make it hard to get new people to talk to your reporters, especially younger ones.

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  7. Retweeted
    5 hours ago
    Replying to

    Fortunately, the government would never ask Reason for a subscriber list.

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  9. Retweeted
    Sep 4

    Doors closed 2.5 hours ago. We are, as ever, staying late. There have been reports of a thesaurus leak, and we are worried, bothered, concerned, apprehensive, fraught, fretful and nervous about it. You never know when it may strike. Or transpire. Be vigilant. And wary.

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  10. Yet judging from the frequency with which the stream times out, C-Span's servers are overwhelmed by the public interest in the Kavanaugh hearing.

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  11. If nothing else, the Kavanaugh hearings are an interesting education in how much less rousing protest chants sound when they're delivered by a single person rather than a large crowd.

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  12. Retweeted

    From : Why the New Yorker’s concerns about normalizing Steve Bannon miss the point

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  13. Sep 4

    The evening after I file a print column is like one long exhale.

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  14. Retweeted
    Sep 4
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  15. Sep 4

    In a hundred years, when people ask why Americans have a taboo on ever letting the tips of their index finger and thumb touch, there will be dozens of urban legends to explain it, and only pedants will know which theory is correct.

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  16. Retweeted
    Sep 4

    This is a super wild story that I'm a bit late to: a Taiwanese painter saw his work being sold on Taobao without permission. He realizes arguing's no use, so he instead says he's pro-Taiwanese independence from China. The Taobao shop quickly stops selling his art and he wins.

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  17. Retweeted
    Sep 4

    The way the Church is handling (or non-handling) this crisis is tantamount to spiritual murder. People are losing their faith over it. I know, I get the letters and emails you all send me. I take them with me when I report and I read them aloud to Church officials.

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  18. Retweeted
    Sep 3

    Under what model of the world is The New Yorker the institution with the uncertainty about the demand curve for Steve Bannon?

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  19. Retweeted
    Sep 4

    Man, this new Bob Woodward book is going to be *wild*.

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  20. Retweeted
    Sep 4
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