I am VERY concerned about the idea of gender pay equity across occupations. It could tank #growth for years. 📉 ⚖️ 💵 My latest Apolitical Economic Analysis 👇 www.nzherald.co.nz/the-listener... #gender #work #payequity #fiscalpolicy

Yes, my complexity / computational folks @tepunahamatatini.bsky.social there is also a maths joke: “Calculus tells us that even as we approach infinity, we approach limits.” Standard economic models will hit their limits long before networks of people do.

My parody of the repeal of New Zealand’s pay equity legislation - Salary Sticks - is out in The Listener (print first). It was fun to write – but the point is serious. Much economic reasoning in policy today still: → masks its politics → mocks its challengers → is gendered *all the way down*

Complexity theory is not actually complex. Here, it’s just saying “we can’t undo your loss, but all is not lost”. Or, “that must have hit extra hard because of what happened to you before”. Surely that’s more intuitive than experimental causal models?

Finally, some comparative work on personality traits in economic outcomes. Culture + inequality matters: “socio-economic background affected social and emotional skills though the effect was smaller in New Zealand than in most other countries.” www.rnz.co.nz/news/busines...

Beautiful bioluminescence down the local beach 🌊

“When they elevate computing to the status of a college, with departments and a budget, they are declaring it a higher-order domain of knowledge and practice, akin to law or engineering.” www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

“the relaxification of college has stemmed, ultimately, from a centuries-old, studiously cultivated tradition of organizational disorganization “ www.newyorker.com/culture/open...

Sharing this as a gift article today. If you see this, please read it. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

FML. A Revived Focus on an Unproven Link Between Tylenol and Autism www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/h...

I laugh, therefore I am.. love this happy idea. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/WlZaan?fbcli...

Money alleviates poverty. Its not complicated. Annie Lowery: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

most American political scientists making political maps of America have never even seen this map

Excellent listen on developments in the health sciences in general. They need a p.s.: that what causes #autism _to be a major disability_ is a closed-minded socio-political environment www.nytimes.com/audio/app/20...

Very cool study, inductively showing important variations in *how* genetic and development factors interplay. I would love to see this for adhd too. www.princeton.edu/news/2025/07...

Also, as Jane Waldfogel said: it wasn't enough money. And also: treated and control groups both got a refundable child tax credit of up to $3,600, per child, over the study period. And also: a cash transfer is pain relief, not an inoculation against ongoing socio-economic disadvantage.

"...Among Those Diagnosed". So many psychology conclusions need to clearly add either this, or "...in Rats". www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Relatedly, Covid — the actual virus, not the pandemic experience- probably directly, increased symptoms of neurodiversity, and related mental health problems - www.forbes.com/sites/drnanc...

“Psychiatry has a legacy of implementing drastic procedures, like lobotomies, that later come to seem like folly. But it also has a history of proffering psychological theory for illnesses that are not yet understood on a biological level.” 💯@thenewyorker.bsky.social www.newyorker.com

* Social hierarchy preservation syndrome * is particularly noteworthy. I can confidently say I’ve never suffered from it 😆

Related: because if a typo and the algo, I was reminded of Christine Delphy: discouraged by Bourdieu who told her “no one researches women”, and now shunned because she saw that gender/feminism was fundamentally an economic issue.

#Delphi is one of the most interesting AI developments sociologically. But most current sociologists can’t engage with it because their theory of the self, identity and mind, is no different from Delphi’s business pitch.

This is not only funny, but a good intro into how cultures turn #neurodiversity into a #neurodisability - #autism #adhd youtube.com/shorts/SG8Vq...

If you prosecute parents, you may be subject to judicial review. Parents of neurodiverse children are prepared to pursue legal recourse against governments that repeatedly fail to provide inclusive education—breaching the CRPD, Human Rights Act, and Education and Training Act 2020.

Another story from @tepunahamatatini.bsky.social about why we can't just implore or even educate people to "follow the science" whether of climate change, or vaccines. (mocking those who don't doesn't work either, see USA).

I've long thought that the dominant - progressive - policy narrative, and social statistical analysis, of 'health inequalities' is wrong. This lovely little story by @drannamatheson.bsky.social helps articulate why.

This is a new, must read social-intellectual #history: a history of ideas as they were developed and practiced by ordinary settler-colonialists and by Māori - The Origins of an Experimental Society: New Zealand, 1769–1860 aucklanduniversitypress.co.nz/the-origins-...

We made the New York Times for being racist (photojournalist Hagen Hopkins must be stoked though)

Ardern’s stylized US Ivy and talk show appearances miss the whole point: that — in the right political system and culture — you can be a genuine, dorkish, imperfect ordinary human female - and be a political leader.

We didn't. This was orchestrated.

Remember the last time happenings in NZ parliament got global attention? When a waiata (a Maori love song) broke out as same sex marriage equality passed. The haka could and should have been similarly celebrated as an example of how politics can be different. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/w...

He ends by recommending Peter Theil as a read; I’d recommend Anand Giridharadas… and some deeper history of social movements… back. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/m...

I recently read what I thought was a very fresh, timely piece on the role of universities/academics in the time of AI by Joanna… and then realized it was posted in 2018, back when she was struggling to get senior folks at Princeton to take AI seriously.

Still, that’s 8 powerful dudes who may well have never got over a rejection from Harvard, Princeton, Yale…or Stanford…

Devasting critique of “Abundance” - not only its political vision (“undemocratic in both form and function”), but its history, economics, logic — its basic facts. Seriously, if they are true Liberals, Klein and Thompson should retract it. www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

The English actually literally whipped people, at home and in the colonies, who listened to the water. Momentarily shocked to learn this, but… of course they did. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Women PIs held 34% of total active grants but 58% of the grants cancelled. The percentage of Hispanic or disabled PIs who lost grants was roughly twice their presence in the active grant pool. Black PIs held 17% of the canceled grants though only 4% of total grants. www.science.org/content/arti...

So, it’s not New York, but I just joined 85,000 people at the Auckland Writers Festival to talk books, and hung out with the likes of Hollinghurst, Adiche, and the legend who actually lived up to it in person: Colm Tóíbín. ❤️ 📚 Huge congratulations to @lfineran.bsky.social and team. #awf25

Also the public *should pay* for the science because then the information belongs to them, not to an institution or company. That’s the whole point!

new to #nzpol but the global perspective is that: 1. The pay equity legislation NZ introduced under Ardern is exemplary: actually meaningful because it compares pay across male and female dominated occupations. www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/o... #gender #carework

@acgrayling.bsky.social on making sense of numbers in wealth- a million seconds is 2 weeks, a billion seconds is 32 years #billionairesPlayground @ Auckland Writers Festival #awf70

I’ve found my critical data science people! So pleased to be included (as an emerging researcher) in this community of scientists …👇 💡

🎯 💯

This is in fact the real issue. From 2017: blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/...

Dose no one advising Starmer know that migrant care workers are _women_? White male Englanders have had had three generations, multiple recessions, a historic closure of their regional labour market, and they still haven't taken their jobs off them.

gender neutral language can also be denial, erasure, and misrecognition

A strong, actually existing, alternative is New Zealand’s public Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI), which I use in a secure, AI-free lab under strict access conditions — including protocols grounded in Indigenous data ethics. www.stats.govt.nz/integrated-d... data.govt.nz/toolkit/data...

“This time of crisis… is also a time for lefty researchers to decide what systems we want to build out of the current wreckage, and what vision of data governance and informational power they require to enact. “ lpeproject.org/blog/the-rig... @salome.bsky.social

“autism is not, in my experience, an invisible condition. It is an illegible condition. When an autistic woman does not read as autistic, she rarely reads as ordinary. She reads as insane or perhaps evil. “ #gender #neurodiversity observer.co.uk/news/first-p...

Good to Janet Frame discussed in LRB today. She should be required reading, in conversation Foucault, on any sociology of mental health class. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...