@bitsyperlman
Economic Historian at the Census. 19th & 21st C innovation, sci of sci, urban/spatial, info spread. All views are my own or expressed for rhetorical exposition. Posts before 2025 were imported. (they/them) Brookline, MA
Good thing I hadn’t seen this when we drove around to do cognitive testing on the Census MOPS survey!
Those, stories, of course, are confidential and protected by Federal Statute.
(Too bad. Some were hilarious!)
But we shouldn't take this system for granted. There are very real strains on it, and a very real need to modernize, including by relying less heavily on surveys. That will require resources. And if that doesn't happen, the quality of the data will erode.
relatedly, it always astounds me the extent to which it seems senior or higher-up people think junior or lower-down people won't talk to each other about what they've seen.
that's a big scary sounding number in absolute terms, but important to contextualize!
when we compare on a percentage basis to other recent successful overrides in our neighboring communities, a hypothetical $23.3MM override would actually be _smaller_ in terms of impact on taxpayers
Ha! The original Lancet article on the dangers of reading in bed is here: doi.org/10.1016/S014...
NBER WP is going to be really vulnerable. What's going to stop someone who's enthusiastic about AI and senior enough that they're not super concerned about their reputation from flooding it with AI generated papers?
As we in #Brookline begin the discussion over this override, this is the shape of the debate:
When unpaid cooking, cleaning and child care get a dollar value, US income inequality shrinks – but the gap has grown since 1965. Leila Gautham & Nancy Folbre in the JPubE report that declining household production implies inequality in living standards has expanded more than standard data suggest!
As we reported in @boltsmag.org last month, Massachusetts is the *only* state with a Democratic governor + legislature that maintains a state-level 287(g) agreement with ICE. As part of this agreement, Massachusetts often funnels people exiting prison into deportation.
boltsmag.org/massachusett...
It depends on how strong the forces pushing us to change are. People are going to be very resistant, but things will start to break
However, I don't have thoughts on answers to the questions I posed, as I don't have thoughts on what student accessment is actually for
I wonder about more fundamental rethinking: what is knowledge production? why is it valuable?
The paper is a form we've settled on, but not, in the end, "science"
If we can deeply understand the aims of scholarship, maybe we can find new forms that better suit this era
bsky.app/profile/bren...
In the briefing, Mr. Rubio argued that, no matter if Israel or the United States struck first, Iran would respond with a powerful barrage of weapons against U.S. bases and embassies. It was logical then, Mr. Rubio said, that the United States should act in concert with Israel, since America would be dragged in anyway. And Israel, Mr. Rubio said, was determined to act. This logic sat poorly with some Democrats, who thought the Trump administration was letting Mr. Netanyahu dictate American policy — and was making a circular argument that the United States had to attack because its military buildup could prompt Iran to strike.
just wild that Rubio would frame the US attack on Iran as beholden to what Israel was going to do and/or as inevitable based on circular logic like this… www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/u...
This administration's policies on data are so twisted that *People Magazine* is covering it now.
An image of beautiful Boulder, CO, USA, with the iconic flatiron rock formations and red roofed campus.
The International Conference on the Science of Science & Innovation #ICSSI2026 will be in beautiful Boulder, CO, USA!
☀️ June 29 - July 1 ☀️
& Open Data Hackathon, June 28 🧑💻
We welcome submissions on all topics in the science of science and innovation, broadly defined.
Learn more at 👉 icssi.org 👈
Petition to refer to this as the Vought Curve.
Check out this recent @nature.com paper reporting a field experiment on X. It shows X's algorithm boosts conservative content and downranks traditional media—shifting users’ views on key issues. Switching to chronological doesn’t reverse the effect. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers.
The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇
Anti-fascism should have broad support across the American political spectrum. Elections need to be defended. Here's an open letter from retired professors at HBS in which we call for business leaders to address that need.
#econsky #academicsky
marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2026/02/an-a...
I support this
It's really a story of generational inequality in housing affordability - people who have been in their homes for a while are comparatively well off, while young people renting and trying to buy a home are facing high costs. It's also a story of immobility - homeowners face high costs of moving.
The impact is already hitting science agencies hard. The NIH—the world's largest public biomedical research funder—has had to rely on leftover stopgap funds.
New grant awards have slowed to a trickle — exacerbating the effects of a record-long shutdown in October.
(h/t @jeremymberg.bsky.social)
Figure 1B from the new Soltas and Gruber paper shows standardized time to build. I'm assuming Boston isn't in the graph because our time to build is infinite
"Contrary to assumptions of post-acute recovery, Long COVID is associated with progressively widening healthcare costs over five years." Preprint from Massachusetts General Hospital researchers: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...
Why Burhan for State Senate? #mapoli
✅ Has a track record of meaningful policy changes that address affordability
✅ Puts his progressive values into action
Bonus points:
✅ Mom raised him while working at Dunkin'
Time is a flat circle
My letter to the editor was published in @brooklinenews.bsky.social!
TL,DR: Let’s turn that surface parking lot into homes and tax revenue!
brookline.news/re-developer...
Outgoing Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic signals greater concern about Fed independence than the more anodyne statements typically offered by his colleagues when the subject comes up
He says there's an ongoing threat and the outcome is genuinely uncertain www.atlantafed.org/news-and-eve...
Haven't seen it on Bluesky yet: a nice paper is making the rounds, estimating that the cost of housing permits in LA can explain 1/3 of the gap between construction costs and housing prices.
That is: LA's terribly slow housing permitting is extremely costly!
A line curve showing number of awards for fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021-2025 across NSF. The fiscal year 2026 curve lies well below curves for other fiscal years.
NSF Update
Funding curve overall. A little bit of progress in the past week, but only a little bit.
Now by Directorate...
1/11
Is anyone else bothered by the way mint flavor spreads? If e.g. any other flavor of chocolates are stored in a bag with mint chocolates, they all become mint chocolates.
I don't dislike mint chocolate; I just don't like it enough for all chocolate (or cupcakes or etc) to be all of that thing.