Dean Eckles

@eckles.bsky.social

9.4K followers 1.2K following 300 posts

networks, contagion, causality
faculty at MIT

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Mathematics 19%

Physics 19%

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Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 11h

Yeah not sure... Changes in the relative cost of manufacturing with standardized parts vs not, thereby making this more appealing for manufacturers?

Reposted by Dean Eckles, Michael Jones‐Correa

Lawfare @lawfaremedia.org · 12h

The U.S. military is being used inside the United States. There's a lot we don't know about how, why, and under what authorities.

Today, Lawfare is launching a new project–which includes a tracker and a map–to follow where and how the military is being domestically deployed.

A map of where the U.S. military was deployed in the United States. The dots are color coded. The dots are in the District of Columbia, Los Angeles and surrounding areas, Florida, unknown locations in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, the southern border area, South Carolina, Idaho, Nevada, Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Border Patrol's Laredo Sector, Texas, Los Angeles and surrounding areas, Louisana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Georgia, Wyoming, Memphis, Tennessee, and Missouri.

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Prose and Khans @temujin9.t9productions.com · 1d

the "tech debt" metaphor primes people for bad intuitions

debts have a strict lending schedule, and refinancing if you're in a pinch

debtors don't wake up Tuesday at 3am and set part of your business afire unless you pay them off

the only part that really fits is the carrying cost

Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social · 3d

ICE agents in Chicago violently detain a non verbal autistic man for being “non compliant”

He couldn’t “comply” because of his disability…they don’t care

This is not the first time they’ve gone after a disabled person

They target the most vulnerable because it’s an easy way to meet their quota

Reposted by Mark E. Schaffer, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Michael H. Whitworth , and 1 more Mark E. Schaffer, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Michael H. Whitworth, Dean Eckles

Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 3d

Haha, this from the New Yorker is getting passed around the math dork community. I did a comic about this kind of thought a few years ago: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/commut...

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · 4d

Feels like the opening to a very bad sci-fi film.

Musk has threatened to leave if he doesn’t get a larger share of Tesla. He told investors last month, “It’s not like I’m going to go spend the money. It’s just, if we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army? Not control, but a strong influence. That’s what it comes down to in a nutshell. I don’t feel comfortable building that robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence.”

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 5d

🧠⚙️ Interested in decision theory+cogsci meets AI? Want to create methods for rigorously designing & evaluating human-AI workflows?

I'm recruiting PhDs to work on:
🎯 Stat foundations of multi-agent collaboration
🌫️ Model uncertainty & meta-cognition
🔎 Interpretability
💬 LLMs in behavioral science

Reposted by David R. Miller, Dean Eckles, David Darmofal

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 7d

The aesthetic of an authoritarian not befitting the civic traditions of the United States

The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 7d

With large portraits of himself, 24-karat golden adornments and a triumphal arch, President Trump is asserting his power through what might be called an imperial aesthetic, or visual cues designed to project personal command and grandeur.

The imperial aesthetic at the heart of Donald Trump’s presidency

In addition to his accumulation of political power, Trump has embraced visual cues designed to project personal command and grandeur.

www.washingtonpost.com

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan, Rosemary A. Joyce, Benjamin Braun , and 5 more Brendan Nyhan, Rosemary A. Joyce, Benjamin Braun, Alan Richardson, Dean Eckles, Jen Nelles, Chimène I. Keitner, Nathan P. Kalmoe

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 7d

This is quite a story: the US employed every strongarm tactic available, including personal threats against delegates and their families, to derail an agreement on reducing shipping emissions that was almost finalized. on.ft.com/47lq3dZ

Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 8d

Not a public link?

Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 8d

An early analysis I did at FB was revisiting the market research team's clustering of users — for which they got help from the data science team, so it was a complex variational Bayes thing. It basically just sorted them into 6 clusters, with clear ordering by how active they were.

Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 8d

Confusingly, I gather in biostat "completely randomised" means Bernoulli randomization

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 9d

Nothing to worry about, totally normal

Yashar Ali 🐘 @yasharali.bsky.social · 9d

“100% ANTI TRUMP, WHICH IS PROBABLY ILLEGAL.”

Donald J. Trump &
+
@realDonaldTrump
Seth Meyers of NBC may be the least talented person to "perform" live in the history of television.
In fact, he may be the WORST to perform, live or otherwise. I watched his show the other night for the first time in years. In it he talked endlessly about electric catapults on aircraft carriers which I complain about as not being as good as much less expensive steam catapults. On and on he went, a truly deranged lunatic. Why does NBC waste its time and money on a guy like this??? - NO TALENT, NO RATINGS, 100% ANTI TRUMP, WHICH IS PROBABLY ILLEGAL!!!

Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 9d

Well I switch back and forth between WMBR and Emerson's WERS :)

Reposted by Dean Eckles

James “f Elon” Kraemer @jakraemer.bsky.social · 9d

Voting is sexy

Me dropping off my ballot early in the drop box

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 10d

Why analysis informing a decision shouldn’t try and predict the decision it’s informing: kucharski.substack.com/p/why-do-peo...

Reposted by Richard Fletcher, Alberto Acerbi, Dean Eckles , and 1 more Richard Fletcher, Alberto Acerbi, Dean Eckles, Anne Schulz

rasmuskleis.bsky.social @rasmuskleis.bsky.social · 11d

What if people appreciate having an abundance of content and communication, more than they feel overloaded by it?

@annisch.bsky.social et al decided to have a look. Their results? "We found that appreciation for abundance was about twice as common as overload".

Paper: journalqd.org/article/view...

Reposted by Alexander Wuttke, Ingo Rohlfing, Dean Eckles , and 1 more Alexander Wuttke, Ingo Rohlfing, Dean Eckles, Jesper Wulff

Anne Scheel @annemscheel.bsky.social · 11d

There still seems to be a lot of confusion about significance testing in psych. No, p-values *don’t* become useless at large N. This flawed point also used to be framed as "too much power". But power isn't the problem – it's 1) unbalanced error rates and 2) the (lack of a) SESOI. 1/ >

Aaron Fisher @aaronjfisher.bsky.social · 11d

But here's, the thing, p values and significance become useless at such large sample sizes. When you're dividing the coefficient by the SE and the sample size is in the tens of thousands, EVERYTHING IS SIGNIFICANT. All you're testing is whether the coefficient is different than zero.

Reposted by Dean Eckles

ProPublica @propublica.org · 11d

Journalism tip: If someone says drop the story, that’s a sign to keep reporting.

Back reporters who won’t flinch. Support our independent journalism ➜ propub.li/43MugoG

Article excerpt: When ProPublica emailed questions to Newby’s daughter, the North Carolina Republican Party’s communications director, Matt Mercer, responded, writing that ProPublica was waging a “jihad” against “NC Republicans,” which would “not be met with dignifying any comments whatsoever.”

“I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump Administration and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter,” Mercer said in his email. “I would strongly suggest dropping this story.”

Reposted by Alexander Wuttke, Ingo Rohlfing, Dean Eckles

Aaron Fisher @aaronjfisher.bsky.social · 11d

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Bluesky @bsky.app · 14d

Also new in v1.109: custom feed operators now receive more interaction events.

If you run a custom feed, now you'll know when people like, quote, repost, reply, and see posts in your feed. All valuable signals that can help you drive higher-quality recommendations in your feeds.

Reposted by Dean Eckles, Brian Weatherson, Aleksandra Urman

Reyhan Harmanci @harmancipants.bsky.social · 15d

🎇New package alert @wired.com! This one has been in the works for months. If WIRED was going to tackle AI -- something we cover daily -- we had to go big. So here are 17 different stories about the way AI is changing us, even as the technology itself keeps moving www.wired.com/ai-issue/

AI of a Thousand Faces

What happens now that AI is everywhere and in everything? WIRED can’t tell the future, but we can try to make sense of it. Behold: 17 readings from the furthest reaches of the AI age.

www.wired.com

Reposted by Dean Eckles, Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 15d

Appendix A7 most striking graph for me:

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, Juan Cole, Aaron Sojourner , and 2 more Richard S.J. Tol, Juan Cole, Aaron Sojourner, Bessma Momani, Dean Eckles

Nick Ashdown @nickashdown.bsky.social · 15d

At a certain point in Turkey, virtually every non-public person I interviewed refused to give their last name. Eventually I stopped even writing "______ declined to give his/her last name for fear of government reprisal," because it became redundant, and editors understood. But here's the thing...

Reposted by Will Jennings, Brendan Nyhan, Gavin A. Schmidt , and 11 more Will Jennings, Brendan Nyhan, Gavin A. Schmidt, Steve Peers, Michael A. Clemens, Daniel W. Drezner, Robert C. Richards, David R. Miller, John Palfrey, Gerald Friedman, Samantha Brennan, Michael D. McDonald, Dean Eckles, David Darmofal

Bill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 16d

An embarrassingly obvious point, but...

This. Is. Illegal.

If anything like the rule of law were in force, Trump couldn't arbitrarily increase a tariff because he is annoyed.

In important and increasing ways, the rule of law in the US no longer exists.
www.cnn.com/2025/10/25/b...

Trump says he’s increasing tariffs on Canada by 10% after Ontario’s Reagan ad | CNN Business

President Donald Trump said Saturday he is increasing the tariff on Canada by 10% over current levels, further escalating trade tensions over what he called a “fake” ad that featured parts of an anti-...

www.cnn.com

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Patrick G. Eddington @pgeddington.com · 17d

For the second time, Cato has sued DoJ & FBI for internal records regarding the Bureau’s use (or misuse) of FISA Section 702 surveillance powers. The de facto destruction of PCLOB & Patel's elimination of an internal audit unit make such oversight litigation imperative.

www.cato.org/blog/has-tea...

Cato Sues FBI Over FISA Records, Again

Two things are certain. The first is that the FISA Section 702 program is set to expire in late April 2026. The second is that the kind of public interest FOIA litigation Cato is engaged in on this ca...

www.cato.org

Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 18d

So what do people think of using (quasi-)Poisson regression for a binary outcome?

How about in discrete & continuous time hazard models?

Crazy or actually sensible?

Reposted by Kim L. Scheppele, Elizabeth Saunders, Rebecca Solnit , and 29 more Kim L. Scheppele, Elizabeth Saunders, Rebecca Solnit, Mark A. Lemley, Brendan Nyhan, Tom Clark, David H. Kaye, Rosemary A. Joyce, David Rothschild, Laia Balcells, Eric Goldman, Chris Hanretty, Anders Nilsson, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, David S. Cohen, Sanford F. Schram, Trevon D. Logan, Rebecca Tushnet, Alan Richardson, David R. Miller, Gerald Friedman, Beatriz Gallardo Paúls, Anne Norton, Dean Eckles, Nora V. Demleitner, Nathan Richardson, Simon Lester, Kate Jackson, Aviel Roshwald, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Nathan P. Kalmoe, David Darmofal

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 18d

Trump: "I don't think we're necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war, I think we're just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We're going to kill them. They're going to be, like dead."

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Micah Lee @micahflee.com · 18d

I was interviewed on the Kill Switch podcast about @iceblock.app, the mutual aid group @norcalresist.bsky.social, and the insane situation we’re in where Apple and Google are collaborating with Trump to censor apps at will podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/k...

maybe ICEBlock was 'activism theater,' but is banning it protecting us?

Podcast Episode · kill switch · 10/22/2025 · 35m

podcasts.apple.com

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 18d

Quite an artifact of the age. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Cuomo condemned over racist AI ad depicting ‘criminals for Zohran Mamdani’

Official X accounts posts and then deletes AI-generated attack ad that prompts widespread denunciation

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