We’re hiring a Manager for Canada’s Productivity Initiative at @UCaglary! It's a great opportunity to help build a national partnership connecting universities, governments, and policy leaders. If it sounds like a fit, take a look and please share: careers.ucalgary.ca/jobs/176253...
Canadian Tax Journal call for proposals: Policy Forum on National Defence and Public Finances.
Canada has set targets to sharply increase defence spending. What does this mean for public finances?
Write for the CTJ Policy Forum!
Proposals due April 15th.
www.ctf.ca/EN/Publicati...
When did we start claiming that what we are doing in our philosophy papers is finding a ‘novel’ argument? I say it myself and I admit I do crave novelty. But what I admire in a paper is when people show that they have thought very deeply about a problem and found something surprising and insightful.
Thanks to both for saying this. There seems to be a large constituency of evaluators/social scientists who want to use shoddy philosophy of science to add some caché to their questionable approaches to causal inference. And I say this as someone sympathetic to qualitative & multimethod research.
My personal rule for IVs is that, if there's really only one reason why Z and Y are correlated, then you should be able to tell me Z and Y, and I'd be able to figure out what X is without you telling me. (1/n)
It's ironic to see a discipline care **so much** about unbiasedness (causal inference!) at the level of a single test but then have a research production system and culture that is basically a ferocious bias generation machine. This is not good.
As compensation for our 2.5 hour train delay, ViaRail offered us a *free* muffin *and* a *50% rebate* off our next trip booking! 🤩
#LivingTheDream
What Americans die from and the causes of death the US media reports on Causes of death in the US in 2023 Heart disease (29%) Cancer (26%) Accidents (9.5%) Stroke (6.9%) Lower respiratory diseases (6.2%) Alzheimer's disease (4.8%) Diabetes (4.0%) Kidney failure (2.4%) Liver disease (2.2%) Homicide (<1%) Terrorism (<0.001%)| COVID-19 (2.1%) Influenza/Pneu monia (19%6) Media coverage of these causes of death in 2023 in... The New York Times The Washington Post Fox News Heart disease (2.8%) Heart disease (2.9%) Cancer (4.1%) Cancer (4.7%) Accidents (5.9%) Cancer (3.8%) Accidents (6.1%) Accidents (9.7%) Suicide (4.1%) Suicide (3.3%) COVID-19 (6.0%) COVID-19 (7.9%) Suicide (3.8%) COVID-19 (5.3%) Drug overdose (7.5%) Drug overdose (9.8%) Drug overdose (9.5%) Cancer (26%) Accidents (9.5%) Stroke (6.9%) Lower respiratory diseases (6.2%) Alzheimer's disease (4.8%) Diabetes (4.0%) Kidney failure (24%) Suicide (2.1%0) COVID-19 (2.1%0 Homicide (42%) Homicide (52%) Homicide (46%) Terrorism (18%) Terrorism (12%) Terrorism (11%) Homicide (<1%) Terrorism (<0.001%) Note: Based on the share of causes of death in the US and the share of mentions for each of the causes in the New York Times, the Washington Post and Fox News. All values are normalized to 100%, so the shares are relative to all deaths caused by the 12 most common causes + drug overdoses, homicides and terrorism. These causes account for more than 75% of deaths in the US. A "media mention" is a published article in one of the outlets which mentions the cause (e,g. "influenza) or related keywords (e.g. "fu") least twice. Data sources: Media mentions from Media Cloud (2025): deaths data from the US CDC (2025) and Global Terrorism Index.| CC BY
Nice chart from @ourworldindata.org showing the contrast between what Americans die of (heart disease and cancer) v what the US media reports on (homicide and terrorism). This naturally leads to it being trickier to build a fact based world view
ourworldindata.org/does-the-new...
Not sure how many people realize that battery storage already supplies 30% of California’s electricity demand at peak.
Batteries aren’t the future — they’re here now.
Text from an article: Given the current state of evidence production in the social sciences, I believe that many - perhaps most - attempts to use social scientific evidence to inform policy will not lead to better outcomes. This is not because of politics or the challenges of scaling small programs. The problem is more immediate. Much of social science research is of poor quality, and sorting the trustworthy work from bad work is difficult, costly, and time-consuming.
I think the current state of social science research is pretty bad and I wrote something for @asteriskmag.bsky.social about it. asteriskmag.com/issues/10/ca...
In 2004, it took the world a year to add one gigawatt of solar power — now it takes a day.
Who wants some good news?
The overwintering monarch population, which had plummeted last winter, has doubled this winter! www.worldwildlife.org/stories/east...
They are 10 times our size, but we are 10 times as united and 100 times as resolute.
You want to know about this NASA Sea Level Projection Tool, which allows you to visualize and download the sea level projection data from the IPCC 6th Assessment Report (AR6).
Paging Free Speech Warriors!! Your time has come. Where are you? Speak up!! Still can’t hear you. Is your mic on?
Seems like an apt time to post this meme.
Centre for the Study of African Economies at University of Oxford will automatically consider all applicants from Africa for full funding for the MPhil in Economics - we have new scholarships for eligible students.
How? Just apply asap: deadline 4th March (extended deadline): see below
Canada’s new Rural Community Immigration Pilot offers permanent residence to skilled workers who want to work and settle in rural and more remote communities.
14 pilot communities will approve certain employers to hire for jobs that they can’t fill with local workers.
More info here:
New WP with @vincentab.bsky.social @ryancbriggs.net. We use LLMs and RAs to track publication trends in polisci. Here’s how subfields have changed in AJPS and JOP osf.io/v7fe8
A line graph depicting the average number of days it took to install a gigawatt of solar energy capacity worldwide from 2001 to 2023. The vertical axis represents the number of days on a logarithmic scale, spanning from 1 to 1000 days. The horizontal axis indicates the years from 2001 to 2023. In 2004, the average time was about 1 year, which is marked on the graph. A downward trend shows significant decreases in installation time over the years. By 2010, it took under 30 days, and by 2015, just over 7 days. The most notable point is in 2023, where it dropped to about 1 day on average for installation. The data source is attributed to IRENA (2024), with calculation by Our World in Data, and the chart is identified as CC BY, indicating it is licensed for sharing and adaptation with appropriate credit.
In 2004, it took the world a year to add a gigawatt of solar power — now it takes a day
If you're a fan of #DavidLynch's work, @criterionchannel.bsky.social & MAX both are featuring selections of his films (Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, the shorts, etc.).
Fact:
by replacing your morning coffee with Green tea, you can lose up to 89% of what little joy you still have left in your life.
Our finest cultural export! 🥴
this abstract is INSANE
Dear Santa,
You didn’t get me the thesaurus I asked for and now I’m mad. You made me really mad. I’m mad at you
Shot and chaser. Don't listen to the nay-sayers who deny the reality of moral (and material!) progress.
It still boggles my mind that only 66 years separate these photos.