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The NSF 2027 budget has noted that they will close out the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Program (SBE). This is not a good thing. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202...

4-panel comic. (1) [Two people standing next to house with solar panels on roof. Person 2 has a black hat.] PERSON 1: Wait, you got solar panels? I thought you were against renewables. (2) PERSON 2: Oh, definitely. I hate the environment and want to harm it as much as possible. I’d *love* to have an oil furnace. (3) PERSON 2: But the technology just isn’t there and the cost is too high. I despise solar, but it makes more financial sense in my situation. (4) PERSON 2: But with the money I’m saving, I can buy and burn industrial waste in my yard to try to make up for it. PERSON 1: Ah, yeah, carbon onsets.

Home Solar

xkcd.com/3226/

View from Artemis II today. Crescent Earth. A view humans haven't captured since 1972.

This is so, so well-articulated.

#polisky the absolute decimation of the social sciences cc @professormusgrave.bsky.social @mcopelov.bsky.social

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

Why Manhattan, Kansas (and the rest of the country) says no kings:

Mind blowing data. The magnitude of differences from 2024 to 2025 are not unlike the difference in asking people how much they would like to eat a BLT versus a shit sandwich.

Relationship Valuation Sensitivity for Family and Friends: A Test of Welfare Tradeoff Ratio Variables and General Social Discounting Decisions about how much we help others have been quantified recently as general social discounting functions or as individual-specific welfare tradeoff ratios (WTRs). The WTR model integrates kinshi...

In this new paper, it worked out the other way -- the prediction I personally favored actually did not end up supported.
Published it anyway, because that is what makes good science (here is an accessible copy)
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

I've told my students that, if they set up rival hypothesis testing correctly, it should scare the [crap] out of you -- because your favored prediction is actually in danger of being falsified.
But it is good science, so do it anyway!
In Brandner & Brase (2022) this worked out one way...

One of the things we strive for in our lab is to use strong inference methods: running critical experiments that pit rival theory-based hypotheses against each other (rather than null hypotheses). For example, we did this before with Brase & Brandner (2022) 2/n
psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...

Relationship Valuation Sensitivity for Family and Friends: A Test of Welfare Tradeoff Ratio Variables and General Social Discounting Decisions about how much we help others have been quantified recently as general social discounting functions or as individual-specific welfare tradeoff ratios (WTRs). The WTR model integrates kinshi....

We have a new research article just out, and I thought it deserves some backstory - if for no other reason than because it turned out in a way I didn't expect. (1/n)
doi.org/10.1002/bdm....

And so it begins...

One good reason to never have billionaire celebrities run a country is that they likely will have difficulty understanding basic social dynamics

Billionaires’ % share of federal election spending in:

2008: 0.3%

2024: 19%

@nytimes.com #GildedAge
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/u...

pan of cute biscuits decorated to look like faces

same pan baked, a horrific fucked up mass of evil

how it started/how it's going

I grabbed this data from the USDA and made a graph.

I've changed my mind - I think 'population collapse with the survivors remaining enslaved to the whims of their owners' makes horses a brilliant analogy for what happens if fully capable human-like AI ever really did take over our jobs.

Of all the analogies, this one about horses is the dumbest.

great stuff by @davekarpf.bsky.social

"Journal articles aren’t social science. They’re just a unit of measurement. They’re how we keep score. Producing journal articles isn’t what we are actually meant to be doing — we’re supposed to be learning meaningful things about people, power, and society."

A highly complex website showing two betting accounts earning nearly $500,000 and $120,000 on a minimal number of positions.

In case you were wondering, Polymarket had yet another spate of likely inside traders betting that the US would strike Iran by February 28.

Per the due diligence investigation service Bubblemaps, the wallets used were created 24 hours earlier.

The Pentagon Pizza Index has been replaced.

percent of sentences in state of the union addresses since carter that express grievances. HUGE spikes for trump. 12% in 2020, 11% in 2026

a striking chart

www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

lots of good points have already been made on using AI Agents for cheating (e.g. the latest Canvas-bot), it degrades learning, etc.

One additional thing I'd like to point out: if you use this stuff, you're not being clever, you're just an asshole.

to explain:

The Kansas state capitol, in Topeka, next to an image on the campus of the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, Kansas.

Kansas May Withhold Millions From Universities With ‘DEI-CRT’ in Gen Ed

The budget bill would also freeze tuition revenue, allow institutions to fire tenured faculty faster and develop plans to eliminate a tenth of positions and expenses from universities’ leadership offices. https://bit.ly/46JE988

Mia Valentina Paz Faria A 7-year-old from Venezuela who was living in Austin, Texas Detained for 70 days “I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

UPDATE: Staff at the ICE concentration camp in Dilley, Texas have begun raiding the dormitories of kids and their parents to confiscate and destroy letters from the children. This is in response to the ace reporting by @micarosenberg et al for ProPublica:

“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

- 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas.

Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children.

www.propublica.org/article/ice-...

Opinion | Affordability and the ‘Epstein Class’ Will Define American Politics

“When Citizens United was decided in 2010, billionaires had spent $18 million on the 2000 election, $13M 2004 and $16M in 2008. Then came the deluge. In 2012 it was $231M, and nearly doubled again in next three election cycles —to $682M in 2016, $1.2 billion in 2020 and $2.6 billion in 2024.” Gift:

An illustration of an organizational chart with stick-like blue human figures standing in the various boxes.

Opinion | Counting Vice Presidents Misses the Point

The growth of administrative titles is not what is hollowing out institutional capacity... It is what happens when leadership repeatedly avoids the more challenging work of setting priorities and enforcing limits. https://bit.ly/4r5vwNw

Link should now be working again. Apologies. tvpollet.github.io/2026-01-30-D...

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