But that distance can become huge to someone on a sailing boat out in the North Atlantic or to, say, a medieval pilgrim heading for Jerusalem.

Excellent review essay of three books on demography - After the Spike and No One Left, which promote “underpopulation” panic; and Toxic Demography, which describes the political mobilisation of demography represented in the first two books

doi.org/10.1111/padr...

Open access training materials in Demographic Methods and Population Analysis The Population Studies Group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, U. of London published a self-study course Introduction to Demographic Methods and Population Analysis for students ...

Useful resource for anyone who would like to learn about demographic methods using interactive materials rather than a traditional textbook: www.linkedin.com/pulse/open-a... We put a lot of work into these modules a few years ago, so thank you LSHTM for taking on hosting them.

No! Please don't discuss pandas being inseminated in any way except by other pandas. You might set off some really unwelcome chains of thought in the minds of the pronatalist bros.

The ever-expanding Corporate Communications team mostly will be.

Bene dicti(ne), magister!

The illustrations are better too!

Hypothesis? They dredged some observational data and speculate about mechanisms based on old research that did observe (!) owners' behaviour as well as cats'. Old git ethologists have found that, rather than having a placatory effect, chatting back often provokes further attempts at interaction :)

Yup, my (male) cat is the worst nag I know.

I'm only a confused squirrel so the distinction between silly nonsense such as destroying money and responsible fiscal management such as reducing the money supply is a little esoteric for me. I do wonder whether, with your forthright debating style, you might feel more at home on the bird site.

I did do econ 101 in 1973. You tell us "If anyone cares, after 2007 I often suggested the UK should indulge in some money-financed expenditure". So you believe that government should sometimes make its own clams but it can't/doesn't/shouldn't ever destroy them? That seems like silly nonsense to me.

I was taught in econ 101 that money is a store of government guaranteed value that is used as a medium of exchange and so circulates. They left out the bit about it also being a bunch of IOUs written and sold by banks knowing that government will take and burn them to stop the economy overheating.

Paul Murphy clearly exasperates you (or did in 2019) and the Right lacks a monopoly abusing economic theory. But I read MMT as building in Godley's identity. It clarifies that macro policy must consider real resources, whereas all forms of monetarism just end up helping private finance grab the lot.

Your article says it: that it's about doctors, schools and consumer goods. So does MMT. For those of us who aren't professional economists, that's the key point. How does one discuss policy sensibly with every politician claiming (mostly believing) that the constraint on a national economy is money?

Yeah, I told them I had better things to do with my time.

I favour an Augustinian approach to producing code: O Lord, make me stop assuming Boolean FALSE is 0, but not yet.

Or:

Previously, the UN used each country’s own definitions of which areas were urban. That approach tells us that only 58% of the global population was urban in 2025. In contrast, the new 81% statistic is based on a universal definition of urban areas as relatively dense settlements of 5000+ people.

These are the first global urbanization statistics since the UN Population Division stopped revising them biennially in 1918. The estimates have changed a lot! They suggest that 81% of the world’s population now live in towns and cities, compared to the 2018 estimate of just 55%. What is going on?

PAPP - Population Analysis for Policies & Programmes Module Overview | Acknowledgements | How to reference

There is an online course available on the IUSSP website that covers intermediate as well as introductory formal demography papp.iussp.org. It could do with an update to cover developments in the last decade, though arguably most of them are advanced and build on what's there.

Tomorrow @farid-flici.bsky.social will talk about population ageing and social security sustainability in Algeria.

Join us! 👇

Chapeau, sir.

Demography may be unique in needing the insights of both those who think involution is about the history of rice cultivation in Java and those who think it's f(f(x))=x.

Ironically, you couldn't be more wrong! A number of East Europeans who trained as rocket scientists before the collapse of the rocket-science job market instead became first-rate demographers. I would mention, in particular, Vladimir Shkolnikov, who was educated at the Moscow Aerospace Institute.

There's lots for all demographers (OK, a few of you probably know it all already) to ponder on in this paper. #demography

What is Michaelangelo's David good for? Sierra llama is a beautiful equation. Sure, it has applications, but the world needs more beauty. And the generalization to variable growth rates - it sends shivers down the spine. A profound account of population dynamics encapsulated in a single equation.

My apologies. It was after midnight when I posted (obviously) and I was evidently too tired to be doing so. I just want to reassure you that it's not at all the case that anyone in Europe has somehow developed the crazy notion that nobody American bothers to read our offerings anyway.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is a llama (4 for me).

Also in the Emergency Room I discovered on Sunday night, though it might rather spoil things if you yourself happened to be the emergency.