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
    4 hours ago

    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."

    1 reply 3 retweets 21 likes
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  2. 4 hours ago

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

    8 likes
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  3. 4 hours ago

    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.

    2 replies 1 retweet 10 likes
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  4. 5 hours ago

    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.

    4 replies 1 retweet 8 likes
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  5. 5 hours ago

    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.

    Feinstein claims that in the '50s and '60s, 200K-1.2M women died from abortion; cites Guttmacher Institute. That's a ridiculous overestimate, off by a factor of at least 30 and probably more.
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    6 replies 13 retweets 30 likes
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  6. 5 hours ago

    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.

    So basically: Times reporters now must try to unearth the identity of an author that our colleagues in Opinion have sworn to protect with anonymity?
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    1 reply 4 retweets 9 likes
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  7. Retweeted
    5 hours ago
    Replying to

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

    2 retweets 5 likes
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  8. 5 hours ago

    I thought the same thing.

    Sounds like the author’s a Reason subscriber; the magazine’s tagline (“free minds, free markets”) crops up as a description of the Republican principles Trump has discarded.
    2 replies 4 retweets 17 likes
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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.

    48 replies 1,343 retweets 5,152 likes
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  10. 7 hours ago

    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.

    C-Span poll found a majority of Americans (52%) can't name a single sitting Supreme Court justice.
    5 replies 6 likes
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  11. 7 hours ago

    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.

    10 replies 4 retweets 34 likes
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  12. Retweeted
    23 hours ago

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

    1 reply 6 retweets 8 likes
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  13. Sep 4

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

    4 replies 24 likes
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  14. Retweeted
    Sep 4

    Great observation.

    On today's podcast, I argue that social media makes people feel as if they can't get away from speech that bothers them, and thereby increases demand for restrictions on speech:
    2 replies 5 retweets 10 likes
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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.

    Today I am being told by dozens of insistent Twitter geniuses that the Mexican-American granddaughter of Holocaust survivors was actually flashing Nazi white power symbols at the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings because of her arm posture. Our politics is stupid beyond repair.
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    8 replies 23 retweets 107 likes
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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.

    笑死我了... 有位台湾画师发现自己的作品被中国厂商做成文具在淘宝卖，不想跟卖家吵，于是自己跑去检举自己是台独，果然就秒下架了... 原po ->
    4 replies 87 retweets 215 likes
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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.

    Replying to @ebruenig
    Oh shit they’ve unleashed Hulk Liz
    59 replies 101 retweets 1,177 likes
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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?

    18 replies 36 retweets 295 likes
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  19. Retweeted
    Sep 4

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

    237 replies 3,858 retweets 16,177 likes
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  20. Retweeted
    Sep 4

    Attn

    When a university hires a Cheif Diversity Officer, it has no effect on diversity of faculty hired. New study
    1 retweet 1 like
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