At Amazon, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence.
Sunday, September 11, 2022
Californians Survive the Heatwave --- Barely
I was beginning to wonder when it was going to cool down. Phew, that was one hella heatwave. And Californians dodged a bullet, it turns out.
This article's from last week.
At the Los Angeles Times, "California averts widespread rolling blackouts as energy demands ease amid heat wave":
For nearly three hours Tuesday night, California officials warned of imminent rolling blackouts as the state’s electrical grid struggled to keep up with surging demand during a punishing heat wave. The Golden State avoided widespread outages, though three Northern California cities experienced brief losses of power. At 8 p.m., the California Independent System Operator downgraded its level 3 alert, the final step before calling for rolling blackouts, saying that “consumer conservation played a big part in protecting electric grid reliability.” There were “no load sheds for the night,” the grid operator said; however, Alameda, Palo Alto and Healdsburg officials said they implemented short “rotating outages.” In Alameda, municipal utility officials said at 6:20 p.m. that rotating outages were beginning. Power would be shut off to two circuits for one hour, according to Alameda Municipal Power. Just before 7:30 p.m., utility officials in the Bay Area city said the second hour of power interruptions had been called off. “No more rotating outages for tonight,” the utility said in a tweet. “Crews are working to get power restored to all customers shut off in the initial hour of outages.” City officials in Healdsburg confirmed outages around 6:30 p.m. “As directed by CAISO, rolling power outages to begin,” according to a Facebook post by the Sonoma County city. Outages lasting about an hour per zone would cycle through each block until the energy shortage is over, the city officials said. “Due to lower system loads, the need for rotating outages has ended,” city officials said at 8:10 p.m. Palo Alto officials said around 7 p.m. that they had been cleared to restore power to about 1,700 customers after outages to meet Cal ISO’s “load-shedding requirements.” “We did not order rotating outages,” Anne Gonzales, an ISO spokesperson, said in an email to The Times on Tuesday night. “We held at [Energy Emergency Alert] 3 with no load shed, and [the alert] ended at 8 p.m.” Gonzales did not respond to several requests for clarification by phone. Shortly after 7 p.m., Cal ISO noted that peak grid demand had hit 52,061 megawatts, “a new all-time record.” The alert did not affect Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers, as the utility operates its own grid and is separate from Cal ISO. “We’re not suspecting any blackouts due to energy shortages and are not a part of any rolling blackouts [Cal ISO] has planned,” said Mia Rose Wong, a spokesperson for the municipal utility. The DWP forecast Tuesday’s demand to be elevated but not enough to surpass available electrical generation and reserve capacity, Wong said. Nevertheless, the utility advised its customers to conserve power and follow the state grid regulator’s guidance, including setting thermostats to at least 78 degrees and not using large appliances. In addition to urging its customers to reduce energy use, the DWP makes excess power available to Cal ISO when available, Wong said, though it was not clear whether there was any excess power Tuesday night. The heat wave is now expected to last through Friday, but the worst of it could be over for the southern half of the state — even as temperatures remain dangerously high. For much of Northern California, the heat was expected to peak Tuesday, but temperatures are predicted to remain well above average through the week, according to the National Weather Service. By late Tuesday afternoon, the weather service confirmed that downtown Sacramento had set an all-time temperature record. A preliminary high of 115 degrees broke the previous record of 114 set on July 17, 1925, meteorologists said. About an hour later, officials reported that the temperature had topped out at 116. The state capital has seen a barrage of extremes over the last year, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and California climate fellow at the Nature Conservancy, said in a tweet Tuesday evening. “First its longest dry spell on record, which ended with wettest day on record, followed by driest start to a calendar year on record, now followed by its hottest day on record,” Swain wrote. In Hanford, the weather service office stated that as of 3 p.m., “all major weather reporting airports in the San Joaquin Valley have set daily record temperatures.” Four cities in the Bay Area broke maximum temperature records tallied on any day of the year, according to the weather service. San Jose’s temperature of 109 Tuesday beat the previous all-time high of 108, set Sept. 1, 2017. Santa Rosa’s high of 115 broke the high of 113 set in 1913; Napa’s 114 broke the record of 113 set in 1961; and King City in Monterey County hit 116, breaking the record of 115 set in 2017. Redwood City in San Mateo County hit 110, tying the record set in 1972...
Policies Pushing Electric Vehicles Show Why Few People Want One
From Bjorn Lomborg, at the Wall Street Journal, "They wouldn’t need huge subsidies to sell if they really were a good choice, and consumers know that":
We constantly hear that electric cars are the future—cleaner, cheaper and better. But if they’re so good, why does California need to ban gasoline-powered cars? Why does the world spend $30 billion a year subsidizing electric ones? In reality, electric cars are only sometimes and somewhat better than the alternatives, they’re often much costlier, and they aren’t necessarily all that much cleaner. Over its lifetime, an electric car does emit less CO2 than a gasoline car, but the difference can range considerably depending on how the electricity is generated. Making batteries for electric cars also requires a massive amount of energy, mostly from burning coal in China. Add it all up and the International Energy Agency estimates that an electric car emits a little less than half as much CO2 as a gasoline-powered one. The climate effect of our electric-car efforts in the 2020s will be trivial. If every country achieved its stated ambitious electric-vehicle targets by 2030, the world would save 231 million tons of CO2 emissions. Plugging these savings into the standard United Nations Climate Panel model, that comes to a reduction of 0.0002 degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century. Electric cars’ impact on air pollution isn’t as straightforward as you might think. The vehicles themselves pollute only slightly less than a gasoline car because their massive batteries and consequent weight leads to more particulate pollution from greater wear on brakes, tires and roads. On top of that, the additional electricity they require can throw up large amounts of air pollution depending on how it’s generated. One recent study found that electric cars put out more of the most dangerous particulate air pollution than gasoline-powered cars in 70% of U.S. states. An American Economic Association study found that rather than lowering air pollution, on average each additional electric car in the U.S. causes additional air-pollution damage worth $1,100 over its lifetime. The minerals required for those batteries also present an ethical problem, as many are mined in areas with dismal human-rights records. Most cobalt, for instance, is dug out in Congo, where child labor is not uncommon, specifically in mining. There are security risks too, given that mineral processing is concentrated in China. Increased demand for already-prized minerals is likely to drive up the price of electric cars significantly. The International Energy Agency projects that if electric cars became as prevalent as they would have to be for the world to reach net zero by 2050, the annual total demand for lithium for automobile batteries alone that year would be almost 28 times as much as current annual global lithium production. The material prices for batteries this year are more than three times what they were in 2021, and electricity isn’t getting cheaper either. Even if rising costs weren’t an issue, electric cars wouldn’t be much of a bargain. Proponents argue that though they’re more expensive to purchase, electric cars are cheaper to drive. But a new report from a U.S. Energy Department laboratory found that even in 2025 the agency’s default electric car’s total lifetime cost will be 9% higher than a gasoline car’s, and the study relied on the very generous assumption that electric cars are driven as much as regular ones. In reality, electric cars are driven less than half as much, which means they’re much costlier per mile.... Electric vehicles will take over the market only if innovation makes them actually better and cheaper than gasoline-powered cars. Politicians are spending hundreds of billions of dollars and keeping consumers from the cars they want for virtually no climate benefit.
Don't Try This at Home
Unbelievably wild.
And it's a Hoonigan.
WoW so good! 👌 pic.twitter.com/wRtQGGOqn3
— Figen (@_TheFigen) September 10, 2022
Saturday, September 10, 2022
King Charles III Formally Proclaimed U.K. Monarch With Pomp and Ceremony (VIDEO)
At the Wall Street Journal, "Ancient ceremony was first to be televised, draw together all living former prime ministers":
LONDON—King Charles III was officially proclaimed monarch during a historic televised Accession Council ceremony on Saturday, as Britain’s new king undertook the first formalities of his reign while still grieving for his late mother. For the first time, live television images were beamed from the throne room in St. James’s Palace as King Charles oversaw his first Privy Council meeting. For nearly all Britons, it was the first time they had seen the ceremony, giving them a glimpse at time-honored rituals that have ushered in kings and queens over the centuries. LONDON—King Charles III was officially proclaimed monarch during a historic televised Accession Council ceremony on Saturday, as Britain’s new king undertook the first formalities of his reign while still grieving for his late mother. For the first time, live television images were beamed from the throne room in St. James’s Palace as King Charles oversaw his first Privy Council meeting. For nearly all Britons, it was the first time they had seen the ceremony, giving them a glimpse at time-honored rituals that have ushered in kings and queens over the centuries. The last time the accession ceremony took place was when Queen Elizabeth II acceded the throne in 1952, before televisions were common. The last prime minister to witness such a ceremony was Winston Churchill. Large crowds gathered around the palace, first built by King Henry VIII, to catch a glimpse of history in the making. Charles became king the moment his 96-year-old mother died so the proclamation of his role as monarch is now a largely ceremonial process. Historically, however, it was a way of formally announcing the new monarch to the nation before the era of mass media. “It is my most sorrowful duty to announce the death of my beloved mother, the Queen,” said King Charles, dressed in tails and standing before a red-velvet throne inscribed with the late Queen Elizabeth’s insignia “ER.” “My mother’s reign was unequaled,” he said. “I shall strive to follow the inspiring example I have been set.” More than a hundred privy councilors, including all living former prime ministers, watched on as King Charles signed an oath to guarantee the security of the Church of Scotland and declared the day of his mother’s funeral a national holiday. He was also flanked by his son and heir apparent, William, now the Prince of Wales. The Privy Council advises the monarch and is mainly made up of current and former British politicians. Later in the day, the king’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, emerged together with their wives outside Windsor Castle to view a sea of flowers placed at the castle gates, and then greeted and chatted with well-wishers. It was a moment of unity after years of tension sparked by Harry’s and his wife’s, actor Megan Markle, decision to quit royal duties in 2020 to build a new life in the U.S. Prince Harry has a tell-all book about his life as a royal coming out soon. That, combined with allegations by the Duchess of Sussex of racism in royal ranks, has strained relations between the two brothers, officials say. All four, the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, spent more than half an hour meeting visitors, shaking hands, accepting condolences and occasionally smiling. Prince William issued his first statement since the death of his grandmother, praising her life of service. The prince, now the heir apparent to the throne, said that while he had lost a grandmother, he felt grateful he and his family got to spend so much time with her. “She was by my side at my happiest moments. And she was by my side during the saddest days of my life. I knew this day would come, but it will be some time before the reality of life without Grannie will truly feel real,” he said. An Accession Council is usually called within 24 hours of the death of a British monarch and is customarily held at St. James’s Palace, which was the residence to British monarchs for 300 years up until Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837. After the Privy Council meeting, the state trumpeters of the household cavalry gathered on the balcony of the redbrick palace to herald the new monarch. Then the Garter King of Arms announced the new monarch to the waiting crowds “with one voice and consent of tongue.” “God save the king!” shouted the crowd in unison in response to the proclamation, before singing the national anthem. “Three cheers for his majesty the king!” said the Garter King of Arms, to which the King’s Guard soldiers took off their bearskin hats and replied, “Hip, hip, hurrah!” The announcement was followed by a flurry of proclamations across the country, including in the city of London, and gun salutes at the Tower of London and Hyde Park. Senior government ministers will gather in parliament to swear an oath of allegiance to the new king. At noon, Britons clogged into the streets around the historic Royal Exchange building in the center of London’s financial district, holding phones in the air to capture the pomp and pageantry. A procession of guards clutching weapons of centuries past—pikemen, musketeers, and the royal guards, wearing the classic red uniforms and tall bearskin caps—preceded a reading of the proclamation that declared Charles the new king. Debbie Harris and her daughter Lucy, 14, traveled in from Essex with a pair of friends. They planned to head over to Buckingham Palace, where they would lay a bouquet of flowers for the queen. “I thought it’d be nice for her to come down to experience it,” she said. Ms. Harris showed off a photo that hangs on her wall at home—her with her arm around a wax replica of the queen at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. “My father used to always buy the commemorative mugs and plates and everything as a family,” she said. Later in the afternoon, the king met with Prime Minister Liz Truss and her cabinet, as well as leaders of the opposition political parties. Televised footage of those meetings were to be made public too, in a further sign of the king’s desire to make this process of transition accessible. With the king now formally installed, the focus will turn to the burial of Queen Elizabeth. The queen’s coffin will in the coming days depart her Scottish residence in Balmoral where she died to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh—the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland. The queen’s body will then go to St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, where the queen will lie at rest, allowing the public to view her coffin. From there it will be flown to London, where the coffin again will be put on display for the public to view before a state funeral at Westminster Abbey. She will be buried next to her late husband, Prince Philip, at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle...
Friday, September 9, 2022
In Conversations, Many Young Britons in London Called the Monarchy Increasingly Irrelevant
By now, if you're even remotely attached to the news cycle, you heard word of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.
I am a fan of the monarchy, and while no expert, I always teach the British case in my comparative politics courses each semester, and discussion of the history, role, and importance of the monarchy is a great part of that. So, though I'm a little late, expect a good number of posts on events happening in the U.K. over the next couple of weeks. This really is an end of an era.
The Queen's obituary is here, "Queen Elizabeth II Dies at 96; Was Britain’s Longest-Reigning Monarch," and "Queen Elizabeth II obituary.
In related news, Britain's young people are apparently over the monarchy, because racism.
At the New York Times, "In London, Mourning, Remembrance and Tributes. And Some Shrugs."Though mourning and grief were visible in Britain’s capital on Friday, some young Britons were more muted in their reaction to an institution that many called increasingly irrelevant. LONDON — Gertrude Dudley remembers sitting on her grandfather’s shoulders in 1953 at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, a monarch she came to know as “the fabric of Britain.” On Friday, Ms. Dudley, 78, a retired entrepreneur, was mourning the queen’s death along with a friend at a London cafe. “This country is in such terrible state, she was the one stability,” Ms Dudley said. “Now she, too, has gone.” Chrissy Mash, 29, who was shopping for groceries in London’s Islington borough, had a much different reaction, though. “I am surprised by how unaffected I am,” she said. “The monarchy does not serve any purpose and if it does it is superseded by the damage of colonialism,” she said. “I don’t buy into the fanfare anymore, it’s an excruciating display of a violent past.” Signs of mourning and grief were on display in Britain’s capital on Friday as residents woke up for the first time in 70 years in a country in which Queen Elizabeth was no longer the monarch. Billboards and cinemas in the city’s main thoroughfares displayed tributes, events were canceled, and small talk about the queen kicked off first dates and business meetings. But while the death of Elizabeth was a unifying force for many, conversations with Londoners also revealed signs of a generational divide in which many younger people expressed indifference, if not hostility, to the complicated institution the queen represented. According to a YouGov poll taken in May, 74 percent of respondents 65 and older believe the monarchy is good for Britain, compared with 24 percent of 18-to-24 year olds. Some younger people expressed fatigue at yet another royal disruption after two years of many crises — including the coronavirus or the war in Ukraine. Others shared amused jokes about how the queen’s last public action was to appoint the Conservative Party leader, Liz Truss, as prime minister this week. Signs of mourning and grief were on display in Britain’s capital on Friday as residents woke up for the first time in 70 years in a country in which Queen Elizabeth was no longer the monarch. Billboards and cinemas in the city’s main thoroughfares displayed tributes, events were canceled, and small talk about the queen kicked off first dates and business meetings. But while the death of Elizabeth was a unifying force for many, conversations with Londoners also revealed signs of a generational divide in which many younger people expressed indifference, if not hostility, to the complicated institution the queen represented. According to a YouGov poll taken in May, 74 percent of respondents 65 and older believe the monarchy is good for Britain, compared with 24 percent of 18-to-24 year olds. Some younger people expressed fatigue at yet another royal disruption after two years of many crises — including the coronavirus or the war in Ukraine. Others shared amused jokes about how the queen’s last public action was to appoint the Conservative Party leader, Liz Truss, as prime minister this week. Many people from older generations could be seen wearing black as a sign of mourning, or rushing to buy newspapers dominated by the monarch’s picture, and some recalled memories of a queen who has been for so long part of their lives. Sitting in front of a candlelit photo of Elizabeth in London’s St James’ Church, Angela Kennedy, 71, a retired fashion journalist, said she struggled to cope with the loss of the queen, whom she had met and long admired. “It’s very hard to take it in,” she said. “It’s truly the end of an era.” Ms. Kennedy recalled how the queen had visited the media organization she worked for in the late 1970s. She said that while Elizabeth appeared more interested in magazines like Horse and Hound than fashion publications, she still gave the staff her time, looking “immaculate” for the visit. “She represented a figurehead that was truly British,” she said, adding that she felt fortunate to live in a country with a monarchy like Britain’s. “I have just grown up with it, it’s just part of my life.” Sitting in front of a candlelit photo of Elizabeth in London’s St James’ Church, Angela Kennedy, 71, a retired fashion journalist, said she struggled to cope with the loss of the queen, whom she had met and long admired. “It’s very hard to take it in,” she said. “It’s truly the end of an era.” Ms. Kennedy recalled how the queen had visited the media organization she worked for in the late 1970s. She said that while Elizabeth appeared more interested in magazines like Horse and Hound than fashion publications, she still gave the staff her time, looking “immaculate” for the visit. “She represented a figurehead that was truly British,” she said, adding that she felt fortunate to live in a country with a monarchy like Britain’s. “I have just grown up with it, it’s just part of my life.” That sentiment will likely be expressed at memorials being held for Elizabeth over the next 10 days, culminating in a funeral expected to take place at Westminster Abbey. Outside St. Paul’s Cathedral on Friday, crowds gathered as a bell rang out at midday, once for each of Elizabeth’s 96 years, as they did at churches across the country. At the gates of Buckingham Palace, people laid flowers — among them the newly ascended King Charles III — and gun salutes honored the queen’s life. Fashion shows were canceled, as were labor union meetings, carnivals and protests. Elizabeth Hastings, 69, who was named after the queen, was holding a newspaper with a picture of the monarch plastered across the front page as she walked to a yoga class. “I was born in 1953, the year of the coronation,” she said, “I have been brought up with her reigning and I have read so much about her growing up,” she said. Ms. Hastings said she met the queen in the 1970s when she worked at the foreign office in London, and she remembered her beautiful skin. “Like a doll,” she said admiringly. “It’s a really sad day,” she added. Dave Stanley, 78, a retired butcher, was walking his German shepherd in London in between the rain showers that intermittently washed over the capital on Friday. “I am choked,” he said. “I was a kid when she was crowned; now she is dead. It’s an end of an era. I can’t explain it. I have known her all my life. And now she’s gone.” Felix Clarke, 31, a manager at a coworking space in central London, stood at his counter seemingly unaffected by the news of the queen’s death. e said that while every death was sad, he saw the royal family as an institution “founded on a colonial and racist past.” Earlier in the day, his mother and sister had shared their sadness with texts on their family’s WhatsApp group, but Mr. Clarke refrained from adding his own thoughts. “I didn’t want to jump in and be rude,” he said...
Wednesday, September 7, 2022
Michael Shellenbarger
Take Liz's advice:
Read every word of this thread to understand exactly how the leftist politicians like Newsom are lying to you about the CA heat wave & electric vehicles. https://t.co/ncw0xZizbk
— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) September 7, 2022
The Honest Guide to College
It's Lee Burdette Williams, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "College students' mental health is suffering. Downplaying challenges of living away from home for the first time won’t make it any better":
About three million first-time college students will soon be arriving on campus—most of them coming directly from high school. About one million of them won’t make it through their first year or return as sophomores. This attrition is financially and emotionally devastating for families, and destabilizing for colleges. What goes wrong for so many students? And how can we stop the bleeding? Financial challenges account for the largest chunk of these departures. But many others leave because the support services they and their parents feel they have been promised are often impossible for colleges and universities to provide. The number of students with mental health challenges has been rising for years—around 44 percent of all college students report symptoms of depression and anxiety. The rate of students taking psychiatric medication doubled between 2007 and 2019, and is now at 25 percent. But what concerns my colleagues and me is the growing expectation among parents and students that college administrators are there not to guide young people, whatever their challenges, in mastering the tasks of adulthood, but to spare young people from them. There are only about nine weeks between high school graduation and a student’s arrival on campus. That is very little time to prepare a teenager for the necessary shift from life under a parent’s management to (semi-) independent living. In as little as four weeks after classes begin, a first-year student who is unable to make that transition can end up unable to recover academically. I have spent my career working with college students from enrollment through commencement. As a dean of students—at the University of Connecticut, and later at Wheaton College—I talked with numerous parents who were startled to discover that their child had not been attending class, had not been turning in assignments, maybe hadn’t bathed in days. The parents had expected more supervision; we had expected more personal accountability. Caught in that gap was a student about to lose a semester of academic credit and thousands of dollars of wasted tuition and housing fees, often covered by loans that still had to be paid back. Here is my advice for students and their parents—as well as my colleagues in higher education—on ways to help make sure students are ready for college...
As California Heat Wave Continues, Santa Monica Community College Loses Air Conditioning (VIDEO)
I've been teaching this week and it's been perfectly comfortable in my classroom. But there but the grace of God I go, it turns out.
This heat wave is devilish. It's not just Santa Monica, of course.
At the Los Angeles Times, "PG&E warns over 500,000 customers of possible rotating outages as California heat wave drags on."
And at CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
Eliza Fletcher Murder: Memphis Kidnapping Suspect Cleotha Abston Held Without Bond (VIDEO)
This is a must-watched segment with Tucker Carson below.
An at Fox News, "Eliza Fletcher was jogging in the early morning when she was abducted. Memphis police announce they have located and positively identified Eliza Fletcher's body."
Monday, September 5, 2022
Bryan Caplan, The Case against Education
This is excellent.
At Amazon, Bryan Caplan, The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money.
How Many Books Actually Sell?
See Lincoln Michael, "No, Most Books Don't Sell Only a Dozen Copies: A little post on why publishing statistics are so confusing":
OMG In the Penguin Random House/S&S antitrust trial it was revealed that out of 58,000 trade titles published per year, half of those titles sell fewer than one dozen books. LESS THAN ONE DOZEN.
— April Henry (@aprilhenrybooks) September 4, 2022
One thing the PRH/SS merger trial revealed is that publishing has a lot of problems. This is very true! At the same time, many of the problems seem to have mutated into unbelievable chimeras as they made their way around the discourse. Today, for example, much of the literary internet was debating a claim that 50% of books published sell fewer than 12 books. This claim took off with the usual suspects—conservative pundits claiming publishing is too “woke” and self-publishing evangelicals saying every author would make a fortune if they ditched traditional publishing—but the publishing professionals I know said this claim is very fishy. (I’m pretty sure publishers would go out of business if 50% of their books sold less than 12 copies!) So this statistic isn’t true. Or at least it isn’t true in the way you might think. But publishing statistics are often not what you think. This extreme 12 copies claim joins a couple others that have gone around the internet recently: “98 percent of books sell fewer than 5,000 copies.” “90 percent sell fewer than 2,000 copies” “Most books sell fewer than 99 copies.” Etc. Are all of these true? None of them? Part of the problem with evaluating claims of “most published books sell [X] copies” is that it—[apologies for the Derrida voice]—it all depends on what you mean by “book,” “published,” and “sell.” No, I’m not playing postmodern games here. It really is confusing. What’s “a book”? The Platonic ideal of a book might be a collection of text printed on a few hundred paper pages. But the term encompasses much more than that, including books that have almost no text at all (for example the “adult coloring book” craze of the 2010s). Publishers publish novels and memoirs as well as cookbooks, puzzle books, Mad Libs, etc. But it’s even more confusing than this when it comes to those statistics. Last year, Orbit published my debut novel The Body Scout. I wrote one novel, so published one book. Right? Not exactly. From a sales tracking perspective, books are published in multiple formats, each with different ISBNs. I wrote one novel, but from a title count POV I actually published 4 books: hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook. Other books have even more formats (mass market version, movie tie-in editions, etc.) and because they all have different ISBNs, they all have different sales figures. When it comes to classics that are in the public domain, like Pride and Prejudice or Shakespeare, there can be literally hundreds of editions in existence (put out by various publishers) each of which could be counted separately. What’s “published”? A published book can refer to a newly written and released book—aka frontlist, or a novel published for the first time in 2022—or it can refer to anything a publisher puts out in a given year, including a reissue of an existing book. But sometimes “published” means any book that exists in any format available for purchase. A hundred-year-old novel that no longer can be found bookstore shelves yet sits in cardboard box in the back of a warehouse somewhere is “a published book.” Some books are never published in print at all and exist only as ebooks and/or audiobooks. And many books exist in “print on demand” form in which a physical copy doesn’t exist until someone purchases it. In the old days, books would go out of print when people stopped buying them. But in the modern digital age books can exist “in print” for forever. It’s also worth pointing out here that publishers range from tiny micropresses run as a hobby in someone’s garage to multi-billion dollar companies. If you’re counting books by ISBNs, this would also include many self-published books. What’s “a sale”? When people reference book sales, they’re typically talking using Nielsen’s BookScan numbers. Think of BookScan as the book industry version of Nielsen TV ratings. Briefly, BookScan is a “point of sale” tracking system that counts the number of print copies sold at participating retail locations. BookScan allegedly tracks about 75% of retail sales including lots of indie bookstores as well as Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Walmart. It’s a fine tool for what it is, but from a data perspective it’s only partial. I already mentioned the issue with multiple formats above. BookScan also only tracks print so doesn’t include audiobooks or ebooks. (There is a Nielsen ebook estimator, but it’s rarely included in these statistics. And ebook sales are tricky since prices fluctuate wildly.) Even restricting ourselves to print books, BookScan misses plenty. Sales to libraries, for example, can be a significant portion of a book’s sales. Many small press and self-published authors might sell directly via an author’s website or in-person events. And so on. Additionally, there are dramatic differences between 1) lifetime sales, 2) sales in the first 12 months after publication, and 3) sales in any random calendar year. Most books sell most of their copies in the first year or two after publication. Some books are perennial sellers and others might break out later—e.g., when there is a TV or film adaptation—but most sell the bulk of their copies early. Any statistic based on 3) is going to give you a completely inaccurate impression of what a book has sold. Imagine a 1998 novel that sold 6,000 its first year and 10,000 copies to date. It might sell only 12 copies in 2022, decades later, but that hardly means it was a failure. Okay, so what does all the above mean? Mostly it means these statistics are completely meaningless unless we know what’s being included. Are you counting lifetime sales or one year’s sales? One year’s sales for frontlist titles or backlist titles? Only Big 5 books or anything with an ISBN? Take the statistic that most published books only sell 99 copies. This seems shocking on its face. But if you dig into it, you’ll notice it was counting one year’s sales of all books that were in BookScan’s system. That’s quite different statistic than saying most books don’t sell 100 copies in total! A book could easily be a bestseller in, say, 1960 and sell only a trickle of copies today. In the same way, most old movies and albums aren’t frequently watched/listened to in 2022. It’s only a small percentage of past works that remain popular. Most backlist books selling fewer than 99 copies doesn’t tell you anything about how much newly released books sell. (If you’re wondering—as people did on Twitter—why publishers keep books in print that don’t sell, remember that a book being in print doesn’t mean a publisher is actively spending lots of money on the title. It doesn’t break the bank to keep one box in the corner of a warehouse. And as I noted above a book can be “in print” these days and exist only in a digital form or awaiting “print on demand.”) In terms of the dozen copies statistic, I can’t evaluate it because it is unclear what it’s referring to. Fifty-eight thousand books is more books than PRH publishes in a given year, but far less than their entire backlist. Is 58k all new books published with an ISBN, including self-published books? Is it something else? I really don’t know and none of the publishing professionals I follow seem to know either. (Editing to add: Jane Friedman, who posted this number originally on Instagram, noted there was no source given in testimony. Friedman gives her own guess in the comments.) In my experience, and with the data I’ve seen, most traditionally published novels that you see on bookstore shelves or reviewed in newspapers sell several hundred to a few thousand copies across formats. Many sell much more of course. I’ve seen some flops that sold only a couple hundred. And of course not all traditionally published novels appear in bookstores or reviewed in newspapers. Is it possible someone has published a Big 5 novel that sold only 12 copies over its lifetime? I suppose. But I don’t think it’s 5% much less 50%! ...
Still more.
Father Leaves Baby Kyler Parrott, 1-Year-Old, in Hot Car, Where Temperatures Inside the Vehicle Likely Hit 130 Degrees (VIDEO)
This makes me cry.
Baby Kyler's obituary is here.
At ABC News 5 Cleveland, "Father, 19, charged with murder after allegedly confessing to leaving 1-year-old son in hot car deliberately."
And at the New York Post, "Ohio dad, 19, admits he left his infant son to die in 130-degree car":An Ohio dad reportedly confessed to leaving his baby son to die in a blazing-hot car as outside temperatures soared, after initially claiming the 14-month-old was alone just briefly. Landon Parrott, 19 — who first said he’d left the infant alone during a short bathroom trip — allegedly copped to the heinous move after cops showed footage of him leaving the boy in the car at 8:30 a.m. and not returning until 1:50 p.m., more than five hours later. “The child passed away after being left in the car unattended for approximately 5 hours, with an outside temperature of 87 degrees,” New Philadelphia Police Chief Michael Goodwin said in a statement posted on Facebook. “It appears that this was not a matter of forgetting the child but was a deliberate act so as the child would not be a disturbance while in the house.” Temperatures reached into the upper 80s on Thursday when the incident occurred. Police official Ty Norris told Fox affiliate WJW the car was likely as hot as 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Norris said Parrott had admitted to cops he knew about the dangers of hot cars for kids. “We estimate that would’ve made the interior of the car about 130 degrees and this child was in there strapped into a car seat with no fluids, no air conditioning, nothing,” Norris told the station. “It’s heartbreaking to see this unfold before your eyes.” Parrott has been charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter and two counts of endangering children, police said. He is being held in custody on $250,000 bond...
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