Let's try this again 👋 Hi Bluesky - I'm Massachusetts' Attorney General. You might know me from suing President Trump nearly 50 times, beating Uber and Lyft in court, or being the first woman of color elected to statewide office in MA. I officially left X today - help me find my MA people?

Andrew: I'm worried I'll be alone on my birthday Thames Valley Police: Relax

🤖NEW POST ON AI🤖 Perhaps you're thinking like Brenda from Bristol, 'not another one!' but... I felt that lots of writing about Claude Code doesn't really show you how it works. So I thought well, why not? And along the way some bad literary allusions. 1/n benansell.substack.com/p/the-appren...

This is a really interesting and helpful piece about working with AI by @benansell.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/benansel...

We are very happy to support the new edition of this workshop! We will also give a short presentation on common mistakes when writing economics papers, and we will award a prize for the best paper

We’re very excited to be headed back to the Economics of Mental Health Workshop this June—this year as sponsors! Stay tuned 👀

some of you are looksmaxxing when you need to be booksmaxxing

When I was 12 I thought Phil Collins was the most boring musician ever. When I was 16 I thought he was at least a decent jazz & prog drummer. When I was 26 I thought he was a pretty smart songmaker. Now at 34 I am convinced he might be one of the biggest musical geniuses of the 20th century

I'm not saying this in a critical way, so much as a "my God am I a coal miner who doesn't understand new tech" way, but also what are these agents actually doing?

Measles is one of those nightmare diseases that, if it hadn't been killing people for hundreds of years, people would ABSOLUTELY be pushing conspiracy theories about right now. It's too nasty in too many different directions to seem natural. But oh, boy, it sure is.

This is why we need heterogeneous treatment effect estimation

Zumal die Lebenserwartung mit den Arbeitsverhältnissen zusammenhängt. Wer einen gut bezahlten und sicheren Job hat, der lebt länger. Wer wenig verdient, prekär arbeitet und auch noch gesundheitsschädlichen Arbeitsbedingungen ausgesetzt ist, lebt kürzer. Die Lebenserwartung ist eine soziale Frage.

Happy birthday to Charles Darwin, patron saint of tired scientists, grumpy fieldworkers, and hating your own manuscript.

On the publication bias discourse, I regret that metascience has become a source of decontextualized, low-res, bean-counting-focused `science is in crisis' narratives. It is largely uncurious abt science, desperately lacking in theory & measurement. I'll quote a few takes I liked & add my thoughts🧵

Where do parents find the time to parent? Less sleep, work and screens. Amazing chart feat. in @alphaville.ft.com Further Reading. homeeconomics.substack.com/p/where-do-p...

If you have used Claude Code or similar for research, I'd love to pick your brain on two issues I have been wondering about: - Data confidentiality: what kind of data do you give it access to? - Data security: how do you deal with the risk that the agent does something stupid with your data?

Guten Morgen zusammen - wie gewohnt mit einem aktuellen Bild der Sonne, heute mal wieder per Satellit SDO und kräftig reingezoomt.

Low birth rates have modest long run negative effects, after good effects for a few decades, and raising birthrates exacerbates dependency. A giant, apparently permanent, disconnect between expert opinion (e.g., below) versus manufactured panic hype on this issue pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/...

One of the most frustrating things about the current US discourse over low birth rates is its laser focus on "how can we raise birth rates?" In this op-ed for @thehill.com, I explain why that's the wrong question and what we should be asking instead. 1/6 thehill.com/opinion/heal...

If you have used Claude Code or similar for research, I'd love to pick your brain on two issues I have been wondering about: - Data confidentiality: what kind of data do you give it access to? - Data security: how do you deal with the risk that the agent does something stupid with your data?

Good to know it's not just me

Just imagine that string buzz

Exciting news! My mum has just kindly given me this bundle of handmade linocut bookmarks. I'm giving one of these away for free with signed copies of my two latest novels. Please let me know if you'd like to grab one of these bundles for just book cover prices plus p&p. Only sending to UK, BUT...

More immigration into the US raises the number of health care workers and saves the lives of older Americans, from David C. Grabowski, Jonathan Gruber, and Brian E. McGarry www.nber.org/papers/w34791

Major news outlets: Please consider prominently reporting what this all-star team of researchers has found. www.nber.org/papers/w34791

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken. Hundreds of kids are still detained. We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

💉 Fallait-il vacciner les enfants et les ados contre le #Covid19 ? Myocardite, thrombocytopénie... Une étude britannique sur des millions de mineurs conclut que les risques cardiaques d'une infection (barres 🔴) dépassent largement ceux liés au vaccin (🔵)chez les 5-18 ans. 1/6

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

Economics has this reputation as being more conservative than the other social sciences, but look at us on this map of Bluesky, stuck between Swedish and Norwegian progressives!

according to a pediatric ER doctor my wife follows on Instagram they have started to see children coming in sick because their parents are asking ChatGPT what the correct dosage is on over the counter medication instead of just looking at the instructions on the bottle

well there’s an instant switch

[watching curling] after 1 min: ugh this is dull 10 min: spin on that stone is off 30 mins: three in the house means nothing if your centre guard is ripe for a pick and roll 1 hour: SWEEP BITCH SWEEP

And makes me want to share it!

🧵 New WP with @kaimiele.bsky.social. We document 2 unsettling patterns in mental health care: 1) despite universal coverage, few individuals with mental illness receive guideline-consistent treatment, and 2) the more severe the illness, the lower the treatment uptake & the longer the wait times. 1/n

Don't be Paul, take the win (congrats though!)

Well now, would you look at that? A massive, 4-YEAR-LONG study of NEARLY 30 MILLION people in France found that individuals who received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine had a 74% LOWER risk of death from severe COVID-19 compared to unvaccinated individuals and ZERO increased risk of all-cause mortality.

Sehe schon wieder die ganzen GF, die stolz ihre Asssistenstellen streichen, weil #openclaw bzw. #Clawdbook jetzt die Jobs macht. Und #moltbook ist ja so witzig. Und dann wundern, dass das Unternehmen leider den Bach runtergeht. Aber der Hype lebt! #KI #AI garymarcus.substack.com/p/openclaw-a...

Liebe alles an dieser Werbung 🥰

This is new to me. We knew that Epstein was working with Kremlin official Belyakov to circumvent sanctions post Crimea, but his eagerness to help Putin beat the West predates that “Reinventing the financial system”

Melania is a film that may end up being shown to a jury, though not at Cannes. I watched it so you don't have to. thecritic.co.uk/an-e...

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.

For absolutely no reason, let me remind people of this banger of a paper by @caroartc.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.jp...

I wonder how many deaths from HIV/AIDS the Foo Fighters caused? The body count from their grotesque HIV denialism must surely be huge.

Just learned about this study looking at methodological trends in psych and econ over time: online.ucpress.edu/collabra/art.... Matches my perception well: Nobody in psych bothers to (explicitly) try causal inference unless they conducted an experiment, not a lot of theoretical work either.

Do read this thread. It covers the classic problems of govt IT ventures: capture by the providers, poor information management and huge security holes, improbably complex signup process, and low quality outcomes. Surely it might have been better to partner with a university than this corporate slop?

I think I might take one of these "under 20 minutes" AI skills courses the UK Govt. seems very keen on everyone doing and live-post it here... Maybe we can all learn something together! The press release sends me to aiskillshub.org.uk/aiskillsboost/ - let's go and see!

Worth reading, not least to reward Andrew for his seemingly infinite patience

Worth a read. This said, I am not entirely convinced by the argument that Denmark can get away with fewer vaccines due to a better healthcare system. To me, it seems better to prevent disease entirely than to catch it early and treat it

The whole thread is worth reading, but this figure is simply amazing. We have a vaccine that prevents cancer!!! How can anyone want to take that away from us?

I am hearing that RFK Jr.’s minions are going to go after HPV vaccines. I’ve got problems with these people and now you’re going to hear about them, first from a personal perspective and then from a professional one. It all boils down to this: WE HAVE A SAFE VACCINE THAT PREVENTS CANCER.