Philip N Cohen

Ideal (family size) compared to what? It’s not just that the ideal is the wrong thing to measure for this. It’s also that total fertility rate is the wrong thing to compare it to.

Ya. Here's some more related to that
familyinequality.wordpress.com/2025/11/23/i...

That's not easy

This is the way a lot of us would like to think we would respond to hostile questions in a Congressional hearing, but its rare to see a witness just turn the tables on a Senator like this.

Ya, D5something

Wow that's cool. Tx!

Ya, sitting on my stoop with the 500mm @ 1/3200th

I call these Sparrow on the Cross, and Angel of Sparrow 🪶

Well he didn't wait to find out. ("my sense is that...the differing variances probably explains a fair amount of this problem.") The abstract justification for assuming the predominance of very smart men - when you are an executive in charge of hiring - is not that relevant to the charge of sexism.

Yes! Thanks for sharing.

Leslie's thread:

Non-natalism – Spectre Journal A case for being against pronatalism Leslie Root shows how misguided it is for the left to accept pro-natalist positions. Worry about declining birth rates is based on a misinterpretation of the Total Fertility Rate, and minor social pol...

"Low birth rates are simply not a problem," and other profoundly important observations from @lesja.bsky.social, to redirect the left away from the myth of progressive pronatalism.

Your regular reminder that the absurdly simplistic claim of "race scientists" that there are genetically determined racial differences in intelligence is about as "controversial" as the claims that the earth is flat, that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer, or that vaccines cause autism

That is nowadays known as a colonoscopy prep solution.

The headline that highlights the absurd form of American fascism we now live with:

I love the idea that it's not sexist to say there are more super smart men if you also say there are more super dumb men. Awesome loophole, convenient implications.

House Sparrow trying to hover below a suet feeder.

I know nothing about physics, but I was surprised to see the daylight between the feathers (left wing) of this House Sparrow, which was trying to hover in place below the suet feeder. 🪶

I reckon that's the wildfires

Wow, this map of particulate air pollution.

The only real way to test this is to see what the left says about a US bombing campaign against Israel on behalf of Palestinians.

MIT graduate student council "calls for adoption of preprints...to
accelerate communication of scientific discoveries, and restore healthy incentives" drive.google.com/file/d/1KLbj...

1. Are you currently using an AI tool for work-related tasks or projects? * Yes * No, but I would like to (PLEASE SKIP TO QUESTION 7)

My employer asks me to complete a survey on AI usage for which this is the first question (required):

1/ Has life expectancy fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic? In a new pre-print, we find that 31 of 34 high-income countries had still not returned to their expected life expectancy trajectories five years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6... #demography

Trump says Iran was "two to four weeks" from having a nuclear weapon (and no reporter even follows up). Also Google says this hair color is "pinkish beige" or "champagne pink."

In fairness it aimed right for the light pole

chaser: bsky.app/profile/phil...

shot:

One can hope

Of course I don't want to put translators out of work. But who is hiring translators? That is not a plausible alternative to using these tools.

Several people have objected to treating LLM generated language translation as acceptable. I'm interested in this, because to me this is a reasonable use case. With these tools (built into everything) I am able to read work and converse with people I would otherwise just never know.

the model is already here—it’s the “human-in-the-loop” tech critics have been writing about for years: underpaid global human piecework validating the supposedly-amazing artificial output.