This paper was accepted like 2 years ago, but nice to finally see it being officially published, particularly in light of the attacks on Fauci. jhr.uwpress.org/content/61/4... @riacton.bsky.social

I am staying in SoHo for my conference. It's nice here, a lot like Toronto, except the people are friendlier.

Something I wouldn't have come across if I didn't live in Canada is the drama surrounding AI use (on an album about AI) by Canadian metal band Unleash the Archers. I came away impressed by their approach. www.metalsucks.net/2024/02/22/u...

Unleash The Archers Respond to Blowback Over AI Art in Their Latest Video

After utilizing AI in their latest music video, Unleash The Archers sought to clear the air with a lengthy statement about it.

metalsucks.net

dame@dame.is · 5d ago

jesus this hank green ai drama is so sad and bleak, the dude is using AI in extremely sane and safe and reasonable ways, and so many of his fans are just on a purity crusade over it here’s a recent reddit post and hank’s reply

I've reposted the original scatterplot post here. At the most general level I think the disagreement between Lakens and Lockhart is due to location. Some players are genuinely interested in getting the most from research, and others who don't believe any of it. scatter.wordpress.com/2026/07/31/s...

science funding and the cherry picking problem

Science publishing–like all of science–requires money. There’s no getting around it, even with the open science movement. What appears free to many authors and readers still requires money and infr…

scatter.wordpress.com

Pamela Oliver@pamelaoliver.bsky.social · 4d ago

Since I shared the Scatterplot post, which I found informative, I'm also sharing this critical thread which also told me a bunch of stuff I did not know.

"Waiting on the World to Change", by John Mayer

Sanjay Srivastava@sanjaysrivastava.com · 6d ago

What is an extremely nerdy/obscure/specific thing you hate with a white-hot wrath?

There's an interesting tension here. If humans have name for it, then it's a social construct. But some social constructs are us trying to make sense of the world around us (e.g., ADHD, carnivores, sleep), and others are wholly constructed by us (e.g., the law, the market, the nation-state).

Stephen Wild@stephenjwild.bsky.social · 5d ago

Something can be both a brute fact and a social construct. The distance between points A and B? Brute fact. Unit of measurement to describe the distance (cm, inches, rods, parsecs)? Social construction. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

I should note that I don't really see an oil pipeline as making sense even with this. There is definitely a big market for oil in Asia *today*, but in 10 years I don't see it. There's huge demand destruction in oil happening there right now.

Jonathan Horowitz@jonathanhorowi1.bsky.social · 6d ago

A lot of Canadians can't envision a world where they're not sending raw resources to the United States. But there is a whole lot of stuff that needs to get built in Canada that isn't. Helping those companies find markets home and abroad seems like a better use of time.

I almost never agree with Milton Friedman-type arguments but I actually think this is generally correct. Make deals with the countries that want them, and use money to reorient the economy to be less dependent on the US. Living well is the best revenge. thehub.ca/2026/07/30/d...

Doug Ford is wrong: Why doing nothing at all is Canada’s best response to Trump’s tariffs

Everyone assumes Canada must hit back against Trump's tariffs. An economist argues the math says otherwise — retaliation could cost Canadians more than it costs the US.

thehub.ca

Fucking hell as if receiving automated rejection letters for jobs wasn't bad enough.

One of my mentors used to say that paranoid people's behaviors make it so that people really are out to get them. I think about that a lot.

Ben Ansell@benansell.bsky.social · 7d ago

This is some dark lore (from Ian Kershaw)

It is insane to say that sociology is not covering these issues. Who is doing this if not sociology?

Headlines today from my relatively US-focused news feed: Gordie Howe Bridge Trump Tariffs Wildfires LeBron James I don't have a clue what anyone is talking about if it isn't about that. Or baseball.

These days,every issue of a higher ed periodical includes a piece like, “50 ways to AI-proof your academic assessments! Each is clearly ineffective and/or requires resources that you don’t have!”

The average human spends nearly 4% of their lifetime being Indonesian.

Could Excel be conscious? We surveyed more than Jan 1 1900 people to find out.

This is the change the world needs.

Randall Munroe@xkcd.com · 3w ago

Time Change xkcd.com/3272/

I guess it's going to be easier to keep Canadian prospective PhD students around instead of going to the US instead, but what an enormous loss for the US.

David Brady@davebrady72.bsky.social · 3w ago

VERY significant news for higher education. International student visas capped at four years! “New rule caps foreign student visas at four years, jolting California campuses” www.latimes.com/california/s...

Aside from the obvious fact that "raking the forest" doesn't address moisture, this is a map of Canada's forests. Good luck raking 10% of the world's forest.

David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 3w ago

“So next time someone tells you Canada’s fires can be solved by raking the forests, you can point out that the thing filling their sky with smoke is a lightning-struck, drought-primed boreal forest doing what a warming climate is making it do more and more often.”

So let me get this straight: The federal government and Alberta pay for the pipeline, owned by the Crown Corporation, and then Alberta pays for the oil companies to expand production. Because nobody thinks this is a good business decision. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

ANALYSIS | Danielle Smith wants to double Alberta oil production. Can she bring back the boom? | CBC News

A new West Coast pipeline is stoking industry excitement. But oilsands giants may be wary of spending big to grow, analysts say.

cbc.ca

YOU DON'T HATE DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME YOU HATE THE LACK OF SUNLIGHT TRY ROTATING THE EARTH'S AXIS INSTEAD

The sun was *orange* this morning in Toronto.

Joanna Pepin@joannapepin.bsky.social · 3w ago

It looks like someone applied a sepia toned filter to all our windows. 😨

Oxford University Press (@academic.oup.com) appears to have fired its copyeditors and replaced them with robots that are terrible at their job. I might still submit there because my university has open-access agreements with them but I need to let them know that I have noticed.

I cannot stress enough how bad of an economic idea this is. The earliest possible date this would start is 2034 and demand in Asia will have collapsed by then. This is going to be a stranded asset for sure. www.cbc.ca/news/science...

Alberta's pipeline deal could allow Canadian oil to reach new countries. But will they want it? | CBC News

Energy and environmental organizations are reacting with alarm to the new Canada-Alberta deal to build a new oil pipeline to the West Coast, questioning whether new buyers can be found for the oil tha...

cbc.ca

Finally it looks like things are going my way...turns out having your brain turned off is bad for your research, and having it turned on again helps.

Not the most scientific quiz but at least it will give some idiot pause before trying to analyze the ordinal scale as interval. britmonkey.com/2020s-politi... (I grew up in Milwaukee and hang out with demographers so I guess it's not super surprising I got the sewer socialist)

2020s Political Compass Test

In this era of post-materialism, where the traditional left-right divide has given way to more vibes-based politics, this test hopes to refresh the outdated policy-oriented political compass tests …

britmonkey.com

Stephen Wild@stephenjwild.bsky.social · last mo.

Okay, so this is just funny britmonkey.com/2020s-politi...

This type of politician looks at regularly scheduled communist purges of professors and civil servants over ideological impurities and instead of recoiling like a normal person say "how do we do that?"

Kevin Reuning@reuning.bsky.social · last mo.

Jerry Cirino has introduced new legislation as part of his takeover of higher education. In short, it empowers the civic centers even more, requires universities to fund them at whatever the director wants and places all civic literacy courses under them. www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/...

Tight labor markets = better jobs (not just higher pay) www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds...

Related to this: People forget how much work we (should) take to build the right model in the first place. What happens if your model fails a robustness test but the robustness test doesn't make sense? What happens if the multiverse shows other coefficients, but they come from less plausible models?

Aki Vehtari@avehtari.bsky.social · last mo.

tl;dr Model selection is not a substitute for building good models in the first place

Bert was always good to me. I liked his work a lot and kind of wanted to do similar research early on in graduate school. He was friendly and always willing to talk, despite my not having published anything at the time.

Pamela Oliver@pamelaoliver.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I just got word that Bert Klandermans passed away suddenly yesterday June 18. Bert was one of the anchors of social movement studies. I have many memories of hanging out with him back in the day when we all were young.

These people are delusional. If Alberta voted to separate they would lose every legal protection and bit of leverage they have. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Pensions, passports and misinformation: What each side says the other gets wrong about Alberta independence | CBC News

In Alberta, both sides of the separatism debate have accused the other of peddling misinformation. CBC News set up listening stations at separatist and pro-Canada events to better understand what fact...

cbc.ca