The long (and short) arm of the law

Good Tuesday. National Night Out, which would have been tonight, is postponed until October 6.

Is Congress broken? There doesn’t seem to be any political reward for consensus and compromise. And it’s showing.

Homicides are up significantly in many big cities, according to the Wall Street Journal. Boston isn’t mentioned in the story but we’re up as well. Are the spikes related to the pandemic and protests or is it just the normal socioeconomic factors that tend to drive crime? That’s the question. In Minneapolis, residents are finding they can’t live with the police and they can’t live without them. That’s also the case in Springfield. The Massachusetts police reform bill is in a conference committee on Beacon Hill. Those are always slow going but in this case that’s sensible. And Chuck Lovell, the police chief in Portland, speaks out about what his department has had to deal with during the protests. It wasn’t pretty. Nor was it productive.

The still-closed MFA is laying off workers. 100 jobs have been cut so far.

Update your priors! This is a great article on the basics of Bayesian analysis from Siobhan Roberts. It’s useful for assessing coronavirus models but also for everyday life.

And it’s official: we boomers are idiots.

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