Thomas Leeper

Minneapolis: absolute hell hole right now.

Caving on the shutdown was totally worth it. Good job, Chuck. Incredible leadership.

This is something else right here. Look at how much time, energy, and tax dollars were put into this without even the most basic premise for any of that activity.

Lawless idiocracy at taxpayer expense.

Expired tabs as well

Please stop voting for Trump's nominees.

I have to assume that the war criminals in the cabinet are sitting around patting themselves on the back for how tough this looks. The telegram chats must be bumping.

But in reality it's all just incredibly lame. Really pathetic loser boys running the show.

"He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people." - some 200 year old nonsense not at all relevant today or part of our foundational national idea

The 4th Amendment exists and exists for a reason. This is textbook stuff right here except that we've empowered a group of people who genuinely hate us to be our robed overlords masquerading as legal geniuses.

Brett Kavanaugh wants this to happen to you

Another Kavanaugh Stop

sahanjournal.com/immigration/...

Can speed cameras make streets safer? Quasi-experimental evidence from New York City | PNAS Each year, approximately 40,000 people die in vehicle collisions in the United States, generating $340 billion in economic costs. To make roads saf...

Our new study provides rare causal evidence about NYC’s speed camera program. We find large reductions in collisions (30%) and injuries (16%) near intersections with cameras. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... @astagoff.bsky.social ky.social @brendenbeck.bsky.social nbeck.bsky.social 🧪

I guess this has to be said because we're governed by weirdo morons, but the purpose of formula is not be "better" than breastmilk - whatever that might possibly mean. The purpose of formula is so that babies don't die of starvation.

New York City went 12 days without a murder in November / December. That's tied for the longest stretch in history, according to the NYPD. As someone who was here when there were 6+ murders per day in this town, it continues to amaze me how safe the place is.

bsky.app/profile/whst...

Zipcar user says closure of car sharing scheme may come at a cost The mayor of London is being urged to help those affected by the potential closure of car sharing company Zipcar.

Disappointing development for London. I absolutely loved having convenient access to moving Zipcar vans for micro-trips (like 20min to pick up some bulky object and bring it to my flat) and a dense network of cars for last-minute, unplanned journeys.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

There is no evidence that the death penalty works as a crime deterrent. People who say this kind of stuff don't care about evidence of what prevents crime or reduces recidivism.

They just fetishize violence, and should be labeled weirdos accordingly.

The policies of the Bush and Obama administrations completely desensitized us - and especially the media - to constant extrajudicial killing, but let's at least try to keep calling it what it is.

This is disgusting and obviously murder, but let's not forget the first strike is also illegal. The US military does not have Congressional authorization for war. This is all just murder. Calling it a war crime would elevate it to happening in a context of legality that the offense does not have.

I'm going to keep saying this in my effort to speak it into reality: Supreme Court should have at least 100 Justices with rotating panels (and maybe an en banc option). No single Justice should have so much power and they shouldn't be names everyone knows.

This is pretty interesting actually. Most proposals I've read have suggested adding ~2 justices. But en masse adding ~50 would substantially diminish the ability for a subsequent president to meaningfully reshape the court. I like it.

For First Time in Decades, Child Deaths Will Rise This Year Almost a quarter of a million more children around the world are projected to die in 2025 than in 2024.

This fetid landmark, this historical stain on humanity is primarily due to the stunningly reckless obliteration of America's foreign assistance agency earlier this year.

Led by the richest man on earth. In secret, on a weekend. With zero analysis or discussion of its catastrophic impacts.

A survey experiment variant of that would take the question as one of priming/framing/salience: "If we prompt people to think about X, does that affect their stated preferences?"

That's maybe less interesting or narrower (depending on your POV), but at least it's answerable.

More importantly they've changed peoples' understanding of what are answerable questions.

A classic 80's style question would be "How do fundamental values affect vote choices?" answered by a SEM of latent values causing vote choices.

But that's unanswerable. And the method proved nothing.

Just fyi: Waymo doesn't have remote drivers. The vehicles just stop if they are unable to drive autonomously and the remote intervention comes in the form of instructions rather than turning control over to a remote driver.

(Not expressing an opinion one way or the other on Waymo btw.)

Contrary to recent racism, Minnesota and Minneapolis are doing fine actually.

I like your distinction between "measurement-oriented experiments" vs others. I hope folks are teaching that distinction to their grad students.

I think that's not totally fair. Survey experiments are - as a category - a methodological improvement over what dominated behavioral research in the 80s/90s (e.g., SEM on large, cross-sectional surveys). Depending on your definition of 'realism', earlier work lacked both realism and credibility.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security United States Coast Guard Commandant United States Coast Guard 2703 Martin Luther King Jr Ave SE Washington, DC 20593-7000 Staff Symbol: CCG Phone: (202) 372-4411 5730 31 ост 2025 The Honorable Rand H. Paul United States Senate Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senator Paul: In response to your letter dated October 6, 2025, regarding the Coast Guard's efforts to interdict illicit drugs headed towards the United States since September 1, 2024, I offer the following: 1. From September 1, 2024, to October 7, 2025, Coast Guard surface assets, operating under Coast Guard law enforcement authority, interdicted 212 suspected drug-smuggling vessels at sea headed toward the United States. Of the 212 interdictions, 41 vessels had no illicit contraband on board when interdicted; 24 of those 41 vessels without contraband did not appear to commit any federal criminal offense. 2. Of the 212 total vessels interdicted during this period, 69 vessels were interdicted in the Caribbean Sea by Coast Guard surface assets, operating under Coast Guard law enforcement authority. Of these 69 interdictions, 14 had no illicit contraband on board when interdicted; 11 of those 14 vessels without contraband did not appear to commit any federal criminal offense. Of the 69 Caribbean interdictions, 14 vessels were interdicted off the coast of Venezuela. Three of the 14 vessels interdicted near Venezuela had no illicit contraband on board when interdicted, but one of the three violated other U.S. federal criminal statutes. 3. The Coast Guard did not use lethal force against any of the 212 vessels interdicted at sea during this period. The Coast Guard used non-lethal force to warn and/or disable non-compliant vessels suspected of smuggling on 105 occasions during this period. 4. Of the 212 interdictions conducted by the Coast Guard from September 1, 2024, to October 7, 2025, 208 were interdicted in international waters. 5. Of the 212 interdictions conducted by the Coast Gu…

Rand Paul just posted this letter from the Coast Guard confirming that 1/4 of the boats they stop carry no contraband. The likelihood that Hegseth & Bradley ordered the murder of innocent civilians is very high.

It also helps obscuring crime.

As in, they might take a huge reputational hit with alumni and members of the general public, but that's not really their target audience for much of anything even if it is for everyone else working at the same institution.