David Nield

The problem with #rstats is portability. Shit like `df$x` has to be converted to `df€x` in Europe and `df£x` in the UK but nobody talks about this.

a thought i’ll put out there: it is not the ideological moderation that is the electoral problem, it is that selecting for candidates who chase popular issue positions is necessarily selecting for candidates who exude the kind of focused-group affect that voters genuinely hate

You still need to pay back those loans, with interest. Even if you pay it back with another loan, the interest from an outstanding loan compounds, and eventually stock will have to get sold in order to pay it down. All using loans does is delay the realization of the taxes at the cost of interest

"When a survey question defines tariffs as taxes on imports, for example, fewer people say they support them. When a survey question calls out specific countries, more are in favor of tariffs on China than on other countries."

A chloropleth map of Belgium, in which the unemployment rate is shown for each municipality. A clear divide between the north and the south is visible. The legend is turned into a histogram.

Here's a cool, simple technique I learned from Joey Cherdarchuk ( @obumbratta.com ): in a choropleth map, your legend can double as a histogram - showing both the colour coding ánd the data distribution.

#maps #dataviz

recent scholarship agrees that the invention of shredded cheese was a collaborative effort, a history that runs contrary to the claims by some proponents of the so called "grate man theory"

He also tried to kill a kid (Bran). He's an interestingly complex character who grew but his bad rap was deserved!

The theory is that price gouging is a good thing because the people who get the most utility from a good are the most Willing To Pay.

Just a coincidence I guess that people with more money are more Willing To Pay

People don't really think any of this! Overestimates of small proportions are a quirk of general innumeracy, not genuine misperceptions.

See research by @brianguay.bsky.social et al:
—PNAS forthcoming: www.brianguay.com/files/guay_2...
—Psychonomic Bulletin 2017: link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Target Losing Market Share As More Americans Opt To Forgo All Earthly Possessions

Target Losing Market Share As More Americans Opt To Forgo All Earthly Possessions
theonion.com/target-...

A Mole Infiltrated the Highest Ranks of American Militias. This Is What He Found. Outraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends....

Outraged by Jan 6, he spent two years getting inside the top ranks of militias like the Oath Keepers. He was stunningly successful. He penetrated a new generation of militia leaders, which included doctors, cops & government attorneys.

This is his story. www.propublica.org/article/ap3-...

Midwest Peace Talks Shattered By Illinois Toll-Booth Bombing

Midwest Peace Talks Shattered By Illinois Toll-Booth Bombing
theonion.com/midwest-peac...

In economics, editors, referees, and authors often behave as if a published paper should reflect some kind of authoritative consensus.

As a result, valuable debate happens in secret, and the resulting paper is an opaque compromise with anonymous co-authors called referees.

1/

Being a pedant here but the French revolution was not sparked by increasing wealth inequality, but the exact opposite: an increasingly wealthy and educated bourgeoisie resentful of the inherited privileges of an aristocratic class. The leaders of the third estate in the estates general were rich.

Musk as working class

"This is a new right based on a populist working class nativism except that it’s the worlds richest man, an immigrant, slashing the welfare state and taxes as some kind of libertarian shock therapy. Absolute clown country."
-Matt Bruenig

a very nice talk with a lot of insights and lessons! the slide deck at cbergmeir.com/talks/bergme...

Experts Recommend Putting Injured Person In Some Sort Of Cylindrical Tank Filled With Fluid -The Onion

Experts Recommend Putting Injured Person In Some Sort Of Cylindrical Tank Filled With Fluid
theonion.com/experts-reco...

That a dude with a couple cameras and a plate of appetizers can make something worth $82.5 million and a media company looks at that and goes "couldn't we make even more money if we had AI do it?" tells you exactly how stupid these people are

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I hate the term "skeet" to refer to bluesky posts. Please tell me that it's just a tongue-in-cheek colloquialism that can die out rather than the official term that the company uses.

Meme of wojak at a party in the corner, thinking "They don't know what death rates mean" while other people are dancing.

How I feel when people say "if the death rate from cancer is declining, then the death rate from another cause must be rising"

Will probably write something on this but the fact that Democrats collapsed among voters who *don't watch the news* is a strike against the "media cost Kamala the election" theory.

Here is an experiment on hacking the TSB model for intermediate time series to accommodate availability constraints. We provide a way to add availability constraints to forecast the "true" demand and avoid just predicting zeros.

juanitorduz.github.io/availability...

Image of French Commune and Lebron wincing with blurb: Lebron James reportedly established an independent socialist govt in Paris but refused to march on Versailles or seize the banks

New paper: Do social media algorithms shape affective polarization?

We ran a field experiment on X/Twitter (N=1,256) using LLMs to rerank content in real-time, adjusting exposure to polarizing posts. Result: Algorithmic ranking impacts feelings toward the political outgroup! 🧵⬇️

This last year*

Been listening to the Revolutions podcast a ton this list year and it's jarring how often some liberal progress is made, then conservatives or reactionaries co-opt liberal language or concepts that leads to liberal infighting, conservatives/reactionaries end up back in power, then the mask comes off

I straight up think it is dishonest to make this claim without noting that a) the mobilization against the Muslim ban involved a thousands of actual people flooding airports and b) coincided with a massive mobilization of people on the ground in Washington D.C.

an overlooked aspect of all these “bluesky is an echo chamber” pieces is that the writers bizarrely think that the only reason people use social media is to talk about politics, which is true only for a subset of users

Dunk

There are simply too few rubes on this site for @dieworkwear.bsky.social to dunk on. Major flaw in Bluesky