Stephen Spiller

Monstrous acts and crimes are being committed right now, in our names, with our tax dollars:
-Renee Good - murdered by an armed agent of the state for protesting
-Alex Pretti - murdered by an armed agent of the state for protesting
-Liam Ramos (5) - used as bait to lure his father out of the house

A masked ICE officials with a 5 year old child

This guy went to work today, put a mask on, kidnapped a 5 year old child, and then used him as bait so both he and his father could be sent behind bars

Conditional Probabilities Are Hard, Example #1073:

WSJ seemingly equates "P(X|Y) is low" (post text) with "P(Y|X) is low" (headline text).

(With the nuance that, in this case, both are presumably true, even though one need not imply the other!)

New York Times chart showing travel peaks around Easter, with 2024 peak occurring before 2025 peak.

Without disputing your substantive point, a quirk of the calendar means the FT chart is weaker evidence than it might otherwise seem:

Easter was later in 2025 than 2024, so March showed a decline relative to 2024, because 2024 included Easter travel.

See chart from www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Regression discontinuity plot showing similar probabilities of running again by men and women when just-barely-won, but lower probabilities of running again by women when just-barely-lost

Not *exactly* this, but related:

A colleague has a paper "Gender Differences in Politician Persistence" (Wasserman, 2023, REStat). Regression discontinuity on differential likelihood of running for office by men vs women after winning vs losing close elections

direct.mit.edu/rest/article...

PS thanks to @kjhealy.co for posting the parking template!

University of Virginia Won’t Join White House’s Compact for Colleges It was the fifth school in a matter of days to refuse an offer of preferential funding treatment from the government, even as the White House has threatened schools that do not sign up.

The University of Virginia became the fifth school to rebuff a White House proposal to give universities preferential treatment if they uphold a set of government demands.

Wahoowa

This is what is happening when the cameras are running

Do you know anyone that has benefitted from prescription drugs? What if these drugs were not available for you or your loved ones? Cuts to federal science funding mean delays for new treatments and cures.

Tell Congress: Science saves lives #SpeakUp4Science https://bit.ly/4mgBMQ9

My lab at UCLA is hiring 1-2 PhD students this cycle!

Join us to work at the intersection of cognitive science and AI applied to pressing societal challenges like climate change.

More info about me: rachit-dubey.github.io

My lab: ucla-cocopol.github.io

Please help repost/spread the word!

this is simply extortion and theft of state monies

Terence Tao (@teorth.bsky.social) has written a thread on Mastodon about the impact of the federal grant freeze to UCLA, particularly to his own field of Mathematics. UCLA's IPAM (Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics) could shut down entirely

mathstodon.xyz/@tao/1149568...

Source Memory Is More Accurate for Opinions than for Facts Abstract. Effective communication relies on consumers remembering, sharing, and applying relevant information. Source memory, the ability to link a claim t

The sixth HotFresh recommended paper is:

Mirny, D. J., & Spiller, S. A. (2025) Source memory is more accurate for opinions than for facts, Journal of Consumer Research.

academic.oup.com/jcr/advance-...

Kudos to Jim Ryan for a terrific tenure as the President of UVA. Again, this is not normal. We should all be alarmed.

When things get difficult over the next few years remember today.

The number of people who want democracy vastly outnumber the people who want a king.

Scene from stage at UCLA Anderson graduation of MBA graduates filing in

In other, joyous news out of Westwood…

Congratulations UCLA Anderson grads! Delighted I had the opportunity to announce 7 new Anderson Ph.D.’s, including hooding Dr. David Dolifka! #UCLA2025 #GoBruins

156. Federalizing the California National Guard President Trump's Saturday night "memorandum" federalizing 2000 California National Guard troops is a tentative step toward abusing authorities for domestic use of the military, but a dangerous one.

Via "One First," my quick write-up of President Trump's "Presidential Memorandum" purporting to federalize 2000 California National Guard troops; the relevant legal authorities for doing so; and how the move is both a modest *and* dangerous escalation of what's going on in and around Los Angeles:

Not to pick on this post, but a good example of why base populations (what group of people you're talking about) are so important, and how easily that detail can get muddled in retelling -- the article says "Nearly a quarter of **consumers using buy now, pay later loans** finance groceries"

Opinion | Trump is killing one of our strongest exports The president wants to balance U.S. trade deficits? He can’t do it without this industry he hates.

This is a terrible self-own, particular at a time when we are trying to compete with China on AI, EV technology, etc. Not to mention that this will kill one of our strongest exports (higher ed), which a trade-deficit-obsessed president should theoretically care about.

Trump team orders stop to new student visa interviews, as it weighs expanding social media vetting The directive came in a Tuesday cable obtained by POLITICO.

Trump team orders stop to new student visa interviews, as it weighs expanding social media vetting www.politico.com/news/2025/05...

Is a photo subversive? NSF staff overcome obstacles to 75th anniversary portrait Management tried to quash outpouring of support for beleaguered agency

Hundreds of National Science Foundation staffers turned out for a group photograph to celebrate the besieged agency’s 75th anniversary—despite efforts by NSF officials to prevent the picture from being taken. scim.ag/4jcGpIt

🎇It's #PubDay for THE HANDBOOK OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY (6e)!🎇

This is the latest edition of the most venerated institution in social psychology, dating back to 1954. Fifty definitive chapters, over 8,000 manuscript pages. (The TOC appears below.)

And: IT'S 100% OPEN-ACCESS: www.the-HSP.com.🧵

Graph of Polymarket prices for Pope predictions, showing market changes when White Smoke went up, before pope named

How much of the change in predictions following White Smoke and before announcement is (a) rational market reactions (decision reached fairly quickly; more likely it was a predictable favorite), (b) concluding most-likely-as-more-likely without supporting information, or I guess (c) insider trading?

graphic showing major cuts to the agencies that help people, advance science, prevent fraud, and protect the environment and major budget gains to Defense and Homeland Security). LH side is in percentage terms, as in NYT article, right hand side is in billions of dollars.

On 5/2, the @nytimes.com published a graphic showing the % change for each agency in Trump's proposed budget, compared to the 2025 budget.

For my undergraduate class, I made a variant that gives $ amounts. It uses the NYT data.

Happy to share w/ other instructors. DM or email if you want the ppt.

A new and fresh paper calls for a fresh start on a new platform. Hi y'all! 👋

Check out my paper with @spillersas.bsky.social and @krajbichlab.bsky.social - we look at the multi-faceted role of attention in opportunity cost neglect, using eye-tracking + computational modeling. Read more at the link!

We also find that people look less at the Buy option when there are explicit outside options. Overall, we identify two different attentional mechanisms by which the framing of opportunity costs (i.e., the outside options) impacts people's willingness to make purchases. 3/n