Happy New Year to my friends celebrating 5786

A $100k “price” for H1-B visas is like a tariff on STEM labor. And the first rule of tariffs is clear: never tax your inputs — that just makes American firms less competitive than their foreign competitors.

Estimating rare proportions There is a statistic circulating on social media claiming that the average person in the USA thinks 21% of the population is transgender.  Obviously this isn't true (both obviously it isn't 21% and obviously that isn't what the average person believes). It's similar in…

Has anyone asked Bryon Noem for comment? www.nga.org/governor-spo...

"can often be perceived as true", including by humans providing feedback to inform the reinforcement learning process

Doesn't Nixon v. Fitzgerald immunize Trump for private lawsuits within "outer perimeter" of official duties? What's the path forward here 1A litigators?

Has @mollyereynolds.bsky.social issued a shutdown / no shutdown prediction yet?

I for one am glad that we can go back to ignoring Jimmy Kimmel

Also a form of economic non cooperation

People are saying

I. Believe. I believe that we will win.

The tariffs are the least popular thing Trump is doing. It's a unilateral trillion-dollar tax hike on Americans that raises prices on items they buy every day.

Our paper on partisan reactions to political scandal is officially published in PSPB: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... Partisans were more receptive to defensive, hostile "explanations" for misconduct from in-(vs out-)party politicians. Seems driven by desire to win > identity-protective motive

Great work showing (one way) polls are done. The @aapor.bsky.social Transparency Initiative provides a list of what information should be disclosed from survey design and analysis here: aapor.org/wp-content/u...

“Contrary to existing theories of protest mobilization, we find that teacher strikes decrease voter turnout, with a substantially larger effect among Republicans than Democrats. Strikes decrease Republican turnout by 3 percentage points, Democratic turnout by 1pp” edworkingpapers.com/sites/defaul...

Ouroborosonomics

I declare it soup season! Improvised a soup with @ranchogordo.bsky.social Good Mother Stallard beans (IYKYK), some sweated onion and garlic, herbs and pimenton, homemade stock and ham bone from the freezer, diced tomatoes, and collards. Plus homemade sourdough of course

A modest proposal: Ask respondents "After which two scientists is the Voight-Kampff test named", and if they answer it, it's a bot.

We watched The Sting, one of my all time favorite movies.

shit ain’t over til it’s over

Send a message.

He's (allegedly, but on tape) gotten enough freebies in Cava bags already, IMHO

Expand the court, yes, but also make the court into rotating terms drawn from the circuits, panels of 5-7 justices that are determined after cert is granted so petitioners don't know their judges in advance and so can enforce ethics recusals.

Since Chuck Schumer has gotten comfortable with public f-bombs lately, I would recommend this phrase to him as well.

Since the start of July, there have been virtually as many carjackings in DC in the 41 days since the National Guard was deployed (21) as in the 41 days preceding that deployment (22).

A very dear friend of mine is running for Congress in New Jersey. Check out her launch video. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOl5...

Yes! A deal without rescission and impoundment reform is no deal at all. It's Lucy telling Charlie Brown that, yes, she will indeed pull the football, and Charlie Brown taking the kick anyhow

On September 4, Pam Bondi's DOJ obtained a guilty plea from a top aide to Ras Baraka, Al-Tarik Onque, for doing precisely what Tom Homan allegedly took $50K to do. According to his statement of offense, Onque took $7.5K in bribes. www.justice.gov/usao-nj/medi...

Alternatively, maybe Trump actually was saying what he truly believed when he said Venezuelan drugs killed 300 million Americans last year? (Spoiler: they did not)

Re-upping this for the weekday crowd. I have some quibbles with Adam about the evidence on the effects of tv ads, but I do think Dems needs to take some dramatic actions to signal commitment to anti-corruption. However, on that count my recommendation is somewhat different from his ...

More fake respondents, potentially undetectable ones, coming to your optin panel surveys sometime soon

They're now running this across multiple markets. Which is a signal of two things 1) They have more money than they know what to do with, for which you can thank Republicans in Congress 2) They're struggling to recruit through normal channels, even with the $50k signing bonus

hey political scientists, wake up, wild new country-pair just dropped.

What strategic value can these unprovoked murderers have to the Trump administration other than an attempt to provoke Venezuela into aggressive action and justify a full scale war?

More fake respondents, potentially undetectable ones, coming to your optin panel surveys sometime soon

My go to recommendations: Mr Noggin (IYKYK) Goodnight moon (classics are classic for a reason) LOTS of onesies, but a size up from wherever the kid is born at

Here we go. Ended up with only about a pint of ripe fish peppers, but enough for a test batch. Used a 4% brine; we will see how it turns out in 4 weeks

People are saying …

The most baffling thing about the “but the price of eggs” discourse is the idea that normie voters need the price of eggs explained to them but not, like, Trump’s machinations on the Fed. Prices are what people feel every day, the salience of those will not depend on statements from politicians!

There's something happening here What it is ain't exactly clear There's a man with a gun over there A-telling me I got to beware I think it's time we stop Children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down

Among other things this illustrates how fully useless “social listening” and other social media sentiment analysis has become

One cooking project for today is lacto fermented hot sauce, as my fish pepper plant is ready to harvest. Anyone out there have a recipe for a lacto fermented fish pepper sauce? (I’ve made other lacto ferments before so don’t need technique advice, just guidance on flavors)

Meanwhile Trump is publicly berating his AG for not prosecuting his political enemies. Because they're not even trying to hide the agenda anymore.

It used to be you just needed a majority, then you needed a majority of the majority, now you need to be unacceptable to *all* of the minority

We have to reach across the aisle and find common gr….

Corruption watch

Dudes rock

To recap, conservatives built an entire category of legal theory dedicated to the grammar-derived reading of precise text, only to take power and abandon written law altogether.

Important thread.