RIP Paul Ehrlich, who was quite good at insect population biology but better known for other work.

The Myrtaceae are a large, worldwide (mostly S Hemisphere) group of woody plants, many of which are familiar in cultivation: guava, eucalyptus, myrtle, Melaleuca (née Callistemon). Leaves are usually opposite & always aromatic when crushed. 📷: Melaleuca viminalis #Myrtaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

4. As Jevin West and I have been saying for several years now, because a seemingly credible message no longer implies a human sender, LLMs will push us toward more emphasis on reputation and status — and as such serve as an anti-egalitarian force in all aspects of society, science included.

This is really disturbing. If the police feel they need a sniper to handle kids getting rowdy at street parties, they are obviously completely incompetent.

Every now and then I think "maybe I could swim across that bit of ocean*", but I really don't think I would get back in after having a huge chunk taken out of my tummy. share.google/WIKELR9i4zJE... * I did not think this of Molokai though. A smallish boat was adventure enough.

Summer camps, and the summer ferry to Martha's Vineyard are both congested... #econsky marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2026/03/cong...

An excuse to put this out there again: youtu.be/sgspkxfkS4k?...

A moderate amount of snow accumulation overnight so prob should do a footpath clear (can hear one neighbour out there), but currently getting horizontal snow and temps are supposed to get decently above zero by evening. Tricky.

Among the many contradictions of this WH is how it wants to retreat from providing global public goods like defense/demand, frequently acts as a destabilizer of the commons, but wants to retain privileges of a hegemonic stabilizer like currency centrality & low interest rates.

A long term strategy that is paying off because the idiot Americans* decided to bomb Iran. * you could try to say it's just the US President, but a whole lot of people have decided it's fine, apparently.

Chris Sims, brilliant macroeconomic empiricist, has died. His Nobel acceptance speech: www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018....

And here is his #rstats code 🙏 #econsky github.com/chris4sims

Concentrated losses and widely distributed gains means if we rely on anecdotes and stories - which is what the media naturally does - the focus is on the costs and not the benefits.

I know everyone on BlueSky is too young to remember this song, but there was a time not long ago when the US began a war in the Middle East. The real foe was a 3-woman country band who dared speak out. In their next album, those Chicks told the patriarchy to continue to fuck right off. Keep fighting

"In general it would be nice if the Trump administration could decide what their [X] policy is gonna be and stick to it for more than 15 minutes at a time" for any X. Except that it is quite likely that for any X the policy chosen is likely to be the worst of the available set.

We have now entered second winter Looking forward to spring of deception and third winter

I'll no doubt make a few tweaks when I have looked at it again with fresh eyes, but my quartet of Blackadders is pretty much done. #caricature #art

U.S. hoteliers were promised a World Cup boost, but lagging bookings less than three months ahead of the tournament are giving the industry the yips.

Oh now they are thinking about coalitions? No doubt just this sort of eventuality is why they have been working to maintain great relationships with their typical allies.

David Autor (@davidautor.bsky.social) just wrote a very kind and thoughtful review of "The Means of Prediction" for the Journal of Economic Literature (@aeajournals.bsky.social): www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

MA research paper option?

"a choice to bolster the ranks and roles of the political staff — without addressing gaps in state capacity and governance — is likely feeding, not fending off, the downward spiral" in capacity and governance and trust.

Having fled Afghanistan as an 18-year-old, international cricketer Firooza Amiri knows what it is like to be a sports refugee from a war-torn country.

Exactly what I was thinking when I read Termination Shock. "This is the Big S ranch. Named for sulphur.* That's what that big yellow pile over there is, sulphur. S is the chemical symbol for sulphur, which is why we called this ranch the Big S." * The book spelled it wrong.

Idea: mandatory retirement age for Congress equivalent to the average U.S. life expectancy (79) so they actually care about improving it.

The prescription to #fossilflation? Get off fossil fuels. "Reaching Net Zero by 2050 'cheaper for UK than one fossil fuel crisis'"

Well put indeed. It remains bewildering to me how obsessed some people/groups are about getting rid of land acknowledgements because they are "performative" / "virtue signalling" and also about the importance of everyone to standing and singing the national anthem (original EN not FR words, natch).

Call for Participants for the 12th Canadian Resource & Enviro Economics Association Early Career Workshop. Deadline is March 31st. Sunday May 31, 2026 in Vancouver, Canada, immediately following the 2026 CEA meeting hosted at SFU. #EconSky docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Echidna tummy!

Bui Xuan Phai (Vietnamese, 1920-1988). Hanoi Streets (oil on canvas).

Starting to get to the point where y-o-y declines are going to be smaller or might see some increases, since travel to the US started falling just over a year ago. Going to be a bit harder to report/explain without a graph.

Wasn't Naboo off by itself in the middle of nowhere? Wouldn't it have been more like blocking and putting extra tariffs on ... I dunno, New Zealand? Pitcairn Island?

Australia grants asylum to 5 members of the Iranian women's soccer team apnews.com/article/iran...

Bass Torres Malacca

congrats on the sex, small ridiculous birds news.mongabay.com/short-articl...

#mangroves Planting trees in the sea could act as a huge carbon sink and save millions of dollars in storm damage every year. What is stopping us from doing it? | Live Science share.google/Wsk2IVlGpk9j...

Fossil collector & self-taught paleontologist Mary Anning's discoveries revolutionized our understanding of prehistoric life. "The greatest fossilist the world ever knew," she made her finds in the Jurassic marine fossil beds along the cliffs of Lyme Regis (UK). She died #OTD in 1847. #WomenInSTEM

Three teenagers say they were well-prepared for a hike through a Far North Queensland waterfall gorge, but one thing they had not been ready for was the rate at which fast-moving water would rise.

Guess whose youth (18-21) population is projected to hold up better than any in the Americas over the next 20 years?

Sorry, nope, I am told by certain analysts that they can discern the workings of the Trump mind. </snark</snark</snark>>>

What is Canada's Favourite Book: ROUND ONE From a list of 96 fiction and 96 non-fiction books, we will choose a winner. All matchups chosen by random number generator. (To vote, go into the thread and click like on the book you are voting for)

Gets pretty much the same results as in other cases/studies: cohorts that are forced to stay in school an extra year have incime gains, concentrated among the types who would likely have not continued, with an extra year associated with 10-12%. The consistency of the results is notable.

Protesters surround the Iranian women's football team bus after their final match in the Asian Cup, as fears grow for their safety.

Spending a day just reading. Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books are wonderful. You can feel them building to complete chaos, and seeing those scenes unfold is just a joy. Kind of like Fawlty Towers, but even madder.

Today, on International Women's Day, I, a human woman, want you to know there is a type of sea cucumber called the Headless Chicken Monster

Is AGI possible at some distant point in the future? Maybe? But if you genuinely believe that Claude is conscious, instead of using all the human ruminations about sentience and self that are part of its training set…

Debra Tate-Sears (Canadian Artist, born 1951) "A Winter's Walk", 2020. Egg Tempera on True Gesso Birch Panel, 36" × 24". Private Collection. #art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

We need halftime interviews during academic talks with Holly Rowe. "The first half seemed rough. No one in the audience seems to think you are saying anything useful. How do you turn this around in the second half? Or are you just turning this over to your research assistant in the next half?" 🤣🤣