ashish arora

May told the House in January 2024 regarding transgender issues and children: "We as legislators have an obligation to insure that our children have no harm done to them"

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RJ_May

One of the few Israelis with a direct line to Gazans urges public to confront horrors ***

Assaf David is a colleague, a friend, and one of the wisest people I know. Please read this interview. (non paywalled link - next post)

www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

Good news: The largest landlord in the US has agreed to stop using anticompetitive algorithms to raise rents. I pushed for this. Carried through by DOJ Antitrust in two administrations and by state AGs.

We must now pass my bill to stop this conduct across the economy.

Hmm, what do ‘central camps’ and ‘final plan’ remind you of?
🤷🏽‍♂️👇🏽

"It’s a little bit like the court of Henry VIII...How’s the sovereign this morning? Is he in a good mood? How’s the gout?"..."A big pharma CEO told me...that the entire sector is petrified of everything the administration is doing, but he can’t speak up...."

1/Well, wrong again. I thought it would be Hassett. But who is Stephen Miran? He has a PhD in Economics from Harvard, and worked with Martin Feldstein, a respectable academic who also worked in the Reagan administration. Miran has worked in the financial industry, and was also affiliated...

Miran recommended tighter political control of the central bank he would join It is unclear how Miran's proposal could affect his chances for Senate confirmation.

“To regain the benefits of Fed independence from political control, Miran wrote, that independence would have to end.” Via Reuters

Gentleman scholar

The people controlling the White House are ensuring that it is riskier and riskier to come to the United States to study, to invest the world's talent in America.

The brightest people in the world can, will, and should choose other countries, countries that value them.

A Fight Over a West Point Job Reveals Two Visions of America Under Trump

A conflict between two Americans: one, a West Point grad, combat vet, Rhodes Scholar, expert and academic. The other… a woman banned from Uber because she was too abusive to Muslim drivers.

Guess who wins.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/u...

The WaPa headline says: 60,000 Gazans were killed. 18,500 of them were children. These are some of their names. Then follows an enormous list of small print names

Thousands of small print names interspersed with some photos of some of the child victims

NEW: 18,500 children have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.

The Washington Post has just published every single known name.

A seminal moment.

It All Comes Down to the Mitochondria

“Why do we sleep” has been a surprisingly hard question. But it looks like the answer may be “ Because we breathe”. Our mitochondria need a break!

'Abundance’ Offers a Sounder Way Forward for the Left than Degrowth or Redistributive Progressivism But the authors of this important book might have been more effective had they chosen a less confrontational strategy with their own side

This is a really good review of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's "Abundance" by @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com in @theunpopulist.net

The General Theory of Enshittification It isn’t a new phenomenon, but it seems to matter more

Good stuff: Paul Krugman's general theory of enshittification even includes a little dynamic programming model.

Today is Spoonerism Day so here’s a list of the top ten best celebrity names when spoonerized…

10. Lude Jaw
9. Bathy Kates
8. Parah Salin
7. Hatt Mancock
6. Sandy Ravage
5. Him Tenman
4. Bean Sean
3. Shartin Meen
2. Rid Kock
1. Cradley Booper

Data from Pew

Paper in Nature 150 years ago. Beats reading any single-cell experiment…

Who has to leave the Federal Reserve next? | Brookings David Wessel discuss upcoming turnovers at the Federal Reserve board and banks.

"Presidents of the regional Fed banks can serve until they’re 65—unless appointed after turning 55, in which case they can serve for a maximum of 10 years or until they’re 75, whichever comes first."

www.brookings.edu/articles/who...

My favourite French portmanteau describes vegan cheese. It merges faux (fake) and fromage (cheese) to get fauxmage

Letter: The contradictions at the heart of Washington’s dollar policy From Karthik Sankaran, Senior Research Fellow, Geoeconomics, Global South Programme, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Washington, DC, US

If you don’t want to read almost 4000 words in the pinned tweet (but I think you should), here’s 380 saying some of the same things. on.ft.com/3TZH9GE Letter: The contradictions at the heart of Washington’s dollar policy

Don't blame Wimbledon Serve-and-volley may be dead — but the culprit remains at large

🎾 🎾 Don't blame Wimbledon for the death of serve-and-volley.

My newsletter, out now.

Donald Trump’s fiscal policy and Fed attacks imperil US haven status, say economists FT-Booth survey reveals broad concern over president’s measures and criticism of central bank

“Fiscal deficits, deliberate government actions to shrink the US financial account and devalue the dollar, uncertainty about succession at the Fed and questions about Fed independence all negatively affect [the safe haven status of USD].” - Prof Anna Cieslak #EconSky www.ft.com/content/0d73...

How a Puzzle About Fractions Got Brain Scans Rolling (Gift Article) A story of bowling pins, patterns and medical miracles.

From bowling ball set-up to "triangular numbers" to "my calculus" to the invention of CT scans: another fine story and visuals from @stevenstrogatz.com www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The path from math and basic science to useful applications is often long and unanticipatable, but always worth it.

Worth a watch:

Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

@carlbergstrom.com

+1 (from America)

As we mark 50 years since the 1975 World Cup, here is the video of Rod March's famous diving catch to dismiss Tony Greig in the semi-final at Leeds ... it is a swish at a wide ball but for context Gilmour was moving the ball both ways

Strong evidence "university patents actually crowds out private patenting"?

Some debate on this, thanks to our evaluators (Ioannis Bournakis and an anonymous one) and the detailed response from the authors. @ashisharora.bsky.social, Belenzon, Cioca, Sheer, and Zhang.

An unpopular view: new diff-in-diff methods have been a setback for empirical work. I see an increased flow of papers that do 5 variants of them plus extensive torturing of parallel trends robustness to "prove" that a weak research design is solid. That effort could've been spent more productively