BC SOCIETY
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

1/Today in @bopinion, I discuss why America has been producing too many PhDs in recent years, and what we need to do to solve the

 2/First of all, many people don't realize just how many PhDs we produce! More than almost any other rich country.
3/And we've kept ramping this number up and up.
4/But the problem begins when PhDs start looking for (usually academic) jobs.

https://t.co/M8hhoap12d
5/The U.S. built a ton of universities and then we stopped.

Professors have tenure.

That means there are just going to be fewer new tenure-track jobs than before. Everyone in academia already knows this well.
6/Here's the market for history professors.

https://t.co/sAwByQikS0
7/Here's the market for anthropology professors.

https://t.co/APb5NbB6Np
8/Here's the market for English and foreign-language professors.

https://t.co/rzzuFsoGCT
9/Now, to make matters worse, college enrollment has been flatlining. Even before COVID-19 came along and kicked colleges' butt.

https://t.co/nsbwhqaoYp
10/And colleges, under huge pressures to cut costs, have switched from tenure-track faculty to adjuncts and lecturers.
11/The life of many PhDs after graduation has thus become "adjunctopia" -- or more accurately, Adjunct Hell. Desperately hanging on year after year, hoping for that big break that never comes.

https://t.co/z9GjZkmAhB
12/Of course, PhDs can go into the private sector. BUT, many doctoral advisors push PhD students toward academia. And grad school culture stigmatizes private-sector jobs as failure...
13/Plus, while STEM PhDs and some social science PhDs can often find private-sector jobs in their fields, many humanities and social science fields don't have good private-sector analogs.

This will lead to underemployment and resentment.
14/And social unrest really is a threat here. Dashed expectations can lead to deep rage at the system. And who better equipped to overthrow the system than a bunch of brilliant underemployed people?

https://t.co/HEp0Hf5Egs
15/Some historians, like @Peter_Turchin, have warned that "elite overproduction" is a recipe for unrest.

https://t.co/23VstFoiAd
16/And the insanely shitty job market for PhDs is taking a massive psychological toll.

https://t.co/Mmuovpg3u5
17/So what do we do about this?

For STEM PhDs, we can have the government employ more. A massive expansion of federal research funding is in the works. We should pass @RoKhanna's Endless Frontier Act.

https://t.co/4Nd91Fcejr
18/But for many humanities and social science fields, a big federal bailout simply isn't in the cards. Nor is the private sector prepared to employ ever-increasing humanities and social science PhDs without severe underemployment.

We need to cut back on production.
19/Some universities are already cutting back on production in these fields.

This will be painful but necessary.

https://t.co/iK92UoN6Zd
20/We need a PhD production system that is more in line with new economic realities -- flat or declining college enrollment, cost-cutting, and the end of the 20th century college building boom.

(end)

https://t.co/o36CkgHRlU

More from We need 3 million vaccinations a day 🐇

Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
1/Here is a thread about climate change that's going to make a lot of people mad.

Basically, America, on its own, has a LOT power to stop climate change than almost anyone admits.

2/China now emits far more CO2 than the U.S. It emits almost as much as Europe and the U.S. combined.


3/In fact, even this huge disparity dramatically understates the degree to which China is in the driver's seat of climate change.

China, being still much poorer than us, has much more room to grow its economy. Hence, the emissions gap will only grow larger.


4/This leads to an uncomfortable but unavoidable fact: The battle to halt climate change will be won or lost in China.

America's power - and thus, the power of American politicians, activists, businesses, etc. - to save the planet from climate catastrophe is very marginal.

5/This is just a fact. But it's an uncomfortable one for a people like Americans who are used to thinking that the world lives or dies at their command.

Thus, I see many Americans desperately trying to preserve the illusion of control with respect to climate change.
ALL
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
1/I'm thinking about the end of Apu in the context of the national debates on immigration and diversity.


2/Apu's presence in Springfield represented a basic reality of America in the late 20th and early 21st century: the presence of nonwhite immigrants.

3/As Tomas Jimenez writes in "The Other Side of Assimilation", for my generation, immigrants from India, China, Mexico, and many other countries aren't strange or foreign. On the contrary, they're a

4/But that America I grew up with is fundamentally ephemeral. The kids of immigrants don't retain their parents' culture. They merge into the local culture (and, as Jimenez documents, the local culture changes to reflect their influence).

5/Simpsons character don't change. But real people, and real communities, do. So a character who once represented the diversity that immigrants brought to American towns now represents a stereotype of Indian-Americans as "permanent foreigners".
ALL
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Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Confession: I haven't the slightest interest in my genetic ancestry or where my ancestors came from or what they did.

I mean, my dad's family came from Lithuania. They changed their name from Kuznets in 1905. At some point they were blacksmiths. My mom's family came from Halychyna in Ukraine. I have no idea what they did. That's about all I know.

Oh, I do know that pretty much all of my extended family who stayed in Europe got wiped out by the Nazis.

I like to think that my ancestors were nothing and nobody. Random boring peasants with no special talents or wealth.

Except for Genghis Khan, of course. But he's everyone's ancestor.

The best thing about this approach is that I don't have anything to live up to. ;-)

(end)
ALL
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
1/OK, data mystery time.

This New York Times feature shows China with a Gini Index of less than 30, which would make it more equal than Canada, France, or the Netherlands. https://t.co/g3Sv6DZTDE

That's weird. Income inequality in China is legendary.

Let's check this number.

2/The New York Times cites the World Bank's recent report, "Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations Around the World".

The report is available here:

3/The World Bank report has a graph in which it appears to show the same value for China's Gini - under 0.3.

The graph cites the World Development Indicators as its source for the income inequality data.


4/The World Development Indicators are available at the World Bank's website.

Here's the Gini index: https://t.co/MvylQzpX6A

It looks as if the latest estimate for China's Gini is 42.2.

That estimate is from 2012.

5/A Gini of 42.2 would put China in the same neighborhood as the U.S., whose Gini was estimated at 41 in 2013.

I can't find the <30 number anywhere. The only other estimate in the tables for China is from 2008, when it was estimated at 42.8.
SOCIETY
Noahtogolpe \U0001f407
Noahtogolpe 🐇
@Noahpinion
1/OK, so. Let's talk about Left-NIMBYism.

We all know about Right-NIMBYs, rabidly protecting their white-flight suburbs from Those People. And there are plenty of liberal NIMBYs too.

But NIMBYs of the Left are also a force to be reckoned

2/Left-NIMBYs have developed a canon of interlocking, mutually reinforcing beliefs about housing and urbanism.

These beliefs are mostly false, but they form a powerful "canon" that quickly ossifies into a hardened worldview.

It looks something like this:


3/Fortunately, Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs has written an article that perfectly encapsulates the Left-NIMBY worldview (and quotes me in it!).

So this is a teachable

4/Robinson selectively quotes a Bloomberg article of mine (https://t.co/iamRrW6oei).

Look at the part he quoted, vs. what I actually wrote!

Pretty different, eh? 😉


5/In fact, as I wrote in the article that Robinson failed to read more than one line of, it's theoretically possible that Left-NIMBYs COULD be right that allowing market-rate housing drives up local rents.

I take that possibility very seriously, as do YIMBYs.
SOCIETY

More from Society

Sam Dylan Finch \U0001f937\U0001f3fb\u200d\u2642\ufe0f
Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️...
@samdylanfinch
I had the most bizarre experience outside of a bar yesterday, which my partner very aptly described as "toxic mask-unlinity." (A Thread.)

I was standing outside, waiting for a lyft to get home, when two cis men came out of the bar to smoke cigarettes. They're discussing the masks that folks are wearing in California at the moment because of the very dangerous air pollution from the fires happening.

I happen to be wearing one of those masks, because I think lungs are important and I like breathing. I dunno. One of the men notices me standing there, and says, "Like this f*cker right here. What is this shit?"

He goes on a homophobic rant about me, the pansy with a mask, and what a Very Manly Man he is because he's not afraid to smoke a pack of cigarettes while California is on fire. He doesn't need a mask, because something-something-heterosexual-something.

And part of me is just... impressed by the fact that this dude thinks he's Owning The Gay Libs by not wearing a mask to protect his lungs from smoke and particles in the air that are literally DANGEROUS... while chain-smoking. Outside of a bar.
SOCIETY
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Krugman is, of course, right about this. BUT, note that universities can do a lot to revitalize declining and rural regions.


See this thing that @lymanstoneky wrote:

And see this thing that I wrote:

And see this book that @JamesFallows wrote:

And see this other thing that I wrote:
SOCIETY
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kurt lash
kurt lash
@kurtlash1
1/ The “I Have a Dream" speech is one of the most extraordinary speeches in American history. You should read it again. First, a few thoughts about the common American heritage Dr. King relied upon in calling Americans to rededicate themselves to the unfinished work of freedom.


2/ Dr. King delivered his speech in what he called the “hallowed spot” of the Lincoln memorial. More than a picturesque backdrop, King relied on America’s reverence for Lincoln and the common celebration of Lincoln’s words and acts, especially the Emancipation Proclamation.


3/ “Five score years ago…” King echoes the words of the Gettysburg Address. Like Lincoln, King invokes the Declaration of Independence and the fundamental principles of American freedom, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Every person in that crowd knew these words.


4/ The Declaration, Constitution and Emancipation Proclamation declared and established the fundamental American principles of freedom that all Americans knew and believed in. But these principles and promises remained unfulfilled for black Americans.


5/ Lincoln’s audience knew the history of slavery and many had suffered personal loss in the ongoing war. Dr. King’s audience knew the history of violent racism, segregation, and unequal economic opportunity. The Proclamation freed the slaves, “but the Negro still is not free.”
HISTORY , SOCIETY
Diyora Shadijanova \U0001f1fa\U0001f1ff \U0001f1f9\U0001f1ef (\u0414\u0438\u0451\u0440\u0430 \u0428\u0430\u0434\u0438\u0436\u0430\u043d\u043e\u0432\u0430)
Diyora Shadijanova 🇺🇿 ...
@thediyora
at some point we have to recognise that the financial anxiety young people are living through is not normal. monetising all your hobbies is not normal. hustle culture is not normal. glorifying precarious work is not normal. self-optimisation is not normal.

all these issues have a single root and guess what? it's the economic system we live under!! but we're too fucking exhausted to even see an alternative to capitalism because we're so broken and fatigued by it. it doesn't have to be this way, we can seek a different future.

As Mark Fisher argued, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is the end of capitalism. We've been utterly brainwashed by every part of our society to think that everything we're experiencing right now is extremely normal! But clearly, capitalism is failing us.

How about instead of “manifesting” money on TikTok, we work towards building a more equal society? Just a thought.

Incredible! People in the replies to this are like “people who hustle will be relaxing when they get wealthy”. That’s IF and not when and still, that’s not a given. The fact we don’t see having a regular full-time job as enough “hustling” or whatever is so scary to me.
SOCIETY
Dant\xe9 Stewart (Stew)
Danté Stewart (Stew)...
@stewartdantec
As many of you know, I was apart of the white evangelical tradition. I have talked about things I learned about being Black in white spaces. Now I want to say some things about what I learned about once being a Black evangelical returning back to the Black church.

A thread.

Spending years in white evangelical churches and schools, specifically from 2012-2018, shapes Black people in more ways than we would like to admit. It shapes us to diminish Blackness, devalue our people’s story, and always test what we have against the white logic and litmus.

This is particular reality for us Black men in that space. White Christians exploit our vulnerabilities, give us the room to speak, while simultaneously subverting and devaluing Black women and their struggles and their grievances. Opportunities abound for us and we take them.

We are invited into the meetings, we are given the mic, we are asked to lead groups on race, the Black church, etc. We are asked though often we actually haven’t read or thought deeply about each. We become a weapon. Profiting and policing/punishing those who get out of line.

All the while, white Christians feel good about themselves and other Black people are left to clean up the mess we’ve made, the ways we’ve made fools of Black folk, and the harmful ways we’ve learned to think, and to preach, and to be around us. It is profoundly depressing.
ALL , SOCIETY

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Built by @jesswallaceuk, the project is focused on highlighting the experience of developers and people learning to code.

I wish this existed when I learned to code! Congrats on $250!!
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Art Historian* \U0001fa94
Art Historian* 🪔...
@Arthistorian18
The last Hindu king of Pakistan.

The name Amarkot is known to all in our subcontinent as the birthplace of Emperor Akbar. When Humayun was fleeing from Sher Shah, Rana Prasad of Amarkot sheltered him and this is where Emperor Akbar was born.

#Thread
1/19
@talesofBharat


They have always maintained friendly relations with the rulers. The Mughal court and the Rana of Amarkot had special respect because Emperor Akbar was born in the shelter of Amarkot Raj. They did not even have to attend court regularly.

2/19

Dara Shikohar provided Rana supplies to Amarkot during his expedition to Kandahar.
But another reason why the name of this Amarkot is inextricably linked with the history of the subcontinent is the partition of the country.
Sodha is the family name of the Maharajas of..

3/19

Amarkot,They were originally known as Sodha Rajputs. Despite possessing a very small kingdom, he was far ahead in terms of wealth and honor. During the British rule, Rana Ratan Singh led the anti-British movement in Sindh. In 1753, the British occupied the state of Amarkot,
4/19

which was his and his ancestral home, and hanged Rana Ratan Singh on a high platform on the walls of Amarkot fort. It hangs in front for a few days. Even today, a folk song called "Mor tor tilaya rana" is very popular in Sindhi language.
After the capture of the fort by the
5/19
ALL
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Pran Katariya
Pran Katariya
@KatariyaPran
The Straddle is my favorite trade these days. But more often than not, one needs to adjust to make a good return from it. There are many ways to do this depending on your view, psychology and imagination. Will discuss a few that I use

The Straddle is a delta neutral strategy and it is important to keep deltas in check during the course of the Trade and not let them run away from you. Of course Volatility is the elephant in the room- but not going there as that will require a separate discussion

The first and most common method is to go 'inverted.' That is to say to shift the untested side to generate additional Premium and increase the runway to Breakeven. So if you start with a Straddle at 700 and price goes to 740, you can move the PE up to say 720.

How much should you move the untested side? While again this is a matter of skill, experience and artistry, the rule of thumb is to cut deltas by half. Remember, prices will move and you have to allow sufficient room for them to fluctuate

The second method is to shift the entire Straddle in the direction of the move. So if you have a 700 Straddle and Price goes to 740, you can shift the Straddle to 720. If you time this right, it can generally be done at virtually no cost or minimal cost.
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सा विद्या या विमुक्तये...
@raghav_aanya
#ज्योतिष_विज्ञान #मंत्र_विज्ञान

ज्योतिषाचार्य अक्सर ग्रहों के दुष्प्रभाव के समाधान के लिए मंत्र जप, अनुष्ठान इत्यादि बताते हैं।

व्यक्ति के जन्म के समय ग्रहों की स्थिति ही उसकी कुंडली बन जाती है जैसे कि फ़ोटो खींच लिया हो और एडिट करना सम्भव नही है। इसे ही "लग्न" कुंडली कहते हैं।


लग्न के समय ग्रहों की इस स्थिति से ही जीवन भर आपको किस ग्रह की ऊर्जा कैसे प्रभावित करेगी का निर्धारिण होता है। साथ साथ दशाएँ, गोचर इत्यादि चलते हैं पर लग्न कुंडली का रोल सबसे महत्वपूर्ण है।


पृथ्वी से अरबों खरबों दूर ये ग्रह अपनी ऊर्जा से पृथ्वी/व्यक्ति को प्रभावित करते हैं जैसे हमारे सबसे निकट ग्रह चंद्रमा जोकि जल का कारक है पृथ्वी और शरीर के जलतत्व पर पूर्ण प्रभाव रखता है।
पूर्णिमा में उछाल मारता समुद्र का जल इसकी ऊर्जा के प्रभाव को दिखाता है।


अमावस्या में ऊर्जा का स्तर कम होने पर वही समुद्र शांत होकर पीछे चला जाता है। जिसे ज्वार-भाटा कहते हैं। इसी तरह अन्य ग्रहों की ऊर्जा के प्रभाव होते हैं जिन्हें यहां समझाना संभव नहीं।
चंद्रमा की ये ऊर्जा शरीर को (अगर खराब है) water retention, बैचेनी, नींद न आना आदि लक्षण दिखाती है


मंत्र क्या हैं-
मंत्र इन ऊर्जाओं के सटीक प्रयोग करने के पासवर्ड हैं। जिनके जप से संबंधित ग्रह की ऊर्जा को जातक की ऊर्जा से कनेक्ट करके उन ग्रहों के दुष्प्रभाव को कम किया और शुभ प्रभाव को बढ़ाया जाता है।
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Justin Kan
Justin Kan
@justinkan
1/ Throughout my startup career, I’ve seen many founders have an aversion to sales. This is a mistake that can kill your startup.

2/ Sales is often viewed as either a saving grace or proof that the product isn’t good enough (because it should sell itself). Neither are ever true. Some common mistakes that result in...

3/ Mistake 1: Hire a sales rep before reaching product/market fit to get your initial batch of customers. This is a mistake because founders need to work through their MVP with early adopters to truly understand what it is they’re selling.

4/ Mistake 2: Reach product/market fit, need to scale, and rely entirely on self-serve. For enterprise products that require big commitments and internal shifts, almost no product is self-explanatory enough to sell itself.

5/ Mistake 3: Make a first sales hire who isn’t scrappy enough to help mold the sales process from scratch. Some salespeople are amazing at their jobs, but not cut out to establish the processes that others end up following. This skillset is what @rdedatta calls a “sales ninja”.
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