I grew up in Silver Towers! First a two-bedroom, then a three-bedroom. Many fond memories of that complex and the ability to just play with other kids in the plaza between buildings.
Asst Prof, UC Berkeley, Political Science. Study protests, stats & race: 1/ Agenda Seeding http://j.mp/agenda-seeding 2/ Race as a Bundle of Sticks http://j.mp/bundle-of
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I grew up in Silver Towers! First a two-bedroom, then a three-bedroom. Many fond memories of that complex and the ability to just play with other kids in the plaza between buildings.
“On his ‘States of Elevation’ project, Kilian Jornet intends to summit the 60-plus so-called 14ers in the contiguous United States, connecting each by bike or foot.” Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/s...
“Floyd’s murder suggested racism was an important national problem to all Americans, but change was especially large and long-lasting for racial liberals: for Blacks compared to Whites, and, among Whites, for Democrats compared to Republicans.” www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
“Floyd’s murder suggested racism was an important national problem to all Americans, but change was especially large and long-lasting for racial liberals: for Blacks compared to Whites, and, among Whites, for Democrats compared to Republicans.” www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
“A racial reckoning?” New study by @amengel.bsky.social & Cindy Kam: “Challenging the conventional wisdom, our analyses demonstrate that racial attitudes changed following George Floyd’s murder, but in ways dependent upon attitude measure and population subgroup.” www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Thank you for the generous engagement with the work 🙏
👇🎯 University presidents, take note & start getting in front of microphones, en masse, now:
Stopped at a Midas repair shop today and the guy there brought up the CDC. This is an example where raising the salience of what is going on really can break through the noise.
If you’re going to go down, go down swinging
A lot of that labeling, though, is just third parties that create some kind of certification and logo, like some kosher products, and no reason that couldn’t be done for low glycemic index.
From Marin to MAHA, our culture encourages obsessing over food purity and avoiding “chemicals” but then promotes drinking organic juices, using “natural” sweeteners, and eating “healthy” energy bars that all spike blood sugar and contribute to long run insulin resistance and related chronic illness.
“Texas Democrats lost. But they drew attention to Republicans’ efforts to put their thumb on the scale, and demonstrated a valuable tactic for galvanizing their beleaguered party. They lost, but they lost loudly. Losing loudly has been a crucial feature of successful political movements.” Gift:
Supermarkets have sections for gluten-free, vegan/vegetarian and so on. Restaurants increasingly flag these things on menus, too. For the ~50% of America that pre-diabetic of diabetic, however, good luck trying to easily identify which foods and meals won’t spike blood sugar.
“Bruising on the back of the hand of an older adult is common, especially if that person, a golfer, has solar skin damage and takes aspirin.” In one study, “those with the condition were much more likely to have cardiac disease (26.3% vs 9.6%, P=0.003)… and to be taking anticoagulation drugs.”
🚨JOB ALERT🚨 We! Are! Hiring! The Department of Africana Studies at Smith College invites applications for a tenure-track position in Black Women’s Studies/Gender Studies at the rank of Assistant Professor, to begin 7/1/26 More info here: apply.interfolio.com/171572 #blackademia #academia #PhDSky
Useful to think about this administration as a set of reactionary regime changes. At CDC, from pro-science to pro-quackery. And, at the Pentagon, from pro-Union to pro-Confederacy.
Useful to think about this administration as a set of reactionary regime changes. At CDC, from pro-science to pro-quackery. And, at the Pentagon, from pro-Union to pro-Confederacy.
Robert E. Lee killed more U.S. troops in battle than Adolph Hitler and Osama bin Laden combined
“66% of respondents agreed the UC system was important for helping students get ahead,’ while 71% agreed UC campuses ‘produce important research that benefits communities in California.’ A strong majority of voters across rural and urban, racial, age, and partisan lines agreed with both sentiments.”
New article thinking about the interplay between identity and solidarity among people of color. How stable is each orientation in a national sample? How much does each feed into each other over time, if at all? Do things look similar or different across PoC? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
They don't feel shame, but they care deeply about status. Wanting to be liked--or at least envied--is their Achilles heel. We can use that against them:it's cheap, non-violent & effective. Social shunning of elites supporting Pinochet helped bring down the Chilean dictator: it can work here too.
“How much of normal healthy aging is due to becoming sedentary? … When we compared seniors to healthy young individuals, we noticed that not only did the heart shrink, but it stiffened. But when we looked at elite masters athletes, their hearts were indistinguishable from healthy 30 year-olds.”
“A colleague recently reported a student saying, of a return to in-class exams and limited device access, ‘It’s like they want us to fail.’ We, of course, do not want our students to fail, but we don’t want them to fail to learn, either.” — Clay Shirky www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o...
Here are the Lehigh Valley’s largest employers. Gonna be great for post-industrial economic development when all the hospitals, the school districts, local federal offices, & Lehigh & Lafayette have mass layoffs due to the dismantling of the entire federal government.
🎯“In 2021, expanding almond and pistachio acreage grew its annual water use by 523 billion gallons of water compared to 2017 — enough to supply 87% of California’s population. Meanwhile, over a million Californians lack reliable access to clean water.” www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2022/02/24/c...
Shout out to the California local elected officials who banned the construction of new housing for decades, causing the state's population to stagnate while places like Texas grew by 1-2% every year since the 1990s.
Jamelle Bouie Receives the 2025 Carey McWilliams Award The Carey McWilliams Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor major journalistic contributions to society’s understanding of politics. Citation from the Award Committee: The American Political…
“It’s a world where performative masculinity is a rent that is due every day,” Mr. Thomas said. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/s...
The taste for sugar in the US and UK, 1700–2000 Source: “Potential role of sugar (fructose) in the epidemic of hypertension, obesity and the metabolic syndrome, diabetes, kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease” doi.org/10.1093/ajcn...
“Columbus planted the New World’s first sugarcane…The Portuguese made Brazil into an early boom colony, with more than 100,000 slaves churning out tons of sugar…By the 18th century the marriage of sugar and slavery was complete…When the natives died, the planters replaced them with African slaves.”
Looks right up my alley. Will order now. Danke!
How did sugar feed slavery? www.learningforjustice.org/sites/defaul... HT @propcazhpm.bsky.social
There are so many reasons I take my coffee black with no sugar. One is that food industry spends millions to hide the risk of overconsumption. Also a drama prof and playwright who taught at my alma mater (and has passed) wrote brilliant play called Sugar about slavery, diabetes… So relevant.
“Stephan Guyenet shows that we are well above historical averages in sugar consumption even after the more recent decline. Obesity didn’t really increase from say to 1820-1920, however.” marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...
“Although the data show that the sugar consumption trend is going in the right direction (declining), the US population still consumes more than 300% of the recommended daily amount of added sugar.” — The Dose Makes the Poison: Sugar and Obesity in the US pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
What's been the most influential piece of research in your area in the past decade?
"When dense cities are not allowed to fund their services in a way that reflects their needs and values, it guarantees that the city will be a site of failure — failure that will be especially visible ... because in dense cities everything is more visible." -- humantransit.org/2025/08/the-...
The main founders of Devo and Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders were students at Kent State in 1970 when the Ohio National Guard (now in DC) murdered 4 students For this late boomer, the Kent State massacre inventing punk rock explains everything
Story time: When I was a City Hall reporter at the Austin American-Statesman, I got a tip that a top budget official had pulled strings to get cash pointed to a non-profit that he co-founded and which employed his wife. The group had indeed gotten $. I thought it was a story, the bosses disagreed.
“Her courageousness is contagious,” said State Representative Mihaela Plesa, a Dallas-area Democrat. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/u...
It’s a good point. Easy to imagine them concerned about someone of European ancestry but who is ”culturally tainted“ (essentially themselves in the recent past). bsky.app/profile/owas...
One founder played “French horn with Shen Yun, the classical Chinese dance and music production” and the other is “a former jazz pianist.” Clearly a lot going on, but hard not to see a yearning for imaginary “white purity” as a partial rebellion against their “culturally mixed” pasts. Gift link:
Racism and politics aside, I’m struck by how the colorline is drawn here: “Seeing someone who doesn’t *present* as white might lead us to, among other things, not admit that person,” Suggests even white supremacists are having to adjust to ideas about the social construction of race. Gift link:
First act of science is to observe. “Doesn’t tell us anything” suggests a misunderstanding of much of science.
Small study had “100 marathon and ultramarathon runners aged 35 to 50 undergo a colonoscopy. The results were staggering. Almost half the participants had polyps, and 15 percent had advanced adenomas likely to become cancerous.” Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/h...
Applications are open for SFI's 2026 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships. SFI offers early-career scholars intellectual freedom, competitive benefits, research funds, and collaboration with leading scientists. Learn more: santafe.edu/news-center/news/join-sfi-as-a-complexity-postdoctoral-fellow
If you aren’t familiar with using interactive games, polls, surveys, live in class, just make a QR code of the page and pop it on your review slide. Let them have fun reviewing.
#rstats #statistics I've released my new open source book, "Powered by Linear Algebra: the role of matrices and vector space in data science," at matloff.github.io/WackyLinearA.... Turns the classic LA course on its head! Still proves the theorems, but with a deep emphasis on applications.
I just made some soup so have pressure cooking on the mind. Think of new housing as pushing the pressure release valve which lowers pressure (prices) across the entire housing market. Alternatively, consider there are *cascades* in which each person “moving up” frees up housing across the market.
Not quite. New housing supply will make *current housing* more affordable immediately as the new supply (at whatever price) becomes available.
Men are from [nobody in sight] Mars, women are from [crowded] Venus. via @aedwardslevy.bsky.social
Density Is How the Working Poor Outbid the Rich for Urban Land: marketurbanism.com/2018/02/05/d...
“But if these luxury buildings didn’t exist, your rent would be higher. Why? Supply of more housing, even if it’s just luxury apartments, decreases pressure on the overall market.” www.wesa.fm/development-...
See, for example, “The dramatic swing of used car prices during the pandemic era provides a textbook example of how new supply, or lack thereof, can impact consumer costs.” ggwash.org/view/97125/h...
The analogy to cars is a good one but with inclusion of *used* cars. Today, most new cars are bought by wealthier people and everyone else buys used cars. Similarly, new housing tends attracts wealthier folks, and evidence finds new housing helps *lower* prices in older housing (ie, like used cars).
“86% of LA respondents support building apartments in one or more of a [wide range] of areas. That number isn’t a typo. This level of agreement is unheard of in politics and should be enough of a reason to build more housing immediately.“ — @zacharyst.bsky.social escholarship.org/content/qt4m...
Flaccid patriarchy
“Despite high levels of expressed support, approximately 16% of respondents harbor negative views toward the idea of a woman president. This bias spans demographic groups…”
Headline could’ve stopped after first two words
“A woman using a public voice is in trouble.” Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/u...
"What we're seeing here is mobilization for more conventional policing," @owasow.bsky.social told me. We spoke about the long history of the National Guard being called in to address crises — and why what's happening in D.C. is different. capitalbnews.org/dc-national-...
🧵This is why we need multi-member districts with ranked choice voting in state legs as well as Congress. There are rural progressives who need to be heard & would make our politics more nuanced & reality-based. Urban conservative deserve the same, tho their views are well repped in the media.
The audio version of Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know is on sale through Sept 5 (written & read by yours truly): www.audiobooks.com/promotions/p...
All three books I've co-authored are freely available online for non-commercial use: - #Bayesian Data Analysis, 3rd ed (aka BDA3) at stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/book/ - #Regression and Other Stories at avehtari.github.io/ROS-Examples/ - Active Statistics at avehtari.github.io/ActiveStatis...
Really helpful for visualizing what to look for bsky.app/profile/guay...
Drowning is “the No. 2 cause of accidental death in children, ages 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents)—of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult.”
At airport and keep seeing folks with these half-gallon and maybe even gallon (!) metal water bottles. What… are they preparing for?
👇
I realize broad science-literacy problems cannot generally be solved just by shoving more facts at people but I really wish more people understood that the entire purpose and mechanism of a vaccine is to educate your OWN immune system, making it about the most "natural" medical intervention possible
America is having a housing crisis because it chooses to have a housing crisis. Americans are being displaced because we want them to be displaced. Our cities are world capitals of homelessness because we invest resources in making them so.
Is blood thicker than party? bsky.app/profile/trou...
Yes, lots of bias to go around but that doesn’t explain many actions like Cassidy folding on RFK Jr: www.nbcnews.com/politics/con... Or Will Hurd in 2017: www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol... Lots of other examples of folding on nominees or policy that isn’t obviously about bigotry.
this is a major factor inhibiting GOP resistance to Trump, and in many ways the severity of the problem is downstream of the long-term project of setting up and retreating into a parallel society of explicitly right-wing social networks and institutions
Yes, also risk of what sociologist Orlando Patterson called “social death”: bsky.app/profile/jeff...
Why have so many moderate Republicans retired rather than stood up to Trump? In part, they are “submerged in social relationships.” Crossing Trump means losing cushy board seats and getting side-eye at church. Avoiding country club cancel culture won’t win a profile in courage but that’s today’s GOP
Now in an issue @psrm.bsky.social: I show that the 🇩🇰 Social Democrats could have won policy support for a pro-immigrant platform if their messaging were framed in moral terms. Findings provide a central corrective to the popular notion that the Social Democrats were destined to go anti-immigrant 👇🏻
Pre-nope
Despite widespread sexism in all four countries studied, there is no evidence that voter sexism reduces support for women candidates. Partisan preferences matter more than sexist attitudes when it comes to vote choice www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
More politics than pop but some that I teach that touch culture: — How to Survive a Plague — Crip Camp — LA 92 — Haven’t taught but recommend Deaf President Now! Just out on AppleTV
Classic Reason Magazine cartoon from 2008: “What Part of Legal Immigration Don’t You Understand?” by Mike Flynn and Shikha Dalmia, illustrated by Terry Colon, showing the complexity and long wait times of U.S. legal immigration.
Reminds me of UK Suffragists gaining right vote after women contributed heavily to WWI.
Also see bsky.app/profile/sumi...
“Many poor and oppressed people wish to leave their countries of origin in the third world to come to affluent Western societies. This essay argues that there is little justification for keeping them out.” bsky.app/profile/sumi...
See bsky.app/profile/matt...
“Actually, there is a mechanism for those who’ve been physically present in the US since a certain date and haven’t been rendered inadmissible by something like a criminal record to simply send in an application for permanent residency…” but the date is *Jan 1, 1972*. bsky.app/profile/matt...
And some critiques of specific earned citizenship proposals, especially those that “express a particular moral basis for legalization”: bsky.app/profile/same...
Whoa, I didn’t realize “earned citizenship” was a standard term. Look forward to reading.
Thank you
“Earned Residency” would be a good compromise.
I’m not a lawyer so would defer to others but presumably one could use things like bills, children’s birth certificates, applications for asylum and so on.
A modest proposal: “Earned Citizenship,” like birthright citizenship but automatic for immigrants who live in the US for a certain number of years and have no serious legal issues.
bsky.app/profile/owas...
More broadly it is the open production and dissemination of information plus free elections that most clearly distinguishes autocratic from democratic regimes.
bsky.app/profile/owas...
Tragedy of the text commons
bsky.app/profile/owas...
bsky.app/profile/owas...
Finally, Sen’s theory may apply more to acute political famines than chronic hunger. While post-1961 China hasn’t had mass famines, there have been issues of food insecurity, rural malnutrition, and local corruption that are harder to track precisely because of press restrictions.
Also, Sen’s claim was that no substantial famine has ever occurred in a functioning democracy with a relatively free press but that doesn’t preclude other paths to prevention or claim that authoritarianism necessitates famine. Post-famine, China reformed many agricultural and economic policies.
Western Chauvinism by an Indian economist on a question about differential rates of famine in two non-Western countries? More generally, insight is that famines are not “natural disasters” but man-made and things like the flow of information can serve as powerful correctives.