dplyr 1.2.0 was released last week and since I use {dplyr} a lot in my work, I wanted to take some time to try some of the new functions. This post provides some supplemental examples of the new functions, beyond what is provided in the new Posit materials. #rstats cghlewis.com/blog/dplyr_u...

We tracked public TikToks containing keywords like "ICE," "Alex Pretti," "Renee Good," "Trump," and "Epstein" over time. There was a big drop - but it hit everything, political and non-political alike. "Recipe" and "Oscar" posts fell off too.

6/ The Post has lost over 375,000 subscribers in just over a year. If 10% of those readers subscribed to The 51st instead, we could hire 10 reporters and five editors, dramatically scaling our coverage of the city at this critical time. 51st.news/signup

Really important research out of Anthropic: In a RCT study, they found AI coding assistance resulted in a 𝟏𝟕% 𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐩 in mastery for users. While tasks were slightly faster, offloading thinking to AI stunted skill growth. Using AI to explain code, rather than just write it did help with retention.

I will simply never recover from reading this sentence: "Since Georgia implemented work requirements in 2020, they have spent twice as much on Deloitte consultants and administrative costs as on healthcare for people."

🚨 If populist rhetoric isn't persuasive, why do populists keep winning? 🚨 Our new paper (and first published registered report) shows populism's real electoral power may be mobilization, not persuasion—though policy positions still matter far more for voting. alexanderkustov.org/files/Kustov...

My new analysis: The administration misleads and ignores courts most often in immigration cases. In fact, a majority of the instances identified in a compilation by @justsecurity.org were about immigration. When deportations are on the line, expect them to lie to courts. www.cato.org/blog/admin-m...

After years in academia, I’m exploring data science and research roles in industry. I'm a quant. social scientist (PhD Yale ’24, NYU) focused on causal inference, experiments, and large-scale data. Feel free to get in touch or share; all leads appreciated. [email protected]

BREAKING: Whistleblower disclosures reveal a formal ICE policy to ignore the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.  Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door & storm into your home. 1/

At a time of unprecedented daily scandals, this this whistleblower complaint, and the memo it reveals for the first time, breaks through for me as beyond the pale. It's the federal government conspiring in secret to subvert the Fourth Amendment. Read it here: s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

i think this MLK day the thing to focus on is the strategic focus and tactical brilliance of the civil rights movement and the way it was laser focused on a set of achievable goals

Trump lets another drug trafficker out of prison because his father happens to be a Republican member of Congress.

"Their 6-month-old infant stopped breathing and lost consciousness."

Non-protesting dad just trying to hustle his kids, as young as 6mo, out of the neighborhood. ICE threw a flash-bang INTO HIS car, all 6 kids in the hospital now. If anyone wondered how things turn against occupying armies there's a case study playing out in front of you.

brutal bag of charts by @ashendruk.com www.not-ship.com/america-isnt...

To mark 10 years of the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics we are pleased to offer access to all issues from 2025 - https://cup.org/3Ld06Fl Where not #OpenAccess the articles in these issues are free to read until the end of January 2026. cc @journalrep.bsky.social#OpenAccess

In the clip he goes on like this for a solid 25s

DOKOUPIL: When I travel the country, they tell me they don't feel it because grocery prices are up-- TRUMP: They're going to now. I've only been here for 11 months. I inherited a mess. If she got in, you wouldn't have this job right now.

If there's one empirical insight I'd want everyone to understand about American politics, it's this: America's problems are solved problems. Just not here. What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵

Academics - if you are expert in the history of the fourth amendment, today is a day you could pitch your favorite news outlet with a piece about it. If you're interested, do a little writing, then email me lollardfish at gmail and I'll give you some free op-ed coaching.

Breaking News: The EPA will stop considering lives saved when setting pollution limits and instead calculate only the cost to businesses.

It’s beyond insane that our overarching internal security agency has spent months tweeting barely-coded messages of support for neo-Nazi groups and the entire media apparatus looks at it and says “That’s odd but certainly not part a major story that is relevant to current events, I’m sure”

1. The DOJ has not released 99% of the Epstein Files, in direct violation of the law They claim the delay is necessary to review the files But here is the thing: The DOJ previously claimed THE REVIEW WAS COMPLETE IN JULY

This is the kind of thing that the Founders explicitly designed our constitution to prevent; a president who has seized wealth for his own benefit without any intervention from Congress, which in our system is supposed to be the holder of the power of the purse.

“No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law" Article I, Section 9.

New at Tusk: I’m pulling my post-January 6th Mischiefs of Faction piece out of the archives to commemorate this fifth anniversary

A tiny trial in New York has shown that personalized mRNA vaccines can provoke massive, lasting immune responses against pancreatic cancer, even as sweeping federal cuts now threaten the fragile labs required to produce them. theintellectualistofficial.substack.com/p/a-breakthr...

Copy Editing Matters, from HHS's release on the new childhood vaccine schedule: All the diseases will still be available to anyone who wants them

amazing how the entire machine can pivot within 24 hours. no need to slowly upsell the argument; just issue new marching orders

I guess StackOverflow is done.

If I may quote Bari Weiss's memo from last week: "the standards for fairness we are holding ourselves to, particularly on contentious subjects, will surely feel controversial to those used to doing things one way"

Trump: "They emptied out, if you think about it, they emptied out all of their mental institutions into our country." (Trump doesn't understand the difference between insane asylums and political asylum claims.)

Awesome article on medical breakthroughs that came from basic neuroscience research in rodents. Major success examples in postpartum depression, non-opioid pain and migraine treatment. This is exactly why funding basic science is so important! www.thetransmitter.org/drug-develop...

“The biggest disappointment of 2025 may well have been not what Trump did but how so many let it happen.” @sbg1.bsky.social reviews the year in politics. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/7co9Uv

The California DMV is in deep need of reform. Enraging stuff, uncovered by a team of reporters at @calmatters.org calmatters.org/investigatio...

Year 1 data on congestion pricing in Manhattan… * Vehicle traffic: -11% * Foot traffic: +3.4% * Storefront vacancy: -0.9% * Pollution: -22% * Revenue for mass transit: $548M So YES this has been a huge success.

I feel like "attention hacking" is most of politics now. The Minnesota aid fraud story is becoming a perfect example. Recap: In 2022, the Biden DOJ filed the first charges against dozens of fraudsters, many of them Somali-American, who'd fleeced a state food aid program. (1/x)

All of the money that changed hands in the Teapot Dome scandal totaled less than $10 million after adjusting for inflation, and it was considered so corrupt we still teach it in high school government classes a century later.

We are getting to the point where white collar criminals are thinking, "why take the plea deal my high-priced lawyer negotiated when I can just bribe the President and skip jail altogether?" donmoynihan.substack.com/p/pardon-the...

New reporting says Don Jr. directly facilitated the pardon of a crypto whale who had promoted the Trump's family crypto. Jr. brought the pardon lawyer to the White House, and introduced him directly to his Dad. Pardon occurred right after. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/pardon-the...

“In DOGE’s published list of canceled contracts and grants, the 13 largest were all incorrect.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...

1 - the exec branch can't decline to spend $ Congress appropriated 2- the fed govt can't use federal $ to extort states over policy/political disagreements 3-the fed govt can't use federal $ to impose conditions unrelated to the funding program 4-the fed govt can't use federal $ to coerce states

It is true that school transportation is in a sorry state in a lot of places, and so many parents have no choice to chauffeur their kids. I think that's bad. I *also* think it's bad when parents opt into the chauffeur life in cases when there are other safe, reasonably convenient options.

This feels like an underappreciated problem: "Of more than 700 locations sampled, 61% exceeded aquatic life thresholds set by the EPA...60% of samples blew past the accepted healthy drinking water standard."

On Bluesky, you often see commentary on and jokes about clips from White House Daily Briefings--but have you considered *why* the White House does them? And to what end? I (with @benjaminsnoble.bsky.social and Erin Rossiter) investigate in a new paper 1/N www.davidryanmiller.com/files/Presid...