i go back and forth all the time on this. vance is much more intelligent, capable, and calculating, but he is also WAY more unpopular and repulsive politically ... so ........ who knows .....
Aspiring wastrel, applied econometrician. At http://rachaelmeager.com for bayes, dev econ and meta science. Also at http://rottenandgood.substack.com for writing, art, death and emotions. Gay academic nonbinary weirdo, cursed to be serious in life.
16,427 followers 2,419 following 8,685 posts
view profile on Bluesky
i go back and forth all the time on this. vance is much more intelligent, capable, and calculating, but he is also WAY more unpopular and repulsive politically ... so ........ who knows .....
The world’s stupidest people have seized the levers of power. God forbid we ever get a smart nazi but believing falsehoods, as one must to be a Nazi, generally makes you stupid.
Almost two years ago I wrote about how and when and what sorts of political violence are justified, mostly by just importing wholesale the opinion of Nelson Mandela; this is more complicated than it seems, please read it open.substack.com/pub/rottenan...
this seems like the place for this: www.independent.co.uk/asia/east-as...
attempting to describe the vibes of the moment. have yet to do better than: "imagine watching a documentary reenacting the burning of the Library of Alexandria set to the soundtrack of 'Yakety Sax'"
Watching all the refs get worked on Charlie Kirk, while Republicans, including the leader of the party and President of the United States, didn’t give a fuck about a politically motivated Christian nationalist murdering a major state Dem politician is just pathetic.
Kirk paid to bus people to J6, man. He was not invested in a peaceful path to winning democracy through debate, he was happy to have the appearance of playing within the rules of constitutional liberalism while actively working to overthrow it. www.govinfo.gov/app/details/...
Steel-manning and its awful consequences
I realise this is like trying to argue with the tide but I genuinely think we should just move on and talk about something else at least until we know more, timeline has been tying itself in knots all morning when we could just be talking about.....anything else instead
yeah, good point
"he wasn't an extremist" he opposed the civil rights act! that's a verbal klan hood of an opinion!!! you don't need to lie about someone to be concerned about political violence
every time there's political violence discourse i think about how jo cox was assassinated in broad daylight by a fascist who shouted "britain first" as he shot her, and now nine years later her party is dedicating every moment in power to placating the ideology of her murderer
Undeniably correct
Another NYT fake headline. The only thing I know about Doja Cat is that she is in fact not a cat. And I am correct.
Terrible how they did that 😔
If only climate scientists hadn't alienated conservatives with tweets expressing progressive issue positions on gender and race
also on the subject of political violence
Unsurprisingly, the thing Noah Smith is saying is obviously not true. Look at reports on the reaction to the assassination of MLK... "glee, satisfaction and weeping in equal parts" (www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/r...) as the Smithsonian notes "some actually celebrated" (nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stor...).
Kirk was a racist who thought black people shouldn’t be pilots. He thought women should be subservient to men. He hated MLK and the Civil Rights Act. He didn’t care about political violence against Paul Pelosi and Democrats. All his own words. You can deplore the shooting without honoring the man.
aw akhil, thank you
MINE TOO <3333333 :)))) !!!!!!!
Today is World Sucide Prevention day. It is a day that I am reminded of all my street family I lost to suicide. They were largely on the streets because they were LGTBQ+ or abused. Many were addicted to substances. There was no hope, no clear way out. I got lucky. We can change the narrative.
the only person who liked this tweet was chiitan, japan's crazy mascot
The TAMU President clearly did not want to fire the Professor. So that means he was pressured to do so by those on high. He should have resigned before complying with the thought police. As should the Provost. A despicable failure of academic leadership by both of them.
exacrtly
and yeah the power struggle over paul between jessica and chani is classic emotional incest stuff
i also watch so much arthouse cinema that i saw it immediately lmao. the scene where they change clothes in front of each other -- each of them gives the other one a weird look while they're disrobing.
jessica is the ultimate enmeshed emotionally incestuous mother tbh
critique this perfect angel!!! no
i really love the moment in Dune (2021) where Paul is finally able to use the voice and saves his own and his mother's life and then at the end of the ensuing altercation she just angrily critiques his pitch. Denis Villeneuve what u know about mothers man.
We (development econ faculty at Princeton) are hiring predocs, to start in summer 2026. Please share the application with folks who might be interested: rpde.princeton.edu/rpde-%E2%80%93-predoctoral-fellows-research-specialists-start-summer-2026 We'll review apps starting on 9/15. Thanks!
Texas A&M should be ashamed of itself. It is encouraging cultural revolution-type snitching that is completely inconsistent with free inquiry and, frankly, being a grown-up that can be exposed to stuff that makes you uncomfortable. It's not only violating academic freedom, it's making kids dumb.
Senior Lecturer immediately fired, Department Head and Dean removed, full Wrongthink Audit of all courses ordered. I’m sure the NYT has dispatched Anemona Hartocollis, perhaps accompanied by the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf, to have a genial dinner party at the home of the person fired.
The important thing to remember, though, is that this is all ultimately the fault of the Intolerant Left, the only constituency in academia with any agency.
Great news Keep fighting, Professor Cook You're my hero!
This fucking psychopath
oh my god yeah even better it's terf-on-terf crime then
there is Coriolanus everywhere for those with eyes to see
(Find out what did I mean by this : open.substack.com/pub/rottenan... )
So close but yet so far
I do think the best metaphor I’ve ever put on the blog was when I said the Bernstein von-Mises theorem was a “fluffy quilt”
Cut rate Timothee in the Prada ads….. you will never be him
I couldnt believe she really posted this so I went to check. She did!
so excited to see you soon!!
this is one of the best episodes yet. if you aren't listening to this podcast you're playing yourself
This all on the basis of the woeful Perry preschool paper … sad to see
i've always kinda known, since the Biden admin at least, that the press has contempt for us. but this "oOoooOooH iS iT ActUAlLy TRumP'S siGnAtUrE???" schtick is the first time that i feel like my intelligence has been personally insulted
BREAKING: Federal judge blocks Trump’s effort to fire Lisa Cook as a governor of the Federal Reserve Board during litigation. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Those mfers who whinged the loudest about “cancel culture” invested thousands of man-hours into dredging up single tweets made by vulnerable academics to use as pretexts to get them canned
I know someone who genuinely is a very smart person who was thinking of pursuing a career in right intelligentsia world (he opted not to!) and was very frank with me that part of the reason this was viable for him was that the standards were so much lower due to lack of serious competition.
Rhythm of the saints so gravely underrated !
Today's reading -- this might be repeat for us, as I know I tried to read this in detail before, but nevertheless -- "GMM is inadmissible under bounded identification strength" by Andrews and Mikusheva economics.mit.edu/sites/defaul...
who could have foreseen this
Thousands of Australians living in the US could find it tougher to extend their stay in America after the Trump administration suddenly issued new visa rules on the weekend.
The Crimson, scooping every news outlet not run by undergraduates working in between classes, gets into how court orders mandating return of research funding have been flaunted, and makes a clear case for contempt proceedings against DOGE officials. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
Consistently, student journalists do the best work holding their institutions accountable.
of course the luigi left would take orders from ezra. as long as he keeps the beard he is looking SO hot and that's VERY important to the luigi left.
A German teen told Meta's child safety researchers his under-10 little brother had been sexually propositioned multiple times on its VR platform. Meta deleted the evidence. New internal whistleblower docs indicate that was part of a broader cover-up: www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...
okay incredible
are you still maintaining your integrity? curse god and post
Drank so much coffee that I can feel the Nothing nothinging
this combination of words makes what would essentially be me reading books sound so cool thank you
that’s the best thing about ladders, you can knock them down once you’ve climbed up them. i don’t foresee any way this could go wrong
Ok hear me out: what if we had the benefits of an egalitarian culture in terms of granting me access to spaces I would once have been de jure or culturally forbidden from, but then the benefits of a hierarchical culture once I'm firmly established within those once exclusive domains? How about that?
the QT i want to do on this would cause a minor, but international, incident in econ academia
*frantically rifling through google to understand this
well exactly!
my honour, defended! thank you scott
you didn't know you needed this but: a group of aussie boys, Playlunch, sing It's Raining Men in a way that conveys respect for the weather youtu.be/CDKaxKpdJF4
the 1620s just called etc etc
America’s labor market has slowed markedly in recent months. If it weren’t for job gains in the health-services sector, it would barely be growing at all. www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...
i thought you were DIRECTLY going to call out dylan matthews to be honest (said with love! i love & very much respect dylan.)
Going to EA events is weird
please do
SO underrated so underwatched
OMG no i havent read it but i clearly should
possibly the greatest line in cinema of all time
why does this make so much sense
When Judith Butler said that matcha is performative they meant that the utterance 'this is a matcha ceremony' commences the matcha ceremony, not that drinking matcha is like acting
☺️❗️
Lmaoooooooo
Ooooo thank you! Also never feel embarrassed to dive into old posts.
I am once again recommending Alain Mabanckou's African Psycho to those of you who are not faint of heart -- it's a comedy just like the original, but you have to like your black comedies very fucking black in order to like it, if you'll pardon the pun
Standing up for due process isn’t standing up for criminals. It’s standing up for the fact that the truth isn’t just whatever the loudest or the most powerful person says it is.
Not that I saw…
We must end the self help industrial complex
Once I tried listening to a well regarded history podcast and the episode in question was about Korean prince Sado, known for continually murdering and sexually assaulting his staff, but the podcasters were constantly saying "but he was just actting out because his dad didn't love him"
It is wild to me that we just can no longer deliver parcels to the USA becuase president baby wanted to feel some emotion or not feel it or whatever as the case may be
Hashtag millennial hashtag trauma
Whomst among us hasn’t thought about using military strikes to resolve our childhood trauma?
The ongoing “mental health concerns for me but not for thee” thing that the centre and right wings have toward the left is just incredible bsky.app/profile/bill...
The streets of Chicago are full with tens of thousands of people standing up to ICE and Trump. Join us.
over time I believe this will end up being one of the most unpopular things the administration ever does a death sentence for many hobbies and all the average consumer sees is that you’re taking away all their bargains one of the few policies that has a direct negative effect on almost everyone
thinking about Punch Drunk Love again. i'm not sure it's my favourite PTA, but in some ways no film even now feels as unlikely and beautiful and strange as Punch Drunk Love. it's incredible that it works. it has a kind of instinctive purity about it.
Lepanto, Part IV https://www.wikiart.org/en/cy-twombly/lepanto-panel-4
Lmao
Do they call it a lindsey buckingham, instead of a flat white?
Just passed a coffee shop called Fleetwood Macchiato, aussies won’t we do it
My brain couldnt comprehend that we were supposed to think the second photo was bad so I was confusedly looking to the side of the screen for a third photo