I am convinced that some scholars are agents provocateurs working to discredit academia.

Current Affairs@currentaffairs.bsky.social · 2d ago

There's a metaphor for the economics profession in there...

John Mullahy@johnmullahy.bsky.social · yesterday

I wonder if the widespread use of "role" to refer to someone's job is a function of the increasingly widespread tendency people have to see themselves as the hero of their own movie, thanks in large part to social media. Also, I can't hear the word "role" without thinking of flared-nostril PE Guy.

Niche (and I do mean niche) skeet of the day: I've decided to revisit the Ozric Tentacles' discog, starting with Erpsongs, and my God, what an amazing band since day one. They sound like what I imagine a trip to the Akashic records would feel like.

"Professor, I know your office hours aren't today but I have a quick question. Could you tell me whether ..."

Everybody gangsta until demand meets supply.

Dexter Goad@shadowdogprod.bsky.social · 3d ago

What if--and believe me, this is a hypothetical--but WHAT IF the male loneliness epidemic had as its root cause a deep sense of inadequacy and insecurity among American men?

Snowden St.@snowden.st · 2y ago

US coffee is a dumb game— any bag that brags about being Too Hard for Gen Pop, DeathRaiser 5000, or Grunt Joe is gonna be a medium-to-dark roast fit for a middle aged dad fighting his acid reflux. All the coffees that actually send you to the moon are from roasters called stuff like “Little Owl”

Has someone told Carville that maybe it's because of the economy, stupid?

Mediaite@mediaite.com · 3d ago

James Carville Tells Fox News He’s Out of the Democratic Party if Hasan Piker Stays: ‘One of Us is Going to Leave’

This whole thread is one of the best things I've read this weekend.

Clément Canonne@ccanonne.github.io · 4d ago

"We're all worried," as what it means to do research (in my field, Theoretical CS) seems to be shifting, and shifting fast. What to do? Senior researchers must lead by example, knowing that not everything will pan out. What I'm suggesting below may not work everywhere, but here's my own advice: 1/

/r/professors, this means you.

Clément Canonne@ccanonne.github.io · 4d ago

- stop the public hand-wringing and doomerism. Things are worrying and scary, yes, but this is (y)our job to navigate it (you/we have the stability and, allegedly, the experience). We can afford to think about it and try things out! If we project despair publicly, then how is that going to go? 3/

🧵To seniors: - move away from bean-counting (easy, right?). E.g., when evaluating CVs or grants or applicants, ask for the top 3 pubs, with a paragraph explaining why these are important. Hiring on a CV of 50 pubs was always sort of meaningless, now it's become meaningless-er (!) and gameable. 2/

This. Absolutely this! The bar for what counts as a "publishable paper" has risen considerably, and will keep rising. I was joking to a coauthor this week that, David Card's displeasure notwithstanding, the average WP was going to get longer. We will become a book field--I'm not joking.

Clément Canonne@ccanonne.github.io · 4d ago

🧵To juniors: - Move away from LPUs, at all costs. (Nobody likes to think of their own paper as LPU: what I mean here is "a paper just good enough to be published in a fairly good conf even a year ago") These publications are most likely going to die, or not being valued any more, as flood-prone 2/

wdym lol Alternatively: Why teach typing when, soon enough, they'll be able to pour their inchoate thoughts in the form of a logorrhea aimed at their device?

I'm calling it now: I don't think he'll still have this job by the end of September. This is likely the last straw.

"There is little evidence to support the idea that bringing supermarkets to neighborhoods that lack them has a measurable effect on what residents eat."

The Myth of the Food Desert

The fight against “food deserts” assumes that better options lead to better diets. The evidence is thin.

newyorker.com

I just saw someone on social media declare that if they see a social media post written by AI, they automatically unfollow. Some sundry thoughts. 1/

How was I supposed to know that all those emails for which I thought "lol I can snooze that until August 1 when it'll really matter" would hit me on a Saturday at 8AM?

At lunch our kid proudly told us how much she been enjoying reading The Count of Monte Crisco 🤦‍♂️

Rhetorical question, stemming from an email exchange with @dlmillimet.bsky.social: When did it become acceptable for one to say "X is broken" when one really means "X is generating outcomes that I personally dislike"? It's a statement that has a vague aura of objectivity and scientific truth.

"Talking Fast and Loose." I'll see myself out.

Stephen Wild@stephenjwild.bsky.social · 6d ago

It so messed me up when I first started reading Kahneman and the like.

In economics, the philosophical concept that gets egregiously misused out of the seminar room is "rational."

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 6d ago

there are a lot of philosophical concepts that get egregiously misused out of the seminar room (and in the seminar room, to be fair). but in terms of sheer pernicious misuse "social construct" has gotta be top 5 somewhere and it's not number 5

Difference-in-differences.

Sanjay Srivastava@sanjaysrivastava.com · 6d ago

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

Man next time just call out /r/professors directly, no need to beat around the bush...

BOGLUDDITE@brucemackay.bsky.social · 7d ago

LUDDITE TEMPLE

Every Saint Paul resident today #iykyk

Michael Bluth

ALT: Michael Bluth

static.klipy.com

Wake up babe, new phrenology just dropped

Eiko Fried@eikofried.bsky.social · 7d ago

Prominent researchers in my field spent over 2 decades telling big stories about the relation between brain & mental health with very little robust data. This has led to really crazy stuff like this, impossible if we had not normalized this bizarre storytelling. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Nobody likes a suck up, Claude.

A post I wrote on Reddit was accused of having been written by AI, presumably because it's written properly. We've hit a very sad point in history.

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to let producers convince consumers that price volatility affects both groups similarly.

UPDATE: I'm nowhere near done. My ORCID had *one* of 50+ articles, and so I had to enter them... Keep your ORCID up-to-date, boys and girls and nonbins! You think it doesn't matter... until it does.

Marc F. Bellemare@marcfbellemare.bsky.social · last wk.

That face when when you're spending the morning making sure your Experts@UMN profile is linked to your ORCID which is then linked to SciEnv to make sure you are in compliance with new rules

say what you will about AI, always-on voice recording and auto dictation has been a game changer for my workflows. Save post and close app. Yeah Footlong meatball sub on white. No veggies. Don't toast it. Ranch and barbecue sauce. Yeah, ranch and bargecue sauce. More. More. Little more please