Saurabh Lall

this is a depressingly good point (about how the EU / Aus / China / Asia-Pac etc did not step up nearly enough to fill the gap left by USAID)

Good news for China, India and Canada:

"firms respond to restrictions on H-1B immigration by increasing foreign affiliate employment... particularly in China, India, and Canada. The most impacted jobs were R&D- intensive."

Are recent immigrants a "ticking time bomb" for British public finances? At a few recent policy events, I keep hearing that dependents on visas are a Problem.

Very important work by @lgilbert.co comprehensively dissecting and demolishing the myth spread by politicians and "thinktanks" that recent migrants are likely to be a drain on public finances.

www.laurenpolicy.com/p/are-recent...

Did the Sun boycott make Liverpool more leftwing? My study indicates it may have shifted views The boycott caused the percentage of people who said they supported the Labour party to increase by about 16 percentage points.

A lot of the studies on media influence on political behavior focus on Fox's position in the channel line-up to generate an exogenous effect. This one looks at the effect of a city boycotting a particular newspaper because of its coverage of a sports tragedy.
theconversation.com/did-the-sun-...

It's a year later (5) in Scotland, so maybe just an English thing?

Nice to see a refreshed corner store in Winnipeg’s Elmwood neighbourhood. The world needs more corner stores. Cities need more neighbourhoods built to accept and support them.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, others call for gun control after Annunciation shooting The mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis is again sparking a push for something to change.

"We need a statewide and a federal ban on assault weapons."

📊 New dataset and paper alert!
We’re proud to launch the Opposition Movements and Groups (OMG) Dataset, 1789–2019: a global dataset covering 1,452 mass mobilization movements. It was just published in Comparative Political Studies. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Below follows a 🧵

I think if Britain colonised your country of origin you should get free BBC iplayer.

Thanks to @scotnational.bsky.social for bucking the trend and sharing positive stories about the people behind the statistics

Fight Cuts, Defend Higher Education at the University of Oregon The University of Oregon is planning to lay off an undisclosed number of faculty—including many tenured faculty—and to close units based on a projected budget deficit that was discovered late spring t...

University of Oregon is planning to close dept and lay off faculty—incl many *tenured* faculty—& among those impacted are Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, and Holocaust Studies. Here is a link to a petition asking the president to reconsider actionnetwork.org/petitions/fi...

Shipping containers stacked on top of each other with a clear blue sky above.

New research from Dr Bernhard Reinsberg shows France’s supply chain law has not hurt company profits or revenues. Firms can succeed while meeting human rights and environmental standards.

Read more on the #SocSciHub: tinyurl.com/8rbdhjrv

Trump’s Tactics Mean Many International Students Won’t Make It to Campus

"Some students have given up on enrolling in U.S. schools entirely out of anxiety over the political environment in the United States. Others are staying away because they worry that even if they were to gain entry, they would effectively be trapped..." 🗃️

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/u...

Opinion | I’ve Seen What Happens When a Country Messes With Data. America, Beware. (Gift Article) Tampering with official statistics leads to bad situations.

What happens when governments meddle with official statistics?

Here's a terrific piece from the former head of Greece's statistical system, outlining just how badly it can distort economic and political life.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/o... (gift link)

Me, repeatedly whispering to myself while reading reviewer comments on an article:

“It’s okay. No one thinks you’re stupid. They are helping.”

but also when you zoom in on a project in stats world everything feels so manageable right up until the end of the project when you realise you've been like, raking the zen garden while the house is on fire

statistics is so soothing relative to writing about art, insanity, sex and death, jesus.

unfortunately journal publication is not soothing or easy, while hitting "send" on substack is.

probably some kind of general lesson here ie that's why we're paid to publish in journals not release preprints

ASU Projects 18% Drop in International Student Enrollment Arizona State University typically welcomes over 17,900 international students to its four campuses each year, but this fall, due to a variety of complications, the university expects only 14,600 inte...

One in three new international students at Arizona State University are waiting on student visas to come through. Difficulties in getting appointments and social media reviews are key drivers.

This creates chaos for faculty and administrators as the new term nears...let alone the students.

I share this sentiment. I think people are still in deep denial. We have a violent hard right fascist party in charge, an openly corrupt and fascist court system, rigged legislators and no opposition party. Without mass revolt this is checkmate.

The White House is taking new steps to undermine every international student at our universities.

It has approved a new rule restricting student visas to 4 years max. That's not long enough for PhD students, or about half of undergrads, to finish their degree.

Likely to enter force within days.

Square sails clearly follow a variant of the "New Version-final-new-revision-last" naming convention

Procrastination time.

For each like this gets, I'll post one currently active Brit pop/Brit pop adjacent/Madchester/90s British rock act that I'd recommend seeing instead of Oasis.

Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the a...

Elon Musk casually, and illegally, dismantled USAID. According to a new study in the Lancet, that action will lead to *14 million* premature deaths between 2025 and 2030.

Again: Elon Musk is directly responsible for 14 million coming deaths. 4.5 million will be children.

USAID is shutting its doors today--marking the end of democracy, diplomacy, and decency all in one fell swoop.

The only ones benefiting from this are the admins, I always thought.

I am once again pitching my romantic comedy:

- two academics start dating
- discover they are each other's terrible reviewer
- hijinks ensue

Working title: Love is Double-Blind

Ten Citations I Hate In Your Book