How are coding agents changing how we study the economy, society and politics? New results from a baseline survey with @tomlyttelton.bsky.social and Maxim Massenkoff, about who is using AI coding agents and what they're doing with them.

"One could say that yes, I did walk the talk." — Tā Hirini Moko Haerewa Mead KNZM (1927–2026) Moe mai rā e te rangatira. www.teaonews.co.nz/2026/05/29/i...

"Immigration Restrictions and Natives’ Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from the 1920s US Quota Acts" www.cato.org/research-bri... "Our findings reveal that the quotas slowed intergenerational mobility among US-born white men."

Confirmed: The HPV vaccine is amaze amaze amaze. Still TBD: Will Project Hail Mary finally displace my penchant for Princess Bride quotes? #GenX #episky #medsky #publichealth #idsky Read more (and subscribe!) jenndowd.substack.com/p/the-cancer...

Why did place names on a map of Canada matter to geographers in London? In the 1880s, a new railroad connected eastern Canada to British Columbia. As the railway expanded, Indigenous place names were added to official maps - including this 1886 map - which became a point of contention at the RGS.

At the Sudbury Theatre Centre, Sudbury, Ontario, June 4th, 6-7pm, to discuss ‘People of the Watershed: Photography by John Macfie’ now on at The Art Gallery of Sudbury. If you’re in the area please join us. Free.

All you ever wanted to know about bread production, prices, markets, and political economy in early modern Spain, now on Early View! "The Bread of Toledo", Joint with David González Agudo at @uv.es. Open access: doi.org/10.1111/ehr....

Illustrations of the palace of the Maya city of Palenque by Jean-Frédéric Maximilien de Waldeck and published by Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg in 1866.

Reinforces something we write in our paper factory work From now on, a publishable contribution must do something that an LLM with standard data and methods can’t osf.io/preprints/so...

Recent reorganizations at the National Library of Medicine resulted in the elimination of its History of Medicine Division. The NLM is one of the largest libraries of its kind, critical for students and researchers. Please speak out in support of the National Library of Medicine (NLM)

I am very excited to announce the forthcoming publication of my new book with University of Toronto Press in July 2026. Heartfelt thanks to friends, colleagues, archivists, librarians, & students who have been on the journey with me. Deets: utppublishing.com/doi/book/10.... @uoftpress.bsky.social

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What happens when AI scaling comes for science? New post: kucharski.substack.com/p/what-happe...

In the Fall I'll be teaching a new MA-level methods course entitled "Applied Statistical Evaluation of Development Projects". It will be 12 weeks, in R, and aimed around RCT evaluations. This is a draft outline. What am I missing? What seems redundant?

Very few sign-ups for the in-person document sessions on 16 and 17 June. Please circulate with PhD students etc who use legal records in their research (or I won't be able to run the sessions this year). I can promise witchcraft, treason, and all that good stuff (if it runs). Details via the thread.

'new hires who were seen as “AI natives” are turning out to have alarmingly shallow ideas. So much so, the anonymous finance worker admitted, that his firm now actively avoids seeking out AI-literate STEM graduates, and opts to comb through humanities students instead.' futurism.com/future-socie...

Finally, here's an absolute banger of an article, published just last month (Hoffman et al. 2026), showing how incredibly powerful the cohort patterning of influenza deaths is, in regular (not pandemic) years, corresponding to how circulating strains match up w what people were exposed to as kids

#OnThisDay, 18 May 1893, Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia spoke at the Kotahitanga (Māori parliament) in Aotearoa (New Zealand). She was the first woman to address the Kotahitanga, #AotearoaHistory #NZHistory #VotesForWomen #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory 🗃️ 1/2

1/ New @Nature! We study how powerful institutions shape the information environment for LLMs. Commercial LLM training is opaque, so we trace a path from state-coordinated media -> training data -> model responses.

A Six-Year-Old Boy On A Field Trip Just Pulled A 1,300-Year-Old Viking Sword From A Field In Norway. 📷Avisen Hadeland/Facebook allthatsinteresting.com/tingelstad-n...

1/ Excited to report we have a new paper out @nature.com today! The bottom line: training data for LLMs does not just fall from the sky - it is created in the context of existing social political institutions - and that has consequences for LLM output. nature.com/articles/s41...

TIL that Dolly Parton's Imagination Library now enrolls one of every six children in the US to receive a new book in the mail every month from birth to age five (60 books each) @arl.org

I'm launching a new project with @joguldi.bsky.social today: Working Papers in Critical Search. Today we're publishing the first working paper: "Why a Working Paper Series on Critical Search Now" #digitalhistory #digitalhumanities working-papers-in-critical-search.github.io/paper-001-in...

"Using an innovative blend of record linkage, machine learning, and historical geocoding, the team ... will give an unprecedented, population-scale view of life over this period, and unlock questions about major social, economic, and demographic changes that were once impossible to answer."

Join us in Vienna to discuss inequality, economic mobility & labor markets! With @franziskadbacher.bsky.social and @izmartinez86.bsky.social I'm stoked to announce this workshop, keynotes by @emilynix100.bsky.social and @natewilmers.bsky.social. Nov 19-20, submit by June 30: www.wu.ac.at/ineq/ws26

Data from 1962 to 2014 and a new identification strategy show increased trade significantly reduces the probability and intensity of conflicts between nations, from Ling Feng, Qiuyue Huang, Zhiyuan Li, and Christopher M. Meissner www.nber.org/papers/w35078

Spiralling global temperatures (1850-2026) It is exactly 10 years since I first put this animated graphic of changes in global temperature online. #ClimateSpiral It instantly went viral. People watched it over and over again. It still offers the power to shock a decade on.

massive research bias toward "Global North" livestock (cattle, sheep, horses) compared to neglected species (buffalo, camels, donkeys, mules). 6,047 cattle welfare articles vs. just 235 for buffalo, despite buffalo being globally important for hot climates & climate change doi.org/10.7717/peer...

Zachary Bartsch at Ave Maria University shows how coffee became a substitute for alcohol during prohibition in the US between 1920 and 1933. #alcohol #coffee #prohibition onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

It's wild that a current events newsletter written by a historian of 19th century America, Heather Cox Richardson, has more subscribers (~3 million on Substack) than the Washington Post does(~2.5 million). Some thoughts on what this all means. rightlandia.ghost.io/slow-knowled...

Handwriting experts, your suggestions. My PhD student is looking an 18C transcription of French letters, together with paralel translations into English. They're on the same pages, with a dividing line. But are very different-looking hands. Do people have different hands in different languages?

I am delighted to share my new article in JAS. Based on Qing confiscation inventories, it examine the relationship between material culture, political power, and cultural identity in the Qing empire. read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-a...

This is a great job for someone committed to the development of economic history as a field. You'll be part of a large community of scholars based in both history and economics, with a vibrant seminar life and lots of interesting people coming through. And a fellowship in Nuffield to boot.

"Scholars from Trinity College Dublin (TCD) uncovered the manuscript that contains Caedmon’s Hymn at the National Central Library of Rome." #MedievalSky #speirgorm #Spéirghorm www.theguardian.com/books/2026/a...

A new book by @stevebrusatte.bsky.social on bird evolution is out today! Here's an interview on why he thinks they survived the end-Cretaceous mass extinction and the challenges they're facing today. 🦅🪶🧪

Burning of Mount Wakakusa 若草山の山焼き. Nara City, Japan, is witness the annual special event called “Burning of Mount Wakakusa”. It is a ritual called “Yamayaki (山焼き)” to appeasement those who have already passed way, as well as a prayer for peace.

For me, Hans Gosling was the spark, and ggplot2 @hadley.nz was the tool that most helped me take visualization seriously. Tufte was of course influential, as well as @kjhealy.co. These days, it's @nrennie.bsky.social who captures my attention most often. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkS...

"Nineteenth-century Londoners ... experienced a hierarchy of urban environments. While the wealthy laid claim to healthier, higher ground, much of the working class crowded near the docks & factories in the Thames Estuary and Lea Valley." - @jimclifford.bsky.social niche-canada.org/2015/11/25/t...

AIDS Creeps Back in Parts of Zambia, a Year After U.S. Cuts to HIV Assistance. A once-robust HIV treatment and prevention system, credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives, has begun to crumble, by @stephanienolen.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/04/25/h... via @nytimes.com

Day 26 of the #30DayChartChallenge: Trend 📊 (a couple of days early) A simple chart made with #RStats to show how easy it is to get nice-looking, effective charts with {ggauto}! #30DayChartChallenge2026 #Day26

Submission deadline for the Workshop on Education Economics and Policy (WEEP) in Trondheim is *this Friday* This is always high-quality with interesting papers and thoughtful discussants - there are no registration fees thanks to funding from our new EduGAP project sites.google.com/site/prgreen...

Vintage data sets of GDP often rewrite the narrative www.measuringworth.com/datasets/UKd...

Happy to be part of this mini-documentary on the pill with Claudia Goldin & Elaine Tyler May. It seems especially timely given certain groups seem hellbent on rolling back women's reproductive autonomy.

📢Online book event! Join us next week to hear more about Deserted Wives and Economic Divorce in 19th Century England and Wales. @drjenniferaston.bsky.social in conversation with @afroide.bsky.social 📅April 30 ⏰12pm noon ET Free and open to the public Info and RSVP: www.nacbs.org/event-detail...

Tfw you hear your book is now at the printers! Available from good bookshops and libraries (feel free to ask yours to order it). (Shameless promotion via #RomanFortThursday) www.amberley-books.com/roman-life-o...

my latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com

An evening with the Glamorgan County Lunatic Asylum Wage Books 📚

Malaria!

Intergenerational Rebalancing Conference: The first day will be academic in context and the second, policy-based: with renowned speakers on both days including Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman, Baron David Willetts and Professor Sir Julian Le Grand.