Favorites February 5th 2022

Paul Bruno @Paul__Bruno

Semesters or Quarters? The Effect of the Academic Calendar on Postsecondary Student Outcomes aeaweb.org/articles?id=10… "switching from quarters to semesters negatively impacts graduation rates. Event study analyses show that the negative effects persist beyond the transition"

aeaweb.orgSemesters or Quarters? The Effect of the Academic Calendar on Postsecondary Student Outcomes(February 2022) - There exists a long-standing debate in higher education on which academic calendar is optimal. Using panel data on the near universe of four-year nonprofit institutions and leveraging quasi-experimental variation in calendars across institutions and years, we show that switching fr…

Wow! Apparently semesters are terrible!

Notorious RBMK 📡🌌 @ComradeRobot

this is a perfect tiny horror story

Another item in the thread was this rod with text on it that says that if you can read the text you should drop the rod and run. Further, Charlie Stross pointed out that it would probably be possible to have all phones automatically sound a warning if the camera ccd is picking up signal consistant with radiation like this.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Caloric output potential of different patches of land based on pre-Columbian crop availability (i.e., no potatoes in the Old World). In theory, Eastern USA and Rio de la Plata could have been the densest places in the world. ideas.repec.org/p/bro/econwp/2…

This map is SO COOL. I would absolutely never have guessed.

Brent Andrew @SanFranciscoBA

The hometown looking gorgeous.

Noah Smith: "This photo really shows you how un-dense San Francisco is. And it's America's second-densest major city."

July 14th 2018