The takeaway: you can still buy the quality you used to, you just need to pay the inflation-adjusted price of what it "used to" cost (eg, something that was $30 would now be $100, and the $100 thing will be as good as the old one). However, there are now cheaper options, which *are* lower quality.

Hannibal: I'm gonna cross the Alps lol Hannibal's Guy In Charge of Packing Elephant Feed: dude it is 5:06 on a Friday you can't be dropping this on my desk are you fucking for real I have been asking what we're doing with the elephants for WEEKS and you just said "oh probably the usual" EACH TIME

"[A]s freeing as gravel is, I think it’s just a gateway to the off-road experience. Mountain biking demands a different mindset, but it rewards you in spades. It can transform how you see the bike, sharpen your skills, and open up a world of adventure far beyond the usual loops." GIFT LINK #bikesky

Junk fees on tolls on rental cars need to end. At the very least, states like New York should be advancing bills to ban it on a local level. This never should've been legal to begin with.

There’s a Stairway to Heaven, but a Highway to Hell. This implies Heaven is a walkable community, and Hell is a congested interstate.

One thing I love is obsolete technology being encoded in our language. Words like “footage” and “rewind” and “dial (as a phone)” that literally describe a physicality that doesn’t exist anymore, yet lingers linguistically. Anybody have any other examples?

To engage in that most cliche of activities, quoting Churchill: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Increasingly convinced a lot of people on here need to get outside more. Mountain bike, hike, run, whatever. Do something where you can't check your phone for several hours. The only "A.I." I was paying attention to this morning was A(scending an) I(ncline) - hitting 946W on a tech-y climb.

"More than anything else, New York’s edge comes from its unmatched ability to attract top talent from around the world. The real risk to its prosperity isn’t capital flight; it’s the sky-high cost of living that is eroding the city’s ability to attract and retain that talent."

Increasingly convinced a lot of people on here need to get outside more. Mountain bike, hike, run, whatever. Do something where you can't check your phone for several hours. The only "A.I." I was paying attention to this morning was A(scending an) I(ncline) - hitting 946W on a tech-y climb.

The Wire seasons, ranked: 3, 2 1 4 ... ... ... ... ... ... 5 (and even then, only if you skip the newspaper stuff).

A good day to go mountain biking #bikesky

If you could introduce Marx to FRED and Excel, he'd be so happy.

My theory is lots of people are introduced to Marx through a lit-crit background, so they learn the jargon, but don't learn of the data/analysis. Marx's data was crude (it was the 1870s), but the reason he called his theory "scientific" is explicitly because he tried to measure economic output.

Big Chungus has lasted almost 20 times longer than the Confederacy

also, these "WAR" values (a) are derived from a statistical model that produces ideologically convenient results that no other open-source model replicates, (b) lack controls for important factors like fundraising and candidate experience, and (c) completely ignore uncertainty in the data. not good!

One of the things THE CROW (1994) really captured well was that in the early 90s, Rust Belt cities (Detroit in the movie) were collapsing. Maybe not to the extent in the movie, but a lot of these cities were full of neighborhoods where you didn’t want to be outside after dark.

In the late 1980s & early 90s Syd Mead released a series of calendars featuring his work. These are some of the images from the 1989, 1991 & 1992 Syd Mead Oblagon Calendars

An old man, deeo in the bowels of the Pentagon, is reaching for a dusty binder, his eyes twinkling. It's been his life's work, and now, he'll get to see it to fruition.

Politically, is there anyone who had a better year than Hochul?

My theory is lots of people are introduced to Marx through a lit-crit background, so they learn the jargon, but don't learn of the data/analysis. Marx's data was crude (it was the 1870s), but the reason he called his theory "scientific" is explicitly because he tried to measure economic output.

I don't even see the questions now.

Look, when @sodrock.bsky.social and I are making fart noises at people talking about German technological prowess in WW2, there's a reason for that!

"About 1.1 million rides are taken every day on NYC buses. It’s the equivalent to the entire population of Boston commuting to and from work every day on the bus."

I feel like every "supercar" looks basically the same now. I suspect two reasons: 1) practical - if you want to optimize for aerodynamics at 140+mph, there are real design limitations, and 2) lack of imagination - everyone's copying each other, the same thing that happened w/crossovers.

Chomsky was a hero to most but her never meant shit to me Saw the pictures of him on the plane Motherfuck him and David Blaine

Gangs of New York (2002)

It's like when everything was named after Sesame Street characters! ELMo, BERT, etc

This is. 391rd Street. Transfer for the ①, ℚ , Ϣ, and ₷ trains. The elevator is a hermeneutic circle at the center of the platform. MTA staff are available to converse allusively in Sanskrit. This an. Inaccessible. Station.

"if I had a dime for every unhinged left-NIMBY named Kate W.," &c., &c.

"Low-rank Covariate Balancing Estimators under Interference" Always neat to see CBPS in the wild arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2512.13944 #statssky #causalsky

"And then we downloaded the video to watch on our IPod Classics!"

We're just re-doing the early 2010s every day: www.huffpost.com/entry/at-gri...

At the risk of hugging the third rail, the truth of the academic job market, at least in history or classics, is neither DEI or anti-DEI. It is that that 1) there are no jobs and 2) our hiring culture treats candidates like they 'spoil' after a few years. No one knows who is mediocre or not.

There are cat (catastrophe) bonds, which serve as insurance against disaster (basically). There should be bonds tied to political risk; you could call them "destruction of government" bonds, or... ... ... ... ... ... DOG bonds 😎

The @dropkickmurphys.com have The Only Good Christmas Song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTx-...

It's wild how congestion pricing 1) survived the Trump administration's onslaught, 2) was one of the first victories against Trump, 3) which revitalized Kathy Hochul's political fortunes after a disastrous 2024, and 4) Trump's initial response inspired the #nokings rallies.

the promise of america is that you can come to america, become an america, and also keep the stuff you love about your identity. america will welcome you in not just physically but culturally: your food, your music, your holidays, your friends and family too you will change america--for the better

I say this without rancor: when I was in grad school, there was a massive difference between the advice you got from profs who were on the job market before vs after the Recession

We're doing the final sprint, and I think we're able to send the PDF of the forthcoming Bayesian Workflow book to the publisher in the next two weeks (500+ pages), which would mean it would be published some time next year

“Mixed tape?!?” Is this a Britishism for “mixtape?”

NYC block lengths, V3 Now accounting for streets cutting through blocks, e.g. Broadway in Manhattan.

Just a brilliantly funny scene: "These go to 11"

The @dropkickmurphys.com have The Only Good Christmas Song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTx-...

The government shutdown got me thinking: How many flights in the US are actually replaceable by train? It depends on how insane you are, but the basic answer is: Not Many! 70% of flights shorter than 500 miles have no train option at all. Out of those that do, 65% would likely be faster by car.

- Pope Leo X in 1517, after being told about Martin Luther.

The ACA isn't just "health care for people who don't have a conventional employer." It also disallows something that was incredibly common 20 years ago, which I fear is getting lost to generational memory: insurance companies could deny you health care for essentially any previous health problem.

Spotted: a sign of good luck?