Big Data Kane

Interesting. In our pod chat Nicole Hemmer and I discuss whether JD Vance can replicate Trump's misogynistic magic or whether the conditions for it have passed:

@stano.bsky.social and I do indeed find that Trump has a special appeal to unmarried men without BA degrees, but not only in 2024. We will see whether another Republican could do the same. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Obviously Michigan should have just run the ball twice at the end of regulation. Horrific play calling.

How can the University of Michigan not have a quarterback or a kicker?

That it'll fail because they lack sufficient consolidation and centralized control does not make it trivial that the president of the United States is trying to steal elections and produce an illegitimate sham Congress. It is open rebellion against the Constitution and morally tantamount to treason.

I’m far from the best Catholic but, yeah, I’m going to believe the Pope over anything from the Trump administration.

A lot of political scientists and Democratic elites downplayed the corrupting effects of the private financing of elections in the US, based on a selective reading of the campaign contribtuion influence literature and the ability of Dems to raise lots of money. Boy were they wrong!

RIP Strawberry www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/...

The fact that the world's first trillionaire feels invulnerable enough to publicly threaten an entire political party is by itself strong evidence that concentrated wealth is a threat to democracy.

What the hell? Per WSJ, Ukrainian drones have been forced to fly more slowly because of new limits on Starshield, the military version of Starlink,put in place at Elon Musk‘s personal direction. Zelensky told Rubio the speed needs to be restored. How in the world are we letting Musk call the shots?

The world’s richest man, a vast recipient of our tax dollars, is personally intervening in a war on behalf of Russia’s murderous dictatorship. Every public contract with firms he controls should be severed on national security grounds. This is legal & easy to do—> www.congress.gov/crs_external...

Just Robert Rubin warning of economic fallout if Trump tries to steal the midterm election. Obv pitched toward the business elites that have mostly cowardly capitulated to Trump during his second term. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/21/o...

Really striking stuff from new NYT poll: Dems lead GOP on every major issue, including immigration, and are seen as the party of the working class by a 13-point margin:

I hope Democrats are ready to blow up the system with campaign finance and transparency reforms. Trust is already at an all-time low. We don't get out of this mess without rebuilding trust.

I just paid 400 bucks to have the motherboard on my washing machine replaced who thought it was a good idea to put motherboards in washing machines?

Sorry I can vote D, it might harm the value of my private prison stocks.

Stop worrying. This motorcycle is holding up just fine with seven passengers.

Put another way there’s no better path to making money in the US than telling rich conservatives what they want to hear.

One reason the idea that academia turns good centrists and right wingers leftist is funny is every professor knows if you sell out to the right, it is much more lucrative. If I wrote a book exposing “woke academia” for conservative audiences I could rake in tons of cash in sales, speaking + TV.

NFL officials need a course on what roughing the passer is because neither of these two this quarter have been roughing the passer

Andreessen offers at least more coherent insights into the SV worldview than Musk. Listening to that worldview was a useful aid to predicting what DOGE would become. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/doge-dange...

Jan is CBS’s legal correspondent. She gave the puff piece interview to Alito on his book. She’s criticized people who criticize the Court too much / in certain ways. She’s a perfect case study in why some mainstream/legacy media press coverage of SCOTUS is broken, bad, and misleading.

Of course. I mean, of course. Will he also give Xi Taiwan while he's at it? www.wsj.com/world/russia...

Vegas is a very dumb place to have a sports team - there’s always tons of the visiting team’s supporters there.

At high volume LLMs can probably grade undergrad work as well as a TA or instructor. It would reduce a lot of labor on an unenjoyable task. Why hasn’t this been done? Dunno, I assume because uni leaders think “customers” prefer human graders who are empathetic and, more importantly, persuadable.

NIL has ruined college hoops but made college football better.

If you ever find yourself in Sacramento and enjoy ice cream check out Gunther’s. This is the seasonal flavors - black licorice and pumpkin 😋

Russia first, America last. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/u...

Phone ban improved academic performance, esp for weaker students.

Reading this article is a surreal experience.

Have to be clear just how dangerous this is. If it continues, it effectively removes constitutional rights from an entire class of people. Imagine you had to fear that if you criticize the regime, any error on paperwork filled out by your family decades ago could be used to strip your citizenship.

The way in which DOGE fucked up the IRS - *massive leadership turnover *1 in 4 employees gone, more in tax enforcement *loss in trust of the public *employees fearful of reporting wrongdoing - all of that remains, increasing deficits & reducing performance. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/things-rea...

Musk’s preferred pols of course have different policy stances than others. But one problem with this type of spending is that it elevates certain issues and sidelines others, because pols need to appeal to wealthy. See: www.russellsage.org/publications... www.nytimes.com/2026/10/12/u...

People sometimes joke that the US is an insurance company with an army. Well many US university systems are now healthcare companies with a college.

The racism dial is being turned up to 11. Must be an election coming up.

What is Justin Herbert doing?!

Over the last decade, there were two hypotheses: H1: the political right genuinely cared about threats to speech from the left. H2: they were using campus speech wars to impose their values and silence dissent. Today, the answer is clear, but I can't find any of the H1 people admitting their error.

I’m far from a Bama Booster but that was obviously a pass interference.

The liberal media is obsessed with the idea that coastal Democratic elites talk down to middle America. Nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody, thinks Trump supporters are dumber than Trump does.

Trump admin's new rule adding prohibitively expensive new fees for "OPT"—temporary work authorization program for international students and new grads in the United States—is out. Would require colleges to pay $70,000 for year one. $30,000 for years two and three combined for STEM fields.

this is effectively a new $100k tax on international students, and will destroy the market. Which is killing the golden goose -- higher ed is one of the most successful exports the US produces