Got an idea worth sharing? This is your moment. We invite speakers, builders, and community leaders to submit proposals that inspire, challenge, and spark new conversations. 🎤 Submit your proposal and join us in Cape Town. za.pycon.org/pages/speak... #Proposals #PyConZA #Python

I shared some thoughts on David Hockney, whom I never met but whose work I’ve kept close for a long time. Also: his kindness to the great neglected painter Patrick Angus. Free post, no paywall. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/some-thoug...

🆕 Aggregating evidence, the research process, and empowering the public to understand research All that & more in this week's episode of Ideas in Development with @economeager.bsky.social. Really enjoyed discussing how we can improve the evidence base in economics by aggregating.

You’ve got to be bookmaxxing. You have to be knowledgepilled and on that information grind. Checking in and looking things up and citing sources. Dont let them bookmog you. Read.

Good synthesis of the discourse around coding and AI right now: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/m...

"I wrote an ode to reticence, my habit of perfection. The held and holding word, its wetting tract is not, as Hopkins said, renunciation but a space, I think for coiled sound to shift." —Isabel Neal, "Doublet"

Where is it we are heading. So fast. But is this fast. I must speak what is in my heart. I don’t know if there’s anything left now in my heart. It is so dry. I must scour it with words. ‘You Shall Not Speak’, a poem by Jorie Graham. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Style (and mindset) tips for less experienced developers working with AI honnibal.dev/blog/llm-sty...

Wrote a summary of a great keynote by @zey.bsky.social at NeurIPS, arguing that we’re having the wrong nightmares about AI: not AGI or superhuman benchmarks, but good-enough genAI at scale threatens "load bearing frictions" society relies on to signal effort, authenticity, sincerity, credibility.

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

🆕 Ten key insights from development economics in 2025 The world is changing rapidly. Can research inform what comes next? I spent a long time trying to condense everything I read this year at @voxdev.bsky.social into ten key insights, you can read the full blog here: voxdev.org/topic/ten-ke...

📣 @youthimpactorg.bsky.social is hiring a Learning Partnerships Lead, who will lead A/B testing partnerships & high-profile research-to-action partnerships: www.youth-impact.org/join-our-tea... ➡️ An exciting role for those who care about rigorous evidence being used in practice on a day-to-day basis

I rewrote Allen Ginsberg's Howl, but for the AI-headed hipsters👇 "I saw the best minds of my generation distracted by machines, shining-eyed delusional demo gods, rubbering through polished cities at dusk Capitalizing The Next Big Push to the end of Introspection, 1/N

You can watch Hadley's keynote at this link: www.youtube.com/live/ctc2kx3... #useR2025

Teaching or studying economics? This blog is for you... @emaansiddique.bsky.social and I have updated @voxdev.bsky.social's series of blogs showcasing how economists use different econometric techniques to answer interesting and important policy questions. Read here: voxdev.org/topic/exampl...

I talked with The Yale Review about two essays of mine--on Philip Roth and Miranda July--they've published in recent years. Many thanks to the editors. backmatter.yalereview.org/p/behind-the...

Most reporting on AI examines worst-case systems deployed under the guise of efficiency. But what would a good faith effort at Ethical AI look like? For two years, we’ve been looking over the shoulder of a city trying to do things differently.

I'm excited about this paper - clearly AI won't always work, but many counterarguments to using AI for decision-making are statistically hard to justify or make narrow appeals to ethics. We identify w/4 criteria where its bad for decisions. Blog post: statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/06/05/w...

In aviation, flight-deck automation is generally understood to be a good thing: It reduces scope for erroneous human inputs and allows pilots to better manage and focus their limited resources. But there is a risk: Pilots may never really learn to fly manually, or they may let those skills atrophy.

Exciting Data Engineering role with J-PAL Africa’s Water, Air and Energy Lab and City of Cape Town’s Data Science team 🇿🇦

Centre for the Study of African Economies at University of Oxford will automatically consider all applicants from Africa for full funding for the MPhil in Economics - we have new scholarships for eligible students. How? Just apply asap: deadline 4th March (extended deadline): see below

📣 Join our team in South Africa as a Research Manager! Support cutting-edge research on a set of scaling evidence-based programs in collaboration w/ the Department of Basic Education @youthimpactorg.bsky.social @j-pal.bsky.social Lego Zenex + more www.youth-impact.org/join-our-tea...

👋 Hi! J-PAL is now on Bluesky! 📊 We’re looking forward to bringing conversations on evidence-informed policy to this new space. Follow us for updates on the latest research, policy insights, and how rigorous evidence is helping shape a better world.

@economeager.bsky.social's excellent essay got me thinking about how we confuse research with affirming (& preserving) our identity. Where we can tolerate uncertainty but only to the extent it blows in the direction of our unfolding personal narrative statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/01/23/s...

“The Philosopher L. A. Paul Wants Us to Think About Our Selves” www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

I'm teaching a grad seminar this winter on Prediction for Decision-making. We'll look at what it means to make good predictions for decision-making from various angles, with a focus on decisions for & about people. Reading list: statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/12/06/n... Suggestions welcome!

Can't believe I just hit 125k followers on here! There are so many more wonderful queer and trans voices you should follow as well. I created a starter pack with them. Give them a follow! go.bsky.app/DVtrFQR

Come attend the 2024 SALDRU December Workshop! 12-13 December, School of Economics, U of Cape Town. We've got a great list of speakers, and v pleased the keynote will be Dennis Egger (@eggerdennis.bsky.social) presenting "Slack & Economic Development". All welcome! RSVP: forms.gle/cwdPjw7iEjqa...

Celebrate the holiday by roasting this bird (delete your Twitter account; it feels good 🎉):

If you're interested in trying out LLMs in #rstats but don't know where to begin, I've added a few two vignettes to elmer: elmer.tidyverse.org/articles/elm... and elmer.tidyverse.org/articles/pro...

We've got a brand new, baby website for Positron! Take a look if you are interested in getting started, and please let us know how it goes: positron.posit.co

intro post: I post a lot of explanations of computer things, here's an example! this one's an intro to Git's internals

The City of Cape Town is a Silver sponsor of #PyConZA2024 🐍. Welcome aboard! za.pycon.org/sponsors/8/

ungatedresearch.org is a wonderful public good being developed by Martin Abel and Susie Godlonton. It's a website with links to the latest ungated version of papers published in several economics journals. Especially valuable in LMICs where many scholars don't have access to the journals.

So cool: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

What’s the story behind that paper by the Center for Open Science team that just got retracted? statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/09/26/w...

We (me & @berkustun.bsky.social) created a starter pack of researchers working on algorithmic decision-making & fairness. Other platforms still seem to dominate for many ML-related topics, but maybe this will help Probably missed people, so let us know if you have suggestions! go.bsky.app/851zVkg

Having a wonderful day off today, rereading some gems: yalereview.org/article/dana... ❤️

❤️ harpers.org/archive/2020...

“Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #1,147,042!” Cool 😎

"It is not the case that “AI gathers data from the Web and learns from it.” The reality is that AI companies gather data and then optimize models to reproduce representations of that data for profit." www.techpolicy.press/challenging-... Long, v. worthwhile read from Eryk Salvaggio

It's not surprising that LLMs have difficulty with this! I talk more about this three card blind task in this article. (also pretty interesting that GPT can spit out the full Oracle text of just about every Magic card) nickchk.substack.com/p/ai-errors-...

If you are interested in learning more about minimum wages, Attila Lindner and I have a new, up-to-date review of the topic, coming out in the Handbook of Labor Economics. Here's the @nberpubs working paper. Link: nber.org/papers/w32878

I'm excited to share the next version of patchwork with the world, available on CRAN now. First class support for gt tables and even more freedom with `free()` #rstats #ggplot2

📉📈 via @upjohninstitute New research shows that job design—the choices employers make about the actual tasks workers are assigned—could provide a route to higher-paying jobs for the future. … 1/2

I wrote about the value of writing: Under the Net https://ksetiya.substack.com/p/content-providers

This week's blog links include using your econ PhD outside of academia, sharing research results with subjects in Zanzibar, city types in developing countries, building farmer resilience to climate change, and more... #econsky blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

For Bluesky-Curious Econ Lovers, a Quick Start guide to plugging into the economics community here. I wrote it hoping to lower the costs & boost the benefits for folks to engage here. If you think it's useful, please share it. 📉📈 #️⃣#️⃣ aaronsojourner.org/for-bluesky-...

For the past few years, I've taught dataviz using #rstats + {ggplot2} and the class is free and asynchronous with ≈35 hours of video at datavizf24.classes.andrewheiss.com I also have regular R-based dataviz-related blog posts at www.andrewheiss.com/blog/