The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and Border Patrol, is using a broad web of surveillance tools — purchased as its budget has ballooned under this administration — to monitor, apprehend and intimidate the people it seeks to deport and the U.S. citizens critical of its policies.
But then at some point you curse at it like crazy, right?
♥️
Imagine you are a Lego fanatic. In ~3 years (Aug22-Nov25), how much could you spend on Legos alone?
AZ's winner-this is one ESA account-spent $15,944.59 of AZ taxpayer money on Legos*
(*May be more: WalMart Target Michael's etc purchases aren't disaggregated. Waiting for those data.)
At my desk, it's machine learning vs. items like Brazilian waxing kit, Victoria's Secret thongs, & vaginal probiotics in the Arizona ESA data.
There's only one GoodMan who can name this paper
@joshua-goodman.com
Helpful to see this example. Can I ask what your prompt was? And I’m guessing this was using opus 4.6?
Jayme Lawson from Sinners hit the nail on the head and said how I felt with the whole BAFTAs situation.
Over on X, Sam Altman is doing an AMA and acknowledging a backlash to OpenAI’s partnering w/DOD.
Meanwhile Anthropic’s Claude has vaulted to the top of Apple’s App Store, dethroning ChatGPT.
Did this yesterday
More Anthropic recruiting material.
Amazing Anthropic recruiting material right here.
Boichick?
Or: here’s my report, did the authors actually address any of these points and I missed it?
We’ve run multiple RCTs w/ survey incentives for our studies (none as thoughtful as this one). We’ve had mixed results. Best version offered unconditional $ up front and $ for completion (max $50). It’s hard to offer $ because people can think it’s a scam even w/ official approvals, letterheads, etc
Incredibly disturbing.
Spring sabbatical in TX where it’s currently 80 degrees…
Many workers have missed shifts without jobs being destroyed making it challenging to measure labor impacts with conventional sources.
We use real-time daily data from Homebase to measure impacts. Thanks to UChicago and Homebase for making the data available.
#EconSky #NumbersDay
my local park is full of hundreds of snow sculptures and someone has been adding museum labels
New RCT: What happens when citizens experience incarceration firsthand?
With Arto Arman, @andreasbeerli.bsky.social, and @aljoshahenkel.bsky.social
Working paper: www.ifo.de/en/cesifo/pu...
Building Pro-Worker Artificial Intelligence Daron Acemoglu, David Autor & Simon Johnson Share X LinkedIn Facebook Bluesky Threads Email Link Working Paper 34854 DOI 10.3386/w34854 Issue Date February 2026 This paper defines pro-worker technologies, including Artificial Intelligence, as technologies that make human skills and expertise more valuable by expanding worker capabilities. Our conceptual framework distinguishes among five categories of technological change: labor-augmenting, capital-augmenting, automating, expertise-leveling, and new task-creating. Only the last category is unambiguously pro-worker, generating demand for novel human expertise rather than commodifying it. We illustrate these distinctions through hypothetical and real-world examples spanning aviation maintenance, electrical services, custodial work, education, patent examination, and gig delivery. While AI’s capacity to automate work is substantial, we argue that its potential to serve as a collaborator, by extending human judgment, enabling new tasks, and accelerating skill acquisition, is equally transformative and currently underexploited. We identify market failures, including misaligned firm and developer incentives, path dependence, and a pervasive pro-automation ideology, that may lead to underinvestment in pro-worker AI. We consider nine policy directions that would change incentives, including targeted investments in health care and education, tax code reform, antitrust enforcement, and intellectual property protections for worker expertise.
Dream Team: @dacemoglumit.bsky.social @davidautor.bsky.social & Simon Johnson on Pro-Worker AI
Going to the top on my reading list
#EconSky
www.nber.org/papers/w34854
Can states do anything about grade inflation?
I've got a few ideas, but none of them are slam dunks. Do you have thoughts? schooledbymikepetrilli.substack.com/p/can-states...
I am particularly excited about the Acquatella and Marone paper being presented. It formalizes intuition about the value of health insurance and problems with the traditional understanding of moral hazard…
Interesting example of importance of choice of incentives in survey data
Watch the censored Talarico interview here:
youtu.be/oiTJ7Pz_59A?...
Stephen Colbert said that the FCC and CBS - which is in no way a compromised or complicit organization - wouldn’t allow him to broadcast an interview with Democratic State Rep James Talarico. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/a...
CBP didn’t give her or anyone any water; she asked 3 times accg to other reports. CBP killed a 7yr old.
“8 hours after the girl & her father were taken into custody, she began having seizures & her body temperature was measured at 105.7 degrees by emergency medical technicians. shorturl.at/d2OTJ
Incredible.
Sometimes very hard not to feel like the rest of the country has abandoned Minnesota. We STILL have ICE everywhere. Our schools, businesses, and economy are in profound crisis. But without Bovino here throwing tear gas, much of the country seems to not care at all what’s being done to us.
I keep rereading this paragraph expecting the words to change
This is much more praise than we (or at least I) deserve, but we'll take it ;)
