Charles Connaughton

This main effect aligns with the across-firm regularity of larger firms producing lower quality patents on average. Any quality increase in 'the good stuff' is overshadowed by increases in strategic junk patenting.

Seems to be some sort of variant on patent thickets, ala Shapiro 2000?

When autocratization is reversed: episodes of U-Turns since 1900 The world is in a “wave of autocratization.” Yet, recent events in Brazil, the Maldives, and Zambia demonstrate that autocratization can be halted and reversed. This article introduces “U-Turn” as ...

“52% of all autocratization episodes become U-Turns, which increases to 73% when focusing on the last 30 years. The vast majority of U-Turns (90%) lead to restored or even improved levels of democracy”

V-Dem data

What’s new in biology: September 2025 Gene therapy, narcolepsy drugs, parasite removal, protein nanoparticles, the 3D structure of genomes, and more.

New post!

A round up of the latest advances in biotech and medicine by @nikomccarty.bsky.social and me.

Prime editing, curing whipworm, a new narcolepsy drug, designing protein nanoparticles, the 3D structure of E. coli's genome and more!

Read it all here: www.worksinprogress.news/p/whats-new-...

Paris said au revoir to cars. Air pollution maps reveal a dramatic change. Air pollution fell substantially as the city restricted car traffic and made way for parks and bike lanes.

“Over the past 20 years, Paris has undergone a major physical transformation, trading automotive arteries for bike lanes, adding green spaces and eliminating 50,000 parking spaces.

Part of the payoff has been invisible — in the air itself.”

Leadership, strategy, real action, common sense. #Paris

A careful study of every populist episode since 1900 finds catastrophic consequences, which play out slowly.

On average, incomes fall behind by nearly 15% over 15 years.

For the U.S., this is a cost of about $13k per person per year. Over a lifetime, that's million bucks.

"Specialization and trade is such a powerful, productivity-boosting strategy that plants that abstain from it are practically the exception that prove the rule."

"what we're looking at is decentralized decision making."

Great piece:
www.npr.org/sections/pla...

It is important to remember that Waymo only operates within an operational design domain that is literally “where we know it will operate safely and well.” That’s why it doesn’t run on all roads, or in all cities, or in all weather conditions. (1/?)

We highlight a fact that at least a lot of economists I talked to didn't really understand well enough, which was that in 1965, 2% of the entire US economy was public science. One in every $50 was public science. That's now about half a percent of GDP.

3/n

we're living through a major, civilization-altering technological revolution and it has nothing to do with AI

Why US Men Think College Isn’t Worth It Anymore Rising tuition, the spread of more traditional ideas of masculinity on social media and a desire for an immediate income are working together to set boys on a different path.

American men are now in a cultural doom loop of consuming misogynistic alpha male content that makes them unattractive to women and ceding college education & thus higher paying jobs to them as well.

I’ve been seeing this anecdotally on Twitter & Threads for years but it’s now being backed by data.

Thinking of a point by @fchollet.bsky.social - intelligence is a society level, not an individual level, construct. Your own intelligence is deeply entwined with your information environment.

Relevant as we integrate AI into our workflows - and also navigate an increasingly toxic media landscape.

The sharp stock market correction—down 10% over three days— is only in response to that part of the tariff plan that was unexpected. And even today, it prices in a (substantial?) chance the President backs off.

It follows that the market reaction *understates* how much damage these tariffs will do.

Today is April 1st, the only day of the year that many (most?) people pause to critically evaluate information that they encounter online before deciding whether to accept it as true.

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

In 25 years of covering national security, I’ve never seen a story like this: Senior Trump officials discussed planning for the U.S. attack on Yemen in a Signal group--and inadvertently added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

I hate saying breaking news, but that’s what’s happening. This story is going to be everywhere.

Of course, that would also imply the status quo of lawlessness and chaos can continue for another 5+ weeks without anyone actually having to do anything about it.

I'm keeping an eye on March 14th, when the current budget resolution expires.

I don't see how Congress is supposed to agree to a budget when the executive branch is ignoring any spending it doesn't like. Doesn't that mean everything just comes to a halt until there is some resolution?

Musk's Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government Imagining how we'd cover overseas what's happening to the U.S. right now

Having watched with growing alarm the developments of the last 24 and 36 hours in Washington, I thought I’d take a stab at how the US media would cover this story if it was happening in a foreign country. Here’s that story that should be written this weekend: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/musk-s-jun...

We're getting that coverage despite the golden retriever just sitting there with the ball in its mouth, growling at everyone.

Not just because of sanctions. Part of the CCP's technology strategy is to convince Western capitalists that they cannot make money competing with cheaper Chinese tech, so that they pull their funding.

It's a more effective way to destroy industrial capacity than bombing, when it works.

The USA has a lot of leverage in trade negotiations. Adoption of US patent protections (and the broader package of US business law) has historically been the price of access to US markets.

If we're tearing up free trade agreements, there's no reason for US counterparties not to make their own laws.

People opposing the separation of church and state implicitly believe merging the two will make the government (which they do not like) more like their religion (which they do). However, in practice, it instead makes their religion more like their government.

The worrisome part of our speech norms isn't the CCP flooding the discourse with party-friendly propaganda, nor is it exporting censorship via platforms they control, either explicitly or implicitly.

The worrisome part is that every alternative I've seen is even more prone to abuse.

Agricultural societies were ridden with disease and malnutrition, compared to hunter-gatherer societies. Life expectancy plummeted.

The stark statistic from archeology is that a typical Greek hunter-gatherer man was 5'9" tall, while 3 millenia later his farming descendents were only 5'3".

Diamond's old article, "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race", has come up more than once in conversation about AI.

There can be huge unforseen consequences from technology. For agriculture, it may have taken millenia for it to become a positive. There is plenty of reason for concern.

Yes, it was a great tool for building mass culture. The downside, I now see, was that it de-personalized that culture. That probably opened the door for the hyper-personalized feeds of social media.

I agree with the topline, though am skeptical that people in the past wanted to put in more effort.

My feeling is old information frictions were overcome with social arrangements that also provided quality filtering. When we lowered the frictions we also lost the filters. No clear solution to that.

When reading this article, I could not help but recall that ego-protective behavior is coded as masculine in social science research.

It feels like that is the aspect of masculinity most enthusiastically embraced these days.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French far right leader, died today.

If you wonder how many French people feel about that, these are the scenes of celebration on the streets of Paris this evening.

One sign reads “The dirty racist is dead”.

(🎥 Luc Auffret)

"Idiot" and "moron" are quite literally the same word, which were also turned into slurs and replaced by softer language. "The r-word" is the latest incarnation of that treadmill.

It's notable that the prior generations of the slurs are normalized now that we have moved onto a new slur.