While at 538, we charted Cabinet roles held by men/women, since Carter. I updated that for my substack, Gender Gap! And wrote about the precarity of GOP women in politics, even (maybe especially?) for the women who meet their party's terms. meredithconroy.substack.com/p/the-number...

After having spent some time with both of them now, let me just say, claude is much more pleasant to talk to and work with than chatgpt in my book.

This figure is the one that is actually embarrassing for sociology:

So much crazy post-hitting in this match.

Love that this story has a Waffle House subplot.

👇 this is how social media is used correctly.

Educational attainment by US religious groups www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Demographer theory: Rebirth rates are down. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

And people say no planning went into this whole adventure. *smh*

Did you know that Russia had over 1 million excess deaths during Covid, almost twice the number of recorded Covid deaths in death certificates? A new working paper by E. Degtiareva (also including @andreatilstra.bsky.social) digs into these numbers. www.demography.ox.ac.uk/news/beyond-...

So much outstanding work is happening so quickly in the research area "What, exactly, has gone so wrong with US mortality?" This is one really good intervention in that vein by @leahrabrams.bsky.social @alysonvanraalte.bsky.social & colleagues

The twitter algorithm makes people more rightwing www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The men can bottle it all they want, as long as the arsenal women put in games like this, i am happy.

birdwatchers 🤝 dataviz nerds (beautiful website) searchingforbirds.visualcinnamon.com

color me shocked www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“…the latest cuts are more sudden and deeper than anything they have faced before. Experts reckon all this will take between two and four weeks”. V good Economist piece. Short version: if there was a ceasefire tomorrow there’d still be months of energy disruption. economist.com/finance-and-...

I am firmly in the "starship troopers predicted the vibes of how this US admin feels, incredibly well" camp. Every time I watch one of those Hegseth Iran pressers I am reminded of just how prescient that movie was. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/m...

Martin Wolf is talking sense about the population decline and falling fertility rates worries here. www.ft.com/content/0ae2...

Very good in-depths article on the state of UK maternal care and the countries' rising maternal death rate www.ft.com/content/24e0...

I build a feed for european grant funding that's updated daily and (IMO) far more transparent then the official EU fundign website: michelnivard.github.io/eu-grants-fe... (inspired by the NIH equivalent @sashagusevposts.bsky.social build yesterday)

sometimes indirect overwrought newspaper headline writing is so strange. Literally reads as if he is some sort of e-vehicle

The historical antecedent for this was all the Asia experts who lost their jobs to McCarthyism for telling the truth about Chiang Kai Shek's nationalists being unpopular, incompetent, and cruel, so were not around to advise as America slid into Vietnam. newrepublic.com/post/207857/...

It was around 1910 when we dropped our tariffs that Europe, *cough laughs* "Europe" started exporting its ideas of introspection.

They’re telling me a great empire will be destroyed if I attack Persia. Even the oracles who don’t like me very much, very nasty, they all said to me, “Sir, it’s one of the great empires, and it’ll be destroyed. And all because you attacked Persia.” That’s what they’re telling me.

🥐

"This is not efficiency... This is the systematic elimination of scientific stewardship at the world’s largest biomedical research funder. And most people have no idea it is happening." Destroying the research that will power future discoveries and violating the Constitution

“Inconceivable is the beginning of this samsara. A first point is not known of beings roaming and wandering the round of rebirth, hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving.” Samyutta Nikaya

Nor does the US but it hasn’t stopped them

this is imo a really important point in the whole AI-intelligence debate: we constantly act as if we have a decent model of our own intelligence, what it means, where it comes from, how it works, but we truly don't. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Windows 11 has an updated Minesweeper game

Sometimes I wonder who will be the next winner of the fifa peace prize. How can you possibly fill those shoes?

Would be cool if future archeologists would try to understand our time like we do with ancient people by classifying preserved container recepticles. The tupperware people are definitely a thing.

I feel scammed

There will be a netflix show based on Orhan Pamuk's "Museum of Innocence". (visiting the accompanying museum in istanbul was already a fantastic experience) www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/w...

"Players now train to replicate AI’s moves as closely as they can rather than inventing their own, even when the machine’s thinking remains mysterious to them." www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/27/1...

The rest of the lot really did their darndest today to make spurs feel like they are just a normal premier league club after all.

1/ Has life expectancy fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic? In a new pre-print, we find that 31 of 34 high-income countries had still not returned to their expected life expectancy trajectories five years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6... #demography

Does FIFA do a prize for economics

Cant help it but the "only fools" line immediately triggers an elvis presley voice in my head.

PAA member and @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social Demography professor Jenna Nobles @jnobles.bsky.social will present the NIH OBSSR Director's Webinar: How Responsible Use of Mobile Device Data Can Advance Our Understanding of Fertility. Register now for March 25 at 11am ET:

Believe in your work. Stop ending papers with “More research is needed” and start concluding with “No more research on this topic is needed.”

paint me sceptical of this emerging "people are falling in love with AI, its keeping the birthrate down" narrative www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/t...

"Birds in the United States are not only declining, but they are declining faster" www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/c...

Not my role to be a critic, but maybe god should have added a bit more flour. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Saw "If I had legs I'd kick you" yesterday and it's a good movie with good acting and dealing with important topics, but boy it's way heavier than I expected. Felt like a truck had driven over me when leaving the theatre.

Breaking new grounds in demographic science: Fresh research from @mortenkthomsen.bsky.social, @andreatilstra.bsky.social and Jane Greve investigates mortality patterns in the intersex population, a group long absent from population health research. www.demography.ox.ac.uk/news/new-wor...

🦢🥚💰🔫 www.ft.com/content/7408...

Well the markets clearly judged that champions league draw to have been very lucky for Arsenal. polymarket.com/event/uefa-c...

If City and Arsenal end up on the same bracket side and both make it to the quarter finals, these two teams would have an insane faceoff schedule: March 22: carabao final at Wembley April 7/8 CL quarter final leg 1 at Etihad April 11 league at Etihad April 14/15 CL quarter final leg 2 at Emirates