Drink coffee and think about stuff

I don’t buy this interpretation. It’s the self-congratulatory sentiment that we are good people who care about others and they are bad people who don’t.

I'm not crying you're crying

A few more hours left in the year.

You'd much rather Tamar have a deer hunting rifle than a handgun, from a public safety standpoint. It's actually not close.

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Always think about the incentives of the ones pushing the narratives and bias adjust.

The new GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are an existential threat to diet peddlers, so it's not surprising to find them amplifying any risk from the meds. There's mostly silence from them on the ancillary benefits, notably kidney & cardiovascular disease.

I've been pretty consistent in my editorial view about this. I want a review process that is one round of referee input, then accepted after revision. If there remain some philosophical/conceptual differences of opinion, I'd rather the reviewers write a comment than iterate behind closed doors.

One more thing: the current equilibrium favors less innovative, incremental papers getting published in the most selective outlets even more than peer review already does. Those are the ones for which the consensus process works best and tends to converge. A real loss for innovation. 6/6

It also makes for a bad equilibrium where publicly disagreeing with a paper (except very mildly and boringly) is infrequent and therefore an extreme signal. So people don't do it even when they feel published papers are wrong or misleading. 3/

"R2 is marginally more negative than I am, but they raise a fundamentally valid point"

When news reports about scientific papers make causal claims that are not justified by the original study, the mistake often traces to a university press release. Here, observational data reveals an association. The press release asserts causality. today.ucsd.edu/story/walkab...

🇺🇸

People sometimes make fun of science that sounds stupid and random. Meanwhile, a study of lizard saliva turned into a peptide medication, which was turned into a diabetes medication, which was turned into a GLP1 weight loss drug, that just became the first therapy every approved for … sleep apnea

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Given how much interaction this got, I thought you might like to know I bought these and used them this morning in ~30 degree weather. Worked very well! t.co/ji2Zvl8tgU

This place is exactly what I thought it was. The latest outrage is almost comical. A caricature. Some useful stuff on here, some very nice people too, but the "kind version of twitter" bsky most certainly is not. Go Bills!

The vast majority of people I reach out to repsond quickly and helpfully; but the few that don't are frustrating and enough to make me really appreciate that large majority and that the community functions surprisingly well.

If you receive a ref request and can't finish in the allotted time, you have options: - Decline the review. - Ask editor for more time. Then turn in report close to your new proposed deadline. Don't do: - Ghost the request - Agree to request then go months past the due date w/no communication

All sorts of face palm here. - using units to deliberately make effect size seem bigger - miscalculate the effect size by a factor of 10 - call that mistake a "typo" - say that a 10x smaller effect size doesn't change the policy recommendation(!!!!!) statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/12/13/h...

Quite seriously one of the regular dishes in my rotation (a lentil dish, obviously) was a direct result of one of Tamar's advocacy posts.

Counterpoint: West Virginia had Joe Manchin as a Senator for how many years? Kentucky has a D governor. Kansas has a D governor. To me it seems like more an issue of finding state pols who are willing to deviate from the national party narrative in order to serve their constituents.

Anyone have winter overshoe recommendations for cycling? When it gets down below 30, keeping my feet warm is a challenge.

I'm clearly 10 years too late to the party, but I found this essay to be enlightening: slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i...

Such a pet peeve of mine. "Follow the science" is meaningless advice. The science doesn't tell you what to do. It just gives you information (of varying degrees of quality/noisiness/bias). Decisions come from combining that info with *values*. The science doesn't give you your values.

lol yup

Americans are now one-third less likely to die from cancer at the same ages as Americans in 1990

Josh Allen gets zero blame for this.

That call goes the other way 100 times out of 100 if it's the Chiefs

Do op-eds in major newspapers convince people to change their minds? Is there research about this?

The whole post is interesting, but I'm going to cherry pick one line, as it has become my modal comment on "natural experiment" type papers. "It’s hard to talk about estimating the treatment effect until you’ve defined what the treatment is."

Lots of health care takes lately sound like what I call the "Free Red Ferrari" problem to my MBA students. If you ask people what they want, it's a Red Ferrari for $0. Translated to health, the request is 0 premiums, 0 co-pays, 0 denials, 0 wait time, no tax increase, no decrease in innovation.

Another day, another GLP-1s are remarkable story.

We might have FINALLY met our match… #WorldBollardAssociation

I had the pleasure of interacting with Bill a few times. Such a warm, thoughtful person and a beautiful writer. May he rest in peace.

I am no fan of these kinds of gerrymanders, but to imply that more voters wanted a D house is more than a little misleading. GOP house candidates collectively won the popular vote by more than Trump did.

Chicago Fed is hiring in our micro group! The ad is not yet on JOE but see this link. 3+ years of experience. Don't need rec letters but do need to list 3 references: rb.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/FRS/jo...

Who is telling high school students to (cold) email professors for internships? This just can't be a good use of anybody's time.

I would be actively in favor of it.

I would not be opposed to impeaching and removing Biden over this. It would set a precedent.

Now published in the December issue of Quantitative Marketing and Economics: link.springer.com/article/10.1... #QME has a very efficient, no BS editorial policy. Can highly recommend!

anybody made a starter pack for dog pic and video feeds?

No thank you-- I don't want to go back to the "good old days"

Here's a great starter pack for folks interested in the economics of innovation, competition and IO go.bsky.app/Rchu8QX

Temp 16, feels like 4. The vibe:

Don’t despair about having an impact, #EconSky! If you want to learn more about how economics research influences policy, join us for this all-star panel at #ASSA2025. www.aeaweb.org/conference/2...