It seems that, after years of 'teaching behavioural science to civil servants used to think as economists' we've now switched 180% and are doing workshops 'teaching principles of economics to civil servants used to thinking behaviourally'... www.binnl.nl/leer++ontwik...

"When Essex University’s Southend campus opened, it was a message of hope for a ‘left behind’ UK seaside town. Its closure will be felt far beyond its 800 students, some of whom will not get their degrees" www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Barely a few hours after President Donald Trump named him as the next nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh was revealed to be in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files.

Here’s Duke behavioral economist Dan Ariely asking Jeffrey Epstein for “the name and email of the redhead that was here with you.” This is four years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution.

Meanwhile at the London Metropolitan University... archive.ph/hikiu

Game theory.... www.instagram.com/p/DTGAZGiE5-o/

I read the Daily Mail for the game theoretical predictions, www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/...

"Good quant work is becoming cheap and plentiful; good theory remains hard." hegemon.substack.com/p/the-age-of...

“nobody is insider trading off his death so it almost certainly didn’t happen” really sums up the state of the world in 2026 huh

British education in a nutshell

"By showing that foam bubbles are not frozen in glass-like states but instead move in ways similar to learning algorithms, the research encourages scientists to rethink how other complex systems behave." www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...

Get your ‘Free Jay Powell’ T-shirts here www.ft.com/content/92e2...

quite enjoying @karthiktadepalli.bsky.social's substack: this recent post on increasing wages as a possible sign of so-called 'obsolescence rents' was very interesting blog.karthiktadepalli.com/p/obsolescen...

"It’s choreographing posture and gestures. It’s using language to engage and relax an audience so they’re more inclined to spend. " archive.ph/Hu2l5#select...

Right. My students working two part time jobs and/or having an hour and a half commute to uni because they have to live at home due to the cost of student accommodation lack drive and vigour. Sure thing, Peter. The UK Govt still haven't a clue about the realities of universities today.

Hendon Town Hall not long after its opening in 1901, and in the present day. Note the extensions, and the library building opened in 1929. Postcard image.

"However, (the LLM's) consistently assumed a level of logical reasoning in humans that most real players do not actually exhibit" (when playing the Keyensian Beauty Contest). www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ch...

"Monopoly is better designed than we give it credit for. We mostly only have ourselves to blame for its most obvious flaws." archive.ph/xTYi5

Not sure if I would advertise it widely that I had won a Noam Chomsky award

Anyone know what "academic article, criticising the use of randomised controlled trials in general" this piece is referring to? www.kcl.ac.uk/news/why-you...

"Quantum money would therefore have the self-custodial properties of physical cash". mail.blockworks.com/p/beam-me-up...

When will this crisis get any attention whatsoever!? A THOUSAND ACADEMIC STAFF AT ONE INSTITUTION SERVED REDUNDANCY RISK NOTICES! And that's not counting what's surely being visited on professional services staff too. This is an economic catastrophe, to say nothing of the intellectual catastrophe!

"As expected, the participants did not play randomly." www.psychologyofselling.pro/what-the-neu...

Nobody. I do not think you can eat chair

Meanwhile on Instagram www.instagram.com/p/DR4wqHWDQv...

Dani Rodrik about how and why he writes catherineeunicedevries.substack.com/p/etched-in-...

Does anyone want a survivorship bias shortbread

Handing back student work that’s been written by ChatGPT with a 0 followed by the comment “This essay will never stand in authentic wonder before the Beauty of God’s creation.”

Another one for my list of real world examples of the Winner's Curse...

A '2008 global financial crisis' hoodie that costs $180 is sold out www.businessinsider.com/2008-global-...

“The sudden appearance of something unexpected — Batman — disrupts the predictability of everyday life and forces people to be present, breaking free from autopilot,” www.zmescience.com/science/news...

"three members of the election committee act as independent trustees. (...) each trustee holds a third of the cryptographic key material needed to decrypt results. Unfortunately, one of the three trustees has irretrievably lost their private key" arstechnica.com/security/202...

"an AI tool he calls "an autonomous synthetic respondent,” which can answer survey questions and “demonstrated a near-flawless ability to bypass the full range” of “state-of-the-art” methods for detecting bots. " www.404media.co/a-researcher...

"when one looks at splatter paintings made by adults and young children through a fractal lens (...) the children’s work does bear a closer resemblance to Pollock’s than those of the adults. " arstechnica.com/science/2025...

"The recent Nobel Prize was awarded to three economists (two of whom are Fellows of the British Academy) whose work (...) showed that we should care about the research infrastructures if we care about prosperity" www.cityam.com/the-british-...

“Data centers are like warehouses filled with machines and cables, and there’s little need for workers,” restofworld.org/2025/data-ce...

"The key takeaway for future success, the scientists conclude, is clear: people who stop overanalysing the past may have a better chance at winning in the future." (if the world was run in endless games rock-paper-scissors...) www.tbsnews.net/offbeat/un-p...

"Google DeepMind’s Weather Lab (...) performed exceptionally well. By contrast, the Global Forecast System model, which is operated by the US National Weather Service, is based on traditional physics (...) performed abysmally." arstechnica.com/science/2025...

I'm only allowed a limited percentage of the total grade for the module I am currently teaching to be determined by in-class test. So I have to run a take home version. Average grade 81/100 (in the UK, where everything over 70/100 gets the top mark, a first).

Amid many a silly “free speech” panic, here is a genuinely chilling case … Sheffield Hallam professor accuses the institution of negotiating “directly with a foreign intelligence service to trade my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student market” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Cass Sunstein lists his favourite colleagues casssunstein.substack.com/p/some-perso...

I find the finding out 'whether it’s better to receive assistance even before disaster strikes' more interesting than the 'ai prediction of floods' bit but I guess the AI is better at predicting restofworld.org/2025/google-...

Wish I had more time to read books. This looks fascinating. archive.ph/RWbAp

Immigrant Nobel Prize winners exiting the United States

From @privateeyenews.bsky.social

I wouldn’t normally endorse AI prompts but these are indeed essential for all academics.

*jazz hands* Tyler Cowen!

I cannot imagine anyone I know in academia letting this happen. It's utterly appalling. Glasgow uni failed to record the grade he had in fact earned, then refused him a degree, then abandoned him to kill himself. For utter, enduring shame.

"Those are conditions that can make almost any stock-picking strategy look smart." arstechnica.com/information-...