Kind of excited for improv theater to come back and satisfy an impending craving for non-AI-generated fiction

No one talks about how the global epidemiologist population went from 3 billion to 30,000 in the period from 2020 to 2026

I would sign up for the Chase Sapphire Rewards card again because it felt so good to cancel it last time

"If it had been STATA, I wouldn't have felt a thing. I'd be dead." What movie?

Imagine If every room were labeled by what it is not

Classical economics: 98% of the data is easily explained by one theory Behavioral economics: 2% of the data is easily explained by sixteen theories

can mathematical economics explain this hardcover premium?

Airplane designer 1: How can we position the outlet so a phone charger has the greatest chance of falling out? Designer 2: On the ceiling Designer 1: But then it's too easy to see Designer 2: Downward at an angle? Designer 1: Perfect!

Review of Boston based on my 2 day visit: Sailboats ✅ 60⁰ weather ✅ Brick sidewalks ✅ Coach lanterns ✅ Someone solved the exceedingly difficult graph theory problem I left on the hallway chalkboard overnight ✅

Clever thing they do in Boston: They make the bus to the airport seem like a train. You transfer from the train. It looks like it's running on train tracks. Addresses that whole "oh no I don't want to transfer to a bus" anxiety.

not only are they selling a bagel, lox, and juice for $25 but they're putting it in the window like look at this deal! get in here!

Every system or con that depends on the argument "nobody's going to take the time to do that" is going away. AI will take the time to do that.

My dad inherited my grandfather's tools. They seem to have accumulated screwdrivers at the rate of 1 per 6 years.

Beach glass is just pollution with good branding

We saw this knot on the sidewalk in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles and tied it at home. Carrick bend, apparently.

Minecraft OSHA violation

And, more generally, we applied consistent terminology: * Reproducibility = same data, same analysis * Robustness = same data, different analyses * Replicability = same question, different data These are examples of repeatability, and are components of the broader concept of credibility.

You have a data set and you torture it until it confesses a publishable story. You literally run loops testing millions of assumptions, exclusions, and model specifications. You end up in a subspace where things look pretty robust but this subspace is just 5% of reasonable analyses.

Nature meta-research project puts claims in social-science paper to the test. Refs in last post I'm interested in Econ and Psych so I focused on that: Econ had about the same rate of "not reproducible" analyses as Psych and a worse rate then Political Science.

My friend took the anti-drunk-driving animation I coded in BASIC when I was 14 and put it online! Good old drunk.bas !

I was introduced to Apple by learning BASIC on a IIe when I was 7. So, this morning, I thought I’d write a little “Happy Birthday, Apple” program in BASIC. But there's no basic interpreter for the Mac! So I Apple dorked all the way out and wrote one for my 7-year-old. github.com/jpurnell/App...

Talking to some undergrads tomorrow about the why no one actually pays us to type model.fit() and asked them ahead of time to submit answers to a "trivially easy" data problem Fun to see the results come it, wild to know how many business run with a not dissimilar fog of war

The Society for Judgment and Decision Making is pleased to announce that the current newsletter is ready for download: sjdm.org/newsletters/ This issue contains SJDM Featured Research Papers, announcements, jobs, and conferences!

We are at that point in history where the charging ports on planes are USB A and those in rental cars are USB C so you need one of these. Reminds me of the USB Micro to USB C transition #nostalgia

Attention NYC undergrads: Applications are open for our 13th annual Data Science Summer school at Microsoft Research NYC! Apply here by April 14th: bit.ly/3pCQENh

Attention NYC undergrads: Applications are open for our 13th annual Data Science Summer school at Microsoft Research NYC! Apply here by April 14th: bit.ly/3pCQENh

Why I travel with a small roll of gaffer tape

Today's SJDM Featured Paper is: Connolly, D. J., & Loewenstein, G. (2026). How Memory Crystallizes the Past: Memories Become More Consistent Over Time Due to Differential, Nonconstant Change. SSRN. doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...

Happy circumference/diameter day!

Today's SJDM Featured Paper is: Strueder, J. D., Looi, T., Clark, P. M., Cockburn, J., & Windschitl, P. D. (2026). Optimistic Predictions Under Uncertainty: Active Information Search Both Supports and Constrains Motivated Bias [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Today's SJDM Featured Paper is: Becker, J., Almaatouq, A., & Horvát, E.-Á. (2021). Network Structures of Collective Intelligence: The Contingent Benefits of Group Discussion. arXiv. doi.org/10.48550/arX...

Today's SJDM Featured Paper is: Costello, T. H., Pelrine, K., Kowal, M., Arechar, A. A., Godbout, J.-F., Gleave, A., Rand, D., & Pennycook, G. (2026). Large language models can effectively convince people to believe conspiracies. arXiv. doi.org/10.48550/arX...

From our group (Economics and Computation) at Microsoft Research cacm.acm.org/opinion/the-...

Opportunities for funding and more from Microsoft's AI Economy Institute www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...

You might be surprised to learn that Canada is the country with the most coastline but this picture should fix that

My bank texted me a code and then rejected it as incorrect and I was like look I'm just trying to be helpful and if you know the code then why are you asking me?

Imagine going anywhere on earth and being able to understand the language www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/g...

Remember when people talked about the Winter Olympics and the opening ceremony was a big deal? It was yesterday btw

You rarely hear the word glottal outside the context of stops

It's so cold that soap bubbles freeze then burst, leaving behind frozen skeletons

Today's SJDM Featured Paper is: DeKay, M. L. (in press). Risky-choice framing effects persist when option descriptions are matched and complete: A replication and extension of DeKay and Dou (2024). Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Today's SJDM Featured Paper is: Dietvorst, B. J. (in press). Understanding people's preferences for predictions: People prioritize being right over minimizing how wrong they are in expectation. Management Science. doi.org/10.1287/mnsc...

About a year ago I stumbled across one of the best teaching examples of selection effects ever

Inflation has me constantly thinking "ha ha funny!" before realizing it's not an error

I'm suddenly inspired to launch a suburban mall flower shop called Fleurs du Mall. Who wants in?

fun(?) little webapp to plot daylight length D(t) and D'(t) for anywhere on the globe at any time (t) in the year lalten.org/daylight sanity checks: - reproduce solstices as D'(t) crossing y=0 - equator has flat D(t), D'(t) [cc @dggoldst.bsky.social who frequently posts about D''(t) ]

The Society for Judgment and Decision Making is pleased to announce that the latest newsletter is ready for download: sjdm.org/newsletters/ This issue contains announcements, conferences, and jobs!

My kids and I made a cube out of paper and hot glue because it seemed like a very Saturday December 20th thing to do

They make planes so big nowadays

There will soon be proctoring center franchises in which people will take tests, do job interviews, and complete paid surveys without access to AI. They'll be strategically placed so that most people will live within a short distance of a proctoring center.