Thanks GOP—The moulds & deckles we ordered for paper making from Papertrail will be $150 more expensive thanks to your tariffs. Who will pay them? Not Canadians or Papertrail— @skeuomorphpress.org will pay it. Tariffs are a tax on Americans & American institutions—such a self own www.papertrail.ca

A few years ago one of our kids realized the name they were born with wasn't quite right—& some of the folks who should have been her strongest advocates instead turned away—I wrote this song for her then & was proud to perform it with The Anxious Bench for the 1st time tonight #ProtectTransKids

My personal favorite of these three is "Dive." I got to play a BEAUTIFUL Fender Rhodes for that track in the studio and it just perfectly complements Ryan's voice and lyrics.

Late this summer I got to go into the studio with @pablohutch.bsky.social & our buddy Tim to record some tunes—and our EP is up today on Bandcamp! I feel a little weird as a middle-aged dude asking folks to listen to my band—but I'm pretty proud of these songs & would love if y’all gave em a listen

Among the other things happening, I somehow missed this one. This would be a major blow to our graduate programs, harm our students, and severely undermine our country’s competitiveness in grad education. www.insidehighered.com/news/global/...

Short Answer: NO THEY DO NOT

A colleague recommended I find the 1958 YA book *Danny Dunn & the Homework Machine* for my “Writing with Robots” class—our library had a copy (off site) & I got it today. In brief: a group of kids get access to a computer & figure out how to make it do their homework for them—high jinks ensue +

Our new paper is out in Early View today! Using a discrete choice experiment, we test whether consumers will pay more for strawberries with a "diverse farmer" label. Here's what we find: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Wholesale prices came in hot in today’s PPI report, but veggies stole the show 🥦📈 Vegetable prices at the wholesale level surged nearly 39% in July. @willmasters.bsky.social & I unpack what’s behind this spike in today's @marketplace.org 🎙️ www.marketplace.org/story/2025/0...

My #TEDx talk is live - Why is Environmentalism Failing? This is a dissection of the role hyper-individualism plays in not only causing the climate and nature crisis, but also in preventing environmentalism from succeeding: www.morganhopephillips.com/blog/2025/6/... #TEDxAberystwyth

Worth also pointing out: it is also extremely hard to make a robot pick crops.

This helps explain why it's so hard to automate farm labor! It's not that it's too hard to make a robot pick crops. It's that humans are really, REALLY good at it. It's hard to make a robot that's BETTER at it than people.

Extremely niche content: the passage of the bbb w/ significant SNAP changes means the farm bill as we know is gone. For decades, the farm bill resolved the tension between payments to farmers and food stamps/nutrition. That is no longer the case. Let’s just call it the pure pork 🐖🥓 bill from now on.

Friends, please share! Proofs are ready for @skeuomorphpress.org's edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s "A Rant About Technology." I am so pleased with this book—in many ways our 1st real book project Details about how to get one through our fundraiser at skeuomorph.ischool.illinois.edu/le-guin-book...

Happy Monday! I would strongly recommend everyone listen to/read this interview by Senator Sarah McBride. It is deeply challenging and really thoughtful.

1) good 2) it's ok to read statements from the trump admin in the worst possible light and the people scolding you for panicking or being enraged are wrong to do so.

Update: bsky.app/profile/bhgr...

Interesting that people have been commenting that "well it's not the DC one." All of my academic research to this point has used the College Park NARA, it's an incredibly important repository.

Unsure what "legitimate business need" means, but I'm guessing this means use of the archives for academic research will be prohibited if not limited. This is a huge hit to the research community, wish I had scanned more while I could.

Kind of a mack when it comes to dog bites.

Does anyone know if there any political scientists digging into the Make America Healthy Again movement? (RIP academic Twitter I’m sure I would have already found them!)

My favorite detail of this work of AI fan fiction: the AI has a "Politics" stat where it becomes wildly... good at politics? Also, I can't recommend the book "More Everything Forever" as necessary context about the belief system (religion, tbh) that produces this kind of writing.

EXTREMELY BAD NEWS for economic research, per former BLS Commissioner @ericagroshen.bsky.social on LinkedIn. BLS is suspending access to its restricted data "for the forseeable future." Applies to projects through the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers & onsite projects with BLS. #EconSky

Another article published in the AJAE with my colleague Scott Irwin: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... In this paper, we use two decades of soybean trial data to track genetic improvement in yields. We find a roughly linear rate of change after modifying the methods of previous work.

Recently had two articles published that I'm excited to tell ya'll about. First, in AEPP, a former student and I published this article looking at racial inequity in the US through the lenses of Cochrane's treadmill theory (🧵) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #EconSky

As we head into graduation weekend—which includes two separate graduations for our family—I was disappointed that a simple search did not uncover a definitive ranking of the best academic regalia. Surely this exists somewhere?

Reminder: work requirements kick people off of SNAP, they do not increase employment. In my ag policy class, students come to this conclusion rather fast in just one assignment where I ask them to examine the impact of work requirements. Studies below to reference:🧵

The House Agriculture Committee bill would shift #SNAP costs to states for the first time, putting food assistance at risk for millions. All states could face major new costs and many, far worse penalties. State-level impacts available: www.cbpp.org/research/foo...

In case you missed it ... Here's the Nobel prize-winning economist Esther Duflo destroying the claim that foreign workers reduce domestic wages. In fact, they actually help UK workers by adding to the talent base and allowing the economy to grow. Getting rid of them just leads to more automation. 🇬🇧🇪🇺

Controlling for farm management gave us the fixed effects estimator!

Our student project showcase at the end of Book Lab has become quite the event! I was so pleased at the turnout today from the iSchool, Library, & beyond—the FabLab was packed I’m going to share a few student projects in this thread, so follow or mute as you want or need

Please highlight this story. ICE stormed into the wrong house, trashed the place, and made women/girls stand outside in the rain in their underwear. ICE also stole phones, laptops, and cash savings from the family, who moved to OKC two weeks ago. kfor.com/news/local/w...

Most food is transported by boat, so food miles are a relatively small part of the carbon footprint of most diets

Polling my undergrads today after discussing school meal programs (~23 seniors and juniors). Interestingly, a lot of them lived through the waivers during the pandemic so had a lot of personal experience with the programs.

I enjoyed this article a lot. I'm hoping the Moneyball analogy will finally get dairy cow genetics mentioned on an episode of the @shutdownfullcast.bsky.social.

Doing a tutorial on using the campus cluster for my department. Looking forward to yet another year where this joke goes unappreciated.

The only thing I have been told AI can do well is write code, and so far I have never saved time using AI to write code. It messes something critical up almost every time and I spend at least an hour trying to find its mistake.

Wrote about the problem of "nature-based solutionism," the idea that there's a quick and easy natural fix to the world's biggest health and sustainability challenges. Sorry but cows aren't going to save the planet! W/ @jandutkiewicz.bsky.social for @newrepublic.com newrepublic.com/article/1933...

Economics checking in

Here is a TLDR version published on our extension platform FarmDoc: farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2025/03/extr...

Super cool tool from the people at Open Street Map. A nice way to waste 10-20 minutes before a meeting! It goes back to 4000 BCE it looks like

Seeing a lot of comments on this laughing that Trump thinks there is a US champagne market... ... except, there is! It's called California Champagne and because of the Treaty of Versailles there are three companies that produce here but can use the word "champagne." vinepair.com/wine-blog/lo...

Has anyone teaching seen students turn in papers with made up references like this? I plugged my prompt into ChatGPT and it gave way better answers than this, so I'm wondering what LLM they are using to do this if any.

New Paper: Vulnerability of US dairy farms to extreme heat. My co-authors and I estimate the impacts of extreme heat (high temperature and humidity) on dairy cattle production throughout the Midwest. Some of the main findings:🧵

The USDA 1890 Scholars Program which supports students at 1890 Land Grant universities (HBCUs) to study agriculture, food, and natural resources, has been suspended and is pending review. This tiny drop in budget bucket of $19 million is an important source of support for HBCU students + programs.

I finally had a chance to sit down this morning & 1. order more paper 2. set up a form for folks to donate to the press & receive a poster/digital file We’re asking for a $35 dollar donation for posters—we will make up to 200 $5 for a high-quality digital version Here’s the form—& please share!