Thesis: 'methodological crisis' in science is NOT the sudden realisation of a problem. It is a well characterised problem which benefited hugely in recognition by a change in how scientists communicate and collaborate. Central issues were outlined clearly before 1970.

Sterling, 1959. Publication bias, the file drawer problem, and the cult of significance.

Cohen, 1962. Social scientific studies are, in general, substantially underpowered.

Forscher, 1963. The pursuit of publication rather than the pursuit of reliable results.

Platt, 1964. Topic-hopping, weak theory, and the role of induction over time.

Tweetstorm: Project ideas that could become huge —

1. GoodReads + Sci-Hub

Sci-Hub is proving to be an amazing resource for thousands of budding researchers who don’t have the means to pay for access to publications. Make a better one with great recommendations, search and importantly — crowd sourced annotations!

2. Better Google Apps Script

GAS is a great way to manipulate various Gmail, Sheets and Docs data but it’s a pain to use and debug. Make this 10X easier. The user of your product should be able to start writing Python to manipulate Google Sheets within seconds.

3. Quantify Engineering Productivity

Quantifying productivity is an incredibly important and underrated problem. One bad metric for software is TLOC. Assuredly we can do better! There are millions of pull requests online. Millions of comments. So much to train on.

4. git deploy gdocs

Current workflow: write text, get feedback, copy text, paste text in codebase, deploy text. That’s broken. Have one source of record in the original document. Using your framework, I should be able to instantly link a Google Doc to a static page.

It’s convenient for others to inconvenience you.

Keep that in mind when people want/ need favors.

Two words that will help you “nice” folks out

When people ask you for a favor start responding with “It depends”

It will take a lot of pressure off you

Can you do me a favor?

“It depends”

A key to being peaceful is to stop doing shit you don’t want to do / it’s inconvenient

Most people go wrong trying to be nice

That shit never works

People will take advantage.

They will push you to your limits

Take you to the deep end & keep going

Being nice will get you ran over

Be fair. Be kind. Be reasonable.

Not nice

Tweetstorm: Project ideas that could become huge —

1. GoodReads + Sci-Hub

Sci-Hub is proving to be an amazing resource for thousands of budding researchers who don’t have the means to pay for access to publications. Make a better one with great recommendations, search and importantly — crowd sourced annotations!

2. Better Google Apps Script

GAS is a great way to manipulate various Gmail, Sheets and Docs data but it’s a pain to use and debug. Make this 10X easier. The user of your product should be able to start writing Python to manipulate Google Sheets within seconds.

3. Quantify Engineering Productivity

Quantifying productivity is an incredibly important and underrated problem. One bad metric for software is TLOC. Assuredly we can do better! There are millions of pull requests online. Millions of comments. So much to train on.

4. git deploy gdocs

Current workflow: write text, get feedback, copy text, paste text in codebase, deploy text. That’s broken. Have one source of record in the original document. Using your framework, I should be able to instantly link a Google Doc to a static page.

you know how employers can ask for references for potential employees? you should be able to ask for references for your potential manager. what do their past reports have to say? 🤔

managers are probably the most-cited reason i hear for people leaving their jobs, but the feedback loop on manager performance is often really terrible because, by design, it's really scary for people to give negative feedback to their bosses!

which is bad for everyone, including the manager. it means that they doesn't get good feedback, which means that they'll keep losing team members without really understanding how they can improve. hiring good people is hard. you don't want to lose them needlessly.

even exit interviews (where, theoretically, you can just put it all out there and mic-drop because you're leaving) are fraught. i've talked to a lot of people who were afraid to give critical feedback in exit interviews because they didn't want to burn bridges.

anyway, companies, if you want to improve retention, get really serious about your feedback loop. you might be asking for feedback, but that doesn't mean you're getting it if people don't feel safe to give it honestly.

The eight key components of a social media style guide

A thread 👇🏻👇🏾👇 (with a free template at the end)

1. The style guide tl;dr

If someone doesn’t want to read everything in the full style guide, they can at least come to this section and get the gist.

2. Voice and tone

You have the same voice all the time, but your tone changes. Your voice and tone humanize your brand and let you take part in conversations naturally.

3. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation

You’ll want to carry over many of your spelling and grammar guidelines from your overall content guide, but keep in mind you may want to modify for social media constraints.

4. Formatting

With so many different platforms, formatting on social media is especially important to ensure you are consistent and make your brand recognizable.

A GAN-generated image has been auctioned for a high price tag. The people selling it might have reused a piece of code taken from GitHub, with limited changes. Should you be outraged? Well, no.

As someone who does open-source, on many occasions my work has been monetized with only thin packaging around it, & not credit. I don't actually have a problem with that -- it's right there in the license terms. It's part of what OSS means: you create more value than you capture.

Is it in bad taste to monetize open-source without giving back? Absolutely. Protesting it is just as bad, though. If you don't want people to reuse your code (and implicitly, profit from it), don't open-source it.

As for whether a generic, low-quality GAN-generated image is worth money -- obviously the content itself is worthless, but the act of putting it up for auction (with great success!) is a kind of a masterpiece of performance art, unironically.

It's like Banksy's shredder -- I don't think the manufacturer of that shredder deserves much credit.

1/ I want to start an honest conversation about kids: They are terrible for your career. They strain your marriage. They make you way poorer.

But they are also the best decisions I’ve made in my life. Here’s what my experience has been like with two young ones.

2/ Before kids, I was all about my startup life. I built an awesome edtech company with my wife, and we sacrificed many years (filled with joy and pain) to get our nut. We traveled a lot. We ate out. We hung out with friends every weekend.

Then we decided to have kids...

3/ When our first kid arrived, we attempted to be very active parents--that didn’t work out so well. It turns out that being a stay-at-home mom or dad is way harder than we could bear, psychologically and physically.

4/ We had to accept that we were better off throwing money at the problem and got a wonderful nanny + other support, so we could go back to work. That decision currently costs us $80K/year (now for 2 kids in f-ed up bay area rates), but was right for us.

5/ For me, I try not to work between 5pm and 9pm during the week, so I can dedicate time with family. Weekends are all family time. But I have to make up those lost hours of productivity by starting work at 5am. On average I get 5 hours of sleep per night, which is not enough.

This is my son, Sam. He’s 5. And today he learned how shitty and harmful #ToxicMasculinity is. My rage meter is spiking right now so excuse me if this is a little raw but there are some things I want to say about BS #gender norms (a thread)

Sam is my middle child & he’s a terror. A “boy’s boy” as so many (not me) would say. He’s rough and tumble, he’s loud, he’s always dirty, loves trucks, plays sports and knee drops me from the couch. But he also loves a lot of “girl” things.

Sam has a collection of purses because he likes to carry things around. And he also loves to have his nails painted bright colors because he thinks they “look beautiful.” And he’s right – they are beautiful…

So he proudly wore his red nail polish to kindergarten this morning because Sam has absolutely no concept of nail polish only being for girls or reason to think anyone would possibly have a problem with beautiful nails.

But his classmates did have a problem. A big one. Sam was ridiculed for being a boy with nail polish. They called him names and told him to take it off. This lasted the entire day.

Poland issued more first residence permits to non-EU immigrants in 2017 than any other member state (and 17% more than a year earlier), new Eurostat data show.

In terms of the ratio of permits to population, Poland was third, behind only Malta & Cyprus (and just ahead of Sweden)

As @danieltilles1 noted in our most recent article, the current government has, despite its anti-immigration image, overseen the largest wave of immigration in Polish history

The data can be found here

🗣 Brandwatch Interviews Thread 📝

We love to get interesting and intelligent people on our blog, so we've been doing a bunch of interviews lately.

We'll be listing them all in this thread. Scroll down for some great insights, opinions, and thoughts.

⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️

Ever heard of Mixed Martial Analytics? Us neither until we spoke to @tonyclement about his unique approach to data analysis:

We spoke to @brendaisarebel about the customer operations challenges at a modern and app-based bank:

We also had @jennisparks take us through what it takes to create unique and beautiful maps:

Our very own data scientist, Paul Siegel, sat down with us to talk about asking the right questions when it comes to social intelligence:

3 Free Ways to Drive Traffic with Content:

1. Youtube - the second biggest search engine after google.
Use what you know to create niche 'how to' content, be informative, engaging & personable and be sure to talk about your brand/website, leaving all your links in the box below.

2. Pinterest - driving more traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.
Step 1:Set up a biz profile and create boards relevant to your audience.
Step 2:Pin other user content daily.
Step 3:Start a blog about relevant topics within your brand niche.

Step 4: Create eye-catching title graphics on your blog topics, eg. use 4 ways to do X, How to solve Y.
Step 5: Link these graphics to your blog which should be embedded onto your site - relevant traffic from your blog will then explore your website.

3. Twitter

Break down what you know about your niche into tweets.
Tweet 10 of these daily.
Engage with the community within your niche.
Slide into other people's DMs to establish rapport.
Offer tons of value.
Promote your website/email list regularly with an emphasis on value.

Here is Editor-in-Chief of the @EpochTimes, @JasperFakkert's response to the slanted hit piece that @Buzzfeed's @HayesBrown put up 2 days ago:

Brown's article at Buzzfeed starts off pretending it's some kind of really off-the-wall notion that Hillary Clinton paid for the creation of the Steele Dossier that was then used to justify the FBI's spying on the Trump campaign & transition team.

After that awful start, he swerves to making accusations that the Epoch Times is connected to the 'cult' Falon Gong.

You can read the article here:

Brown insinuates with no real evidence whatsoever that the Epoch Times is 'Falon Gong-linked'.

The 'evidence' he supplies in his article to 'prove' @EpochTimes is 'Falon Gong-linked is this:

1) the Epoch Times' extensive *news coverage* of China's attempts to wipe out Falon Gong with intense persecution directed at the group since 1999.

2) a reporter *shouting a question in 2006* at then-President George W. Bush about China's persecution of Falon Gong members.

How to unlock creativity:

-slow down
-study another field
-get into nature
-get out of office
-music, lots
-sketch
-cardio before/after
-nibble on small ideas
-throw stuff away
-atomize the work
-look for orthogonal inspiration
-breathe
-learn about circadian rhythm
-paint

How to unlock creativity part 2:

-rest (take CBD)
-travel far
-use pain as leverage
-talk to people not like you
-go beyond physical exhaustion aerobically or anaerobically
-spend an hour in play with a child
-read poetry/philosophy
-cook a new meal
-walk
-get in water