John Paul Helveston

John Paul Helveston

@jhelvy.bsky.social

Systems Eng Prof @ GWU 🦛 | Director, Data Analytics MS Program | EVs 🔋🚗 | Low Carbon Tech | Choice Modeling | Survey Research | China | US-China Policy | #rstats | #reproducibility | #opensource | Father | opinions own

11.5K followers2.8K following701 posts

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John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

Hi everyone! 👋 I didn't really give a great intro when joining, so here's a short introductory thread to folks who want to connect here. Quick summary: - #Rstats dev - Choice modeling - Global EV industry - Consumer preference modeling - China - Industrial Policy Details in a 🧵... (1/6)

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

@pingfanhu.bsky.social and I built our own editor. I know, I know…does the world really need another one? But Emaki 絵巻 is the tool I’ve wanted since I started using Claude Code and Codex, so we just went ahead and built it 🙃. We’re calling it an "agentic development environment" (ADE) ...🧵

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John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

• Terminals open in your project folder, plus the agent’s native CLI anytime 🐼 • A file sidebar to preview or edit what your agent is changing 🛺 • Git support, of course 🌋

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

@pingfanhu.bsky.social and I built our own editor. I know, I know…does the world really need another one? But Emaki 絵巻 is the tool I’ve wanted since I started using Claude Code and Codex, so we just went ahead and built it 🙃. We’re calling it an "agentic development environment" (ADE) ...🧵

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

What I've never liked about using agents in traditional IDEs is that the editor is the centerpiece while the chat is squeezed into a sidebar. But I spend most of my time reading the chat! So we flipped it - Emaki puts the chat in the center as a well-organized conversation log.

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

And now for a bullet list of features (complete with emojis): • All sessions in one sidebar, grouped by project 🤝 • Claude Code deletes sessions after 30 days. Emaki archives them 🎱 • An outline panel summarizes long sessions 🥌 • Click “explain” on any command so you know the agent wants to do 🧠

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

My piece in The Conversation today: Americans want electric cars, they just can't find them. For the past ~6 months, many articles have pointed to low EV sales as a sign of low EV demand, even with sky high gas prices. In my article, I show evidence that this is a market misread. ...🧵

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John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

Chinese-linked EV technology is also being barred from the market, even if it's manufactured in the US. There are plenty of policy options to make EVs more affordable to meet rising demand. None of these are it.

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

My piece in The Conversation today: Americans want electric cars, they just can't find them. For the past ~6 months, many articles have pointed to low EV sales as a sign of low EV demand, even with sky high gas prices. In my article, I show evidence that this is a market misread. ...🧵

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

The evidence: - Used EV prices rose 13% through late June, about $3,500 more for a typical EV - New EV inventory fell from ~130 days of supply in early 2026 to 78 by August (on par with gas cars) - The median new EV discount shrank from 9.8% off sticker in Feb to 4.7% in June

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

Meanwhile, federal policy is doing the opposite of what we need to make affordable EVs more accessible. The federal EV tax credit was removed in Sept. 2025, and the new fuel economy rule loosens standards and ends credit trading in 2028.

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

Rolling back fuel economy standards during the worst Middle East oil crisis since the last Middle East oil crisis that prompted Congress to create those standards in the first place is...a choice

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

On my way to posit::conf(2026)! Looking forward to sharing ideas about data, code, AI, & tools with a fun and ridiculously creative community. And if you'll also be there, come to my talk Tues afternoon to see how we used #quarto and AI agents to build the vehicletrends.us dashboard!

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

Journal editors can't find reviewers because we're overwhelmed. I checked my gmail, review requests have more than doubled since the pre-LLM days. This is also why you're seeing more AI-generated reviews - reviewers can't keep up and reach for the LLM to get the job done faster (not better).

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

Your opportunity to comment on the proposed NSF Guidance on Financial Assistance ends next Monday, August 24. There are WAY fewer comments on this than the earlier proposed OMB government-wide regulation, but this rule codify's the SAME policies! Attached is my comment to NSF.

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

The public overwhelmingly rejects OMB's federal grant rule change. I used the GPT 4o mini LLM to classify the comments, showing 94% in opposition. Of the 5% supporting, ~84% are verbatim copies. This blog post summarizes the results (full analysis linked in post). www.jhelvy.com/blog/2026-07...

jhelvy.comThe public overwhelmingly rejects OMB’s proposed federal grant rule – jhelvy.comOMB has proposed a sweeping rewrite of the rules that govern every federal grant. Thousands of people filed comments. I downloaded them to look at what they actually say.
John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

Dissenting on a birthright citizenship case should be disqualifying for SCOTUS. Not only is the language of the 14th amendment abundantly clear, we fought a civil war to enshrine it in our constitution. That amendment was a very, very costly amendment. Shame on Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas.

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

🚨 The U.S. scientific enterprise faces an existential threat few are talking about. A proposed OMB rule would reshape ALL federal research funding — NIH, NSF, DOE, DOD, every agency. What it does & how to push back 👇 defendfederalresearch.org 🧵...

defendfederalresearch.orgComment on the OMB RuleThe proposed OMB Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance would put political appointees over peer review and let agencies cancel active grants. Here’s what it changes and how to comment before Jul...
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John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

This is the most significant threat to American science in my lifetime. But it's not final. Public comments legally must be considered and responded to — a specific, personal comment genuinely counts.

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

Take 15 minutes: 1️⃣ Comment using the guide (it has an AI prompt to help you draft it): defendfederalresearch.org 2️⃣ Send the same message to your members of Congress ⏰ Deadline: July 13, 2026. Then repost this.

defendfederalresearch.orgComment on the OMB RuleThe proposed OMB Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance would put political appointees over peer review and let agencies cancel active grants. Here’s what it changes and how to comment before Jul...
John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

🚨 The U.S. scientific enterprise faces an existential threat few are talking about. A proposed OMB rule would reshape ALL federal research funding — NIH, NSF, DOE, DOD, every agency. What it does & how to push back 👇 defendfederalresearch.org 🧵...

defendfederalresearch.orgComment on the OMB RuleThe proposed OMB Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance would put political appointees over peer review and let agencies cancel active grants. Here’s what it changes and how to comment before Jul...
John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

The rule would: • Put political appointees in charge of what gets funded — effectively ending scientific peer review • Let agencies cancel active multi-year grants anytime "priorities" shift, no justification required (yes, the language is that vague)

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

The rule would also: • Restrict international collaboration • Sharply raise the barriers to pay publication fees or attend conferences • Ban entire fields of inquiry on ideological grounds • Lock it into binding regulation that's hard to undo — and limits future public input

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

The BUILD America 250 Act charges #EV owners $130/year to "pay their fair share" in road taxes. Hogwash. Average drivers pay ~$95/yr in federal gas tax. A 50 mpg hybrid pays just $42, yet no surcharge for them. It's almost like this has nothing to do with tax revenue and is just an EV penalty 🤔

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

A less extreme version is just to put speed governors on every car. You can put the cap at something like 85mph, but seriously beyond that there is truly no reason to be allowed to drive faster except like running from the cops

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social

My least popular (and most correct) view is that cars should be automatically limited to the local speed limit. Put the pedal to the floor and you still can't go over 25mph in a residential area. (15 in Manhattan btw)

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

We are watching our democracy crumble. With this SCOTUS ruling, every state has no choice but to follow TX and redraw their voting maps. The south will become an entirely white R vote, and blue states will become entirely D. The changes made now will lock in polarization for a generation or more.

John Paul Helveston
@jhelvy.bsky.social

At its peak, the US had over half a million soldiers deployed to Vietnam, with a total of 2.7 million served over the course of the war, and US forces still failed to secure the country