Kim Weeden

I'm not shedding a tear for Larry Summers, but it's striking how many more institutional consequences & negative news stories he's faced compared to MAGA/GOP men whose emails and alleged behavior, per the Epstein files, were far worse.

Harvard & NBER booted Summers. OSU circling wagons for Wexner.

If a President doesn't sign a bill within 10 days, excluding Sundays, the bill becomes law anyway (unless Congress adjourns before the 10 days are up).

Trump can bluster and bully, but - for better or for worse - the GOP-led Congress can still make laws. If it wants to.

In general I agree, but in this case the poster from the UAE is a private citizen.

I suppose he could write an op-ed instead of posting on social media, but there's no guarantee that it would be published or, even if it is, that it would be seen by as many people.

We often treat education as the primary engine of social mobility, but conventional models may be overestimating its impact.

Not correcting for selection into schooling will artificially inflate any indirect effect through schooling...

1/3

#socialmobility #sociology

The paradox of inequality that isn’t: rising economic inequality depresses and polarizes citizens’ belief in meritocracy Abstract. This study examines how rising income inequality has been impacting individuals’ belief in merit-based success, using three decades of survey dat

🔍 How does economic inequality impact beliefs in meritocracy?

Using comprehensive survey data from 39 advanced capitalist democracies over more than three decades, Markus Gangl & I examine how rising economic inequality has been shaping citizens' belief in meritocracy.
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwag016

Terrible framing.

The bill requires US citizens to have documents that many don't and can't afford to get, and it disproportionately burdens married women who changed their names.

It's an attempt to suppress votes of women and poor people, under the guise of solving a problem that does not exist.

Alaska officials stonewall state legislators on justification for handing voter data to feds | Alaska Beacon The Division of Elections and Department of Law declined to waive secrecy on advice that led state to hand over detailed data.

Alaska has a constitutional right to privacy, and the state might have violated that right with the handover.

Legislators are trying to investigate, but they're being stonewalled by elections officials: alaskabeacon.com/2026/03/06/a... #akleg #Alaska

I thought it was for keeping pans away from the Very Bad Cats between the end of cooking and the beginning of post-dinner cleanup.

At least $7.2 million in taxpayer funds has been spent on LEGOs through Arizona's school voucher program, new public records obtained by 12News show 12News uncovered the spending -- including one family spending $30,000 on LEGOs -- after suing Superintendent Horne and Treasurer Yee to obtain ESA public records.

Since 2022, AZ taxpayers funded $7.25M in Legos that individual families kept for themselves.

Every AZ K12 teacher could have spent ~$125 on purchases *for their whole class, present & future* w those "take my toys & go home" Lego sets.

[And yes, my code for this analysis was straight bananas.]

Wait, the picture is blacked out. It's just a screenshot from the CR article, so nothing that would run afoul of filters/restrictions.

Relevant quote is, "an investigation found that carrots used in the foods were the likely source of the glass."

Vaguely recall that a paroled inmate committing a terrible crime was enough of a scandal to undercut the Dukakis campaign. This is objectively worse in term of Trump's responsibility, but will get a fraction of the attention.

Former GOP House member's wife said Sen. Markwayne Mullin put his finger in the noses of sleeping members of Congress and their spouses on a trip to Israel "This idiot starts walking up and down the bus with his camera and anyone who fell asleep, he would put his finger in their nose and take a picture."

A middle-school bully with the knowledge of a 4th grader, the cognitive development of a toddler, and the empathy of an infant.

The bar can't get much lower.

Data Visualization A Practical Introduction

Here’s a full draft of the upcoming second edition of my “Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction”: socviz.co

cartoon drawing of dead dog with x's for eyes and tongue hanging out.

FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

Why supporting a shelter for women is now 'kind of radioactive' That's how researcher Beatriz Garcia Nice describes the new U.S. stance under the Trump administration to programs addressing gender-based violence.

www.npr.org/2026/03/04/g...

My grandfather was what was politely called a "gentleman farmer" in the old country. After escaping Nazi Germany, he became a dairy farmer, but by all accounts -- including his own -- not a very good one.

As my uncle put it, "he spoke five languages, none of them cow."

So you think "Christian" and "8th generation Texan" aren't identities?

I haven't heard him say, "I'm white". Hence the brackets in the OP. But he doesn't need to explicitly announce "I'm white" (or "I'm male") for this to be part of his social identity, or of the identity others attribute to him.

Every interview I've heard with Talarico includes a variant of , "I'm a proud [white] Christian and a 8th generation Texan ..."

If influencers, pundits, and journalists can't recognize this as identity politics, it says more about their own biases than it does about a supposed "referendum."

Back of a white van. Kid’s refrigerator magnets spell out, “is it spring yet? Absolutely.”

Love the optimism!

NEW: Haowen Zheng, Robert Andersen, Anders Holm, Kristian Bernt Karlson, "Is College Really “the” Equalizer? New Evidence Addressing Unobserved Selection." sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...

Except the sociologists. We prefer to observe social interactions rather than to participate in them.

Wage returns to human capital resulting from an extra year of primary school: Evidence from Egypt In this paper, we examine the wage returns to an extra year of primary school using a policy reform in Egypt, which reduced compulsory primary schooli…

Policy reforms to *reduce* educational attainment were detrimental for disadvantaged boys, in Egypt. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.

"This study investigates variability in women’s experiences balancing work and family, focusing on the association between early childhood investments and work trajectories."

Just out in our journal, @sociologicalsci.bsky.social

Prosecutors drop case against UAF student about 5 weeks after he ate AI-generated art Nick Dwyer, the graduate student whose artwork was destroyed, signed an affidavit Feb. 3 in support of a motion dismissing the misdemeanor criminal mischief charge against Graham Granger. Prosecutors…

The charge initially came after Granger ripped up and chewed the AI-generated artwork of UAF Master of Fine Arts student Nick Dwyer in January, the same day of the arrest.

(From KUAC - Fairbanks)

Missed opportunity title: "when the levy breaks us"

Time series plot of Fairbanks, Alaska winter (Dec-Feb) average temperature each season 1929-30 to 2025-26. The ten highest and lowest values are color coded and two era means are shown (1929-30 to 1975-76 and 1976-77 to present).

Fairbanks airport December through February 2025-26 average temperature was -14.6F (-25.9C), which is 10.5F (5.8C) below the 1991-2020 normal. This is the eighth coldest winter in the past century and the first "top ten" coldest since 1970-71. #akwx #Climate #Winter2026 @leahwrenn.bsky.social

The savings we're getting here by annihilating decades of American science will pay for whole minutes of the operation to create decades of death, immiseration, and chaos in Iran.

Head shot of a young looking white guy with a smirk and one eyebrow raised. Backdrop is an American flag and part of a federal government seal.

I feel so much safer knowing that this 22-year old Trump loyalist with no relevant experience was in charge of US counterterrorism programs until less than a year ago.

A guy who no woman would leave in charge of watching over her drink while she used the restroom.