Malcolm Certain

[citation needed]

Wanna see something cool?

At the Grammy's in 1976, Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme explained what jazz is.

The result? The crowd losing its mind. 🔥

That's only true if repeated draws are independent, which is not the case here. The tension between the tectonic plates builds over time. More tension = higher probability of earthquake.

Controlling for things only works if you have so much data on individuals that whether or not they eat ultraprocessed foods is literally as good as random once you control for everything else. Safe to say, that is almost never the case. People don't randomly decide to eat junk food.

“I think that…most researchers think of statistical tests as a kind of annoying paperwork, a set of forms they need to fill out in order to get their work published… They feel they already know the truth…so then they find whatever p-values are necessary to satisfy the reviewers.”

-Gelman

Note to fellow journos: If only one "economist" agrees w Trump tariffs—as evidenced by fact that this particular "economist" is now being interviewed and cited everywhere as only "expert" willing to publicly defend them—consider confirming that he's actually an "economist." Check CVs, for example.

Federal spending is *up* under Trump according to the Wall Street Journal. Chaos is not actually the same as cost savings.

Actual budgeting is a kind of actual policy-making and takes real work spread over real time. Running around breaking stuff isn't that.

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Live updates: Trump promotes investing in the US as his new round of tariffs go into effect A number of sweeping new taxes on goods from other countries are already here — and more took effect on Wednesday. Trump has promised higher rates for his latest and most severe volley of duties, whic...

Important legal victory: a Texas judge has barred illegal deportations of Venezuelans to El Salvador. SCOTUS ruling that these cases must be tried in Texas does not mean the legal battle is lost.

apnews.com/live/donald-... 
Judge bars US government from deporting 5 Venezuelans

How are tariffs neoliberalism? Like, in any way? Not everything you don't like politically is "neoliberalism".

This is high art

We are speedrunning the Declaration of Independence, folks.

I may be tired and a little hoarse, but as I said again and again on the Senate floor, this is a moment where we cannot afford to be silent, when we must speak up.

Hey folks! If you're in Florida and Wisconsin today, GET OUT AND VOTE!

1/ On April 5, there are nationwide protests happening literally everywhere in the US. Find more details here: handsoff2025.com

Measuring racial educational disparities over time amongst t Educational disparities remain a key contributor to increasing social and wealth inequalities. To address this, researchers and policymakers have focused on average differences between racial groups o

The Excellence Gap. That is the topic of a new study that we just published in
@nature.com.
You can download for free here:
ideas.repec.org/p/feb/natura...

Imagine any other world leader saying this about another country.

We have had nearly two decades of panic about Free Speech on Campus and not a single case, not even the ones they made up, were as bad as what's happening now

Opinion | The Democrats Are in Denial About 2024 Party leaders have embraced convenient excuses. This perilous political moment requires more self-reflection and honesty.

Amazing to see how much it’s a settled assumption—not even worth questioning—that public opinion is a static exogenous force that politicians must optimize around.

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/o...

don't do "drumpf" and "muskrat" shit in my menchies

twee bullshit

Make a nonsense model, get a nonsense finding. Citing Sam Altman as an "expert" is not serious academic research.

Separated Bike Lanes Means Safer Streets, Study Says — Streetsblog USA Cities that build protected lanes for cyclists end up with safer roads for people on bikes and people in cars and on foot, a new study of 12 large metropolises revealed Wednesday.

Never forget, a 13-year study found that protected bike-lanes led to a drastic decline in fatalities for all road users.

ALL ROAD USERS.

And painted bike-lanes? No safety improvement at all.

For sharrows, it’s actually safer to NOT have them.

Via @usa.streetsblog.org @nyc.streetsblog.org

DOGE/Musk preferentially cancelled grants and contracts to recipients in counties that voted for Harris in 2024.

Among cancellations with election data available, 92.9% and 86.1% cancelled grants and contracts went to Harris counties, representing 96.6% and 92.4% of total dollar amounts.

A new practitioner's guide to staggered difference-in-difference designs

arxiv.org/pdf/2503.13323

#RDDers: check it out.

"A Partial Linear Estimator for Small Study Regression Discontinuity Designs"

RDDs can lack statistical power.

Standard approaches focus on large N scenarios.

This paper develops a partial linear estimator for low power RDDs. This estimator outperforms leading estimators.

The most obvious lesson to draw from the leaked Signal chat is that these people really are morons. It's not a public act, it's not a schtick, there's not some secret back room where they drop the facade. They are genuinely stupid, incompetent people.

Stopping the Trump administration’s use of funding cuts to coerce speech restrictions at universities - Protect Democracy Protect Democracy is challenging the illegal access to sensitive personal information of millions of Americans by representatives of “DOGE”.

Today, on behalf of faculty represented by @aaup.bsky.social and @aftunion.bsky.social, we filed a lawsuit w/Altshuler Berzon challenging the Trump admin’s unlawful termination of $400m in funding for vital scientific & public health research at Columbia Univ.
protectdemocracy.org/work/stoppin...

the speed at which these guys have broken everything has given a lot of folks who should know better the impression that they are an unstoppable force and the only option is to negotiate the terms of surrender

just because the clown car goes very fast does not mean it isn’t full of clowns

Yes, this is me. As you can tell, I was not having it! I refuse to be a nice old lady(or granny, they call me). We must do everything we can to stand up!

How SUVs Are Making Traffic Worse As larger, taller sport utility vehicles took over US roads, they also aggravated highway congestion, according to a new study. It’s yet another ill effect of “car bloat.”

A groundbreaking new study found that the surge in SUVs from 1995 to 2019 reduced Minnesota's highway lane capacity by 9.5%.

Less lane capacity --> More congestion

Me, in CityLab 🧵