A commenter notes that "Trump managed to be both Hitler and Chamberlain in the same negotiation. An unprecedented feat." 😭

Thus, women may be more successful in crowdfunding not because it is less biased than other forms of fundraising - women are punished for deviation from norms of expressiveness - but because it rewards more gender typical forms of expression by women.

Outside of nonverbal expression, there is evidence that the opposite is true for professional investors. Women need to conform to male-typical norms for communication and behavior in order to succeed.

Women do quite well in crowdfunding but not in fundraising with professional investors, like venture capitalists. Our results suggest that supporters in rewards-based crowdfunding, like kickstarter, reward gender-typical behavior like emotional expressiveness by women.

Women are punished for neutrality in both vocal and facial nonverbal communication. (Men are also punished for vocal neutrality but do fine with facial neutrality). We think this provides an important clue in understanding variation in entrepreneurial finance:

Poker face and steady voice: Gender and reactions to emotional neutrality in crowdfunding While emotional neutrality (e.g., maintaining a neutral face, speaking with a calm voice) can help entrepreneurs project a sought-after image of ratio…

We hypothesized that emotional neutrality in nonverbal expression would be valued by supporters because it signals a steadiness through ups and downs. But we find something more complicated and interesting.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I have forthcoming research with a former Bocconi PhD student and current St. Gallen postdoc, Jiongni (Jennie) Mao, that studies nonverbal communication by men and women in crowdfunding. This work is with Silvia Stroe and Charlotta Siren her post-doc advisors at St. Gallen university.

How does nonverbal expression affect success in crowdfunding pitches? Does this vary between men and women? Do these differences provide hints to why women do better in crowdfunding than in traditional entrepreneurial fundraising?

The essay does not answer one pesky question that has been bugging me. Why is this genre called "LitRPG" when "RPGLit" would make so much more sense, at least if one converts it to real English words...

The Unlikely Hit That’s Popularizing a Whole New Type of Novel Like many, I never thought I’d become a fan of this bizarre series, but here we are.

Finally, dungeon crawler Carl and Princess Donut get the @lauramille.bsky.social treatment in Slate. I resisted recommendations for this ridiculous "LitRPG" series for quite a while, and I'm still wrestling with why I love it so much.

slate.com/culture/2026...

"And perhaps the greatest myth of all is that Greenland was ever truly conquered. It remains, even now, a place that humbles empires, silences explorers, and outlasts expectations. It is not a relic or a ruin. It is a force," Erik Mikkal Thorsen, Greenland Uncovered

The rate of global sea level rise doubled during the past three decades - Communications Earth & Environment Global mean sea level rise amounted to 4.5 mm per year as a result of warming oceans and melting land ice, more than twice the rate of 2.1 mm/year observed at the start of satellite data in 1993, base...

The rate of global mean sea level rise has increased from ~2.1 mm/year in 1993 to ~4.5 mm/year in 2023. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

one of four in a week

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/n...

Why Americans are feeling poorer even though they’re not Essential services cost more because people are better off

tldr: it all comes down to Baumol’s disease plus rising opportunity costs of family work. www.ft.com/content/3fa9... Why Americans are feeling poorer even though they’re not

Perfect, no notes 👇

The idea that concern with “pedantic details” identifies a review from an LLM is pretty funny. Human reviewers are all too capable of this!

So that changed fast

I just finished Moby Dick. The last 25-30 chapters are a rip-roaring yarn. What elevates it to “classic” experience is the relief of getting through the first 100 chapters of whale trivia and ship gossip.

Do you give yourself mad-lib like reference challenges when you have to write about the same depressing thing over & over again?

I just finished Moby Dick. The last 25-30 chapters are a rip-roaring yarn. What elevates it to classic is the sheer relief of getting through the first 100 chapters of whale trivia and ship gossip.

Fine for Harvard students though.

Good lord, that is so true. Let’s hope it gives us the strength to resist completely performative “scandals” in the future. @nyt I’m looking at you!!

They should put in auctions where you bid to recline while the person behind bids to prevent reclining. To the winner go the spoils.

“We found over 35 cases in which the judges have specifically said what the government is providing…false information. It might be intentionally false information, including false sworn declarations time and again," says Ryan Goodman, law professor at New York University.

Oh, Europe. Self-parody is so 2018.

How causality ate the world. I don’t see how causality is the key issue in psychology research, most of which is based on RCTs. Replicability crisis, yes a big issue. Generalizability out of the lab, yes. But causality? That hardly seems to be the crux.

[writing the constitution]

Benjamin Franklin: Write down "no dumb fucks as president"

Alexander Hamilton: Stop saying that

Benjamin Franklin: I'm tellin' you. You're gonna regret not writing that down

“Technology will just get better”

idk but I liked the Internet better 25 years ago

The renewable energy transition goes very slowly, then all at once