Nick Ottone

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands. The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.

Re this absurdity on the HUD homepage right now, a federal employee told me:

"I'm fucking pissed that I still have to take annual ethics training and Hatch Act training."

Another great talk, this time from Nick Ottone @nottone.bsky.social at @priec.bsky.social on the impact of group based diversity on downstream sentencing decisions

(He’s on the market!! Look out, he’s on the way up!!)

the free press trying to make a scandal out of reading robert dahl is very funny (shoutout to dahl, one of the best to ever do it)

A New York City political ad on a TV screen. On the screen are three people split across with the text “City Council: Keep Grocery Delivery Affordable. Protect Grocery Delivery Work.” Appearing in front of them. Below in smaller text says “Paid for by Instacart”

An interesting example of “outside lobbying” in the wild!

A black-haired puppy staring at the camera with puppy eyes and sitting on a tan blanket on a tan armchair surrounded by a watermelon squeak you and a long pink squeak toy with various mess behind her

A new pup!

Let he who has not sought friendlier data cast the first stone

Code Review, Reproducibility, and Improving the Scholarly Record

Excited to see this column with Limor Peer published in Harvard Data Science Review! Also very mystified by the (seemingly AI-generated) thumbnail!

hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/suy0nbh5...

Is this not popularism

Original thought alert! Very strange how this same party attacked Michelle Obama’s healthy school lunches and Bloomberg’s Big Gulp ban as “nanny state” intrusions on their precious liberties. Would read a book on this evolution.

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY School of Law barred 31 pro-Palestine law school students from campus facilities and demanded that they sign away their right to protest in exchange for being allowed to return. If the students — deemed “personae non grata,” or PNG — don’t renounce their right to protest on campus, they will be unable to sit for final exams. “You may not participate in any protest activity or disruptive activity on Law School property,” says the so-called “Use of Space Agreement” sent to the students, which explicitly lays out conditions for being allowed to return to key campus buildings during the school’s “exam period.”

NYU School of Law has told 31 pro-Palestine students they must sign away their right to protest if they want to return to campus and sit exams.

theintercept.com/2025/05/03/n...

This is high art

For this very reason, I really don't think it's a coincidence that mass deregulation has been ordered by a big-time government contractor, who would have a LOT of contact with regulators. Why we should be normatively concerned about government contractors' lobbying and influence!

So excited that this study is finally published!

We focus on the methods that organizations use to mobilize *existing supporters* of abortion rights to move them from passive to active supporters

Turns out messaging targeted to them does not work... but it doesn't alienate people either 🤨

One thing I'm really proud of here is the data we brought to bear on the extremely common campaign topic of targeted messaging: qualitative interviews, an online field experiment, two survey experiments, and a meta-analysis. Thankful for my two co-authors and for all the feedback along the way!

So excited that this study is finally published!

We focus on the methods that organizations use to mobilize *existing supporters* of abortion rights to move them from passive to active supporters

Turns out messaging targeted to them does not work... but it doesn't alienate people either 🤨

"Electoral Turnover and Government Efficiency: Evidence from Federal Procurement" by Kyuwon Lee. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

re the previous repost: if they can disappear permanent residents they can disappear citizens

The federal government spends a lot on contracts with outside organizations — most of it in places where DOGE isn't cutting.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Adams must be removed. The city cannot sustain being governed for nearly a year by a Mayor who is being coerced by Trump admin in order to escape charges.

This corruption poses a real threat to the people of the city. He should have resigned a while ago, but will not. So it’s time for him to go.

Paths Out of Dixie

You are right that we should be looking outside the US for understanding but I’d also say probably some of the work on authoritarianism in the US are relevant. A non-Cambridge book: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

68% yes, 32% no; 58% Prop 1A, 42% Prop 1B

Social housing funding appears poised to pass by a wide margin in Seattle. The Prop 1A version to enact an excise tax on employers with highly compensated employees is leading with 58% of the vote.

Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been unleashed on federal agencies. ProPublica is attempting to document who is working with him and what they are doing.

Hot off the presses: projects.propublica.org/elon-musk-do...

Trump isnt just trying to impound appropriated but unobligated funding. He's frozen dispersement of billions of dollars of CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED funds. Whatever you think about the validity of impounding unobligated funds, this is quite clearly a direct and widespread violation of contract law. 🧵

Me researching and reporting: Haha!! Fuck yeah! Yes!!

Me writing: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

BJPolS abstract from a scholarly article discussing the impact of interpersonal conversations on political views and demographic cooperation.

#OpenAccess from our new issue -

Shared Demographic Characteristics Do Not Reliably Facilitate Persuasion in Interpersonal Conversations: Evidence from Eight Experiments - cup.org/4getJPI

- @dbroockman.bsky.social, @jkalla.bsky.social, @nottone.bsky.social, Erik Santoro & @amandaweiss.bsky.social

MALAN Fire & Wind Storm Resources

My baby sister is a UCLA undergrad and I'm sending texts every six hours like "ARE YOU STILL OKAY DO YOU HAVE A GO-BAG???"

Anyhow re-upping mutual aid resources in the greater Los Angeles area: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Some Good Art from 2024 Yup, doing this again

Here’s the Substack write-up if you’re interested:
open.substack.com/pub/somegood...

When Twitter was still useful, I’d post a year-end list of art I had enjoyed. Here’s my list for 2024:

Abbott Elementary
Just for Us (Edelman)
Anora
Decameron
His Three Daughters
Get on Your Knees (Novak)
Merrily We Roll Along
Oh, so we have to keep doing this forever (Petri)
Outsiders
Sing Sing

Constrained market, little competition, excessive complexity, uninterrogatable pricing, no government subject matter experts, a one-way ratchet on pricing...it's all a recipe for adding an extra zero to the price tag of every big project.

At the scene of the Amazon strike:

The NYPD has now erected barricades to allow Amazon contractors to enter and leave the distribution center, helping Amazon break the picket line.